Reunion Avenue

Today was surgery day for Tuna. It has been a long, long day.

Tuna could not eat after 1:30 a.m. and she is sort of the opposite of a gremlin. We didn't feed her after midnight and she turned into a monster. At 8:00 a.m. when I denied her a drink of water, she unleashed a torrent of profanity one would not expect from a Ninja Turtle-printed pajama-clad patient. At that moment, I said a little prayer for her nurses.

Tuna is funny, and tough, and super-resilient and I love those qualities in her. But...she is also smart mouthed, and ornery, and sometimes her filter malfunctions. Okay, most of the time her filter malfunctions. When the first nurse we encountered asked the date of her last menstrual period, Tuna gave her a running monologue about the new Tampax radiant tampons and how they probably make your vagina glow and wouldn't that be fun? I said another little prayer for her nurses. I reminded Tuna that the nurses pick the size of your needles.

This is not Tuna's first surgery, but it was her first planned surgery. She usually enters into these things on an emergency basis. Like when she was five and got the flu like the rest of the family only she didn't get better when everyone else did and three days after an ER visit we returned to the ER to learn that her appendix had been ruptured for several days. That surgery ended with an eight-day hospital stay. Or when she went roller skating and broke her hip. That surgery is what led to this one. It required an ambulance ride and an emergency surgery to pin the bone back together.

That surgery went really well. She got two screws in the hip and even though the surgeon gave her less than a 40% chance of maintaining blood flow to the bone, the bone healed nice and solid.

Post surgery, SCFE pinned with screws 

It healed nice and solid with a little extra somethin'. It healed with two really long screws and a marble-sized bump (or bony prominence) on the ball of the hip (femoral neck). Look! I speak ortho now. It was the bump we suspect was causing most of her pain, though the screw heads may have contributed as well so both were removed today. My girl is now bump and hardware free.

Pain free she is not. We arrived at the hospital at 9:30. Surgery was scheduled for 11:00 but was delayed. Surgery began at 1:45. We finally met up at Reunion Avenue at 6:00 and made the tear-filled journey to her room.

Reunion Avenue, the happy place where you meet your groggy post-op kiddo.

She got settled in with a morphine pump and the good times began. Her oxygen levels are dipping a bit here and there causing her monitors to beep which is generally met with a colorful shout in the general direction of the machine. Occasionally, she wakes briefly to illustrate her pain with colorful descriptives or to carry on one-sided conversations about strange things. In between, she dozes. But never, ever, does she drop her cell phone. It is amazing.

It is now almost 9:00 and I'm tired, hungry, and in serious need of a Dr. Pepper. We have a long night ahead and the good doctors will start making rounds at dark:thirty. Whether I've slept or not, dark:thirty tomorrow will officially mark the end of this very long day and I will greet the dawn with new hope. And, I'll say a few more prayers for her nurses.  

Behold, The Pantry!

Well. We've done it. We've built the pantry.

And by we, I mean the Big Guy built the pantry and I told him how to do it. I did a good job too. I mean the Big Guy did a good job. He did. I love my new pantry.

When we moved back into the house in November, the pantry was not finished and as we had not fully settled up with the insurance company and we were out of money...well...no pantry.

I was unhappy. I stormed. I pouted. Then I demanded that we sit down together and find a temporary solution.

This was the temporary solution:

Because we have fabulous friends, the can rack was together before we moved in. Because we had a small catastrophe with the insurance company and they abruptly ended our extended living expense earlier than agreed we have purchased a full household worth of rental furniture. Sigh. 

So, we took the rented nightstands we now own and don't want and stacked them in the pantry with lengths of plywood layered between and on top. Hey, it kept the food off the floor. It worked, okay?

Finally, the time came to purchase the shelving and build the pantry. YAY!

But first, everything had to come out of the pantry. Oh wow. It was super ugly. 

We pulled everything out into the family room. 

Then it spilled over into the kitchen. 

