Snail's pace

I see it's been quite  a while since I've updated the progress on the house....But I hate to say there is very little to tell you about in regards to the house. The weather, on the other hand, has left us with a lot to say! It has not allowed our contractors to move forward. We've had wind chills well below zero, lots and lots and lots of snow, rain, fog, wind and even thunder snow.  Yep, we've just about had it all. The other day we were listening to the weather and the meteorologist said that the temps were going to warm up, but with the warmth will come flooding because the ground is too frozen to soak up the moisture. L thought about that for a little while then he asked, "So if there's snow and flooding and rain and wind all at the same time, does that mean it's the end of the world??" Awww.. We had a good conversation after that kind of question. Poor guy. He's been a weather worrier ever since the tornado..

There is a post sticking out of our creek (at our big house) that D measured a while back. There's a white line on the post that measures three feet deep and the snow is right at that line.

The melting snow is causing problems. Lots of people whose homes were swept away by the tornado are only left with basements. Most of those basements have been boarded over. People are trying to maintain them in an effort to salvage the foundation. I've heard of people declaring what was left of their house has quickly converted from a basement to a swimming pool. In some cases insurance is covering the damage from the snow/ice/water, in other cases they are forcing the home owner's to submit a new claim with a new deductible. Ick.

All day yesterday we (and by we I mean everyone in town I talked to and am following on facebook) were talking about the weather. So many of us are tired of the snow, but we find comfort in the fact that if it's cold and it stays cold out there won't be a chance of storms or tornadoes. So, when the weather man said we are expecting warm temps we were happy to see things warm up and thaw out, but worried that scary weather would accompany the warm air. And sure enough it did...High winds and fog happened simultaneously. Tornadoes were spotted about an hour and a half south of us. Fortunately they did not cause any major damage.

Last night the fog was the worst I've ever seen. The ground was still frozen, but the air was warm so the air was really dense. You could hardly see. We had hair cuts scheduled in B-town yesterday afternoon. The boys have missed haircuts for several weeks because of tornado related tasks and because of the awful weather, so D was determined to go. As we drove we decided that once we'd reached the interstate if the fog hand't gotten better we'd turn around and drive back home. Well, as soon as we got out of the country and drove closer to town the air was completely clear and the fog was gone. It was the strangest thing to go from minimal visibility to complete visibility. It was as if I'd put my glasses back on and regained my vision. The guys got their hair cut and we stopped on the way home for dinner. Haircut nights are my favorite. Maybe next time the weather will be better.

Today the weather was more stable, a steady 30-40 degrees. In a few days the temps are supposed to drop again. I should have bought a nicer pair of winter boots after stepping on a nail in mine. Oh well. I'll claim these and replace them for something for next year.

We go through phases of emotions regarding getting back into our house. We have times when we'd like to spruce up a few things that we've been thinking about doing for a while such as adding built in shelving around the fireplace and back splash over the kitchen counters. We think about doing interesting decorating things that we've seen online like hanging reclaimed wood somewhere in the house. We'd like to add a light fixture here and a canned light there, maybe even switch to a larger ceiling fan...We get into a groove where we think about paint colors, picture frames and furniture..At times we feel like now is the time to do those things.

However, now that we've been sitting and waiting for several weeks with no repairs made, we're considering scrapping the upgrades and just moving back in. After the glimpse of stormy weather yesterday we realize how important it is to us to get back into our house where we can hang out in the basement if that makes us more comfortable during a bad weather.

At times the extra things we'd like to add to the house just don't matter. We want to move back into the house. We want to patch and paint the walls, throw in some carpet, give the place a deep cleaning and move in. We even joked last night that there are times we could live with the plywood floors and wait until our wood floor issue gets resolved with insurance. These are the times we just wanna be home!! We want to be back in our kitchen, our bedrooms, our garage and our basement. Yesterday was a reality check that storms can come again and we'd love to be back in our house where we have a basement to run to if needed. Our rental doesn't have a basement, not even a crawl space..

It's very frustrating and disappointing that construction isn't further along. People keep asking when we're going to move in but we really don't know. When insurance and weather cooperate we'll get the ball rolling. And when the ball gets rolling I really hope it moves fast so we can get things done!

