Single-Ply

Not much is new around here, but I figured I’d fill everyone in on the latest since that’s the purpose of this blog.

Kolby has been working non-stop lately. He had heard that substitute teaching gigs in this area are hard to come by, but once again, being a male English teacher has proven to be a hot commodity. He no longer has to go through the “sub-finder” website or call logs; he now gets personal phone calls from the school principals requesting him by name. For the past two weeks, he’s been teaching language arts at a nearby junior high. There was an SAT test this past weekend, so he’s been double-timing it at the college prep center as well. Some days he goes straight from one job to the other and works more than 12 hours straight, and he has also been teaching several SAT classes each weekend. So he’s been my little worker bee lately, but things will slow down for him soon. SAT season is pretty much over, so he’s switching to just substitute teaching a few days a week and will concentrate much more on grad school since the fall quarter began at the beginning of this month. He’s really enjoyed all of the work, and we’re certainly thankful for all of the hours he’s getting, but he’s ready to switch his focus back to his writing.

Staying this busy causes Kolby to lose weight because he just doesn’t have time to eat enough calories. His high metabolism drives me nuts. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to lose a few of the many pounds I have gained since we’ve been married and him stepping off the scale and griping about how his weight just keeps going down. I was giving him a hard time about it the other night and he said, “It’s OK honey, we can meet in the middle!” Very funny.

Kolby claims it’s hard work trying to maintain a sufficient caloric intake, but it’s difficult to feel sorry for someone who spent the last two weeks chipping away at a HUGE chocolate cake some friends brought over.

You’re right, dear; having to eat large quantities of delicious chocolate cake straight from the pan must be tough.

In other news, we have tree roots infringing upon our plumbing which caused our sewer lines to back-up twice in less than 2 months. Fun! The plumber that we called out this last time also detected a semi-broken connection near our house that he thought was probably a main compounding problem because toilet paper can get caught up there and cause a clog. Replacing the broken connection would cost around $700 and addressing the tree root problem is incomprehensibly expensive, so we’ve opted for a hillbilly fix--- a switch to single-ply toilet paper. A plumber may totally disagree with this logic, but I have to figure that septic-safe, single-ply toilet paper will dissolve much better and decrease the likelihood of clogging the pipes. Right?!? That’s our plan for now, and we’ll make a decision on what to do next based on how long we go before it backs up again. I apologize in advance for those of you who come visit us and are relegated to using toilet paper comparable to that which is found in gas station restrooms. Oh the joys of home ownership!

We’ve had a lot of visitors to our house lately, which has been really fun but also reminds us of all of the stuff we still need to do to the house. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t really notice that we don’t have any curtains, that all of the bedroom walls are completely bare, that our office is a total wreck, that we have a kitchen cabinet with two huge holes in the back of it, and that we have a massive pile of fence-building materials in the middle of our backyard… but giving people a tour always serves to remind me of what is still on our to-do list. When I go over with Kolby what needs to be done, he says we should just sell the house. We're just tired of house projects!

But you know who never gets tired of a single thing about this house? Maya. Boy does she love this place. She loves her fun yard, she loves that the front window has a sill that's the perfect height for her to sit up and rest her chin on as she keeps watch over the house, and she especially loves the glass back door.All in all, things are going great here. We've had a string of very eventful weekends that I'll post about once I get some pictures together. One thing worth mentioning now, though, is that we went and saw Where the Wild Things Are at the IMAX theatre and it was fantastic. I would highly recommend it!