Wow, what a whirlwind weekend I had!  I knew it was going to fly by but it literally felt like a stepped off the plane and before I knew it I was getting back on one!  I am happy to say that now that I have more flying under my belt, I am not nervous at all about flying.  Nice!

The first day I got there it was just me and my Mom and Aunt.  We basically just needed to do some last minute things before the family reunion Saturday – go to the grocery store, prepare our dishes, finish cleaning the house, putting all the chairs out from the shed out onto the patio, hosing off some of the bag chairs so they could dry before Saturday.  We did find time to get our nails done – 2 generations of feet!  I am pretty sure long time readers will recognize which feet are mine!

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We ended up snacking a bit before going out to dinner – the damn pimento cheese was there but I managed to limit myself to a few crackers – that stuff is literally like crack – especially this brand.

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Here’s Mom with her favorite child, she probably told me at least a dozen times over the weekend that I was her favorite.  Ha!

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The part of the world is so pretty – I could look out over the river all day long.

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As I was prepping veggies for our vegetable tray, I poured out a whole bag of radishes on a tray to rinse and cut up – when I got to the last two, they formed the shape of a heart – I’ve seen random hearts around since Tony died – I like to think that was a hug from above.

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I took 446 pictures guys!  I didn’t get home until about 9:15 last night and spent the evening catching up with the kids.  I’ll be sharing pictures of my vacation during the remainder of this week. 

The kids were productive while I was gone.  They bought a power washer and power washed my back patio – it was nearly black over the years, you know how you don’t notice something because you see it every day?  It looks amazing!

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And they refinished our back table by sanding it and staining it.

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So. . . here’s the deal about the contractor I hired.  I am firing him today.  Here are the top 6 reasons why:

  1. Friday when I was traveling he got dropped off at the house.  Since he didn’t have a car, he asked Jacob to run to McDonald’s for him.  When Jacob came back, the contractor was coming up from the basement and when Jacob asked why, he said he needed a drill and he didn’t have one and wondered if we had one.  Huh.
  2. He texted me Friday afternoon asking for a $200 labor advance because he realized his brother never returned his saw to him because he broke it and needed to buy another one.
  3. He texted me Saturday afternoon asking for a $300 labor advance because his cell phone was about to get shut off.
  4. Every day he was here he asked Jacob if he would be helping him.  Um, no – I hired YOU to do the work.
  5. While talking to Jacob he said that he texted his girlfriend to see if she’d put out that day so he could have sex – it had been a couple days because his girlfriend was mad at him.  When he got the text back that it was thumbs up, he told Jacob he was going to get lucky that night.
  6. Another conversation with Jacob – he once dated a woman in town who was a hoarder and he said when he cleaned out a portion of her bedroom, he thought for sure that a blow job was a good reward.
  7. Turns out we did have active carpenter ants, not termites, and I guess when the Orkin guy and Chris were removing the last panels of insulation and pulled that down, it was raining ants on them – so glad I wasn’t here to see that!  Hannah felt bad for him and said that she would buy him lunch.  He wanted a philly cheese steak sandwich at Subway and asked if we had any A-1 sauce.  Hannah said no and he said “could you stop by the store and pick some up?  Who can have a steak sandwich without A-1 sauce?”

When I hired him I could tell he was desperate for work so I pushed away my red flags and thought I was helping out someone who needed work, and I needed work done – win/win.   So I am having him come over tonight to pick up what tools he does have and bring me receipts so I can match up what was advanced to him and what materials I actually have in the house.  Since Jacob worked at Home Depot he has a pretty good idea of what the materials I do have total, and it doesn’t come close to the amount I advanced him.  Should be an interesting night!

While I was gone Jacob was calling a bunch of other contractors that he works with at his job now at Sherwin Williams, and one of them asked if I had contacted my insurance company to see if the work would be covered under my homeowners insurance.  Guys – I never even thought of that!  So fingers crossed when I call my State Farm agent they say that the work is covered – that would be amazeballs!

Alright, I have to get my stuff together.  Jacob really missed my cooking!  I think Hannah made dinner once while I was gone and the rest of the time they ate out at fast food places.  Not even sure what’s in the fridge for me to put together for food today – it should be interesting!

Make it a great day!