You Are Cut Off

NOT AGAIN!
We’re coming down to the end. I can taste it. Not the food, because our insurance cut us off. We gave our agent a date that the contractor gave us. They underestimated the completion of the cabinets by TWO weeks. Everything else was delayed because of this, and now we must pay to eat out at restaurants because we still don’t have a working kitchen! So it’s Thursday night of our last week. Wood floors are done. We have final adjustments and drawers here and there to go for cabinets. We have final electric and plumbing wrapping up. The glass backsplash has just been completed. The appliance installers are coming Friday morning. The plumber decides to test the water line. All is going well until David spots a T shaped water line at the ceiling close to the cabinets. Unbelievably, the plumbers didn’t pressure check the lines before they closed the ceiling up! Our plumber starts cursing out his apprentice because he has a feeling of what happened. Luckily, (this is a good tip) we took photos of all the plumbing before they closed up the walls, and the plumber was able to see exactly where the problem was before he started cutting into the ceiling to find the leak. He was right; his apprentice didn’t snap the hoses into the connection deep enough, so it was leaking there. He was able to reach the hose by cutting out a piece of our perfectly dry walled ceiling and taking out the crown molding of the cabinet to reach the connection piece. Our plumber says we got lucky because the water didn’t do any damage. True enough; it could have happened overnight and ruined a lot more. I shudder to think!

WHY DID I SAY THAT?
It is still the same night. 1:30 am. David is up working late. I am writing this blog. David finishes work and checks under the sink. He notices water leaking around the Reverse Osmosis hose and wraps a small towel around it. A gush of water streams out of the hose. “Lisa! Help! Get the shop vac!” He sucks up the water with the shop vac, as I get as many towels as I can to clean up the remainder. David also discovers the dishwasher is connected with the cold water hose instead of the hot. Was our plumber sleepwalking when he was hooking up our plumbing? Clearly, they need to give him less hours!

IHOP HIPPI
With all the restaurants we’ve been driving to and all the parking lots we’ve parked at, it was bound to happen. David scrapes a car as he pulls into a spot at IHop for breakfast. The kids and I inspect it; David writes the note, a man appears from the restaurant. He is a throwback from the ‘70s. Long brown hair and a beard. He very calmly lets us know that his daughters noticed we are looking at his wife’s van and it looks like we hit it. We told him we were sorry and we were just writing the note and noticed he had some other scrapes there anyway. He agreed and said he would talk to his wife about it after he got our information. We all ate breakfast (not together) and they waved to us as they left the parking lot. We fully expected to hear from them about the cost, but they never called. Wow. That could have been ugly. I have to remember to pay that forward if someone accidentally does something to me they regret.

SONNY’S SALAD
Friends sing praises about Sonny’s in San Clemente. Lines are out the door. Looks like a fun little Italian place. We order salad, pizza, and a tri-Italian pasta dish. Pizza is good, but burnt on one side. Pasta dish okay. David tries the salad. He is not impressed with the Italian dressing. “Taste this,” he says. “It is so bland.” I agree – not much to it. When we get the check, David has an epiphany. “The salad dressing is really butter!” He tells the waitress hoping she made a mistake. “NO, that IS our dressing,” she says with a stern face. She storms off, we all look at each other, glad that David told her that at the end of the meal vs. the beginning. This little lady must have made the dressing herself!

NEXT POST
The story starts at the bottom. Even though our food has stopped from insurance, we have plenty of more stories! Check back next Monday. Scroll down for the photos.