bkdelong

Since I'm on this "personal update" kick, I figured I'd update people on the B&B at Chez DeLong last month.

It all started with the fabulous mother-in-law coming up for 10 days and completely organized our house. The first 5 days she managed to completely paint and wallpaper the downstairs 1/4 bath and repaint the guest bedroom. We changed the color from a dark sea green to a lighter lime-creme. 2 days later, my youngest brother Jon came up with his girlfriend from MD and her best friend. They came into work with Kirky and I the next day and went all over Boston. They took the commuter rail back to Salem and we picked them up. The next day I worked from home and after a long walk around Salem for shopping, they headed back to WMass. Earlier that morning Kirky also left for a conference in Maryland, driving back up Friday with her Father. That same friday, my middle brother Nate also arrived with his friend and roomate for a visit.

We were exhausted by the time they left. The major projects completed included the repaint of the downstairs bathroom and guest bedroom, wallpaper in said bathroom, and my father-in-law totally took out the wall against the first-floor stairs in the main hallway to move the basement door from the kitchen into the hall. I was going to say "we" but everytime the in-laws come up to visit I feel like an incompetant slack-jaw. It's not their fault but I just grew up not being a very handy person. Kirky has taken a power tool class at the college she works at and loves to work with her hands. I do a lot of watching and try to help but it's not my most favorite thing in the world. That's why I'm so incredibly greatful when I do have a visit from Kirky's parents. I don't think they realize how invaluable they are to the two of us - who come home from work each night incredibly exausted.

Anyway, in demolishing the wall by the stairs we filled our immaculately clean house with a white, thick layer horsehair plaster dust. I feel SOOO bad because when my mother-in-law cleaned the house the previous week she even did the baseboards. But since moving the basement door became her husband's project when he arrived I figure it was between them.

What I haven't mentioned was that a good majority of the 10 day visit was spent cleaning out the basement which flooded due to the rain we received on top of the fact that the ground was already saturated due to snow melt. The first day of the rain, it started flooding when I was at work and an important client was in town for a rare visit. My mother-in-law called me on my cell and plead for me to come home. I begrudgingly did and then rushed because my mother-in-law would NEVER call me at work unless it was an emergency. Luckily I went into the office early enough that I was able to get back to the house, freak out at the 2in of water on my basement floor, run to Home Depot for a pump and huge tarp (water was overflowing from the gutters in the backyard causing a lot of the flood, we had to nail the tarp into the house and angle it to move the falling water away from the house), make a second run to Home Depot for another hose, come home, get everything stabilized, shower, change and get back to work. I had arrived just as the clients were shaking hands and getting their first cup of coffee.

We spent the next few days running the pump, sweeping the water into the big hole in the floor meant for a sump pump, and vaccumming up water with a shop vac, and dumping it in the hole. Some time during this cleanup I made the mistake of dumping into our utility sink, clogging it with sand and dirt. Unfortunately this is the same sink the washer uses to drain dirty water and we couldn't do laundry. When we tried to open up the piping to see if we could clear it, the "trap" got destroyed because it was made of lead. Freaky. Super Father-In-Law Man managed to replace the whole system with PVC and we were good to go.

We were sad to see our visitors go. It was tiring as hell but a lot of fun. Though I like to have a weekend worth of recovery, the next weekend was an adventure on babysitting and next Sunday I leave for a conference in New York for a few days. Ah well. Rest is for the weak! But never take away my Rest Assured.

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