July 4 through 9

Sunday, July 4

My Sunday morning Zoom meeting with DeAnn was good, as usual.  It was a shorter meeting than usual as she had to go somewhere at 1 pm, but it was still productive and motivational.  When we finished our meeting, I caught up with my DW journal.  Later in the day, Caleb came over and took my garbage and recycling bins to the curb.  Both were very full.  My only other accomplishment today was filling my pill caddy. 

I posted about what would have been my dad’s 90^th birthday today on FaceBook.  I put up a picture of Dad on his 40^th birthday with his parents and my brother Jack when he was just a little boy.  My dad was 64 when he died. It’s hard to believe that I am now older than my dad was when he died. 

It was very hot today, so Mom and I opted out of going to the fireworks in Owatonna.  We had gone to the Beaver Lake fireworks yesterday, so we really did not need to go and roast ourselves tonight.  Last night’s fireworks lasted about an hour and a half.  Tonight’s would only last between 20-30 minutes.  So no great loss.

 

Monday, July 5

I finished my laundry, finally.  My house is filled with flies.  I have no idea how they are getting in.  It’s disgusting and annoying to have dozens of flies all over the house.

In the late afternoon, I took Mom and Lily to Blooming Prairie where we got supper at the DQ.  Lily got a chili dog that smelled just fabulous.  Mom and I got BBQ chicken strips.  We all got ice cream as well.  Lily ate her chili dog right away, but Mom and I took our chicken strips home.  They were a disappointment.  The strips were dry and over cooked.  They were more like chicken jerky than a nice, moist chicken strip.  I doubt I will be getting those again any time soon.

I didn’t do much today—just picked up a few things, looked at doll stuff on Etsy, and poke around on Facebook. 

 

Tuesday, July 6

Today was a day of historical significance in my life.  (HA)

Mom had been complaining that she was out of a lot of her vitamins and that she really wanted to go to Walmart to stock up on vitamins and buy some cat litter for Mojo.  Since we are both fully vaccinated now, I told her I would take her, but I wanted to go EARLY in the morning when there were not many people there.  So I got up early and we were in Owatonna shortly after 8 am. 

There were not many cars in the parking lot, but I was surprised that there was only one electric cart available.  It was only about half power, too, so the whole time I was in Walmart, I was afraid it was going to die on me.  We did a pretty quick tour of Walmart.  I bought stuff that I was low on, like soap and toothpaste.  I bought four good sized totes so I can continue sorting and organizing my stuff for a possible move to Lily’s house.  I also bought two small garbage cans with lids—one for the soft food containers Peaches’ food comes in.  The lid will keep the flies out of there and also keep any unpleasant smells confined.  I picked up a few really cute, summery fat quarters of fabric to use to make some cool summer clothing for my three new baby dolls.  They are still naked at this point.  I am sure they don’t mind, but I hate seeing naked dolls laying around.  The only other stuff I bought was two loaves of bread (one French and one pumpernickel), a bunch of Diet Coke, a box of apple fritters, a box of tiny eclairs, and a big bag of really yummy looking dark, sweet cherries.

After Walmart, Mom and I went through the drive through at Caribou.  We each got a cold, fruity beverage and a breakfast sandwich.  We ate them at the dam at Morehouse Park.  Back in Ellendale, I brought Mom to my house to drag my empty garbage bin back to the house.  I feel guilty letting her do it, but it is literally impossible for me to walk while dragging the big, clumsy bin back to its place.  It isn’t heavy—just awkward.

When I got home, I managed to get in one tote with the food products in it.  That was very hard for me to handle due to my mobility issues.  I decided to text Caleb and ask him if would stop after work and carry the rest of my stuff in the house.  By that time, the recycling truck will have collected my recycling, and he can haul that bin back up to the house too.

I don’t know if I mentioned that I got my city water/sewer bill last week and that it was almost three times higher than it usually is.  I realized this on Saturday, when the city offices are closed. They were closed on Monday because of the Federal Holiday too, so I called them today when I got back from Owatonna.  Steve Engle, who was in my high school graduating class, is in charge of a lot of the business of City Hall, so I talked to him about my bill.  I thought they might have had a computer glitch that charged me twice or something.

Well, he said that my water consumption for the month of June was more than I usually used in an entire year.  I have done NOTHING that would result in that much water usage, so Steve asked if I had left a hose running outside or if some device was leaking in the house. Well, I have never used the outdoor spigots, and nothing in the upstairs is leaking.  And if something were leaking in the basement, it would have been leaking for a lot longer than the month of June!  The only person that goes to the basement is the Culligan man, and it has been months since he was down there—I’ve missed his last two visits due to either Lily or Mom needing to be driven places.