And then it consumed the dining room table. 

So, we ate out Monday night. Tuesday night we ordered pizza. But...

By bedtime Tuesday night, it was almost finished and we had regained full use of our family room, kitchen, and dining room again. 

Behold, the pantry!

I am in heaven. We are eating at home again (minus pantry building). We have room to store food. Everything is neat and organized, which I expect to last until the first child strolls in there. 

All is perfect in the pantry!

Now c'mon. You know I can't end a What-A-Crock blog post like that! 

Remember Flooring Guy? Remember how hard he worked at getting our flooring all squared and level? Behold, the work of Flooring Guy. 

Do you see it? Start at the bottom left corner and just follow the grout line up...up...oops...yeah. Sigh. What a nerd. This is a minor, insignificant little thing in the grand scheme of things, but when the man leaves the steps unfinished, the basement unfinished, and then tries to pursue bad check charges on his stopped payment...

Well, what a goober. 

Have I told you lately how much I dislike fire recovery? 

Have I told you lately how much I love my new pantry! 

See...there it is again. The good, the bad, the whole crock.    

  

The Flooring Guy

In an effort to stay as positive as possible (ha!) and perhaps in an effort to not 'air the dirty laundry' I have left much of our struggle off of the blog. I've been doing some soul searching on this subject. My soul is deep folks, deep. I have decided that I have not been true to the spirit of the blog. You know...the good, the bad, the whole crock.

So, here we go people. We're going to journey right down into the bad.

I could not even imagine when our house caught fire how much time rebuilding our home, our lives, would consume. Not in my wildest imagination could I have understood what our lives would look like going forward. To say I was naive was an understatement. We both were, the Big Guy and I. Naive.

He trusted contractors much more than I. Much more. I wouldn't trust a one of them any further than I could throw them and I really couldn't throw any of them at all so...

Actually, I could probably throw the flooring guy. I can do a lot when I'm angry.

Well...wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning here. I'll try to be brief. (Me? Giggle.)

The flooring guy was hired to install flooring. Carpet. Tile. Linoleum. Carpet in 2 bedrooms and on 2 sets of stairs. Linoleum upstairs, and down. Tile on the main floor. Simple. For a set amount of money, Flooring Guy was going to install the flooring in 5 days. F-I-V-E days. This is where the story gets reminiscent of The Money Pit with Tom Hanks.

A week in, Flooring Guy had not made it out of the master bathroom. Every day, every single day, he would say "tomorrow I'll start the linoleum." Every day, I would visit the house and find him laying tile.

He ran into lots of issues you see. The floor was extremely un-level he said, and he worked hard to level it. This required multiple trips to the big box hardware store to buy more floor leveling stuff. Then, an unscrupulous contractor who had agreed to be paid when the insurance check arrived (another blog post entirely), blazed into the house one day demanding payment immediately. He apparently yelled and cursed and made quite a scene.

Some of our contractors were humored by the scene. Others were angered. Some worried they wouldn't get paid. Others just fled the scene never to return. The 'others' included Flooring Guy's crew. So, our already painfully slow flooring installer moved even slower. He borrowed other contractors and helpers  to assist from time to time. Our other crews were generous with their time and muscles and helped carry large rolls of flooring up and down stairs for him.

At one point, he used some of our other crew members to help carry a very cold roll of linoleum into the basement. He turned a corner too sharply, with no direction to his new-found helpers and cracked the roll of linoleum. We paid for materials on this job so this was at our expense. He left in anger and did not return that day.

I was, at this point, beginning to joke that when we moved back into the house Flooring Guy would be eating breakfast with us because of course, he would still be there laying flooring!

I was wrong. He demanded a check for the remainder of the bill. This amounted to several thousand dollars. If it was post-dated and given that day, Flooring Guy would show up once again with a full crew and finish the job. As I said earlier, the Big Guy trusted contractors more than I and he wrote this check.

