Gone, Gone, Gone

I know. I know. It's been forever since I've written an update about the house. It's just...well, you know...it's May. My grandmother would sing this little diddy to me when I was a child- "March, in like a lion, out like a lamb. April showers, bring May flowers." Whatevs. May in our part of the Midwest brought snow (yes, snow!) and as any parent of school-age children knows, May comes at you like a tornado.

We have a senior in the house this year. (A senior!) That means on top of all of the end-of-the-year talent shows, field days, memory book presentations, yearbook sales ("I need $21 by Friday, Mom!), band award presentations, orchestra award presentations, and field trips, we are adding senior parent socials, senior picnics, graduation, and a graduation party. C'mon, May! Bring it!

And then Little Bean shared her flu virus.

Yep.

What? You don't want to hear my excuses?

Fine.

Here is the most exciting thing to happen at the house recently:

The big construction dumpster that has been a permanent feature in our yard for the last 16 months is out of here!

Actually, there were 22 dumpsters in all and they are all...GONE, GONE, GONE!

And now the back yard is a big, ugly, un-landscaped, mud pit. Full of deck lumber. And other various oddities. Like the old shower pan from the master bath. And the metal shelving that doesn't fit in the basement now.  

  

A week after our fire, the insurance agent sat in our front yard and explained that we had up to $500 allowed in our policy for landscaping. I snickered. The fire was inside, not in the yard. What on earth did we need to fix in the yard? 

Oh, how naive I was. Flames and toxic smoke poured from our kitchen windows for several minutes. The trees above did not react well to all of that heat and smoke. The fire truck parked on the end of the sidewalk. Thin concrete is no match for a pumper truck. The backyard was dug up to place new electrical lines, though that was more a personal preference. The crews trenched around our home for reasons I cannot recall. And  the dumpsters were rolled across what remained of the sidewalk and parked on the lawn. 

We now have a sidewalk that looks like an earthquake hit, odd patches of grass here and there, mounds of dirt in the back yard, deep pits scattered about, damaged trees, and odd trenches where the hostas once grew. I look out over the yard and $500 seems kind of comical. But then, the bare yard does go well with our no-siding look.    

What is more comical, in a very painful way, is that every new person who enters our home says the same thing: "Doing some remodeling?" 

And I want to laugh like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit when the bathtub fell through the floor.