Forgotten lunch

H is a sensitive kid. Sometimes I think of it as just being tenderhearted, but every now and then he goes in waves where he seems overly so—crying about not being able to play with toys because it's bedtime, sobbing if a small toy dog comes near him, and crying if we suggest the kids race to see who gets their pjs on first. It appears we're in the midst of a wave.

Last Friday, about two minutes after H and S took off for school on their bikes, I happened to look on the kitchen counter and realized that H had forgotten his lunch. I ran to see if I could catch them, but they were already past the playground. "Well, he can get school lunch today. No biggie." The kids have money in an account at school so they can get school lunch twice a week, so I figured H would just do that. Then I remembered which kid I was dealing with. I knew he would not realize that he could just do school lunch, and most likely would get very upset. So, I planned to take his lunch to school right after I dropped T off at preschool in 30 minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, I got a call on my cell phone. Whoever it was didn't say anything, but I could tell they were trying to. I was about to hang up when I realized it was my son, probably crying so much that he couldn't speak. I said his name over and over but he still wouldn't/couldn't talk. His teacher came on the phone and said he was very concerned about not having a lunch and I assured her I was bringing it over soon.

When H got home from school, we talked it over and I told him if that were to ever happen again, he should just get school lunch. My mom suggested we talk as a family about different potentially troubling situations that could come up to try and head off H's emotional meltdowns. I think it's a good idea, but honestly, so many different things seem to be setting him off these days, that I'm not sure my husband and I can think of all the potential scenarios. I'd also like to help him "toughen up" for all the years of sports, possible bullies, and just life stuff that is sure to come his way.

*Sigh.*

Anyone have any advice?

Are we there yet?

I would like to announce (tentatively, and I'm hoping that by announcing this, it doesn't somehow mess with the order of the universe and bring us more woes) that the basement is back to its original state. Well, with the entire system of pipes moved up four inches and new concrete poured over the pipes. And new carpet in the theater room, because the carpet in there was used to replace carpet in the halls and bedrooms that got affected.

So... it looks the same as before, but let's hope the changes that were made mean that this never, ever happens again. Now comes the fun(?) part of putting everything back in the right place, wiping off things that got dusty (although everything was covered in plastic) and organizing our lives again. I can't believe it's been less than three weeks since the incident. It feels like we've been dealing with this for months. I'm excited to really relax in our house, and hopefully not have to worry every time we flush the toilet, do a load of wash, or take a shower.

And we've run into a dead end on the "get someone else to pay for this" project. After talking with a few trusted people, we decided that the best person to pursue would probably be the builder himself, or at least his liability insurance. Unfortunately, because the house was empty for three years, it's very unlikely that insurance would pay on the claim. We'll keep looking into it, but we're not betting on anything.

Melinda,

When I think of my childhood, high school, college, and even beyond, so many memories are made better because you were there. I remember years of Primary classes together. I remember making a pact in high school that we wouldn't go to drinking parties. I remember when you would shove Frisky in my face and tell me to "just love her!" And too many memories from college to count.

Even though you've forgotten a lot of this, don't worry. I'll always be here to remember for you. And if you call one day and ask me the name of "that girl with blond hair who we didn't like but who knows why we didn't like her" and I can't remember, I'll just call Brooke. She'll remember.

Happy birthday, friend. I love you.

Tennille

P.S. Sorry for the plethora of pictures. Just be glad I didn't pick any from high school.

At Bead's parents' house for Easter, after the Dark Crystal incident. Apparently, you really liked your juice.

Beauty pageant-ready. Except for Beda, that is.

I have no idea what's going on in this picture.

A touch of OCD

Recently, I read a book for book club: Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Spencer Hesser. It's about a young girl who suffers with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's a really touching story that makes you realize how very hard it would be to deal with something like that and overcome it.

While I definitely do not have OCD, reading this book reminded me of the slightly obsessive tendencies that I do have... Checking to make sure doors are locked every night, to the point that I have to look at the door lock straight on and "visualize" the door locked. Checking several times to make sure the garage door is down when I leave. Going back to make sure I've locked the front doors. Making sure my children are breathing every night, to the point that I have to stand there, with my hand on their chests and feel the rise and fall of their breathing. Perhaps I'm guilty of nudging them to make them move so I don't have to wonder. Perhaps.

Some of this is probably typical Mom stuff, but I also remember checking doors and things when I was a kid (especially if my mom was gone for the night cause I worried my dad wouldn't do it). I also remember that when I said my nightly prayers, if one of my family members was still not home, I had to pray that they would get home safely. If I forgot, I'd get out of bed and say another prayer. I was convinced that if I didn't pray, they wouldn't get home ok. Nice burden for a kid, don't you think?

These tendencies haven't been helped by the trenches in my basement (and no, I'm not posting another picture. It's just too depressing.) Every few hours, I have to go down and check the basement bathroom and the furnace room to make sure we haven't had another back-up. The vision of what I found in there last Saturday is still too present in my mind. This isn't made easier by plumbers telling us we can use our system until everything's fixed, but "take short showers. Don't flush unless you go #2, and don't use your disposal." I'm constantly worried that one of the kids will flush too much toilet paper down. Or, flush in the middle of the night and we won't know there's a problem until we wake up in the morning. And I wonder why I don't sleep well these days.

In good news (comparatively speaking), they've almost uncovered the whole pipe system in the basement and hope to have everything fixed and back to normal in the next week. We'll see. :)

Sanctuary

Your home should be a sanctuary, somewhere where you feel safe, comfortable.

