Busy week around the house.

First, the surveyor arrived on Tuesday and staked out our property line.

It was warm that day and when Charlie got home from daycare he helped me water the garden, then played with the hose. His favorite outdoor activity! (Compare to the same week last year.) He was also pretty busy with his wheelbarrow later that day and the next morning.

Wednesday the fence crew arrived and started replacing the fence.

A couple hours later the sump guys came to install the sump and dry well. I was amazed that they knocked everything out in just three hours.

Thursday and Friday Charlie was home from daycare. It breaks my heart to have to work while he is home, because he notices that I’m not paying attention to him. I did get to spend some quality time with him after work to go get ice cream and take him on a little bike ride along the Old Croton Aqueduct before picking up dinner.

Later he acted like he was typing on a computer and pretended to ignore us. Gutted me.

Despite all the distractions, I was able to get through my to-do list at work this week, but it was challenging for sure.

Saturday I cut down a tree limb that was already cracked because I didn’t want it to fall on the new fence. I also spent a couple hours replacing the vinyl trellis under our porch with wood.

Saturday night we learned the hard way that our sewer is clogged. It backed up into the utility tub in the basement. Thankfully we caught it early. I thought it was just that sink plugged at first and spent a while trying to snake it, until I saw more bubbling up when I heard water running upstairs. I was not excited to realize that I was elbow deep in shit water 🤢

A plumber came the next morning and cleared the blockage pretty quickly. We got lucky because the blockage was in the house trap/U trap rather than something worse like tree roots in the front yard. At least I learned how the U trap works, where the clean out caps are, and saw the plumber (a nice guy named Mike who works for Sewer Heros) use a 6ft toilet auger to clear the blockage. It looks like Harbor Freight has one, so I’ll pick one up next time I’m over that way.

Sunday we did a lot of yard work to get ready for a Memorial Day party. We hope the newly forecasted rain holds out.

Charlie had a lot of fun helping us wash the outdoor furniture. He is the keeper of the hose. He also helped me push the lawn mower for a while.

My friend Jon stopped by for a short visit to check out my workshop upgrades, the fence, and the sump.

The fence is coming along nicely. We gained a few feet inside the fence since the old fence wasn’t on the line. The yard feels bigger! Should be wrapped up sometime next week if the weather is nice.