french drain for, oh, $1,600. The guy and his workers came and began work yesterday. At some point, the guy who owns the company decided to take a look around, and found that, behind our fence, there was a huge pile of dirt. Behind our lot is a lot where the builders who build in our subdivision are putting up a new house, and the Einsteins who are responsible for grading the lot piled all the dirt directly up against our fence.
The fence is two feet onto our property, by the way.
Running through this huge pile of dirt are channels and gullies formed during the last few rainstorms. Basically, the rainwater from not only our lot, but both of the lots behind us are channeled directly into our backyard, and finally into our pool. Fred called Westminster Homes (formerly Breland Homes), from whom we bought our house, and talked to the customer service lady. An hour or so later, "Mr. Carpenter" came out to check out the situation. He told Fred he’d get someone out here "right away" to fix the problem. When Fred suggested that Westminster Homes should be responsible for paying to have our pool and concrete cleaned, and should reimburse us for the french drain, not to mention the previous pool cleaning we paid for, Mr. Carpenter was less than enthusiastic. Fred has spent a good part of the morning writing a letter to Westminster Homes detailing exactly what we want, and mentioning his lawyer. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
The kitten woke up from her nap yesterday unable to open her left eye. I rushed her to the vet’s office (yes, I’m a spaz – wanna make something of it?) and found that she has a corneal abrasion. Which no doubt happened when she decided to pick on Mr. Fancypants. She may be little, but that doesn’t stop her from launching herself full-speed at one of the bigger cats when she’s in a playful mood. She also really likes to taunt the Boys to the breaking point, and when they go after her she hides in a space where they can’t fit.
That’s my girl!
She weighs 2 3/4 pounds now – almost double the weight she was when we got her – and this visit to the vet’s office, she actually growled at the vet’s assistant, rather than just sitting there and looking pitiful. The vet gave me ointment to put in the kitten’s eye four times a day for ten days. It’s not much fun to hold her down and put the ointment in her eye, but it’s not as difficult as trying to get her to take oral medication, either.
One evening last month, Fred came in and told me I had to come check out the sky, because it looked so cool. I did, and it did, so naturally I took pictures:
Okay, y’all, don’t be sad or anything, but I don’t think I’ll be updating again until Monday. I intend to stay away from the computer for the most part until then (ha!), and maybe I’ll be overwhelmed with the urge to post another journal entry, but I don’t think so.
In any case, I hope that each and every one of you has a great, happy, relaxing, exciting, everything-you-hoped-for Christmas. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the emails you’ve all sent. I appreciate them more than I could possibly express.
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12/23/1999