Well. The play has come and gone, and it went really well until the last performance, even with a particularly bad brush with laryngitis that involved an emergency call to an ENT friend and megadosing of steroids to get so I could sing again. I finished the steroids this morning, and I’m glad. My innards have not enjoyed the trip, and NOW I understand why there was note on the prescription to take Prilosec OTC concurrently.
Anyway… back to the Friday night performance, since I know you’re dying to hear my perspective about it…
Apparently the pianist had somewhere to be a little before the end of the show, so he upped the tempos of every single song and clipped entrances multiple times. The most egregious example of entrance-clipping happened on my song, “Getta Loada Toad,” and he did it to me twice. The first time I gave up, because it happened so quickly and then Lizard came in and took the attention as he was supposed to, so it wasn’t worth trying to sing the line I’d repeat another four times. The second time, Jenny and I sang together, and she just barreled on and I followed (I’m a sheep. Baa.) and forced the band to find US. They didn’t clip it the third time, thank goodness, but the tempo was still insane, and I was completely frazzled to the point that I wrecked the dance number that immediately followed. 🙁 I’m very sad about that, because I had done VERY well in every performance up to that point, but it all fell apart on Friday night. Oh, well. The band managed to shave a full five minutes off the first act. This is impressive when you consider that there are very few lines in the show — it goes song-to-song-to-song for about 45 minutes. And he took off more than 10% of that! Yikes.
However… Thursday morning, Helen came up and snuggled with us in the middle of the night and we kicked her out just before 6am (when I needed to get up in order to make it backstage by 7:15 to get ready for our morning performance) because she was wiggly. She insisted on an escort down the stairs since it was still dark out, so Jerry walked her down. He heard something weird as they passed the kitchen, so on the way back up he went in to investigate.
Water.
Everywhere. And still running out from under the fridge.
Apparently the water filter had an issue, causing a major leakage. He turned off the valve and spent a large part of the morning soaking up the water with a ShopVac and towels — big mess. Meanwhile, the show must go on — so I went to the theatre and performed for little kids, calling the insurance company during intermission and explaining what had happened.
Over the weekend, our insurance company sent ServPro in to survey the damage and help us dry it out. We had (and still have as of this writing) HUGE dryers going (5 of them) and dehumidifiers in the kitchen and laundry room. VERY LOUD. VERY VERY LOUD. The dogs like the air moving around and go purposefully stand in it. Alice hates it (it’s right at face level for her) so she goes around and turns off the fans. And we go around and turn them back on. The cats really hate it, and have been yowling and hiding and are generally displeased with the whole situation.
Today, ServPro is back with a team of guys who have been hard at work ripping out the flooring in the kitchen, laundry room, dining room, and foyer. Carpet One has been in to measure everything, and I’ll be getting more samples from them so that we can get this restoration job done quickly and move on.
I’m bummed. I really liked our kitchen floor and got compliments on it every time people came over…. It was a medium gray Pergo laminate tile that has been discontinued since we had it put in 4 years ago. So we have to decide on something new. The dining room and foyer were done with a cheap-and-crappy hardwood veneer that was scuffed and damaged from 4.5 years of hard use, so I’m not sad to see that go… But it’s hella messy getting it all out right now.
And it’s been an interesting history lesson in the kitchen — four layers of flooring (laminate, then linoleum, luon, linoleum, and what looks to be asbestos flooring)…
At least Merry Maids was here on Friday, so it’s relatively clean for these guys to rip out. Could be a LOT worse.
Tomorrow the girls and I will be flying to Virginia with my dad to see his mother — she’s 94 and hasn’t seen Helen and Alice since Alice was about 4 months old. She fell and broke a vertebra in her back last week, so Dad’s flying up anyway, which saves us the drive we were planning to make. Nana Helen was worried we weren’t going to come see her since she fell and hurt herself, but that just sealed it for me — of COURSE we’re going to go see her! She needs the happiness that two little girls will infuse. 🙂
The Halloween quilt I’ve been working on has the binding attached, so now I just have to hand-sew that down and attach a hanging sleeve and label. The orange quilt is almost done, too — just needs a hanging sleeve and label as well. The third quilt is totally done. I have to have these two done by next Tuesday, and it looks like I’ll make it. Yay!