Flooring Guy promptly disappeared. We promptly stopped payment on the check.

This is what is finished in the basement. The linoleum ends just outside of my son's room. It is not adhered to the floor. The basement floor has been 'leveled' which means the washing machine, when it leaks (again, a whole  blog post right there) leaks water across the floor toward the sheetrock instead of toward the floor drain. Criminy!

The basement stairs never got carpeted, but the stairs on the main floor did. Sort of. For reasons only Flooring Guy could possibly understand, the carpeting above that top stair is cut into two strips and as you can see, the top strip is not exactly attached. 

For all that fancy piece work, Flooring Guy still ran out of carpet. 

A whole stairway plus a single stair did not get any carpet and yet...there were carpet strips scattered here and there like confetti on the front lawn.   

Eh?

So anyhoo. Today we get a call from the county prosecutor's office. This nerd has turned us over to the prosecutor for a bad check. They required us to prove that we had enough funds in the bank when the check was written to cover the check. Our bank was all too happy to write a letter stating that we did indeed have the funds to cover the check. We've assured the prosecutor's office that we have sent a formal dispute letter to Flooring Guy via certified mail and that he is fully aware of why he is not being paid. 

So here is the whole crock. I'm mad. I'm fighting mad. I am so angry. I am angry that this nerd would do this shoddy job and try to collect the full amount of money on it. I am angry that he would even pursue it. I am actually quite stunned at the nerve of Flooring Guy.

But, this is just ONE story. One blog post. I could write a hundred more. I could fill a whole shelf with proverbial crocks. I could tell you about more battles. More contractors. It just drags on and on. The fire? The flames? That was just the beginning of this disaster. I thought those first steps back into my burnt out home were the hardest steps I would ever take, but they were just baby steps. I have walked this walk until I am exhausted. I am sick of the path.  

I had no idea how long and complicated this journey would be. How could I have known? 

I do want to acknowledge that we chose this particular path. We chose to contract this mess ourselves. (Okay, not exactly. The Big Guy chose it. I went along kicking and screaming.) We could have hired a contractor. When you face a house fire, you have several paths to choose from. What I've realized though, is that none of those paths would have been easy. None of them were going to be simple or pain free. There was no good option. I have talked with many fire recovery survivors. The stories are different, but they are all tear jerkers. 

So, we are living in our home again and for that I am grateful. It is so much easier to fight the battles from our own home. And, there are things I love about the house. It is fabulous. But we are far from finished. We are still in full-fledged fire recovery mode. We still have contractors to deal with. We still have projects to complete. We still have insurance money to fight for (though we have now hired someone to fight that fight for us). We're still recovering. I'm afraid this time next year we will still be recovering. 

That is the whole crock. The good and the bad of the thing.  

Goodbye 2012

It's almost midnight on the eve of the new year. I've never been so happy to see a year pass. Though our fire happened in the fall of 2011, 2012 will always be the year I remember as 'the year we were in fire recovery.'

Seriously, 2012 can suck it.

We're so close to the end of this year. We're so close to a clean slate, a fresh year, blah, blah, blah. Alas...two hours before this year could slide on by, my oldest daughter had to say goodbye to a dear friend.

Mr. Joy, Tuna's lions head rabbit, has spent his last holiday season with us. He was incredibly sick a few weeks ago and the vet had little hope for him, but he gave him some antibiotics and fluids and the little guy bounced back and seemed to be doing just fine. Yesterday he seemed fine. This afternoon he seemed fine. Then tonight, gone. Losing a pet is so hard and watching your child endure that hurt is terrible.

What an icky way to end the year. 

Sigh. 

Other than that, we are spending the end of the year exactly the way we wanted. We are at home and we are together. It's snowing outside, but inside it's warm and cozy. The kids are eating chips and dip, drinking punch, arguing over Wii games, and waiting on the stroke of midnight. 