In addition to construction frustrations my back has flared up. I had a flare up like this about nine years ago that required weeks of physical therapy and chiropractic care. This time around I'm sure I would benefit from that type of care (and it's available to me), but now I have two kids and two houses to take care of. I'm doing my best to pace myself. I'm allowed to do light exercises and deep water walking in the pool. No lifting. No running. No exercises that involve bouncing. I miss you, Dear Grapevine. Ha.
I've been in the pool several times water walking. I'm actually starting to enjoy it. It feels good, but it is easy to get revved up and aggravate this flare up without realizing it until later. I'm doing stretches and PT moves my chiro provided. It's helping, but the healing process, just like the construction process, is going suuuper slowly, a snail's pace. It's even slower with a sinus infection thrown on top. L had this infection first. Now I have it.. Man, you never realize how much you use your back when you cough and sneeze until your back is messed up!! Yikes! (update..D has the sinus infection. He even stayed home from work 'cause he feels bad)

In the meantime D and I continue to do what we can to keep things moving forward as best we can. We have spent lots of time picking out new couches, bed sets, carpet, wood flooring, paint samples, back splash samples, exterior lights, bathroom lights, etc, etc.....We hope to get those things chosen so that when the weather and insurance and health cooperate we are ready to roll.

Friday Funnies

I haven't done a "Friday Funnies" in so long I forgot about it. Here are some funnies from this week.

D and the boys were out running errands one afternoon last weekend and when they got home L burst in the back door and said, "Mom, if we don't have anything to eat we'll have to live on sardines!!"

One morning before school N asked me if rubber bands were made of polyester. Shortly after that he asked "if we yodel, will it snow on our heads??"

We've been watching the icicle outside L's window grow. D broke it off the other day and brought it inside. It was taller than L (before N touched the tip and broke it). (and darn it if I can't find our big icicle pictures right now...I'll post some when I find 'em)

L is my talker. He talks, talks, talks. If he's not talking he's singing and if he's not singing he's humming. He's my little noise maker. So the other day I had to laugh. We were riding in the car and he and I were both quiet for about ninety seconds. And after ninety seconds of silence he said. "Woow, I needed that piece of quiet!"

Honest to goodness there are days I believe my boys say my name 1,000 times. Their little voices are so sweet and they usually have a good question, a good joke or an interesting statement that follows the saying of my name, but sometimes I need a break from them saying "Mommy...Mommmmmmy...Mom.." So the other day I teased L and I said, "That's my name. You're about to wear it out." And, without missing a beat he said, "Mom (there it was again). I got idea. (He's always said I got idea, with no "a" or "an" between got and idea.)...So, "Mom, I got idea. How bout we change your name every day so it never gets worn out?"  I just smiled.

Temporary Home

Gru, cue "I'm Having a Bad, Bad Day" song.

Most of our days are good, as good as they can be considering our current situation. Most days we can deal with what we've been given. Most days I wake up and thank the Lord for the day, for the sunshine, for my kids, my husband, the roof over my head and the food on our plates. I am sincerely thankful. And even on the days that I'm frustrated I'm still thankful. Every single day we have little challenges that present themselves that would not otherwise present themselves if we were living our "normal" life. Most days I can roll with the punches and I can manage all the little hiccups that come our way. These are the "this situation stinks, but we're gonna be okay, we can deal with this" days. Then there are days that I think "this sucks. this really truly sucks." I don't even like that word. Seems like a swear word to me, so we'll call these the " TRS days. I can't find my tennis shoes, the boys can't find their socks, I'm out of paper towel, the humidifiers need to be filled again, this sucks." This is harder than it should be, this is not fair. This is a TRS day.

Then there are days that totally complete suck and I'm angry about it. The no good very bad day, kinda day...I call those the TFS days. The F stands for a really bad word that I don't even say, but the weight of the word gives you the sense for how rough those days are. Today was a TFS day. Ughhhh. This stinks, this isn't fair, I liked my life the way it was, I wanna go home, I'm so frustrated I wanna hit a punching bag, you get the idea.

To give you some background on our house and to give you and idea of our daily challenges I will include the following..The furnace at our rental house is very temperamental. You put a filter with any sort of filtering ability in it and the thing turns off. Totally off. That doesn't fly with this polar vortex that we're living under.. Our landlord has been super nice and he's been great to try to find a filter that eliminates more dust and allergens, but the furnace just can't take it. So, we choose to live in a house that is simultaneously warm, cold and dusty. The house is like swimming through a lake. Some rooms are warm and toasty, but if you wade a few feet the next room is cold. If you wade further you'll find a warm spot, a little farther you will find another cold spot. We have to crank up the furnace to try to warm the coldest rooms while we practically sweat in others. Some of us are sleeping with lots and lots of blankets on in heavy jammies and others are sleeping with minimal blankets and light weight jammies. Welcome to the lake, folks.. This house is somewhat of an H shape. Two long sides connected by two doorways. The kitchen side houses the furnace so that side is warm. The opposite side of the house isn't as warm. I try to set up fans to push the air from the kitchen side into the living room side to even out the temps. The frustration with the fans is that we really don't have space to spare for them to be sitting out nor do we have extra outlets to use, so we have to unplug that thing to plug in this thing and we have to move the fans to walk past them.

