Sunday scrapin!

Sunday was my rebound day from Sick Saturday. Sidenote: I try not to call in sick to work hardly ever because you end up paying for it by being sick on the weekend eventually. I can't remember the last time I called in sick for work, but it must have been sometime.

I was happy to get out of the sick thing and back over to Campsie for some action. Lucy spent the day doin' this and that. She said she hadn't been upstairs, and when i asked why, she said she was a-skeered! girrrrl... shee-it.

Our house isn't haunted, I don't think. I've never had a ghost. When I was a kid our furnace made this noise like Frankenstein's Monster lumbering around. It could be kinda scary, so a ghost is never really something I've wished for, historically. Anyway, if Campsie is haunted, it's haunted by the ghosts of technology gone by. Things like: hot water heat. knob-and-tube electricity. giant TV antennas.

Today we scratched out heads some more over the lock situation. Who would have thought this could be such a fiddle-faddle? (I don't have any idea where that came from.) Still mystified by how you get all the locks on a house to use the same key without calling a locksmith and without buying damned Schlage locks, which are just as ugly as any of them, but three times more expensive. Once I'd thrown my hands up over that, it was time to draft our new tool into action: the cast iron floor scraper. Ah, yes! Now, this is the warrior that we got to help with ripping up linoleum in the upstairs bathroom and downstairs in the kitchen and the hall. After a few tentative strikes here and there, I was thinking, "this is going to be an incredible bitch." I took a deep breath and headed into the upstairs bathroom, put my back into it, and made some very satisfying noises of destruction. This is a violent process, fabulously loud and... an incredible bitch! But verrrrry satisfying. After tearing through 3 layers of linoleum (layer two was pretty cool, kind of bachelor pad Louis IV), I hit this grimy skuzzed-on layer under which was—surprise!—hardwood. Unfortunately, it's kind of soaked in filth (I mentioned this is the bathroom, I believe), and the floor may be hosed. There's some evidence of water damage around the toilet, which could explain our mammoth water bill. Just add this to the "wait and see" list.

On a momentary bleak note, right before bed, Lucy read to me from Mr. Fix - It, who says that knob and tube wiring is cause to run away from a potential house purchase. Well, too late for us.

Today's destruction brought to you by: Cast Iron Scraper, Flat Crowbar/Claw (always a favorite), and my new rubber kneepads. they were $15, but I think I'll get my money's worth and my knees will thank me.