Next year, our son will be living in his own home and likely won't celebrate with us. Our oldest daughter will be in London, preparing to march in the New Year's parade. We will be snuggled up at home with our little ones worried sick over our big ones who aren't with us. So, this year...we're going to savor the moment for all it is worth. 

In a few minutes, I'm going to watch the ball drop. I'm going to watch the clock change to 12:01 and I'm going to welcome in 2013 with a deep, cleansing breath. 

Happy New Year!

95% Complete and Okay

This was my living room September 22, 2011.

The white areas are where the Big Guy hit the ceiling with a water hose trying to put out a fireball of super heated particulate matter. Bless his heart. He was trying to save our home, but it was too late and he needed a much bigger fire hose. 

This was my living room in May. 

The white areas in this photo are due to a coating of shellac, applied to seal the smoke into the wood so we wouldn't smell it once the home was rebuilt. The more natural wood color is new lumber, added either to bring the structure to current building codes, or to replace or reinforce heat damaged boards. 

This was our home in August. 

You could look right through the structure to the outside. This was about the time I began to cry and cuss things every time I visited the house. It was when I began to internalize that this whole mess wasn't coming to an end any time soon. It was when I knew that we weren't okay. I also knew that we weren't going to be okay for a long time to come. We were just putting one foot in front of the other, going through the motions. 

Fall brought this- walls and windows.

I was seeing possibilities again. 

Home, it was not. 

By November, we were living at home again but something was missing. 

The rest of the furniture. It was MIA. Held up in customs. BLARGH!

Well...today, December 27, 2012...15 months after the fire...

THE CABINETS ARRIVED!

How awesome is that? 

I have my living room back!

I can unpack things!

This room is...um...95% complete now. It needs base boards and a ceiling fan. It could use something to decorate the walls. But, it is homey again. It is a place I can sit and say "ah." 

Little Bean walked in, took one look at the new furniture and said with wonder "is this our old stuff?" I had to laugh, but there was a little twinge of pain. The new pieces are just a bit different than our old ones and there are things missing that will never come back again, but our house is a home again. We're back. And guess what? We're okay. The road home was just way longer (and far more scenic) than we ever could have imagined. 

  

  

Is a Fairy Tale They Say

Every year we go visit Santa and buy candy and fudge and look at the downtown Christmas lights. Every year. As in, we ALWAYS do it.

This year, we couldn't seem to find time to fit it in. First, there was the 4th grade musical. Then, the 7th orchestra winter concert. Then winter guard practice. Scholarship volunteer hours. Anime club. Teen Advisory Board meeting at the library. Band concert. And on and on it went.

I was complaining that all of the kids' activities were starting to interfere with our Santa visiting time when it hit me like a mean brick- the kids? They grew up. They aren't little kids with open schedules and visions of Santa anymore. They are teens and tweens with extra curricular activities and visions of X-boxes and iPods under the tree. No need to ask Santa.

But wait a minute! I still want to see Santa! I'm not ready to give up this yearly tradition. Not yet. Our youngest child just turned eight and it can't be over yet. Not yet.

We finally managed to squeeze a visit in this week, but we couldn't convince the Boy to go with us. We did manage a quick shot of all of us with Santa and Little Bean told him that she really wanted a puppy this year. Oh poo. (Santa handled that really well. Thank you, Santa.)

Hey, I think I see a future Santa there on the left. 

So, we're barreling toward our first high school graduation and we probably just made our last visit to Santa. This year is really kicking my butt. 

This week kicked particularly hard. My sister was in a bad car wreck. The Big Guy picked a fight with black ice and the ice totally won. We had another less than enjoyable visit with a contractor. Our hardwood furniture is still held up in customs. The high school was put on lock down for a doomsday bomb threat and later evacuated (in mid-20s temperatures) for a potential gas leak. By mid-day Friday I was functioning in one-crisis-at-a-time mode. Some folks say life marches on, but I don't think that is really true. I feel more like life is coming at us like a steam roller and if we don't keep running, running, running...we'll get run over. 

