Christmas Trees and Plumbing Lessons

It was going to be a short weekend, we knew that, so all the more reason to get to relaxing FAST! GO GO GO – RELAX! James had spent the better part of the week outside, first in pouring rain then in bonechillin cold. I was inside most of the week but caught up on his misery on Friday night in Long Island City where I spent 6 hours shooting an exterior with the wind howlin around my ears. 

So so cold on 30Rock. You just accept it and keep watching the clock. By 3 am it was wrap time and Keanu gave us a bottle of vodka to warm up and thank us for the first 2 weeks.

So we got up to Clintondale Saturday morning. James had some errands to run so I took a little dozer. He got stuck in crazy holiday traffic and I got stuck with a text from Chris the tenant. 

Before I go any further I would like to introduce you to our water system. When James and I moved in the previous owner took us through the process a little bit and we said “sure sure we get it…”

We so do not get it.

The water comes from the well and goes in to the blue tank which is the pressure tank. Then it mixes with the water from the little white tank in the back which is 35 gallons of water mixed with 3 gallons of bleach. It then passes through the yellowish tank which is the filter and THEN it goes through the little stubby white tank which is the water softener. The tall one behind it also belongs to the softening system. We often question if we need all this crap. Especially the softening system, since it takes a good half hour to wash soap off your hands. But we need a person in the know to tell us that and that seems like a down the line thing. SOOO…when we first moved in we filled the tank that holds the bleach solution and have since then been watching it like hawks. Has it gone down yet? I don’t think so? How is that possible? Nothing yet? Nope, still the same.

We show up on Saturday morning and the water pressure seems a bit low. Hmmm,  that causes a trip to the basement where we find said tank EMPTY. We get in the car and go to Loews to buy bleach not really thinking WHY it is suddenly empty.

Welcome to the world of being a homeowner.

Back to the text message… Chris seems to think a pipe has burst, his toilet won’t refill and his water pressure is way down…

Welcome to the world of being a landlord…

I call a plumber, he is going to charge us $105/hour to come out on an emergency call, oh, and plus 50 as a trip charge. We decide to hold off, thanking Chris for his patience.

We spend the evening coming up with GREAT theories why this is happening and why the pump on the chlorine tank won’t stop. Finally James gets out of bed to turn it off.

We wake up to no water.

It’s time to call Scott. It all makes sense, the pipe that is feeding water to the cottage toilet has busted because of the cold and now the pump is going going going trying to fill it but all it is doing is causing a big puddle in the yard. I guess we just didn’t want to believe it.

James has decided to stay the week at the house and deal with the problem. I on the other hand am going to Buffalo. I just didn’t think it was cold enough in New York City… My movie is flying us up there to shoot on location for 4 days and there is just no preparing for how brutally frigid it is going to be. But by this weekend I am Clintondale bound for 2 1/2 weeks. Best present ever!

I am 35 years old and I’ve never had my own Christmas tree. I guess I never had a good place to put it and I never used to spend the holidays in the States. So this one – we are going ALL OUT! 

We got the tree and I got the xmas made EZ by IKEA kit. No really they just had nice cheap ornaments and for the Casey-Slaters that’ll do just fine… 

My new hobby is figuring out new uses for the bailer (the not machine that puts the tree in the net) it's just so clever.

Bagged and done. 

James  is liking Christmas more and more cause today he got to break out the power tools to get our tree to fit in the tree holder. After that he used the Mora kniv, a knife he got as a present from Gizmo, to wittle the top to fit the Christmas star. He is also just now realizing why every dad on his childhood block dreaded the time of christmas trees. They are hard to get in the house and they are hard to put in the holder.

All kinds of class in one picture. Disco Christmas star from the 99 cent store. Peeling wall paper. Insulating foam in the window. One sweet-ass drop ceiling.

Fat and lovely and ready for ornaments. Next weekend it’s glögg and julpynt and Elvis’ holiday album while fighting about where and how the lights should go on the tree. Bringing back lovely childhood memories.

Really? 

 Oh I'm sorry Mr. Squirrel, are we out of nuts?