Will this year’s remodeling ever stop?  Not yet, I guess.  We upgraded our fencing to separate the front and back yards.  Cost?  $2200.  Ouch!  But it is a nice upgrade.  The main motivation was the fact the old fence was leaning over in two places!  Not enough support. 

Holly found an gruff ol’ ex-marine to do the job, and he hired a nice guy with a big smile named Juan from Honduras to do the actual work.    He added steel posts for support where the fence was leaning, and added fencing and gates on both the east and west sides of the house. 

Good job!  Looks great!  🙂 

Okay, I schedule a visit to the dentist just for a cleaning, but find out I’ve got some serious issues pending.  I should’ve figure that out when I had some severe pain in my right-side upper jaw during this recent bought with bronchitis.  It was severe!  I literally couldn’t sleep one night just because of this strange pain I felt on the right side of my face.   But, as the bronchitis went away, so did the pain in my jaw.  So I didn’t think much about it. 

The infection, however, turns out was agitating a pre-existing condition that I wasn’t aware of… which was an great deal of decay in that upper area.   This goes waaaaaay back to when I was 16 and had a tooth removed.  Another tooth up in my jaw was supposed to descend… but it never did!  It is still up in there…lying sideways… pushing my other teeth in weird directions…. decaying….  ugh!   And now almost 40 years later it is rotting and causing me problems.  It needs to be removed.  🙁   

Insurance will cover 2/3rds of this cost, but I still need to shovel out over $2,000.    So that sucks.  

Our cousin George Bush Sr. died today.  I’m not surprised, really.  When his wife Barbara died several months ago I thought, you know, I bet it won’t be long before George followers her into eternity.  

We’re related to both George Bush AND Barbara Bush, which is kind of unusual.  I’m not sure if they are related to each other.  Probably so.  Distant cousins.   

Check out the previous blog where I laid out the ancestry lines… 

Okay, off we go to Arkansas again for Thanksgiving.  But this time it is immediately interrupted by a head cold.  I felt kind of bad as we left out on Wednesday afternoon, and that only increased as the night progressed.   By the time we arrived at the hotel on Wednesday night, I was fully into a cold or flu or whatever this nastiness is. 

Next few days….  we have Thanksgiving dinner at mom’s house.   All good!  But afterward, as we had planned to go to Silver Dollar City, I told my niece Jill that I just didn’t feel like going.  I’m sure I couldn’t stand 6 hours or so of crowds and noise and (most of all) rollercoasters.    So, she took Ivy and her bunch to SDC without me!  Thank you, so much, Jill!!   God bless you for doing that.   That was such a blessing, plus gave Ivy some time with her cousins and stuff like that.  Thank you thank you thank you.  

Ivy was dead tired when y’all returned to Mom’s house.  In fact, she doesn’t even remember getting out of the car and walking into the house!  LOL.  She was amazed the next day and kept asking, “How did I get into the house?”  I said, well, I took you out of the car and you walked into the house, took your clothes off, and climbed into bed.  She swears she doesn’t remember any of that.  😀  

Friday, we packed up our stuff and headed back toward Houston, but decided to go the longer route through Hot Springs, Arkansas instead.   Holly dropped me off at one of the Buckstaff Bathhouse just in time for me to be get the spa treatment.  In fact, I was the 2nd to last person before they closed.  There were numerous Japanese and Indonesian tourists (male) in the bathhouse, and I was one of only 2 … maybe 3 … white guys in the whole place.   I really enjoy the old-timey bathhouse experience in Hot Springs.  It is pretty cool with it’s 1920’s atmosphere and lion-footed bathtubs.  Check out these reviews and photos on Yelp and TripAdvisor.  Good stuff.   Not too expensive either – I paid $35 for a 1 1/2 hour spa experience.    Afterward, we had dinner at Granny’s Cafe on main street.  That was some good food, too!  

Then the long drive back.  Ugh.  It seems like it took forever to reach our hotel in Dennison.  But we made it.  And then our air conditioner didn’t work right.  It was set on 45 degrees … which I would later learn that someone had set it on celcius … but whatever the case, I had to get up in the middle of the night and shut the air conditioner off because it was unbearably cold.   The next morning, as well, I heard a knock on the door and it turned out to be the front desk… they said there was a leak from our bathroom to the bathroom below (on 2nd floor).  Sure enough, our shower as non-stop running and leaking.  As we all check out of the hotel, we agreed that this was the last time we’d stay this place.  Thanks, Holiday Inn Express, but you disappointed us one too many times.  

On we go to Dallas.  Rockwall, actually.  We stop to visit Toni and Nabil in their new home in Rockwall.  Wow!  Nice house!  Ivy put on her gymnasium suit and went for a swim in their hot-tub with her cousins.  We enjoyed our visit, and I even stole away for about 1 and 1/2 hours to visit my friend in Forney which is only about 14 miles away.    Later, I returned to enjoy some lunch made by Toni, and got a tour of the house including the spot where Nabil fell throught he ceiling!!  I really like visiting these folk.  Such good, down-to-earth people.  I think it is great that we have relatives in the Dallas area and even close together in Dallas area!  It gives us reason to visit the Dallas area more often.  😀  

Finally, off we go on our last leg of the journey.  I felt somewhat sick and stuffy-headed, but Holly said, “Please drive.”  So I did.  I drove the rest of the way home.   We arrived about 9 pm on the 23rd, and proceeded to just crash.  The dogs were very… VERY… excited to see us!  lol.  But we pretty much went straight to bed.  

Another year done.  

