We’re back in Indiana.  And we’re exhausted.  We didn’t sleep at all on the long flight over the Pacific (something to do with the chairs and the screaming infants), so when we came home, after doing a few things, we crashed.  Hard.  Woke up to the doorbell - Dave’s parents came to drop off our dog (they watched him while we were away this time) and to report on his misbehavior.  He was angelic, they said, the first 8 days, and evil the second 8 days (messing on the carpets a couple of times, jumping the backyard fence, etc).  They looked relieved to give him back - and I don’t blame them.  =)  We’ll be keeping a close eye on him for the next couple of weeks - hopefully getting back to his routine and getting a ton of exercise will fix those behavioral issues.

Anyway, we’re back safe and sound for those of you who were waiting to hear. 

I hit my head *really* hard yesterday morning.

We were getting ready for Saturday morning prayer meeting at church - and by “getting ready,”  I mean rolling out of bed and brushing my teeth - and I bent over in the bathroom.  Dave and I were brushing our teeth at the same time, so we were both in there doing our thing…  He had the cabinet door open for some reason (toothpaste?).  I stood up and cracked my skull right into it.  Sat down and almost cried - I even asked if there was blood I hit it so hard.

I immediately took a couple of Tylenol, and so was fine for the rest of the day.  A little tender where I hit.  I remember going to sleep last night thinking, “Man…  I sure was lucky.  I can’t believe my head hasn’t hurt all day.”

Ha.

I woke up this morning with a splitting headache, only on that part of my head.  Top of my skull, on the left side above my eye.  Took a couple more pills to try to quiet it down, then went to church.  Made it through Sunday school (which, by the way was great - David’s first time teaching that class) before I started hurting bad enough I couldn’t see well.

Church was torture… I couldn’t even focus on the sermon.  I have no idea what it was really about, though I remember bits and pieces.  All I really could focus on was the pain - spreading down the left side of my face so that, by the time church was over, even my teeth were hurting!

I went straight to bed, stopping only for a couple of really strong headache pills - the kinds I use only when I have to sleep off the headache and can’t stay awake for the pain.  David woke me up a couple of hours later, and for about 10 minutes, it seemed like the pain was completely gone.  But the longer I stayed awake, the worse it got, until I was back to sleeping it off.

I missed our first Sunday night service of the year - my favorite meeting of this church.

… almost.

Jake found something really nasty and rolled in it. We think. He’s had this odor of rot, vinegar and poo following him like a cloud - David says it’s like Pigpen.

It’s so cold, we haven’t washed him. He’s too big to wash in the house, and the weather is so frigid that we can’t wash him outside, and David doesn’t want to pay for a groomer to bathe him.

So I pulled out the baking soda, and rubbed it into his fur. I remember that when I was in high school and wore one particular pair of shoes for 3 years or so (my favorites) then got them soaked, I experienced embarrassingly stinky shoes for the first time in my life. Grandma Jo suggested putting baking soda in each shoe, and I STILL have that pair of shoes. They’re only stinky if you stick your nose in and sniff.

In like fashion, the baking soda has completely removed the aura of yuck, and almost neutralized the smell. Unless, of course, you get down with him and take a big whiff. I’m thinking that if the smell doesn’t fade and if it doesn’t warm up, I’m gonna take the dog into a groomer regardless.

David doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal, but if you’ll recall, he couldn’t smell the stench of the sewer smell before we covered that drain in the basement, either (where the previous owners had cut a hole directly into the sewage line for basement drainage). We don’t trust his nose, no matter how big it is. =)

It’s smelly in here.  =) 

I’m dogsitting for the Gardners, and Jake and Chopin have been playing for over an hour.  They’re both hot and panting, and our house smells like dog. 

Not that I mind.  It’s fun for me - the more the merrier, as long as they’re not trying to kill each other.  These two are getting along well (as long as Chopin doesn’t eat or drink in front of Jake). 

I’d take pictures and post them so you could see these two playing, but my camera is broken.  Don’t know what’s up, but I can only take or look at a couple of pictures before the camera’s software locks up.  Nothing I try fixes the problem!

=(

We went to church this morning.  My parents’ church recently split when their pastor left, so the remaining members are in the middle of a pastor search.  The interim pastor gave the sermon today and at the end gave an invitation.

It really, really bothers me when preachers ask to have “every head bowed and every eye closed” when they give an invitation.  There was nothing private about what Christ did for us.  If you’re making a statement of belief in Jesus, it should be bold and unapologetic.  Christianity, true Christianity, will change your life dramatically - it’s not a lifestyle to step into half-heartedly, it’s a worldview change, a paradigm shift.  I think it’s inappropriate for a pastor to minimize the gravity of the decision to follow Christ by allowing people to slink into the relationship.  I think it undermines the importance of the commitment and makes the relationship seem like it doesn’t have to be THE priority of your life.

That said,  I think the “close your eyes” approach can be appropriate in youth ministry because kids are so wrapped up in what their friends and peers think of them, but adults should be able to make decisions - especially such important decisions - without basing them in vanity.  If you’re not ready to stand up and stand out for Christ, are you ready to commit to a life in him and for him?

I sound judgemental, and this is something I struggle with - snap decisions about things I hear and see, and the people that say and do them.  I need to think more, but I wanted to post my initial thoughts here so I could hear what some of you think.

So, what do you think?

