Long Yucky Day

Argh.

I've been up since 7AM--yeah, me. The problem that ruined the AC system at our house reared its ugly head again. This morning I woke up to a heavy rain which meant once again spending hours trying to contact someone to fix this problem:


The beige murky stuff featured here is water. Lots of water. Water that goes under the house and ruins things like AC ducts. Where is the water coming from? A drainage ditch that runs behind my house--a ditch that has been backing up since I moved back down here. The problem is that no one seems to want to claim responsibility for cleaning this thing. Trying to find a remedy has done nothing but take up time while the problem gets worse. All the water must be pushing more debris into the drain because the water in the yard gets higher and higher every time it rains. It is especially worse by the side of the house:

This is a shot from me holding my camera in the air--looking down at the space between my house and the neighbor's. There is this cheesy 2.5-3 ft cement wall between our property--the water was more than halfway up the wall this morning--usually by the time the water gets to the side of our house it is only a couple of inches.

So this mess started my morning. Making me very late for work and very cranky. Feelings that were only compounded by the killer cramps that struck when I was nowhere near any heavy medication. After work, I went to tutor my girls and discovered that they had not done ANY reading since the last time I saw them (Thursday). Little Miss Violet finally finished an essay that she's been working on all week, and I was just appalled at her written response. Maybe my standards are too high, but I know that a high school student should be able to develop a simple 5 paragraph essay with an introduction, body, and conclusion. Apparently not.

When I finally finished with the girls, I headed to the candy store for some retail therapy. Picked up my favorite Tyler Perry play (ok so it's the only one I've seen live but I laughed more than ever that night), and I'm going to watch it tonight and laugh this long yucky day away.

In the midst of this long post, the local news team called--they are interested in doing a story on the flooding--I sent them pictures this morning in an effort to get some type of help. I may be on TV!