Getting down and dirty with The Dude

After I spent the entire morning running around the house like an idiot, cleaning and doing laundry, I went over to The Dude's house. We had plans to get down and dirty.

And we did. Well, he got dirtier than I did. But I helped. A little bit.

He had to replace a wheel bearing on his van. So we went and got the part and then got to work. It was a little harder to get it taken apart than either one of us thought that it would be, and so there was a lot of swearing and yelling and sweating and grunting and growling. I helped him for as long as I could, but then I had to leave to go get the boys from school and all of that fun stuff, so he had to finish on his own.

Although he did finally get it done, some of his tools didn't quite survive. Oops.

But the important thing is that it's done. He took it for a test drive over here (with me following him) to make sure that everything was ok, so now I don't have to worry about him driving it around anymore. I made dinner for all of us (and him and his mom) and we hung out for a little while before I sent him home to get some rest. After yesterday's beautiful weather, it was much cooler and windier today, and being outside in it all afternoon was a little more than either one of us liked.

And just for good measure, here are a few pictures of the final way that I rearranged everything in the front two rooms, after I got everything cleaned today. I still need to get fabric to make a curtain to divide off my "bedroom" but I'm not too worried about that. I might work on that over the weekend while I'm stuck in the house (see below for explanation)...

And...why I will be stuck in the house all weekend...

I sort of touched on this on my facebook page and mentioned it last night in the blog, but I didn't really go into details. I had Alex at the doctor the other day to talk about the constant bowel incontinence, and it was determined that he has a condition called "encopresis". Basically, he has a really big blockage and that is creating the majority of the issues. So, starting tomorrow after school, he will be getting massive doses of laxatives to "clean him out", so to speak. I already bought pull-ups and wipes and I am prepared for the worst. But, once we get things, uh, 'flowing' again - hopefully things will smooth out. I've talked to him about it, he knows what's going to happen, and so we are going to stay home and tough it out. I'm dreading the amount of poo that I will most likely be dealing with this weekend, but I want him to feel better and to be able to get this fixed. I feel horrible for punishing him for the accidents, now that I know that he couldn't control it all along. But, we're going to fix it. It's just going to suck in the meantime.