The Evolution

I've decided to blog this process of rebuilding my house.  There are two reasons for this:

#1 - This is something I want to remember.  When the time comes for us to move out of this place and I become sad and burdened with nostalgia, I want to be able to look back and know what I am escaping. 

#2 - I'm kind of tired of telling the story over and over.  I don't resent anyone for asking - I'm glad you all care - but it has become one of those things that I can't escape. 

 "Is your house back together yet?" 

 "How is the house coming along?"

It's like when someone close to you dies and everyone you meet feels awkward and asks "How are you doing?" and you have the choice of lying and saying "Fine!" or telling them more than they want to hear.  Of course, some people really want to know how you are doing, but when you are broken, playing the social games that sort all that out is downright insufferable.  

I get that no one died.   This is not a tragedy.  But I do find myself worn out by trying to figure out what to say.  It wears me out to see someone who expected to hear "Great!" get a look of shock when I say "Well, they are almost done with the demo.  We have no walls."  It bites at me to inventory the details over and over in my head - to hide my emotion when I get to the parts I don't want to share and they don't want to hear, like throwing away the foosball table that we got for a wedding gift from hubby's best friends.

So here's part 1:

It rained.  It rained on Monday night and almost came in our back door.  We went to bed with the forecasters saying the worst was passed.  Around 4 a.m., the storm woke up my husband.  He went downstairs and was back up in a flash saying "It's getting in."  

The water was coming in the front and back by then.  He worked really hard to save what he could.  I tried to help, but I was really pretty useless this time.  Isaac woke up screaming, and I went to comfort him.  We prayed.  I finally got him back to sleep, but by then, the water was up 6" inside.  We took some pictures, realized that there were electrical strips under the water, and went back to bed.  We had gotten around 10" of rain in 15 hours.

Around 6:00, the water had gone down enough that we could open the doors and start getting it out of our house.  We used brooms and shop vacs and towels to get things as dry as we could. By 10:00 or so, the street was passable and friends came to help us move out furniture and start cleaning what we could.  Almost everything was wet and went to the garage, which was also flooded.  I took the kids to daycare so they could have a more normal day.  The water damage guys (demo dudes) showed up around 3:00 and started opening up walls to dry out the insulation and framing.  Some friends had us over for dinner, but hubby had to stay home with the demo dudes.  They finished around 10:00 p.m.  We went to bed amidst the dull roar of fans, dehumidifiers, and HEPA filters at 10:30., and so ended Day One.