On Friday night, I got another solid night's sleep. That's big news around here at Chez Cheese! I decided that in honor of a night of sleeping, I would spend Saturday doing "good old fashioned" chores, so the beds got stripped, sheets got washed, then the other seven loads of laundry (that got neglectd while I was off doing VBS) finally saw the inside of the laundry room. Then it was time to do the rugs. After that, I carried some junk that had been accumulating in a corner of the bedroom downstairs.

By this time I really needed to get to work on that sermon. I mean criminy, it's noon on Saturday already! So...what do I do? I clean out the refrigerator, of course! We're talking everything comes out, the shelves get taken out, the whole things gets scrubbed! Then I notice the thing is woefully empty, so off to the grocery store for me.

After I get home and put away the groceries, I do get to that sermon, and organize all my things I need to organize for worship the next day.

Then I decide to tackle the ironing, a job I loathe, but must do periodically because I drip dry most of my clothes. Two hours later everything is ironed, washed, dried, hung up, put away. etc. Thank goodness WG is having a friend over and they want pizza--I'm pooped! But it's a good tired, and after a soak in the tub (we have one of those indulgent Jacuzzi tubs) I'm feeling pretty good and accomplished.

Today...well, today had surprises! I have been noticing a funk of a smell in our finished basement. It is a very nice basement--four finished rooms. It is the reason we ended up choosing this house. Nobody else noticed the funk--it's kind of like when you smell something that has gone bad in the fridge, but no one else dares to notice it, because then they might have to take it out and
investigate. I was getting tired of hearing everybody else say "Smell? I don't smell anything.", and then just watching them spray some air freshener.

I finally got OEH to smell the corner where the smell was coming from. He moved the CD racks and walked back there---and his socks got wet! Our carpet, our pad is SOAKED in two corners of the room. We're really lucky it is just mildew and not in a moldy state, or we'd be in trouble. It looks as if we will have to replace some pad, have the carpets re-stretched where we pulled it away from the wall, have it all steam-cleaned, replace one piece of baseboard, and maybe one strip of drywall.

The culprit? A carelessly placed paint stir-stick that happened to be lying on a corner of the basin where the water softener drains, causing the water to go all over the floor of the utility room, instead of the basin. It is clearly OEH's fault--clearly an accident. I'm trying to make him feel better about it. "Hey, don't feel bad--coulda been worse. I was envisioning having to replace a chunk of foundation because of a leak. At least we don't have toxic mold like Doug and Tracy! They had to gut their brand new house!" Anything to make him feel better. It is a $250-$300 repair instead of $3000. My basement does kind of stink in the meantime, until we can get it all dried out.

And, I bet after we repaint the mildewed walls, we'll throw away all the paint stir-sticks!