As I lay here in this bed, nursing this sweet toddler babe, I am thinking of how much stress this last week has been for our family. Kids need routine. Parents need routine. When you don't have routine, the delicate structure of daily life can sometimes crumble.
Last Wednesday, we noticed leaking from our A/C in the hall. Before long we noticed our bathroom ceiling, filled with an unnatural amount of water, straining against caving and crashing down on us. Turns out the A/C hoses were not functioning. One was clogged and disconnected the other was never properly attached. I blame the creep A/C guy who came out to our house last fall. I'm pretty sure he was trying to drum up business. Business being a flooded attic and massive water damage.
Thank goodness for renters insurance. They moved us out pretty swiftly. However, since it was a holiday weekend and my landlord didn't quite understand the severity of the situation (he had plans and didn't want to be inconvenienced), we had to let that water sit and drain for 5 days before anything was even looked at and plans were formed. All this to say, there's going to be an 8th person living in our home before long. Mold.
See, our landlord is a cheap bastard. He also thinks women are stupid, even when they (ahem, I) know what they're talking about.
The walls need to be vented and industrial fans brought in to dry things properly. It took three weeks before he finally had this done. After hiring a "handy man" to make the repairs. This handy man didn't air anything out, just tore down and tossed up a new ceiling. His sloppiness is evidenced all over the bathroom in the form of paint splatters that now make it look like I don't clean much.
On the flip side, we enjoyed our summer in a high end hotel, spent every day at the pool, had maids who cleaned for us once a week, had the best burgers EVER served to us by wonderful staff at the pool, did some fun thrift shopping, fully fell in love with Ross (I now rarely shop anywhere else for me or for home items), learned that sometimes that bad creates some fun memories.
Seriously, my kids want to live in a hotel now. Best part was being so close to Brittney and getting to spend some time with her this summer. The worst was that I didn't get to see anyone else besides my Coley...once. We were so far away that I needed to be practical with gas.
The scariest part came when we realized Amelia can not only open the doors but whil I was showering, she decided to take off in the complex. Scaling about 45 stairs and making Mommy panic so badly, I had bad dreams for days and a full blown panic attack that nearly ended me in the hospital. She was finally found but I've never in my life been so crippled by fear. I'll have to write the story in its entirety sometime just to be able to tell her someday.
Now it's December and I'm finally finishing this post. Needless to say, we've been home since August and we are far more settled now. We did make our landlord pay for our portion of the hotel as well as our insurance deductible. When he tried to huff and puff, we told him what the bill would have been had he been responsible for the entire amount our insurance paid. Just the hotel alone cost over $13,000!
Just have to remember...Memories. Building memories!
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