Yesterday I put Fern and Hodor together, and Alice and Sushi together. With any luck we will have some new bunnies in another month.
Tony and I went back into the septic basement. The breathing masks are no longer cutting it. Even with all of the basement windows open to air it out, the smell is starting to get so bad that it makes my eyes burn - like ammonia in a cat box that hasn't been changed in a long time. I start to get short of breath and find myself huffing and puffing and feeling like I'm working a lot harder than I am. I suspect the oxygen levels are dropping as the septic smell continues to steep. Ish. Anyway, we went down there again today to rescue the turtle tank. The wooden stand for the tank got wet in the flood (obviously, the bottom 18" was underwater), which has caused the front portion with the door to the cabinet to start bowing. The whole thing was starting to pitch forward. Since a 55 gallon aquarium full of water and gravel and turtle supplies weighs quite a bit, and we also had the big aquaponic set up on top of it (think two five gallon buckets full of pea gravel plus bell siphon parts), it seemed best to get everything torn down and placed somewhere safe before the stand collapsed under the weight and destroyed everything else. So now we have three buckets of gravel (two from the aquaponic set-up and one from the turtle tank), we siphoned out most of the water, and the tank is now sitting on the buckets until we can either replace the stand (after the basement is cleaned) or we can move it to the new house.
Which brings me to the housing update. The mortgage folks called this morning to let us know the adjusted insurance rate was still too high and they were not able to give us a loan if we can't get the insurance lowered. He pointed out that the insurance quote is for three times the replacement value (to rebuild the entire house), so asked if he could conference call our insurance to figure out why it was so high and if they could lower it. About an hour later we were faced with the reality that we have three days to find a new insurance company to get our homeowners insurance through or we're going to lose out on the house! Yikes! Turns out our regular insurance is claiming they can't lower it any more because they require coverage for full replacement and rebuilding of all structures and all belongings. They still couldn't explain how their number was three times higher than the appraiser's rebuild quote.
So tomorrow morning as soon as girls get on the bus, Tony will be on the phone with another insurance company to see about getting a quote and possibly signing up so we can keep the mortgage people going. It's crunch time and we're feeling it. I just wish we had a little more advanced notice so we weren't scrambling in the last day or two to tie up loose ends we didn't anticipate. Especially since all the financials and stuff are in Tony's name, and he works full time, which makes it even harder to get it all done. Fortunately he isn't scheduled until 11am tomorrow, so he has all morning to work on this.
I brought my overgrown aloe vera plant to the hotel. It was the last surviving plant in the house, and with the automated turtle lights unplugged in the basement it no longer had access to light. In a sense, I rescued it. I need to repot it, but I don't want to do that in the hotel room. I'll need some succulent soil and a big container. Maybe I'll take a few of the pieces and give them to my Mom. She doesn't have any plants indoors anymore as she used to have cats who'd pee in the containers or knock them over, and now she has a pug who sometimes likes to mark things as his. Maybe she could put it on her counter or table, or in the bathroom in a hanging planter basket by the window.
I ended up getting her the planter for her deck railing for Mother's Day. They're two weeks away from building their new deck, so it's a little early, but hey, hopefully she will find it useful.
And for the daily photo... Yesterday I got a fortune cookie that didn't have a fortune in it! At first I was a little disappointed, but then I figured it was a good thing. I love eating the fortune cookies, so the paper was just an extra I didn't really need. The cookie was still tasty.