……………………………………………………………

Update:  When we got home, my illness became worse – much worse.  I woke up one night feeling so bad that I contemplated going to the emergency room.  I had a strange pain on the right side of my face.  I was thinking…is this a stroke??   But I managed to calm myself down and go back to sleep (for a couple of hours, at least).  I went to a doctor and learned I had multiple problems going on – Brochitis, flu, and high-blood pressure (186 over 110).  And would later learn I had an abscessed tooth….hence, the pain on the side of my face.  Even weirder, I learned I have numerous dead nerves around this tooth, so that’s why I never felt it despite it being abscessed.  Only when my sinus infection became so bad that the tooth pain increased all throughout my nose and cheek and jaw.  

So she gave me some meds in the office, and prescribed some pills.  It worked!  Over the next 7 days or so most of the sickeness went away, and the BP seems to have returned to manageable levels.  

I love these rope climbing things.  So scary and fun!  I’ve only done one, but loved it.  I thought about doing this one, too, along with Ivy, but by the time the birthday party activities got around to doing the rope course I had already consumed a couple of margaritas, so I figured it was best I did NOT go climbing obstacles 15 feet off of the ground.  

Ivy did it though!  This was her pal Natalie’s birthday party at the “Main Event” in Humble.  Cool place!  Lots to do there including laser tag, bowling, video games, shuffle boards, restaurant, bar, and so on.  Lots of ways to spend money!  Even an indoor rope climbing course above the arcade.  

 Check out Main Event just for fun or as a potential birthday party place!   There are many locations all around Houston.  This is the one in Humble  —–> Main Event

Rainy day in Houston.  What to do?  How about drive down to San Leon and get some more chickens?!   We wanted to replace the chicken that died, plus get some meds for a hen that was sick.  We ended up bringing 4 more chicks home with us.  

Well, one of our chickens died.  It was our favorite one, too.  The one with the feather hat.  I just found her dead on the floor of the coop this morning.  There’s no visible reason for her death, so I don’t know what killed her.  🙁 

Like it says…

Also made a little video of my trip to the dog park.  This Dog Park is FANTASTIC!  But it was destroyed in Hurricane Harvey.  Now it is back and better than ever.  

About 1 a.m on Saturday morning. I am awakened by the sound of running water.  Not just water running from a sink or toilet, but the sound of gushing water.   I lay there half asleep thinking, “What is that?  Who left the water running?”

Then I hear, “JOEY, HELP!!”  

Holly had got up to go pee, and somehow in the process, snapped off the PVC water pipe sticking out of the wall and into the toilet.  It was JETTING water into the bathroom floor.  Not gushing, but jetting at high pressure.  Within minutes the floor was flooded (about 1 inch of water) and rising with each passing second.  We threw about 5 towels into the door step to sort of dam up the water and keep it from flooding the house.  The water kept climbing.  

I knew there was a valve outside to turn the water off to the entire house, but the problem was the water was jetting into the house so fast that it would literally flood into the next room by the time I went outside and opened the box and turned the water off.  Also, I was still kind of half asleep….trying to figure all this out in a matter of seconds…having just been woke up.  Omg.  Plus, now Ivy was awake and stumbling around crying because of all of the stress.   

Solution?  I grabbed two dog food bowls nearby and had Holly just start scooping water as fast as she could into the bathtub.  It was working!  She able to at least keep the water level from rising even higher.  I ran outside to the driveway and began trying to open the box containing the water valve.  It was covered it mud!!  But I dug out the mud with my hands, opened the case, and began feeling around for the valve (the box was full of muddy water because of rains from the previous day).   Found it!  I think.  Turn turn turn.  

I trot back inside.  The sound of rushing water had stopped.  “Did that stop the water?!” I shouted.   Yes, came the answer.  Impending disaster averted. 

For two more days, we simply lived without running water.  But we didn’t have to wait long for repairs because – as it just so happens – our next door neighbor is a plumber.  He came over on Labor Day (his day off) and fixed it for us!  He also charged us only $250, whereas normally his company would’ve charged us $650.   

So it is great to know your neighbors and have a good relationship with them!  😀 

As for damage to the floors or walls….?  Nope, the floors and walls in the bathroom are entirely ceramic, so no water damage at all!    In fact, I took the time to clean and bleach the floors and clear out dirt and mold.  After everything was said and done, the bathroom looked brand new.  

Charles called and asked if he could just come and hang out for the weekend.  I said, sure!  So he did. 

Chuck likes history and nerdy stuff like that, so I took him, first, to the Buffalo Bayou Cisterns, a nifty place where downtown Houston used to store clean water.   Unfortunately, they had temporarily turned it into an art display instead of the usual historic tour, so it was kind of weird instead of interesting.  Later, I took him to the San Jacinto Monument, which I’ve been to several times and toured the museum and watched the movie, but I had been years (maybe 9 years or so?).  I had never taken the elevator to the top of the monument either, so this was a first for me as well.  

Later, Chuck and I went down to Kemah Boardwalk and met up with old friend Randall Davis.  For several years, as kids, we went to school together and played and hung out… so it was quite amazing to meet up again after all these years and catch up.  I was surprised to learn Randall knew several of the same people I know, and even worked at some of the same places back in Arkansas.  He is living here in Houston (well, south of Houston, west of Kemah), so it is good to have someone from the old ‘hood here in the new ‘hood.  😀  

Overall, I really enjoyed Chuck’s visit to Houston.  It was a real encouraging and edifying time.  Come back again, Charles, and let’s do it again!  🙂