Steve then suggested that maybe my water softener had gotten stuck on “cycling” and had run for many days.  I said that was unlikely as it is only about a year old. We talked for quite a while and I told him I would have my nephew check the water softener to see if it was running when he stopped by after work. 

When Caleb came, he carried in my stuff, brought the recycling bin back to the house, and headed to the basement to check the water softener.

Well.

That was when my life went directly to shit. Literally and figuratively.

He discovered that my basement was literally covered in shit.  He took a picture with his cell phone and showed me.  The toilet was covered in shit.  It looked like a volcano that had erupted.  Instead of lava rolling down the sides of a mountain, there were rivers of shit on the sides of the toilet. It had spread out about five feet from the toilet all over the basement floor and had pushed up against various things stored in the basement.  OMG. 

Well, at least the mystery of where all the flies were coming from was solved.  I was so aghast that I didn’t know what to do for a while.  Then I realized that I needed to call Jim and Dude’s (my plumber) and find out who in this area does professional cleaning as there was NO WAY I could clean that level of filth up on my own.  I called the City first to tell them what was gong on. 

Several years ago, there was a scandal here.  A guy whose last name was Misgen was hired to hook all the houses in Ellendale up to the sewer system.  Well, he was a corrupt asshole.  He randomly connected about half the houses in town to the sewer but left the others unconnected.  Of course he charged the City for connecting all of the houses and left with pockets full of cash.  One of the houses NOT connected was my Aunt Darla’s.  It cost them a fortune when a foot of shit backed up into their basement.  Not only had they paid for sewer service for years, but they were left to clean up the mess on their own dime as the City refused to take responsibility for any of the fraud perpetrated by their sewer guy.

So I feared that might have been a victim of that same issue.  Even though it has been years since this happened, every now and then, someone’s house gets flooded with shit and it is discovered the house was never connected to the sewer.  I would have thought every house in town would have been inspected when this fraud was discovered, but apparently the City decided that would be “too expensive.”  No one who had this happen was ever reimbursed for all the money they had paid for sewer served for years either.  Small town corruption.

Obviously, this situation caused me a maximum level of stress and anxiety.  I think I did a pretty good job of handling the situation, all things considered.  Obviously, this situation has taken over my life, too. 

I called the plumber and explained the situation.  I asked them for a recommendation of a cleaning service, and they gave me Service Master.  The plumber told me that they were booked up until July 19, and if I had them prior to that date, I would have to pay $140/hour overtime for their workers.  Then I called my insurance agent’s office and talked to his office lady.  He was up in Duluth over the 4^th, and she wasn’t sure what my policy provided.  So, she told me she would call him and get back to me. 

Now I have to switch out of the daily update mode and put it all in a glop of information as everything runs together in my head and I was too busy dealing with this situation to keep notes to reconstruct my days in writing.  So----

Wednesday, July 6 through Friday, July 9

I had to take Lily to her physical therapy appointment at 10 am on Wednesday.  She had no one else to take her, and she is still not allowed to drive after her hip replacement surgery. While I waited for her in the parking lot of the rehab facility, I called Service Master and talked to them about the situation.  They told me a ton of stuff that I don’t remember anymore.  Part of it was about insurance and part of it was about payment.  I remember that they told me I would have to pay $500 up front before they would do anything.  (Ultimately, they never collected that, even though I offered to pay it when the cleaning crew came.) 

When she got out of the rehab place, I took Lily to Aldi’s to return the pool she bought for her great-grandchildren to play in over the 4^th.  They gave her a full refund in cash, so she was very happy.  She wanted to take me to Culver’s for lunch, so we went through the drive through and got food.  She got a fish sandwich and I got a fish dinner with 3 pieces of fish, coleslaw, and onion rings.  Lily had no idea there was a lake in Owatonna, so I took her there and we ate our meal there. I ate the sides and one piece of fish.  I saved the other 2 pieces for another meal.

Now this is where I am not sure the order things happened in as I was very stressed out.  I had a plan.  I followed the plan.  Stuff got done. 

The plumbers were scheduled to come after 4:30 on Wednesday, but they ended up coming closer to 2 pm, which was better as that would not result in me paying them over time.  They clean two clogs out of my system—one that was under the house and one closer to where the pipes meet the sewer.  The happy news is that my house is connected to the city sewer.  One less thing to worry about.

