Something about our little part of California that most people don't realize is that its got green yards and evergreens PLANTED INTO MAN MADE YARDS AND GARDENS.... it's a fuckin desert...
Its like Peter Pan Syndrome for our region... Southern California is a man that doesn't want to realize or accept the fact that its getting old so it buys a Ferrari by way of planting and over watering grass in a desert climate that needs succulents and desert indigenous landscaping.
If that even makes any sense.
Our house was previously owned by geniuses...rocket scientists disguised as homeowners... And of course, the bank we bought our house from couldn't wait to get this thing off their hands either...then comes us...apartment dwelling for so long we forgot what it was like to be in a house... one reared by a father ringing the bell of Work Smart Not Hard all day long and the other with no Mr Fix It in their life at all...We had no idea that the backyard was graded too high...that the dog run was put in wrong...that everything about it would kick us in the ass one day...
And it did...HARD...
Three weeks before Christmas, in a tiny Who House, we are forced to take 400 sq feet of belongings and shove them into the remaining 800 sq feet of house that did not receive rain damage. I can see how a renovation can tear and strain relationships... ours is doing just fine because my husband is amazing... our family has been wonderful as far as my mother offering sanity via venting and ranting and my mother in law still having rooms set up for us to stay the night. Thing 2 has been wonderful as well due entirely to her ability to sleep comfortably in the pack n play as long as her trusty boppy lay beneath her and her build a bear Hello Kitty is by her side...
Still... there is an amount of guilt...there is the thought that I could have single handedly prevented this in so many (albeit unforeseen) ways... because someone always knows more or knows better or can do better than me... than us... and that's fine... but still. I'm not going to ridiculously pretend like its not actually passing through my mind every other minute. Coworkers and friends are to our rescue as well and I feel like the chunk out of our savings is not as big as it SHOULD be due to us not being covered for this particular instance under our homeowners insurance...lame.
Living room camping on our pull out couch is what we have been doing... Monday(today) our dry wall gets put back on and hopefully our vanities will get put back on and we can take showers here again... I am a lot calmer than I was,yet still not completely calm... fantastically we are still a family and still together and still breathing so that's nice....
My hubby stepped up amazingly fantastically superbly and dug a huge nasty "French drain" in the side of the house and started leveling it out. Then CoWorker Husband #1 came over and checked out our house and the temporary drainage ditch. Yes we need a permanent one, but the temp one will hold just fine until then.
No we're "There"... over there, by all those people investing into their houses...that's us. That's our spot in life right now... at the same time as trying to be US we have to be "homeowners" too... it's a tough juggle when you buy what you can afford. It was either this or stay apartment dwellers for quite a while longer, and LORD KNOWS where we'd be if we did. I actually don't want to think about it.. Because as clean and easy and glorious as that sounds, that's not us...Not anymore...it's universes, galaxies away from us. You never go forward by going backward, I truly believe that... so I'm going to apply that same logic to this right here...
Meanwhile:
EVERYTHING ELSE IS FUCKIN AWESOME!!!!
I mean that... work...wow, we just got a great update at work about how well we're doing... We were sailing in yachts, then we had to downgrade to dingys, then we were drowning... in scuba gear with oxygen at 1% and boom, we were back in dingys, And there we've stayed because of the recession... Fine... But now, now we're profiting again in ways that make us have numbers in line for our 1st quarter already and I can't tell you how exciting that is, especially when we have a nay sayer walking around like a god and everything out of their mouth is "Peril!" "Plight!" and I can't take it anymore...so the op's manager sent out a little email from his corner of the universe and it made my day... Little things keep happening that make things great and I'm so happy... but isn't true...when one facet of your life is picking up steam another falls fantastically to pieces... Amazing how true that really is. Anyhoo, that's all from this end... hopefully. I just want to go home tonight and have walls. I never realized how accustomed to our little lifestyle I was until I woke up one day and it was gone...