Friday night was movie night with 4 extra kids in the house (because we don't have enough kids in the house) and Saturday night was cookie night with 5 extra kids in the house. The house has been a little bit insane and we are completely exhausted. Movie night with the younger kids sounded more like a stampede of buffalo and cookie night required a mad rush to the store and resulted in me burning my finger and teaching my 10 year old the new word "mofo" which I yelled out in my best outdoor voice. The stress of the week has taken it's toll and I had to wonder why we would commit to having all of these kids over to hang out at our house at this crazy time. 

Then I looked into the kitchen tonight and saw 7 teenagers laughing and decorating gingerbread men. They were eating pizza rolls and cutting out cookie dough and drizzling melted chocolate over peanut butter balls. They were all crowded around the new island in our newly remodeled kitchen sharing some fun down time after finals. What a great way to kick off winter break. And in that moment I thought "yeah...we're home...we're going to be ok." I knew, this is exactly what we were fighting for all those long months since the fire. We're home for the holidays and all of the crazy is a whole lot easier to cope with from the comfort of our home. 

We're carrying on our new tradition of the countdown socks. This whole week, according to the kids, the countdown socks contained crappy surprises. They are right. In all the rush and stress of the week we resorted mostly to candy. The night the Big Guy fought with the ice we didn't put anything at all in the sock. Tonight, we figured it was time for something fun. We set up a sort of scavenger hunt based on Frosty the Snowman. Each clue corresponded to a set of lyrics in the song. The clues were found on a can of corn (corncob pipe), a Cinderella DVD (a fairy tale they say), a broom (a broomstick in his hand), etc. They led to container of self-stick snowman parts for snowman building. 

We confiscated their cell phones so they couldn't look up the song lyrics but that was useless because Rough Stuff is a displaced elf and she knows the lyrics to every single Christmas song by heart. She sang the lines one by one and the teenagers landed the clues in nothing flat. Next time we play this game we'll have to confiscate her. 

Now that school is out and the performances and parties are all over, we're looking forward to a very calm, quiet Christmas. 

Shhhh....

You hear that?

It's the universe laughing. Who are we kidding?     

      

The Twelve Days of a House Fire

I seem to be having a difficult time finding my Christmas spirit this year.  I’m not sure why. I’m back in my warm, cozy home. This whole house fire mess is behind me. It’s Christmas for heaven’s sake. Where is my spirit?  

I thought perhaps it had gotten packed into a moving box but I checked every box and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I bought some jingle bells for my purse because you know…every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings and all. That didn’t help.

Then I remembered what brings out Christmas spirit. It’s singing! I need to sing!

Come on! Sing with me! Ready? Here we go:

♫♫♪♫ ♪

On the first day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

A stair with no carpeting

♪♫♪♫

On the  second day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

2 belligerent contractors and

 A stair with no carpeting (One stair?)

♫♪♪♪♫

On the third day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

3 unfinished rooms

2 belligerent contractors  (Seriously?) and

A stair with no carpeting (What the??)

♫♪♫♪

On the fourth day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

4 useless insurance reps

3 unfinished rooms (The shower door didn’t come in?)

2 belligerent contractors (That behavior is totally inappropriate!) and

A stair with no carpeting (But…why?)

♪♪♫♫♫

On the fifth day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

5 cabinets not installed

4 useless insurance reps  (Why won’t they call us back?)

3 unfinished rooms (What do you mean we can’t install the toilet yet?)

2 belligerent contractors (You didn’t finish the job, dude!) and

A stair with no carpeting (ONE STAIR?)

♫♪♫♪♪♫

On the sixth day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

6 court cases pending

5 cabinets not installed (Where are the drawer pulls?)

4 useless insurance reps (That’s not even half the money!)

3 unfinished rooms (He didn’t bring the other cabinets, why?)

2 belligerent contractors (You don’t get paid for incomplete work!) and

A stair with no carpeting (You’ve got to be kidding me.)

