Keep Calm and...

One year ago today, September 21, 2011, fire destroyed our home.

Our crock pot shorted out and started a fire that would destroy our home.

My oldest daughter called screaming in terror  for me to come home. The kids took refuge with a neighbor while the Big Guy shouted instructions to the firemen about where our pets were located.

The fire department reported the fire as fully engaged and called for 2 additional trucks from a neighboring fire department for support. They assigned one unit to pet rescue and drained a pumper truck of water into our home. It took 8 minutes to contain the flames.

I drove in frenzy to reach my family. I found my family, shook up but safe...the dogs black with soot and suffering heat exhaustion...and the house...

Destroyed. 

The ceilings and walls black with soot. Fixtures melted and contorted. 

Sap running out of the wood. 

Furniture burned and melted.

Insulation and water and broken glass everywhere. 

The destruction took my breath away. 

It's been a year. We've lived in two hotels. We've lived in two rental houses. We've lived in limbo. No stability. We've lost nearly every tangible memory we'd collected in our two decades  together. 

This fire has rocked our world. It has mangled a year of our lives. It has made me angry, sad, scared, insecure, frustrated...you name it, I've probably felt it. We all have. 

There are days when we want to scream "STOP THIS RIDE I WANT TO GET OFF NOW!" 

But that wouldn't really work. 

So, we just...  

Keep calm and sheetrock on!

Keep CALM and sheetrock on!

Keep CALM and SHEETROCK on!

Keep CALM and SHEETROCK ON!

Come on! Say it with us!

KEEP CALM AND SHEETROCK ON!!

Soon

It's been another busy, busy day!

The whole day turned inside out when the school nurse called to tell me Tuna had twisted her knee and fallen in P.E. and thought she might have hurt her hip. After the whole broken hip ordeal and the two screws she sports in that hip, we don't take falls lightly. I stopped work and took her to urgent care since the Big Guy was tied up with the sheetrock crew and a fixtures delivery.

It's not supposed to be that way. The Big Guy would normally handle doctor's visits while I work, but nothing is normal anymore.

I'm writing this post in the car, on our way to dinner at almost 9 o'clock.

We usually eat dinner out because we don't have adequate space to store food for our herd of 7. Plus, our rented refrigerator doesn't keep food well. And, we don't have any place for all 7 of us to sit and I'm determined that through this disaster we will sit together for meals as much as possible. We're going to maintain some sort of normal if it kills us!

So, that pretty much sums up where we are apart from the house right now. Tuna is out of P.E. and Color Guard activities until we follow up with an orthopedic doc (because the ortho department is our second home),  and we have more physical therapy ahead. We are all sick of eating out and we all hate the rental house with a growing passion. I am exhausted and frustrated from trying to manage 5 kids and a job while juggling endless lists and tile samples. The Big Guy is exhausted from keeping all of the work moving and fighting the insurance company over every board, nail, and brick.

We are all so over this mess. There is this sort of restless, agitated atmosphere among us that threatens to overtake what remains of our emotional stability. We're just two days short of being out of our home one year. It's still surreal.

But...the journey is almost over. I can see the end now. I can actually visualize my home again, because there are actual spaces and rooms.

Master bath.

The wading pool bath tub arrived! And...they got it in without tearing any walls out! And...there are even some walls up in there! I like it!

Upstairs bath.

The walls are really looking good. 

Upstairs bedroom. 

Soon, we'll be ready for paint! And lights! And then I can actually get good photos! The house is so much darker now that the sun is not actually shining through the walls.

Check this guy out:

I have serious respect for anyone brave enough to carry giant pieces of sheetrock around, on stilts, with a nail gun in hand, while stepping over boxes and debris and extension cords. You have to be some kind of hard core to do this job. Or just bat shit crazy. 

Movie night while Daddy works on the house.

Soon, so very soon, the kids will sit in the family room on an actual sofa, and watch a movie on a TV, not a laptop screen. 

Soon, we'll shop for groceries again, and actually have a place to store them. 

Soon, we'll return the rented 8-piece dish set and we'll have enough dishes of our own to eat lunch and dinner before we run the dishwasher. 

Soon, we'll bathe with big, fluffy, colored bath towels again. 

Soon, our kids will walk out the door in the morning and get on a school bus, in their own neighborhood, with their friends. 

Soon, this will all be over.  

Soon.

We're Rock-ing!

The sheetrock has arrived!

We're getting walls!!

It arrived on a really big truck. Huge.

They brought lots of stuff! 

Entire pallets of stuff!

I don't know what all of this stuff is, but the sheetrock crew is going to build walls with it! That's the important part. 

They used a crane to haul the materials from the truck through the door. A crane. In my backyard. Hauling loads of building materials through a second-floor door without steps. It's all so disturbing. 

That- up there in that pic- that is hole. A hole in the floor. Or ceiling. Depends on your perspective and where you're standing. They removed part of the floor to the upstairs rooms to get the materials moved up there. Every time I turn around, they tear something up again!

We have sheetrock stacked everywhere. And that's a good thing. Because...let's say it together...

SHEETROCK BUILDS WALLS!!

The walls went up today in most of the upstairs part of the house. The Big Guy took us by to see the progress on the way to dinner. We all oohed and ahhed. It's really starting to look like home again.