The cleaners also came and they worked at the same time for a while.  The plumbers left before the cleaners but then had to come back the next day as the cleaners discovered the main drain in the center  of the basement quit draining.  Presumably all the debris that spewed up from the sewer abyss and coated the basement got washed down that drain during the cleaning and plugged it up again.  So the plumbers drilled down into it and broke it up again and the cleaners went back to work.  This time, the only thing that got plugged up was their suction hose.  It got plugged so bad that they had to take it outside and work for an hour to unplug it. 

The two cleaners looked like kids to me, but I suspect they were in their early 30s.  They were friendly ad kind and hard-working.  It took them three days of hard work to get the basement clean. Both they and the plumbers checked everything and found NOTHING dripping or running.  So the excessive water usage remans a mystery though the main suspect remains the water softener. 

Once the basement issue is resolved, I will be calling Culligan to send someone out to give it a thorough checking over.  I don’t want to waste all that water (or pay for it) again.

A dumpster was ordered for all the ruined stuff, and the cleaners spent a whole afternoon breaking up ruined shelving and dragging all that disgusting stuff up the stairs and out to the dumpster.  They also hauled out an old area rug that was very nasty and stained from cat vomit while I was in the hospital.  It was rolled up in the garage, and the shorter guy carried it out and threw it in the dumpster.  I am going to see if I can get Caleb to come over and throw the broken railing from the fronts steps and a few mystery things that I think Kim’s spawn brought here out.  As long as I have a dumpster, I want to throw as much as possible into it.

Remember when I said I had a house full of flies?  Well, about two days ago, I found a maggot crawling on my living room floor.  I threw it in the garbage and found another one in about the same place.  I assumed the nasty little bastards had ridden up from the basement on a worker’s shoe or one of the tools that they carried up and down. 

I didn’t think much about it.

Well, the next day, I found more maggots—two, then five, then random singles.  I threw them in the garbage, but they crawled up and out as fast as I threw them in!  So I got a large ziplock bag and started throwing them in there as I found them and zip locking them in.  After I had picked up all that I could find, I swept up all the fuzz, cat hair and crumbs in my living room and grabbed my floor scrubber device, sprayed the area with water and Mr. Clean, and scrubbed.  When I looked back at the scrubbed portion of the floor, seconds after I had scrubbed it, I saw a mass of wriggling, squirming maggots right where I had scrubbed.  I turned the scrubbing pad over and saw that the bottom of the pad was just ALIVE with a mass of maggots. 

I started gagging instantly.  They were everywhere.  They were squirming off in every direction!  So, I put the head of the scrubber into a big bag and carefully peeled open the Velcro which held the pad onto the head.  I checked the entire body of the scrubber and found no more maggots on it.  I tied the bag shut to keep them in.  Then I started rounding up all the free roaming maggots and adding them to the zip lock bag.  It took me about four hours to do all the maggot hunting and confining.  The cleaners arrived in the middle of that task, and I told them what happened and showed them the ziplock bag of confined maggots.  They were horrified, and the smaller one took the tied bag with the scrub pad outside and threw it in the garbage bin immediately. 

Eventually I ran out of maggots to find, and I have not seen any more “loose” maggots since.

The days run together, so I don’t know exactly what thing happened on what day. 

I know that I am really glad that the weather has turned much cooler.  Lily had wanted me to come to her house and help her go through things and decide what to get rid of in preparation for her move—though she is now leaning towards NOT moving.  I sorted and started another week’s laundry, washed a bunch of dishes, and wiped down and put away a lot of pop and iced tea bottles.

At one point, I think it was Thursday, Tammy called and informed me that Mom was telling everyone that *I* was trying to blame “poor Kim’s precious boys” for my sewer back up.  This is NOT TRUE.  I specifically told my mother that it had been over a year since they lived with me, so I didn’t think they were to blame, even though Lucas always used enough toilet paper to choke a horse and frequently plugged the upstairs bathroom and left it for me to plunge despite my deep, open abdominal wound. 

Tammy went off on Mom and yelled at her, telling her that SHE is the one keeping all this shit going while whining and crying about “her family being soooo divided.”  She told Mom that we had talked and that I had said that *I* was afraid that THEY were going to accuse me of blaming “the boys” (poor abused and misunderstood victims that they are) for this mess.

Tammy is sick of her crap.  She was going to come down to visit this weekend but has now decided to come down, rent a hotel room overnight, and have a meal with her high school friend then return to her place without seeing Mom at all.  Mom is destroying her relationships with her kids HERSELF by running her never ending, bullshit filled mouth constantly.

I was so sick of Mom’s shit myself that I took off for Owatonna by myself instead of asking her if she’d like to come along and get a burrito from Taco Johns.  I usually ask her to come along so she can get out of the house.  Not this time.  No one else feels obligated to keep her amused and give her opportunities to enjoy her life more. 