♪♪♪♫♪

On the seventh day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

7 weeks waiting for an insurance check

6 court cases pending (You can’t withhold our deposit!)

5 cabinets not installed (Um…what about the office shelving?)

4 useless insurance reps (No water in the basement?)

3 unfinished rooms (Well…when will the caulking be done?)

2 belligerent contractors (I’m not paying your materials fee!) and

A stair with no carpeting (Was he drinking?)

♫♪♫♫

On the eighth day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

8 months of storage fees

7 weeks waiting for an insurance check (What do you mean you won’t do the inspection?)

6 court cases pending (No, you don’t get full pay for an incomplete job.)

5 cabinets not installed (No backsplashes? Didn’t we order backsplashes?)

4 useless insurance reps (How can a pumper truck of water not leak into the basement?)

3 unfinished rooms (Oh my gaawwd, the house will NEVER be finished.)

2 belligerent contractors (We already paid you $3,000, buddy!)  and

A stair with no carpeting (How do you not carpet one stair?)

♪♪♫♪♫

On the ninth day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

9 windows without curtains

8 months of storage fees (Unlimited free storage does not end in August!)

7 weeks waiting for an insurance check (Three weeks for another inspection date?)

6 court cases pending (That wouldn’t even pass inspection.)

5 cabinets not installed (They forgot to paint that!)

4 useless insurance reps  (What is taking them so long?)

3 unfinished rooms (I’m not looking at them anymore.)

2 belligerent contractors (You ran over the neighbor’s mailbox!) and

A stair with no carpeting (Oh my gaaawwwd. Why? WHY?)

♪♫♫♪

On the tenth day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

10 psychotic meltdowns

9 windows without curtains (The neighbors can see everything!)

8 months of storage fees (We’re storing crap that still smells like fire!)  

7 weeks waiting for an insurance check (But the check didn’t come on the Fed-X truck today.)

6 court cases pending (Unbelievable.)

5 cabinets not installed (You’ve got to be kidding me.)

4 useless insurance reps  (What do you mean heat doesn’t crack wood?)

3 unfinished rooms (Out of sight, out of mind.)

2 belligerent contractors (This is harassment!) and

A stair with no carpeting (It’s one freaking stair!)

♫♪♪♪♫

On the eleventh day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

11 temper tantrums

10 psychotic meltdowns (I just want to cry.)

9 windows without curtains (How did we run out of money before we bought curtains?)

8 months of storage fees (Our clothing multiplied!)

7 weeks waiting for an insurance check (You mailed it when?)

6 court cases pending  (You can’t charge your personal tools to our materials account!)

5 cabinets not installed (You will not get the final payment up front!)

4 useless insurance reps (A fabric care expert? With a Master’s degree? In what? Stink?)

3 unfinished rooms (Ugh!)

2 belligerent contractors(Get off our property!) and

A stair with no carpeting (Ow! There are carpet tacks exposed on that blasted stair!)

♫♪♫♫♫♪

On the twelfth day of Christmas the house fire gave to me:

12 pages of contents inventory

11 temper tantrums (I just want this !@*! to be over already! Stupid freakin’ crock pot.)

10 psychotic meltdowns (Do not eff up my packing system! I will hurt you.)

9 windows without curtains (Who are those people and why are they slowing down to stare at us?)

8 months of storage fees (Surely, we did NOT own all that!)

7 weeks waiting for an insurance check (You mailed it where?)

6 court cases pending (I will be more than happy to file suit on you too lint licker!)

5 cabinets not installed (Dude, seriously. No more cash until the job is complete.)

4 useless insurance reps (Speak to our public adjuster!)

3 unfinished rooms (Damn contractors.)

2 belligerent contractors (Yes, we will see you in court!) and

A stair with no carpeting (Where is that carpet guy? I’m fixing to take a carpet tack strip to his hide.)

Merry Christmas.