Feeling blessed...

I must admit that I have been a little high strung since the giant mess that has happened at my house this week. It has truly been overwhelming! I think the worst part is that not only am I not able to go home, but my entire schedule feels thrown off by not having my "normal" routine. I haven't been sleeping very well at all and the effects are taking its toll on my body as well. My skin is all broken out and I have a lovely cold sore thanks to a little thing called stress. Oh well. My mom told me that I have been through "worse things" in my life and came out victorious, but right now I can't remember anything that seems much worse.

On a better note though...

I feel better after having talked with the insurance adjuster and claims people. I at least have an idea of what they are going to do inside my home. I don't have much of a time frame yet because the contractors haven't come to assess the house yet. It's still being dried out with the heaters and dehumidifiers. I think they'll be removed tomorrow but I'm really not sure. I'm going to push to have them do the main floor first so I can get moved back in. Work can go on in the basement while I'm living there. I am getting all new flooring of my choice on the main floor and in the basement. Also, the basement will be repainted from ceiling to floor and will be like new when it's completed. I'm also finishing off an unfinished room in the basement as well. Why not! That will be nice... when it's all done.

A GIANT THANK YOU TO ALL OF MY WONDERFUL FRIENDS!!

There were great people that came on Sunday to help with the water (not to mention my emotional breakdown!)

(thanks mom, dad, Dale, Debra, Ryan, Jamie, and Ken)

I have had so many people call me and offer me a place to stay.

(thanks Laurel, Kim, Jamie, Jacquie, Julianne, and mom and dad)

I have been overwhelmed with people willing to help me move stuff out the the garage and go through boxes (thanks Tiffany, Dusty, Kim, Nate, Ken, and my dad)

And people who just generally want to get me out and about to take my mind off stuff.

(thanks Allison, Kim, Tiffany, Jamie and a HUGE thanks to Ken...yes to flickies no to Muppets!)

I seriously feel blessed that although this house thing has been a little traumatic for me (I obviously don't handle stress or change too well) it could have been worse. At least I wasn't diagnosed with some terminal illness (although if I keep drinking the amount of diet Coke I have this week I just might be) and all can be fixed in time. Evidently patience is not a virtue I possess. I'll work on that... as soon as my house is fixed!!

More flood pictures and updates...

I think I'm getting a little less shell shocked over this whole thing.

My house is a total disaster! There isn't much I can do it about it either other than take some pictures and blog about how much it sucks!!

Right now, the disaster clean up crew is in the process of trying to dry the entire house out. They've opened up ceilings and some of the walls and drilled holes in all of the baseboards trying to force air up everything to dry out the sheet rock, wood, and insulation.

It is so hot inside of the house right now! When I was there this afternoon, it was 108 degrees inside. The hottest I've seen yet is 112 degrees. In fact, all of my jar candles are liquid and I've killed a few forgotten house plants. I also forgot about a couple of candles that were in the bathroom and kitchen.

Oh well. They can be replaced.

The plum colored candles used to skinnier and taller. The lighter colored candle on the right used to be a tall tapered candle that was about 8 inches tall. A friend of mine said it looked obscene. Hilarious!

Here are a few pictures that I took today...

My TV room.

The upstairs bathroom. They tore the floor out yesterday.

The hallway from the front room into the TV room on the main floor.

One of my piles of belongings. It was like trying to play Tetris to get everything arranged in the garage tight. Thanks dad and Dusty!

Pulling up any remaining flooring and sub floor.

More dryers in the front room.

My bedroom.

The upstairs TV room.

The remains of the basement bathroom.

Yikes! More removed ceilings in one of the basement bedrooms.

More mess! Check out how they've cut off the bottom foot or so of sheet rock on the walls. They've done this is a few of the rooms.

This part of the ceiling was cut out too. This room was unfinished but will become an office. I'm going to have it finished off when the construction crew comes to do the work.

Look at all of the cords and the giant mess everywhere!

The ceiling in the basement hallway was completely removed.

This is the walk-in closet in the large spare bedroom in the basement. There was a lot of damage in here as well.

More ceiling damage.

One of the walls in the downstairs bedroom.

They put up this plastic doorway in the downstairs at the bottom of the stairs. Every time I unzip it to go in and out I feel like I'm in that scene from E.T. where they tent the house.

A view from the basement family room of the hallway with all of the heaters and dehumidifiers.

