We have a new project, one we've been thinking about and planning for a few months. The netting and framework will become a catio, or safe outdoor enclosure for our cats.
Here, you see Stace in engineer-mode, staring at his project, and thinking hard.
Also this week, I worked on the 2024 and 2025 blog books, cleaned, and baked. Stace and I rewatched Wolf Hall, and he watched a lot of World Cup games.
We also went to Ellie's dance recital - we especially had to show up for our dancer, since Grandma and Grandpa were in Alaska.
With Violet gone, Evie had to hang out with Cora! (I promise she was happy; I just caught her looking angry.)
Cora had a friend in town from out of state, so she hung out with this friend group from her first high school.
And then...
...This happened.
While Stace was outside working on the catio, I heard a dripping in the bathroom. It sounded like someone left the tub faucet on, but we don't use the tub. I looked up and saw two streams of water flowing down from the ceiling onto the tub and floor.
Uh oh.
Stace turned off the water and began clearing up six bags of wet insulation from the attic around a pipe that had burst.
The orange circle shows where the copper elbow is, on a joist, which it had evidently been rubbing on all these years.
As the ceiling began looking worse, Stace propped it up with a stick. We had a mitigation company come out on Sunday, and learned we'll need to demo both bathrooms because the drywall and the studs behind them are soaked. Then, high-powered fans and a dehumidifier will be brought in to dry out the internal structure.
We did NOT have this on our bingo card this year.
Needless to say, the catio is on an indefinite hiatus.
Once Violet was back, we went out to dinner as a family, for Stace's birthday.
On his actual birthday, Violet, Stace and I started off on our summer road trip to Nevada. Stay tuned for more!