Speaking of plug ins...some work as they should. Some outlets are wired to the light switch so that you can plug a lamp into them and use that as your light for the room. However, you cannot plug anything else into that outlet unless you're okay with the things on that outlet turning on and off with the flip of a switch. Then we have other outlets that are worn out and if you so much as breath on them wrong the plug you have inserted in will fall out. So, if I do the math we have....one to two outlets per room that work on a consistent basis.

And speaking of consistency, we have a neighbor who consistently parks her car on the side of the street at the very corner of our driveway. Honestly there's nowhere else for her to park. After living here for nearly eight weeks we realize her parents work days and she works second shift and they have a one (possibly two) car driveway. They have to do the drive way dance....The annoying thing is that their driveway dance forces our driveway dance. As we descend our steep driveway we have to watch for her bumper so that we don't hit it as we back up. That's not always easily done on snowy, icy pavement.

Not only do we do the driveway dance,we have to do the bathroom dance...No, no. No potty training going on here. It's not that kind of bathroom dance. We have to take turns using the bathroom. Cause not only do we have one small bathroom, but our small bathroom has two doors. Ya, I can stand in the middle of the bathroom, stretch out my arms and close both doors simultaneously. So, you hardly ever get any privacy when you need to take a shower, go potty, brush your teeth, dry your hair..Not to mention the bathroom is right next to the furnace so it's hotter than the dickens...I don't like to dry my hair in there because it's so hot, so I try to dry my hair in one of the colder rooms, but then the boys complain that the hair dryer is too loud. Ughh!!

And speaking of hot....I haven't been able to cook a really good meal yet because my oven doesn't operate on a temperature that I am used to. It's too hot...or is it too cold?? I can't figure it out.. I enjoyed baking and cooking when we were living in our other house. I need to do a lot of home made meals so that I can stay on track with my gluten free, dairy free needs, but this oven and stove have proven to make that more of a challenge that it already is. And then there's my crock pot..I had myself all geared up and excited to make use of my crock pot, but it's been shotty too. The other day Mom put a roast in the crock pot for us (Thanks again, Mom). I got home and checked on it. One side of the roast was 165 degrees the other was 145. Same roast, same crock pot, same thickness. Bad crock pot.

The boys and I have attempted several baking recipes, but in order to have the space for us to bake I have to unplug the microwave and set it on the kitchen table (if it doesn't have toys and papers on it). I also have to be sure to move or clean the dishes before baking to free up counter space. I just want to bake! I want to bake on my island in my kitchen without having to move my appliances and do the dishes in advance.

Keeping up with the dishes in another story. We produce dirty dishes like it's our job. We've reduced the number of dishes we clean by using some paper products, but we still have lots of dirty pots and pans....Side note. I feel bad about using more paper and disposable products. I use to say a little apology inside my  head to Mother Nature at each meal because we are using so many paper plates and plastic utensils, but it is Mother Nature who put us in the position!! . Anyway. Back to the dirty dishes. As I have mentioned before, I do the dishes by hand from time to time, but most of the time I don't have time or energy at the end of the day to dive into that chore. So, the idea is to keep an empty  bin in the kitchen and set our dirty dishes in it as we go. Once the bin is full I take it to our other house and let the dishwasher do the work for me. When the dishes are clean, I wipe out the bin and put the now clean dishes in said bin and haul them home. This is a great idea and it's working, but most of the time, when I reach down to put a dirty dish in the dirty dish box I realize the clean dishes in the bin haven't been put away yet...not to mention the fact that we have to shift the dirty dish box around the kitchen all day to get to our dresser drawers.

Yes, we have a dresser in our kitchen. It's actually quite handy. You might try it. ;)
The dresser serves as a little bit of extra "counter" space, it houses office supplies, plastic leftover containers and winter accessories. Sounds like an odd mixture of things to be housed in one place, but it works..after you move the dirty dish bin outta the way that is.

Putting things away is a theme that carries on and on and on throughout the day. We don't have any extra space for anything. The kids have to put their toys  away so I have space to exercise in the living room. "Please play in your rooms while I exercise so I don't accidentally run into you."
" Please pick up the Legos off your floor in your room so you space to play"
" Please put your clothes away so we can put the clothes basket in your closet so you can walk in your room." We can't leave more than two laundry baskets by the washing machine or we won't be able to walk in the back door. We can't leave shoes or coats sitting out or we won't be able to get into the front or back door without tripping.