I bought myself 2 burritos, some potato ole’s (from Taco Johns), and a chocolate malt (from DQ).  I ate one burrito and the ole’s and saved the other for a meal another day.  It was so peaceful and pleasant to go to Owatonna without my mother harping about “poor mistreated Kim” and her “poor, abused sons.” Or about the “whiny BLM people” and the “lazy welfare people who would rather lay on their backs and holler ‘helllllp me” than get one of the “many many jobs” currently available—just “look at all the help wanted signs” on every business.  ARG!!!  She doesn’t listen to the fact that those “many many jobs” are all minimum wage SHIT jobs that do not provide a living wage.  By the time I listen to that bullshit for an hour, I am ready to kill her, myself, and any random other within my reach.

It was good to get away without her bitchy ass riding shotgun.

On Friday, I had a long conversation with the insurance adjuster.  He told me a lot of stuff, most of which I do not remember.  He did give me hope that the plumbing bill would be at least partially paid for and that the cleaning bill would pretty much all be paid.  After the deductible, of course.  I told the adjuster that most of the stuff in my basement that was ruined was of little value.  None of my dolls were damaged.  The Christmas tree was probably the most valuable item that had to be thrown away—and I only paid about $100 for that several years ago, so I am sure its value has depreciated to about $10 by now. 

I had a nice chat with the cleaners close to the end of the day and told them how very much I appreciated what they had done and told them, “Whatever they are paying you guys, it isn’t nearly enough.”  The bigger guy said, “It is a shitty job.”  LOL.  I responded, “Literally and figuratively.” Then I gave each of them a $20 bill which they did not want to take.  I told them to PLEASE take it.  Their kindness and moral support made this whole ordeal much less painful than it could have been.  I know that I will be paying plenty for this, but I am sure that only a pittance will go to them.  This way they can at least have a really nice dinner and a few beers on me.

I got a call from Kevin who is the main guy at their Service Master location.  He will be coming tomorrow to inspect their work and see what remains to be done.  I think the cleaners themselves may be done.  They left some (I think 4) dehumidifiers in the basement and said they would probably have to run for a few days.  They will be back to collect them eventually.

Now there is no doubt that I have forgotten completely some of the stuff that happened during this ordeal or misremembered the order in which they happened.  But this is the bulk of what happened and a summary of those things that impacted me the most. 

It does look like the problem is essentially solved and that the basement is actually much cleaner now than it was prior to the disaster.  Now all that’s left is to pay the bills and deal with the insurance.

 

 

 

So I just got a 30 day Ban from Facebook for "Inciting Violence."

 Please read my protest and request for appeal and tell me if YOU think I was threatening violence or attempting to incite violence.

How did Facebook get the decision wrong?

The post  responded to was one of those silly  questions that tells you that you have only the object to your right to protect yourself from some imaginary monster.   My response was that I had a jar of salsa con queso and a TV remote and I facetiously opined that I would "kill the bastard" (IE the imaginary creature supposedly threatening my life).  Do you SERIOUSLY THINK that I was threatening to actually murder someone or to incite OTHER people to murder someone with a freaking JAR OF SALSA CON QUESO AND A TV REMOTE?  Also--recently, I reported someone for making threats of violence, murder and rape against four democratic women who are nicknamed "the squad."  THAT, a threat against ACTUAL, LIVING WOMEN WHO REALLY EXIST, was considered "not against our community standards."  Even though this poster had made many, many threats of this nature against ACTUAL, LIVING PEOPLE.  What the hell is wrong with your review system?  It obviously is DEEPLY FLAWED.  THIS is not the first time this has happened to me either.  Shame on you.  Either enforce your policies equally or STOP HAVING THEM.

What was your reason for posting it?  Do you think Facebook misunderstood your reason?

I posted it because it was a silly game meant to amuse people with the various items that you would have to use to protect yourself in the event of an attack by a monster.  The post was meant to evoke a mental image of some silly person attacking a homicidal creature from the dark side with a jar of cheese dip and a remote control.  OBVIOUSLY the FACEBOOK Patrol Bot is mentally handicapped if it sees this as a REAL threat or incitement to violence.  Come on!

 

Does this content involve important social issues?

Not unless the FaceBook Patrol Bot has started a protest titled "Imaginary Homocidal Monsters' Lives Matter.  You need to look at posts IN CONTEXT or not look at them at all.

 

Summarize in 5-10 words, the most important details of your case.

Threatening imaginary monsters with a jar of dip is not real violence.

 

Is there anything else you think we need to know?

You need to have actual humans read these things IN CONTEXT before restricting people for a month.  It makes you look like idiots.