Unrelated

1. On Friday morning, I noticed that the light in the kitchen was casting a fairly yellowish glow. It's a fluorescent fixture that normally throws a white light throughout the space. I walked over to investigate and thought, "Huh. It kind of looks like the fixture is full of...water." And so when Mr. WG returned home from morning prayers, I brought him over to see. "Oh, crap," he said, and that about sums it up.

He disconnected the electricity, climbed onto the island, and touched the fixture -- which sent a tidal wave of water gushing across the kitchen. Which is always a fun way to start the day, particularly a Friday, when I have to cook for Shabbat.

It was yet another pipe that had burst, and now we have a lovely hole in the ceiling, a pipe with a clamp, and no light fixture. All should be repaired soon. Well, not the pipe. That's not getting repaired anytime soon, because the only real fix is a whole-house repipe, and we're not doing that. We're just going to keep clamping these pipes as they explode, and one day we'll have no water pressure left at all. It's overrated, anyway.

2. We have offered Z. $100 if she can toilet train J. in two weeks. If she can do it, it will be the best $100 I have ever spent.

3. The therapy center called today. They know we're in the process of appealing Aetna's charming decision to deny D's speech therapy, but there's the small matter of the $2k that we owe them, and could we perhaps pay that? Mr. WG explained that we prefer to first ride out the appeals process. He explained that if we exhaust all our appeals and Aetna still won't pay, we will pay the balance due, but he doesn't want to make a payment before then. They repeated their desire to be paid. Mr. WG repeated his side. This happened several more times, and now I'm not sure if I can go back there on Monday for OT, which so far has been covered. Oy.

4. D. is perilously close to reading. He can identify all his upper and lowercase letters and the sounds they make. The other day, we used magnetic letters, and D. sat and carefully sounded out, /k/, /a/, /t/. Then, he moved his finger under the whole word, and slowly and purposefully said, "umbrella." So, not quite, but getting there.

5. While I was in the middle of writing this, a letter came from Aetna, but let's save a little something for later, OK?