We moved our black shelving unit to this house to prevent it from getting damaged during renovations at our other house. It's a great idea in theory, but the unit must have suffered some shifting or damage during the move because the shelves keep sliding off their pegs and dumping their contents onto the shelf below or onto the floor. That happened three times today. Three times! Urghh!!

An interesting note on laundry at this house... You can't run the washing machine while you're taking a shower. Not because the water's temperature will change. Nope. It's because the water from the washing machine will back up into the bath tub and mix with your shower water if both are on at the same time.

We are thankful to have a garage and I'm glad D is letting me park in it (he has to scrape his windows every  morning in this historically cold winter weather), but honest to goodness I think dogs must have been kenneled in the garage. It smells awful! There's gotta be animal hair hidden in the rafters or the walls 'cause it smells like a dog. Dog, dog, dog. The garage has very valuable shelf space, but we can't store anything fabric out there or I'm afraid it will smell like dog. The garage fills up with snow and ice so we have to squeegee it every few days to keep it from turning into a giant slushy mess. Cause you and I both know that slush will make it's way onto our feet and into our house.

Our refrigerator is a standard size fridge or smaller. It's gotta be smaller than standard. We don't have a lot of space for anything extra in it. The freezer is packed to the gills. There's no room for ice cubes in the freezer. I take after my grandma N in that I love my ice in my drinks! the more ice the better for this girl. To solve that problem we buy a large bag of ice and put it in an ice chest in the garage with a scoop in it. If you want your cold beverage you have to step out into the garage to get your scoop of ice. Must be like the olden days.

I typically hang the majority of my clothes out to dry. I have space in the back half bedroom (yes, I said half bedroom, not half bath. Half bedroom is the term used by our landlord. He honestly is a really sweet guy.) However, I cannot hang my clothes to dry in the half bedroom because it's too cold. It is so cold it literally takes two to three days for those clothes to dry completely and that's with a fan blowing on them. I have resorted to putting my drying wrack in the hallway with the fan blowing on it.

With that said. Wanna come over?? Ha!! Should you stop by unannounced you might see my clothes drying in the hallway with a fan on them. But don't trip on the extension cord leading to the fan to the bathroom with two doors with a boy sitting on the  potty with the door open.  Don't trip on my dirty dishes bin and wonder why my microwave is on the kitchen table next to burnt brownies and a science project (we've done lots of those on our six snow days). Don't trip on any little shoes and try to avoid getting stepped on by the exercising lady...Come to the front door and not the garage 'cause you'll go home smelling like dog... Should you stop by unannounced come to the front door and ring the doorbell but give me a minute to move the extra basket of laundry and yellow and black tub of wooden trains. Should you come by unannounced don't be distracted by piles of jet lagged mail (still taking 13-21 days to forward) and crooked wall hangings. For this Mama is doing her best. I'm using pre existing nail holes to hang our pictures to make this place our home. Our temporary home, but our current home nonetheless.

(P.S. I went back and edited the typing and grammar errors and my computer froze up. Just adding to my "Bad, bad day." I better just keep it like it is instead of losing the whole darn thing.)

Visitors

I have attempted to get things organized at this house, but I don't want to get too committed because I know we're not going to live here long. We're visitors in this house so to speak...but I also feel like a visitor in our other house. Construction has begun on our house. Our contractors are super nice, respectful guys. They are from our parents' hometown. They are there to work and they are doing a good job, but we try not to stay at the house too long because we don't want to interupt their work. We're visitors. We worked on the house this weekend to get more of our belongings boxed up and moved out so the guys can rip out the carpet and hardwood. The majority of our neighbors have crews working at their houses, too. Some crews are local and some have been recruited from other cities and states. Having so many unfamiliar faces on the cul de sac makes our neighborhood a place to visit. So we return to our rental house. Our master bedroom is too small to hold both of our dressers, so my clothes are stored in a dresser in the half bedroom. Our closet is too small to hold all of our clothes, so half of my clothes are in the master bedroom and half in N's. The coats we are not using at the moment are in L's room. D and the boys have their dressers in their rooms, so they are more settled in than me. I'm okay with my dresser being in a room other than my bedroom most of the time, but sometimes it's yet another instance of feeling like just a visitor. We have a roof over our heads and a roof being fixed, but being visitors in two places can make a girl feel homeless sometimes.