Apple, Apple, who wants an Apple?

People keep commenting on our apple trees. We have 3 right now...at the house we are renting. It could be great, except when I first noticed apples getting ripe, I also noticed holes on the apple. Every single apple had some sort of worm or bug living in it. I guess I could have sprayed them with some kind of bug killer...but that kind of defeats the purpose of having homegrown apples right? Anyway, now look at our backyard. The ground is covered in apples. And with 3 BOUNTIFUL apple trees, that sums to a ton of apples. Anyone want to come and rake them up for me? And then once raked, will you please cart them away to the nearest compost/yard waste facility? Please?

My girls, enjoying the apples. The fiber should be good for them, right? At least someone gets to enjoy them. Oh well, I guess the squirrels also enjoy the apples, the squirrels also love to bring the apples onto our porch and gnaw them to mulch.

The joys of renting 3

Well I went downstairs before work and noticed that Jamaal had turned on the pull switch light over my embroidery machine. So I went in the laundry room to turn it off, and there was water splashed on a plastic box...

Upon further inspection, I noticed that there was a big puddle on the ground, and the water was creeping toward the carpet in the main room downstairs. (I just typed "the patient" guess where I am! :D) There was water dripping from a small hole (like one that would be made by a screw or nail) on the ceiling next to the stairs. The water was dripping directly into a rubbermaid box that I had some yarn in...no lid on this one. So, I examined all of it and the only bag of yarn that got wet was one that had old skeins of yarn from projects I had finished. So that's good...but they were perfectly good and most of them were unused. :( There was also a roll of magnet with adhesive backing that was wet, and a couple small cross-stitch projects that I started, but never finished...I didn't like them anyway so I don't mind tossing them.

The good thing is that the water is no where near my embroidery machine or craft table.

I called the landlord and he'll come over in the morning to check it out. So he'll wake me up around noon, which is fine because I am off for the next couple days and I need to get back on to the normal day schedule.

The joys of renting 2...

So previously I talked about how there was a leak from our water meter. The landlord actually came over that same day and was able to fix it. He said there was a gasket that went bad and needed to be replaced and since then the end of our driveway has been dry. So that was good. He had to turn the water off for a little bit, and of course one of the first things I did was tried to wash my hands...funny how you take things for granted.

Now, before my Seaside adventure, I wanted to wash a load of jeans, so I put a load in the washer and was going to throw them in the dryer overnight so they'd be ready in the morning. But when I opened the washer there was still water in there, even though the cycle was finished. Well I thought, maybe I put too many pairs of jeans in there, so I took a few out and started the rinse cycle over. But this still didn't work. So I took out everything except the two pairs of jeans I wanted and started the washer all over, and still there was water left in the washer. Now by this time it was 1:00am and I wanted to be in bed, so I just threw the soaking wet jeans into the dryer and started it. And even though they didn't get spun as well as usual in the washer, they were perfectly dry from the dryer.

So over the weekend I called the landlord to check it out, he came over yesterday and said that the washer (and dryer) have been there since the previous owners of the house lived here and it would be cheaper to go buy a new one...so hopefully we will have a new washer sometime this week! I hope so...you don't get that when it's your own house.

The down side is that I really need to do some laundry and that won't be possible without a washer...

The joys of renting...

One of the perks of renting is that if something goes wrong with the house, and it isn't our fault, we have someone who is supposed to fix it for us...

Unfortunately something has gone wrong. We noticed that even on a hot, dry day when no one was running any sprinklers, there was a wet path appearing to come from the water meter at the end of the driveway. So Jamaal looked, and our meter was filled with water...

There is apparently this rule that if there is a problem between the meter and the house then it is the home owners' responsibility to pay for the problem. But if there is a problem between the meter and the street, the city is responsible. Again, unfortunately it is between the meter and the house...so somehow we are going to have to have it fixed. Fortunately for us, it is the home owners responsibility...we won't have to pay it. But perhaps we will be without water for a couple hours/days while it is getting fixed. Oh well...one thing that sucks for us is that the price of our water bill has gone up $20 over a period of 2 months, last month I just thought we were using more water because it was hotter out, so I didnt think much of it. The inspector said that our landlords should pay the difference...I don't know that we'll be that lucky though...it would be nice however...