Home Again, Home Again, Jiggedy-Jig

First things first:

Happy Birthday, Boo! One day late :)

Just got back today from visiting the parents for Boo's first birthday. I spent Thursday and Friday shopping for Boo clothes with my mom, getting her fitted out for colder weather, including her first shoes.

We had a little birthday "party" yesterday, just Boo, me, Albert, my mom, and my stepdad. We put Boo in her high chair, sang "Happy Birthday" while she looked at us as if we'd gone insane, and gave her a little cupcake with a candle in it. My mom helped her blow the candle out, and she got to stick her fingers--and her stuffed elephant--into the icing before she ate it. My mom gave her a shirt with her name on it, Albert and I gave her some bath blocks, and an old friend of my mom's sent her a stuffed dog which, for reasons I haven't yet dared ask, Albert immediately christened "Pongo." She loves Pongo, and he seems to have supplanted even Pinky (the aforementioned elephant) and Cow in her affections. She had a very happy birthday, I think. :)

Inspec-shun!

Now for news about house-related matters.

The big news is that the inspector is coming tomorrow. To prepare for his advent, we've had to have the electricity, water, and gas turned on. After a week, we've succeeded in two out of three. We've tried twice to get the water turned on, but both times there were, apparently, taps still open in the house, so the water workers turned it off again once they saw that the meter was still pumping water in after a minute.

Now, not being idiots, after the first time this happened we went in and found out which taps were open and closed them, then called the water company again. Imagine our surprise when, two days later, Albert showed up for the gas turn-on and discovered that the water had, again, been turned on and then shut off because of open taps.

Investigation revealed that some idiot had apparently shown the house in the intervening 48 hours, either unaware or uncaring that we had a contract with HUD, and in the process someone had turned on several of the faucets and not bothered to turn them off again. Grrrrr. I'm just hoping we can persuade the water guys to come again in the morning.

I can't say but that I'm just a wee bit apprehensive about the inspection. I've been over the house myself a few times, and last week my dad came over and crawled around the attic and looked in the crawl space underneath and so on, but I'm nervous about what an intensive inspection is going to turn up. We already know there's a leak around the chimney, some loose caulking around some of the siding along the back, and the water heater may or may not need to be replaced, but I'm hoping that I won't leave the inspector tomorrow with a jillion-dollar list of repairs. We can still get out of the contract if it turns out that the place is riddled with termites or sitting on a pool of water or something, but that would really, really suck.