Fire and Flood

I'm going to backtrack my week a bit today. Last Tuesday night (actually is was Wednesday morning but keep reading) the phone rang at 2:00 am. I am of the age that when the phone rings at 2:00 in the morning the first thing that goes through my head is "OMG, someone has died!" No, it was the evil soon-to-be ex (I'll call him Satan for the rest of the post. It's my little pet name for him) calling me from Vegas which he apparently hasn't figured out is in another freakin' time zone! He promptly announces that our Michigan house is on fire. Crap. He got a call from our security monitoring service saying they were sending fire trucks out there. I have a love/hate relationship with this house. It is a truly beautiful house that is on 2 acres of wooded land located between Detroit and Ann Arbor. An architect built it for himself and it is a soft contemporary that has a very Zen feel to it. This said, I don't know why Satan bought the house. He was renting a 3 BR place in a great area and Monkey Boy and I were moving up so for some reason he bought a house - outside of Detroit - one of the worst housing markets in the US. Whatever. To top it off, if he had put it on the market when I asked him to, it would have sold. But he kept saying that he might want to keep it. Well he's stuck with it now because he put it on the market after 3 automotive plants closed in the area.

After hanging up, I started thinking about the best case scenarios for the fire. There's #1, the security system was acting up again and sent out a false alarm. Then there's option #2, which is the place burns to the ground. Why would I be OK with option #2? Because one of the reasons that my divorce is taking so long is because Satan needs to sell this house to afford the divorce. If it burns to the ground, the insurance would pay it off.

Surprisingly, I can't go to sleep after this phone call, which is just fine because he calls again at 4:30am. The house isn't on fire, its flooded. We have temperature sensors on our alarm system and when the internal temp hits 35 degrees (the furnace broke), the alarm contacts the monitoring service. The less than bright girl working at the monitoring service interpreted the notification as fire instead of low temp. But it worked out OK because the drop in temp caused the pipe to burst, so at least the fire dept. turned off the water to the house.

Satan tells me during this phone call that someone had suggested that he turn the water off to the house and winterize it. I asked why he didn't do this. His answer: because it was warm when they told him to do it and he didn't think it would need it. Wow. This is why I called my mom and asked her to be my alibi if I shot him. If you are worried, he's still alive. So in one night, I was told about a fire and flood. All I need is a plague of locust to round the night out.

Nazis in Denver

Apparently the Nazi party has relocated to Denver as shown in this ridiculous story about a couple who were being fined for having a Peace sign wreath on their home. Seriously folks, its just a wreath that I'm sure they hung as a campy joke, not a symbol of Satan, as implied in the story. Part of the reason for asking the couple to take down the wreath was that the homeowners' association doesn't allow signs that are considered divisive. When did wanting peace become divisive? Remember when Christmas was fun and not a political minefield? In spite of the possibility of being fined by some lame association, I'm going to wish for peace on Earth this holiday season.

Source: RANDI PIERCE: AP / DURANGO HERALD

Strep is BACK in the House

Monkey Boy has strep again. Satan failed to notice that he was running a fever and had a sore throat during his visitation weekend, so he took Monkey Boy to the mall and swimming. Great. The good news is this bout of strep isn't as bad as the last one. His fever isn't that scary high fever. The bad news is he's out of school during a major standardized test and will have to make-up two days worth of testing in just one day.

On a more upbeat topic, my garden is looking gorgeous. I planted a small herb and tomato garden this year and already have flowers on one of the tomato plants. I added new cushions to the swing in the arbor and the confederate jasmine in just starting to bloom. And the converted grill works great!

Go over to my sis-in-law's blog and tell me what you think of the header. I created it out of a photo I took of her horses.

And Now We Bring You a Green Moment

I read a blog called Simply Green written by Danny Seo who has written several books on living the 'green' lifestyle. I thought his entry today was very cool. At the Westin he stayed at in Pittsburgh they have installed a new system to minimize electricity usage. Check it out.

Liv: I know what you are thinking. I drive a big, stupid SUV that consumes huge quantities of gas, devastates the ozone, and is probably responsible for the death of a rainforest or two. Satan bought it for me. I did not pick it out. Yes, my eco-conscious little soul is filled with guilt, but honestly I don't have the money to replace it and probably won't for a couple of years. I live in constant fear that Al Gore is going to hunt me down and bite my ass.