That's all for now!

I'm officially homeless...really!

Just a note... until the flood of '09 is resolved at my house, this water and fish motif on my blog is staying!

Where do I even begin with this one...

It's been one heck of a week, and it's only Tuesday.

Sunday afternoon I went over to my mom and dads house for a little family reunion. My dad had a few of his siblings over and I went over to visit. When I left my house that afternoon, everything was fine and dandy. I came home about 4 hours later. My aunt Debra and cousin Ryan (both visiting for one night from Kansas) came with me to see my house.

As we walked in, I could hear a horrible noise. When I opened the door to the house I was met with a few inches if standing water, water shooting everywhere from the laundry room, smoke detectors going off, and one very wet and stressed out Tank.

(if you click on the picture below you can enlarge it and see the poor little doggy)

My aunt and I ran into the laundry room to turn off the water valve and my cousin went into the garage and got a big push broom to start pushing water out of the kitchen and into the garage. My aunt grabbed towels and rugs and started trying to shift some water too. The entire main floor was soaked! All of the carpeting, pergo, and bathroom vinyl.

I started to laugh... because I didn't know what else to do.

I called my mom and told her to send my dad over immediately.

Then I went downstairs.

I then started screaming and crying.

Water was dripping from the ceiling like a rainstorm. It was running down walls and through paint. I was standing in water up to the tops of my ankles. The more I went through the basement the worse it got. Water was even pooled in the light fixtures and was running out of them as well. And to make it worse, the electric smoke detector was full of water and had shorted out. It was making the most horrible loud sound. My uncle finally cut the cord with scissors to get it to stop squealing.

Talk about an unforeseen, giant, unwanted, unappreciated, big, fat mess! LONG story short, I had a lot of help that night. My mom and dad (of course) ran over. Also my poor aunt, uncle, and cousin spent their one night with my parents at my house trying to bail me out. They were amazing! My friend, Jamie, came to my rescue by bringing another shop vac and helping move stuff. Ken also came to help out while trying to keep me from emotionally cracking. He did a great job, but I think I've cracked.

The insurance company sent out a disaster crew. They worked until about 2:00 a.m. and then came back the next morning. Here are a few pictures from Sunday...

Where it all began...

See the little gold thing poking out of the hose on the right?
That's the culprit!

The beginnings of the stockpile of my belongings hanging out in the garage.

Ummm... that sheet rock on the ceiling was about to fall down!

Wet camera, foggy pictures. My uncle Dale mopping up water (sorry for the butt shot!)

Bye bye basement ceilings!

This is the downstairs basement bathroom. See the water on the walls? Nice.

(no love lost to lose that wallpaper, by the way)

This is the ceiling in the hallway in the basement. It was all bent about ready to cave in. It's gone now, but I took a picture before the clean up crew took it out.

Again, the ceiling in the basement. Water was dripping through the ceiling. It was like a rainstorm in the basement.

This picture is foggy because water kept dripping from the ceiling onto the camera. There is a good couple of inches of water in the floor here. Surprisingly, this is the only floor covering in the entire house that will not be taken out and replaced.

Yikes!!

This is my uncle Dale (my dads youngest brother) trying to get all of the water off of the bathroom floor.

My AMAZING dad who came over and started schlepping water while I cowered in the fetal position rocking back and forth crying... literally.

My mom insisted that we all eat hamburgers around 10 p.m. to keep up our "flood strength". This is Ken with his burger. He wasn't as happy about eating it as he looks in this picture. We were laughing about it and joking about eating french fries naked... ask my mom... it was her idea!!

My mom was obviously NOT happy about me taking this picture by the look on her face but I needed to find humor in the situation somehow. Her pants were seriously cracking me up!! She was WONDERFUL though. She was the one that rounded up shop vac's, fans, food and called the insurance company to get the ball rolling so I didn't have to. Yay mom!!

Yippee! The clean up crew arrived around 10:30 p.m. to get started.

This was the coolest thing! It sucks up the water out of the flooring.

What it looks like now.

What it looked like a few days ago.

The lovely condition of my bedroom currently.

What it looked like as of Sunday afternoon.

Another before picture.

My kitchen and dining area now.
Don't you just love the old vinyl flooring that was under the pergo?

My kitchen and dining area before the great flood.


And then to top it ALL off...