Sanctuary is not the way I would describe our house right now. I told my husband that I feel like our house is working against us, which has made both of us feel stressed, sad, and angry. Adding to that was the news yesterday that we'll have to rip up every spot in the basement floor that's above pipes so that we can raise the whole system up a few inches, to give it a better angle when it connects with the pipes outside of the house. Adding to that was the bill I got yesterday for the disaster clean-up crew that was double what they quoted on Sunday. I guess that's why they call it a quote, eh?

I'm not feeling a lot of love toward my house right now. Which is unfortunate, because it really is a beautiful home. So, I took a few photos to remind me of the things I do love about it.

I love my front porch.

I love our new couches.

I love my bathroom.

I love our winding staircase.

I love my kitchen.


I look forward to the time when this home will really be our sanctuary.

Wow

I know I said I wouldn't post any pictures of the house until I had decorated more, but I just couldn't resist posting this one. Behold, our theater room in the basement...
Holy crap!!

Let's get another look at that pile of dirt, shall we?All day, men have been banging and jack-hammering away in my basement, and then hauling loads of concrete up the stairs and out into the garage. I thought that pile was appauling. But after they left for the day, I got the courage to go down and look at what was in the room itself.

Yikes.

So, here's the story, as of today (it changes every few hours). There was no issue with an actual plug. Rather, the pipe bows in a few places under our house, going either up or down, rather than at a gradual decline out to the street. (Thus, sewage would back up at the bowed area, creating a "plug" of sorts). They dug this awesome hole to see if they could just lower the pipe itself to fix the problem in the house. Also, there's some issue with the connection spot right outside the house, which is why they'll be pulling out all our brand-new flowers and bushes in front and making a huge hole outside.

We're hopeful this won't all cost the possible $10,000 to fix that the plumber told me on Tuesday (I stopped breathing for a few seconds when he said that) but it's going to cost quite a bit, that's for sure. And we don't know if we can A) prove who caused the negligence in the first place since a few different people would have been involved in the plumbing of the house and doing the pipes out to the street, and B) get any of those people to pay anything, since when people work on a short sale, they typically don't get paid and they're very, very angry about it. Maybe we can get an insurance company to foot the bill, but we're not sure about that either (not ours, since I was still in the process of setting up our insurance here when it happened. Who knew a catastrophe of this magnitude would happen in the first week?!!).

The fun just never ends. :)

Time machine

I wish I had a time machine, so I could go back to yesterday, before the bathroom in the basement and the furnace room were filled with raw sewage. Or better yet, I wish I could go back to before the builder poured the basement floor, so I could punch the plumber that didn't remove some stupid plug out of the pipe that's always, always supposed to be removed.

We had an emergency plumber come out last night and he was able to punch through the plug and drain the mess. After looking at the bathroom down there, I knew I could never, ever get it clean enough myself to feel comfortable using it again. So, now we have a disaster clean-up crew down there, cleaning the bathroom, ripping up the carpet that was affected, and hopefully making it so I can walk into my house without cringing. Hopefully.

We have another plumber coming out on Tuesday (awesome that this all happened on a holiday weekend) to send a camera down the pipe to see if the plug is still there or if the other guy was able to completely get rid of it. If it's still there, we'll have to rip up part of the basement floor and get it out. Also, my favorite idiot plumber installed the drain in the furnace room off the ground so that's why that room got destroyed. We'll have to fix that as well.

My husband said the silver lining in all of this is that BYU won yesterday. Hmm. I'm glad the Cougs won, but I'm not so much feeling the silver lining. Hopefully the silver lining will be that we can actually track down the idiot plumber and make him pay for all of this. Hopefully.

Settling in

Our phone and Internet got hooked up yesterday—hallelujah! I was so grateful for the amazing technology of my iphone this week. Although it was a huge pain to type long e-mails out on it (and I did do several of those for work) it was my lifeline to work and the outside world. Thank goodness for it.

We're slowly but surely unpacking all of the boxes and figuring out where things go. That's the easy (but annoying) part for me. I can organize and clean and put things away just fine (although, a few times, I've forgotten the oh-so-handy spot I put something in and had to open several drawers to find it). The hard part for me is what comes next—filling up the wall space with all of the art and knick knacks that we brought with us. Will our old stuff still work? Do we need to get new stuff? If so, what stuff? Luckily, I have people like A's cousin who actually think it's fun to decorate a house. I like the finished product, but I don't have an eye for that kind of thing. At all.

The kids are starting to walk to and from school now. They (meaning S) were nervous about not remembering where to go, but I walked with them several times and they're a lot more confident now. I love that we have these great bike trails that they can walk and ride their bike on. And I love the grassy area and playground that are behind my house. The kids have been playing there non-stop and it's awesome.

Since we're still in a state of semi-moved in, I'm not going to post any pictures just yet. Except for this one—it's the view from my bedroom window. I love it. I'm getting even more of a view of the park and lovely mountains in the distance since we don't have blinds yet (and won't for a week more). That's been fun, letting our new neighbors get a great introduction to us. But it is a beautiful view.On Sunday, we go to our new ward for the first time. We've already had several neighbors introduce themselves and even bring over treats, but I'm still nervous. I feel like my kids probably did on the first day at their new school: Will they like us? Will anyone sit by me in Relief Society? Wish us luck!