Rapid fire post, in which our heroine Has Fun With Dotter In Water, encounters washing machine back-uppage into showers, meets a cute plumber, deals with No Cable, and the Hair Drama resurfaces: Saturday, since OmegaDad has a final paper due for his class, and it was a lovely weekend, the dotter and I forayed down the hill to OmegaGranny's home. The morning of, OG and I had exchanged emails, in which I had said we would be down there around 4 "or thereabouts, but do expect us for dinner". Amazingly enough, we were early. We haul butts up the stairs to OG's front door, to discover it wide open. We pop our heads in and holler to announce our presence. No response. We wander through the house. No OmegaGranny. We wander through the forested yard. No OmegaGranny. Being the calm, almost zen-like creature that I am... I panicked. I called GreatGrandma's extended living center, picturing ambulances, OmegaGranny receiving frantic phone calls, and darting out the door, forgetting to close it in her haste. Nope, no problems there. I called OmegaDad, thinking OG had alerted him to Some Dire Thing. No OmegaDad. We wait. I panic some more: OG passed out in the bushes somewhere where we didn't see her? OG having gone on a walk, then being hit by a Mack Truck? I dither, and dilly-dally, dramatic scenes playing in my head, and finally get OmegaDotter to put shoes and socks back on, as we are going to chat with the neighbors to see what's up. The shoes and socks take ten minutes. As we're about to gallop down the stairs, who should appear at the bottom but... OmegaGranny. Seems she had gone for a walk, leaving the door closed, and the wind blew it open. Whew. We spent the night, then went off to Governor Lake. We rent a paddle boat. OmegaDotter and OmegaMom spend an hour paddling about. OmegaDotter gives the boating high praise, but wants a canoe, instead (they were skittering about like water bugs, whereas our paddle boat, paddled by one person, sort of wallowed). We arrive back home. OmegaDad starts a load of laundry, and dinner. All is going well, until OmegaDad goes into the bathroom, for bathroomy type duties, and notices that the laundry water had backed up into the bathtub. Ugh. So I stayed home, called the plumber, and met the cute plumber dude, who informed me, in no uncertain terms, after he had dug out the septic tank cleanout and used the deadly-looking metal pokey device to clear out the clog, that we should have the tank pumped ASAP. To my shame and dismay, I couldn't remember when we had it pumped last. He reiterated that we needed to have it pumped at least three times. Okay, okay, I get it! And, after he had left, and I was able to do laundry, I took the time to make the pumping appointment. ($200 per thousand gallons pumped. Eeek!) During all of this hoo-rah, the cable company subcontractors arrived. Y'see, since they paved our roads last fall, we have had a conundrum: the cable cable has been sitting in our drainage ditch, free and open, and our cable box has been a mess. We have called them. We have talked to cable guys we flagged down as they were driving by. We have talked to cable guys out to check out why our cable keeps dropping out. Each and every one of these people has said that the cable company would be getting a contractor out Real Soon Now to bury the cable and fix the box. Har. But the last cable guy who came by seems to have the magic touch. First, though, the county came by, marked up our pavement, lawn, and driveway, and left a stake through the heart of our drainage ditch with an ominous bright pink notice attached to it, talking about "encroachment on easement" and leaving a contact number. I tried numerous times last week to contact the mysterious person at the other end of that phone number. I did not succeed. We kept having visions of the county summarily removing our unsightly unburied cable. This morning a bevy of vehicles arrived. The contractors, confronted with a harried woman whose hair was looking strikingly like a mohawk, comforted me: the stakes and marks had been meant for them, not us. They were about to dig up our lawn (oh, goodie), but, the supervisor assured me, they'd do their very best to leave OmegaDad's cute little flower bed alone by boring beneath it. Lo and behold, they did leave the flower bed alone. All was dug, all has been filled in, but... But... We still have this unsightly cable cable in the ditch. Um? So has it been done or not? I am clueless. And I was cableless for most of the day. Which led to great amounts of housework being done. About the Hair Drama...the less said the better. The gist is that by the time OmegaDad and OmegaDotter left this morning, I was ready to Run Far Far Away. Or divorce the man. Or something. Things are better this evening. The clog is gone, we can do laundry, the cable dudes have been and gone, the dotter was Quite Well Behaved, because we had a note from school and OmegaDad gave her A Talking To and forbade any videos (o horror!). Does this post have a point? I don't think so, just blathering.