Not exactly what I expected my 8-year old daughter to say, but I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and it probably could have been a lot worse.  She hears me talk while I’m driving!

I guess that’s how it is with siblings; they hate each other on a moment to moment basis, but if you try to hate one of them, the other jumps right in.  Ben was complaining about one of the kids in his class not being nice to him and Ela chimes in with that jewel of a statement.  What made it extra funny, was that she was working on her homework, had her head down and seemed to be completely disengaged from the conversation, then, BAM!  It’s amazing.  Kids really do hear everything unless you’re looking directly at them, using their name and giving them advice or discipline.  So the takeaway from this, I guess is: when you think your children are not listening, they are, when you think they are listening, they’re not.  If you want your child to listen to you, direct your comments to someone else.  You got that?  There’ll be a test later.

Aye, it just happened!  Ben was doing something “stupid” and I asked him to stop…3 times: Loud, Louder, and ME.  He didn’t hear me either time, then I said, “Ice cream, Ben?” in a regular voice and he immediately said, “Huh?”  Where’s the knitting needle?

Okay, I’m the consumate (sp) do-it-yourselver, but yesterday was, by no means, a do-it-yourself day.  It turns out that my kitchen is attached to a grease pit on my neighbor’s side of the house.  Well, on Monday, I was painting the dining room again (see blog from http://elaben.com/zackblog/?p=21 ) and wanted some fresh air in the room to help to dry the walls as it was getting a bit humid in there.  It was a lovely spring day, about 60 degrees, and in with the beautiful fresh air was the heavy fetted smell of poo water.  I blew it off while I was painting, but intened to get back to it if it continued.  It continued.  I did a walk-through of the property and on my nieghbor’s driveway ( their driveway sits about 4′ onto our property – they better be nice or I’ll fence their cars in [insert evil laugh] ) I saw a small ”manhole” that was burping some white-ish (paint) assy smelling water.  Okay, given my experience as a building engineer, I deduced that it might be a grease trap.  I called the plumber.  YUP.  I had to call a sewage company to pump it out, then pay the plumber to route out the exit pipe into the sewer.  The bad news – $600+; the good news – the plumbing company that I use offers a free camera service down the line.  After the routing, the waste line looks great all the way to the city connection.  Great! No $10,000 kick in the nuts in the foreseeable future. All I have to do is make sure that I budget that $600 every three years or so.  Good thing about the grease trap is that it seperates the grease and solids from the kitchen – which are much worse for the lines than the poo and TP.  Also, they suggested an enzyme treatment (from any hardware store) to help dissolve the solids and grease which could extend the time between pumpings…cool.  More good news, the nearly 100-year-old pit was constructed well and is still in great working order – another $5000 in re-routing the line narrowly averted.  That was the whole morning – standing in the sun getting my bald head burned and smelling shit.  I laughed a lot because it was just sooo disgusting.

The rest of the day was cleaning up the yard.  I’ve been trying not to throw yard waste away.  We don’t have a ton of property that isn’t visible to the public (corner house) and I really don’t want the “pile of shame,” so I’ve been cutting up branches in very small pieces and composting them; using the bigger branches for kindling for the fireplace; using the large chunks for firewood.  I mulch the grass, but had to dethach this spring, so I used the thatch for mulch in the flowerbeds and the mulched leaves from last year are split between the compost heap and the balance of the flowerbeds.  Hopefully, this will net a more healthy garden, but right now it feels like a game of cat and mouse trying to hide the waste from the garbage dump.

So, looks like the gym will have to wait until next week.  Shit!  I can hear myself getting fatter!!!  I have to take the kids to school, so more later…