Murphy's Law of Deployment

When the tuff-boxes are packed and the unit is boarding the bus bound for the airport, we turn to each other, left standing behind and waving, and say, "What will be the first thing to break?" It is only partially funny because we all know one of us will be calling a repairman in the next 7 days. It's not that we, mostly women, are unable to perform the handyman duties that our husband could (because sometimes they do actually make matters worse)...it's that whatever shuts off/randomly reverses direction/rusts through/dies in the middle of the night/or, in my case, leaks during a west-bound storm is only fixable by someone with superior knowledge in that specific area. We change air filters and clean garbage disposals all the time. But, inevitably, the garbage disposal will cease to do anything but moan or the refrigerator door will somehow come completely off its hinges and we are left standing there, wondering,

Why the HELL couldn't this have happened when he was home?

Within our unit alone, by the end of the second month of deployment, there had been a serious car accident, the need to purchase a new car (unrelated to the first), the purchase of a new air conditioning unit, and the discovery that the entire front of a townhouse had been improperly bricked.

That last one would be mine.

And thus began my last 3 months of general contracting Hell. And they haven't even started working yet.

What started as rain running down my blinds during the first west-bound storm we've had in 7 years, ended with a quote in the thousands to remove all of the brick on the front of the townhouse (floor to second story roof), remove and replace rotten OSB board and 2x4's, install new construction windows, re-wrap the house in Tyvek, and re-brick the entire thing.

We sold our house in the suburbs last spring so that I could have an easy-to-maintain townhouse to visit while Neal was in Iraq. I, quite literally, jumped from the pot directly into the fire. I traded mowing the lawn every 2 weeks for a well-landscaped, improperly constructed townhome.

Awesome does not begin to describe it.

Except that I love our house. The interior is painted in blues and grays and all of the appliances are stainless steel. I delight in hearing the girls' toenails click as they climb the hardwood stairs. The landscapers mow and weed faithfully once a week. There is a fountain behind our house and well-maintained, blooming flowers everywhere. Our master closet is so large that the building code required an outlet on every wall.

I don't want to move. I don't want to sell it. I don't regret the purchase.

But I think there is a special place in a fiery afterlife for some general contractors.

So, that's the story of where I've been....aside from helping to host a baby shower for a bestie in Georgia, launching the new Daisy & Elm website, and voting everyday on Facebook for Journey 4 A Cure (which is a non-profit that is trying to win money from a business giving away $1.25 million to charities with the most votes. You can vote everyday and you can do so by clicking the button on the top right of my page. Easy peasy. AND they're *almost* to the #4 spot! They need the votes, you can give it them).

I am "back" and I'm working my way through the 290 unread posts in my Google Reader. I don't know how I fall so behind. Oh yes I do...brick springs a leak, the patio light mysteriously stops working, the dryer hose blows off, the taillight falls out of the back window of the Pathfinder......Murphy's Law of Deployment.