It’s finally warmer here.  After a week and a half of snowstorms and blizzards and snow showers and icy roads and snowed-in garages, it’s finally warm enough that the sun is making things drip.  And I can drive again!  I had to try to pull out of the garage a couple of times (the garbage trucks they turned into snow plows have plowed the alley, creating walls of snow in front of all the garages), but I finally made it out!

Snow really freaks me out.  Dave’s been the driver - when the roads look like they have for the past couple of weeks (Indy STILL hasn’t cleaned up our residential streets), I don’t drive unless I absolutely have to.  I slid off of then back onto the road a couple of years ago and was very lucky that I only hit the guardrail instead of the other cars around me.

The dog likes the snow now that it’s softer - for a while, there was an inch-thick layer of ice on top of the foot of snow.  Jake would take a step and fall through, take another step and fall through.  It was funny.  =)  Today, though, because the sun was actually out, the snow was soft enough that he jumped around and cavorted and chased squirrels.

…

Tomorrow is my last day here - I fly out very early Wednesday morning, and I’ve got a lot to do (taking a break from work now) before then.  I’m doing laundry and packing most of my things tonight.  Tomorrow night, I’m going shopping for the things Leah said she wanted me to bring (among other things, Colts caps - she’s a fan!) with me.  She called last night with a list.  =)

I can’t wait - except for the leaving David for two weeks part.  I’m glad to be seeing my family, though - twice a year is just not enough.

So…  the smell.

Turns out that our basement floor was too close to the sewer to install a trap between the floor and the pipes.  In the 60s or 70s when they updated the plumbing in the house and/or got tired of the basement flooding, they put a drain in the middle of the basement floor, then just ran a pipe directly from our basement floor into the pipe.  The smell I’ve been gagging over is sewer smell - straight from the sewer into our basement, and into the rest of our house via the space around the basement door and the heating/cooling system fan.  Which draws air straight from the basement.

And David couldn’t smell it. 

And people lived like this for 40 or 50 years.

Not us, not anymore.  We paid a plumber $50 to tell us what the problem was and to bring us a cap contraption they designed for folks like us.  Until we get that from him, we’ve improvised with a gallon ice cream bucket - it’s turned upside-down over the drain from whence the smell comes.

Our new house is stinky.  There’s a foul, unidentified smell eeking up from the basement.  I’ll be calling a plumber tomorrow.

We spent the weekend out of town.  Before we left, David dumped some bleach water down the drain in the basement.  When we got back, it was still stinky.  Dave just dumped an entire container of liquid fabric softener down the drain (as recommended by the guy from the Mayor’s Action Center).  We’ll see if that has any effect; my guess is that the plumber will be necessary.

… I have internet access! At least for the last few minutes, I have. No telling what’s going to happen before I finish this sentence, let alone this post.

The neighbors have wireless DSL that’s as flaky as flaky can be. I can’t believe they’re paying for service like this… but since I’m *not*, I can’t really say anything. We’re calling cable companies and seeing how much it’ll cost to get us onto a reliable internet connection.

In the meantime, please bear with me as I’m not posting (I can’t even get all of my email usually before the connection dies). Also, I’m working on two websites concurrently, and have YET to widgetize my Andreas04 theme… People have been emailing and asking me to do it, but without an internet connection, I’m just about worthless. You can imagine how fun it is to try to work on those two websites… =)

And now, when I DO have internet access, I have to leave. Wind Symphony rehearsal… grr.

I’ve spent the day (as I do every other day or so) at this little coffee shop in Gas City called Payne’s. It’s great… They serve both frozen custard and specialty coffees, so they’re in business all year ’round, and they have free wi-fi. Which is why I’m here all the time.

We can’t get high-speed internet at our apartment (well, we can, but it’s ridiculous to do it that way - we’d have to pay for both a phone line AND unreasonably-priced DSL) and though I have a friend who has a wireless router at his house and has offered me free run of the place, I am allergic to his house. Literally. Two cats make a lot of dander and stir up a lot of dust - the second I walk in, I’m sneezing and wheezing. So I only go there every other day. =)

Today’s my coffee shop day, which means I have to (feel bad for me, don’t you?) buy something. Today’s choice is the “Mocha Frappe” - I felt the need to pretend it was hot out (it’s currently 43°). I like it here - it’s quiet during the day, and I tend to get a lot of work done.

Yesterday was my day at Steve’s, and he (for kicks, I guess) Google’d my name. Turns out there are like 75,000 results for me (not someone else with my name, he searched for “Tara Aukerman”)… All are a result of this theme that I “ported”.

I found this html theme at an open source website (a site that posts themes people create for anyone to use) and made it into a Wordpress theme - just to see if I had the skills. It was done specifically for my website (so it had a lot of personal extras I wouldn’t have put in if I was doing it for anyone else) and I really didn’t know what I was doing.

When I finished with my version, I asked Andreas if I could post it so other people could download it - I had seen many, many people asking for it. He said, “Sure, but let me look at it first.” He’d done this with several of his other designs with other people, and knew what needed to be done to release it.

Well, someone found my site before he got back to me and downloaded it (who knows why I put it out there? I don’t!) and told someone else… Now there are thousands of people using it in its crappy form. Then, Andreas contacted me and told me that Wordpress.com has included it in their list of themes for people to choose from…

Ugh. I wish that Andreas had had time to look over it - it sure would have been a better theme. So, to anyone here because of the theme, sorry it’s not in perfect condition. If I can help, let me know.