(a little more stress to my havoc-wrecked home)

American Fork City's pressurized irrigation tore into my front yard as the flood crew was cleaning up the next morning. Talk about a mess inside and out!!

Tank and I will be staying at my mom and dads until I can get back into my own home. I cannot believe that I am almost 35 and will be living with my parents!! Ha, ha. What else do you do? And they have both been WONDERFUL and supportive with all of this.

I also met with the insurance adjuster today. I'll be getting all new flooring throughout the entire house, top to bottom. The basement will also be getting a makeover with new paint as well. He told me when they're done it will look like a brand new house. I guess that's the silver lining in my gray cloud. I was wanting to completely redo the basement in a few years when I could afford it but it looks like it's going to be happening a little sooner than I had anticipated.

I'll be posting a lot more as the work progresses.

Each day it has looked more and more demolished than the day before.

And I wonder why I'm single...

Okay. If you read this, I want you to comment. Even if I don't know you, hate you, love you, or am completely unaware that you are cyber-stalking me, I want a comment. Please.

I think I am a geek, most of the time.

I can be a little OCD, most of the time.

I am fairly insecure, most of the time.

I am not spontaneous enough, most of the time.

I have to know where I stand with people, ALL of the time.

Case in point...

I have this bizarre need and obsession for "rules" and "definitions" in my life. Go figure. The most recent one? Needing to define my definition of dating. Now, you would think for someone my age (35 this year-YIKES!) dating would be no biggie, right? Been there and done that, more than once. Obviously my success rate is a little less than par. However, the older I get the more I feel a need to define the relationships I form with men. I want to know where I stand, and where they stand too. Here is a little snippet of something I would submit to Webster's if they ever came knocking...

Hanging Out: The act of two people choosing to spend quality time together. Activities could include things such as... going to movies, dinner, lunch, vacation, shopping, etc. One may also define this as a very close friendship with no romantic interest in the other party. At this stage, the idea of taking this type of relationship to "the next level" does not exist.

Dating: The act of two people choosing to spend quality time together. As with "hanging out", activities could include such things as... going to movies, dinner, lunch, vacation, shopping, etc. One may also define this as a very close relationship with the intention of having it become more. There is mutual interest between the two parties. There is romantic interest developing, and the intention of dating is to take it to "the next level", which in time is typically marriage.

Let's be honest... at my age, why would I want another male "hang out" buddy? If my end goal is to partake of eternal, celestial, glorious wedded bliss (insert a tired sigh here) than why would I want one more guy friend?

So there is a point to all of this... REALLY!

I've recently reconnected with someone from the past that I used to really like, and still do. We've gone out a little bit (notice how I didn't use the word "dating" or "hanging out"... cautious!) and a week ago I initiated a giant conversation about defining everything. I'm an idiot and am sure I look like more of a total freak to someone who pretty much can already assume I am. Wait... if he accepts my freak-ish side maybe that's good, right? Anyway, I have this need to know where my puzzle piece fits in his picture, if it even does. So we chatted for a little bit, well hours actually. He knows my weirdo dating definition and we came to the conclusion that we could classify our little outings together as dates. Good for me to know. I like him. I think he's great. I always feel better after talking with him. I enjoy spending time with him. I actually get butterflies in my stomach when I see him and I love that! He makes me want to be a better person. I'm a little terrified (as usual) but glad to know that's what it is so I can proceed forward.

Here's my question...

Am I totally retarded? Is there anyone else that has to define aspects of their life?

Even if you're married... think back to the time before.

Well??

Thoughts on a funeral...

I went to a funeral yesterday of one of my good friend's (since 5th grade) grandmother. As I was sitting listening to the program I thought to myself... how in the world can you really sum up an entire life in an hour? It seemed a little more sad to me. Sad that someone lived over 70 years and in an hour or so, their moment of tribute is over. That's all, really. I just felt sad that a funeral really cannot begin to pay tribute to a life well lived.

Blog negelct...

Yep. I know it. Major blog neglect.

Not like there is really anyone who is a religious follower of my life or anything... is there? A lot has been going on this summer. I've been catching up on movies, and lots of time with good friends - yippee Tiffany and Ken! Fun, fun. I've also been up to my classroom a few times to work and it was so nice to get things accomplished WITHOUT children. Sad that time at work is a highlight, huh? Hopefully in the next week or two I'll get some pictures posted and a better update. Until then...