4/16: Wowza... what a weekend...
Last Friday the tub guy, David,
came to refinish the tub. Wait, let me back up a bit.... Thursday night
we drove into town to Pizza Hut, WM and Lowe's. As we were leaving
Lowe's we heard a horrid sound and pulled right over. The serpentine
belt was shredded. Gone. It was rainy and nearly storming and 9pm and
we had no one we could call locally. So we called Traci, she lives 30
min away from WM in the other direction of the 30 minutes away that we
live. She came and got us and we all packed into her Suburban. The
next morning as David was unloading I told him Tony would be right with
him that he was on the phone calling the tow company. As I explained
what was going on David quickly said "Stop him!" So I did. David said
he knew how to fix the serpentine belt and that as soon as he got the
first part of the refinishing done he would go with Tony to town to
replace the belt. The tow was going to be $70 and the dealership
was going to charge around $200 to replace the belt So Tony and
David headed to town, got the new belt and David found the problem that
caused the belt to shred. A pulley had gone bad. So they bought the
new pulley but David did not have the part to install it. It was such a
busy day and they thought it would be fine to wait a day or two until
Tony could find the right ratchet to change out the pulley. After all,
it's probably been bad for a while, right?
Are you still with me? LOL
So
it's Friday in my house, the packers are on their last day of packing
the house, I have to keep up with what goes with them and what we are
taking (remember we are about 6500 lbs over what they will pay for
taking), David is working on the tub. Packers and David left, Charlotte
came by for a goodbye hug, the Realtor dude came by with
paperwork for me to initial and sign and we had received an offer via
email from someone we don't know to stay rent-free in their little
rental house in exchange for doing some work there so Tony wanted, for
that reason and because we needed to get our truck up there, to go to SC
for a quick weekend. The plan was to leave around 5 and get
there around midnight. We did not get out of here until nearly 7 and we
did not get there until 3:30 am. It was an incredibly difficult trip
there. I was so.very.tired. Only the Grace of the Lord got me there...
and I am very serious. I have never, ever had such a difficult drive, I
was so sleepy... We got to the hotel, got checked in and konked out.
Saturday
morning we drove over to the post office to set up a po box there. We
got lunch and Tony made contact with Joe (with the old farm house for
rent) and Kelly (with the freebie rental in exchange for work). We went
to look at Kelly's house. It's a sweet little not quite 900 sq ft, two
bed, one bath right down from their house. They are a sweet, sweet
Christian family :) [ I put an ad on Craig's List that
we were looking for a place and that's how she contacted us.] The house
was not that dirty but the previous tenant did smoke. Ugh. Remember two of us are allergic to smoke and it's so hard to get smoke out of a house... So we went
to look at the old farm house. Oh people... I do not even have words to
describe this place. Suffice it to say we decided to take Kelly up on her offer... ;)
Where
was I? Such a long story... is anyone still with me? LOL We drove
out to the Nine Times house because we needed to do some measuring for
a)the pool fence and b)the drive entrance to make sure an 18 wheeler can
fit in the entrance and have room to maneuver in the yard. What a
precious blessing I received... my three favorite things in the world,
yard-wise are Magnolias, forsythia, and dogwood trees. We knew there
was a magnolia beside the house but now with spring springing there is a
small forsythia bush and a dogwood tree in the yard. So sweet...
On
our way back to the hotel we stopped at the BK right outside of the
hotel parking area and heard that, now familiar, whakerthump. Yep,
shredded serpentine belt. The children and I walked back to
the hotel and Tony and the boys checked out the issue. Tony had an
extra belt but did not install it at this time.
The next
morning they put the new belt on and drove to Pep Boys to have the new
pulley installed (that they had purchased with David on Friday). PB put
on the new pulley and belt. On their way back to the hotel from PB...
yes, you guessed it... whakerthump! The new pulley disintegrated and
the belt shredded. So, Tony had the van towed to PB and they put on two
new pulleys and a new belt. They did not charge for the pulleys or
their labor, Tony had already purchased a new belt. Go Pep Boys! There
went our Sunday, we were going to leave Sunday but decided to stay
until Monday at this point so we could clean the rental some
before we left.
We spent Monday buying kennels for the dogs,
beagles, chickens, having them delivered, we assembled them and Tony and
some of the olders worked cleaning the house. They got all the walls
wiped down and the kitchen and bathroom cleaned and then we were out of
time and had to head back home. We got here around 1am.
We have
quite a bit to do here before we can actually move up there. Praying we
can get it all done in the next few days. Monday is his start day and
we really want to just make one more trip up there so we need to get it
all done ASAP. I'm guessing we will move up there, unload the Uhaul
into the storage space (rented while we were up there) and check back
into the hotel (they love us there LOL) for a few days while we/Tony
gets the new place painted. What a whirlwind!
