A Series of Unfortunate Events (Complete with a Hit and Run)

Fridays are my favorite day of the week. You get to finish your work week, know that you have the next two days to be with your family and friends and not have to worry about who you are going to charge your time to or if you are being fully utilized or not (ahhh, the beauty of corporate America).

Two Fridays ago was nothing but a disaster.

We were told by the inspector that the washing machine that the previous owners left with the house was in working order. Since it was already hooked up, I decided that I would use it until we could switch them out. I went to run a load and quickly discovered that yes, it did work… that is if you consider leaking water all over the floor working.
That afternoon I was startled by an unexpected knock on the front door. The older lady that stood there kindly informed me that a school bus had hit my car and drove off without stopping. WHAT!?!? I seriously had to have her repeat herself as I played out in my mind a big yellow school bus turning the corner and sideswiping my car. I went out to assess the damage and I found several scratches down the back side of my car, yellow paint on my taillight, and a dent in the rear passenger side. I swear people- I can’t make this stuff up! I called the police since it was a hit and run, filed a report, called the school district, etc. I was told that they are obviously going to take care of it, but the driver of the bus denies hitting anything. I find this funny since the witness claims that after he hit my car he stopped, turned around to look and then went on. The county bus people are pulling the tape for confirmation. Thank goodness for responsible citizens!

As if that drama was not enough, one of my neighbors stopped by to ask if I had heard the shooting across the street the other night. Excuse me?!?!? Come to find out, the night before we actually moved our stuff into our asbestos free house, my neighbors were woken up to the sound of five bullets being shot into the front door of the house across the street. That’s right people, we have moved from one shooting event to another. I seriously don’t know what in my life I have done to deserve flying bullets near my residence twice in one year, but I have got some seriously bad Karma.

FYI- no one was hit by the gun fire (thank God). In the meantime I keep looking around for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from around the corner to claim that I have been Punk’d uncelebrity style. I can’t ever find him. Dick Clark, are you around???

Asbestos 101

Yes, it has been about three months since my last post. And yes, we are still working on our house. While I will spare you all the boring details about what all we have fixed, updated, installed, knocked out and enclosed, I am going to share my wealth of knowledge that I have gained on the subject of Asbestos.

Our house was built in 1975. After our inspection and closing on our new/old house, John and I started on the mile long list of renovations. From the looks on the inside, the house hadn’t seen any updates since it was originally built. While I am sure some people like the dark brown paneling and popcorn ceilings of the 70’s, it doesn’t really suit my fancy. We figured we would start from the top down, so scraping the ceilings was at the top of our list. John researched how to do it (because paying for labor was not in the budget). First thing that had to be done was to scrape a sample of the popcorn ceiling and send it to a lab to be tested for asbestos. Two days later we got the call that it was “hot.” In layman’s terms… we had asbestos in the ceiling in over half the house- 5% to be exact, which we were told is a medium to high amount for a residence.

What do you do about that? Well, you call your friend that is an asbestos expert. Everyone has one right? But seriously, I do. Nate H. came to our rescue- and while I can’t name my first born child after him, we definitely owe him some warmed up cow on a plate. Nate told us how to safely remove it from the ceilings- seal off the doorways and vents, cover everything in plastic, open all windows and doors to the outside, and most importantly wet the popcorn and scrape it off and keep it wet. The objective is to keep the dust from it from stirring up into the air. So that is exactly what John did while wearing his coveralls and respirator (a kind of homemade hazmat suit).

After a couple of weeks of ridding our house of the asbestos, we called Nate to come in and test our air to make sure that we got every bit of it out, also to make sure that what we had been breathing the past couple of weeks wasn’t going to give us cancer. Now, just to put into perspective our test results, schools have the strictest standards and are allowed a score of 70 per so many units of air. So as long as we scored a 70 or lower, we were okay to move in. Our score- 437.

Six times higher than what they allow in schools! I was never in more need of a padded room than when I heard that news. I thought I was going to have a mental/emotional/physical breakdown (and basically did on every level to a certain extent).

The explanation- We speculate that the source was not the ceilings (as we removed it the exact way we were supposed to) but a wall in our master bedroom that we knocked down. We assume that asbestos was in the joint compound in the wall, and since we didn’t know to test the wall, the dust from it got in the air and spread throughout the house.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, John, his parents, and I spent several days cleaning the house, switching filters, dusting, vacuuming, and mopping in hopes to collect all the asbestos dust that settled. Nate also brought over an air filtration system that filtered the air in the house which we ran non-stop for about a week. After days of cleaning and what I know was a little divine intervention, Nate came to test a second time and we got a score of zero on our results. We got EVERY BIT of it out!

As for our health… I don’t think we have asbestos (or Mesothelioma, the cancer you get from asbestos), because we only had limited exposure to it. Evidently those people who do get or have it, are those people who worked in the factories or in construction that were around it all day everyday for many years. It takes about 30 yrs for it to show up, so I’ll let you know in 2038.

Under Construction

After two weeks of being totally and 100% debt free, our family is comfortably back in the red as we became proud homeowners yet again. We bought the house in Richardson (described below) because of the great area and GREAT schools. Due to all the remodeling work we are having to do to the property, we are still living at my mother's house until the dust settles at the new place (we are thinking about another two weeks…which might be wishful thinking).

Our plan is to have the painting, flooring (carpet and hardwood), and ceilings done before we start taking our belongings over. And yes, we are doing everything ourselves (except for the carpet).

I promise to post before and after pictures once we get over there and start on everything. I sent out an email with the new address, but if for some reason you didn't get it, let me know and I'll email it to you.
Side note: If you are a blog stalker and I don't know who you are, feel free to send your Christmas wishes via the comments section of this blog. No home address will be given out to you.
Anyway… My sanity level has taken a nose dive within the past week. Those who know me well will attest to the fact that I don’t handle change very well. Living with my mom has been quite an experience (and that's all I'll say as she is a faithful reader). It has been a little difficult being back at "home" where we are all cramped and I am not surrounded by my own familiar things. All three of our wardrobes are in one closet and Braden’s food is in a cardboard box in our room.

Needless to say Braden has needed some time to adjust to his new surroundings as well. To make matters worse, we have to ship him off to the Shuttlesworth Funny Farm (John's parent's house) this next week so that John and I can work on the house 24/7 without interruption. It will only be for a couple of days, but it still makes me miss him already. I just can't simply have him over there with us in the dust and paint fumes (not to mention the people used to smoke, so we have to deal with that issue as well). While I did paint three rooms and two hallways in our old house when I was pregnant with Braden (and he escaped from having webbed fingers and feet when he was born), I think exposing him to all the work we will be doing this time will only guarantee him a permanent seat in the Special Ed class for the rest of his academic career.

I'll be glad when this is all said and done… As I told my friend Jami- I am one issue away from having a mental breakdown where I get in the car and just start driving until I run out of gas... of course that will only get me to Mesquite, and from there I would have to head East to Forney on foot where the soles of my shoes would melt to the pavement and I would then be forced to head into the woods where I live out the rest of my life as a hermit that scares little children living in the local trailer park... (insert deep calming breath here).


On a lighter note, my mom does have cable where we have been watching ALL of the DIY and HGTV shows on how to do things yourself. I have also enjoyed the following shows: "Talk Soup," "Girls Next Door," and anything on the E! channel.

Who’s McGruff?

Apologies for the unannounced blogging sabbatical. If I am not working, I’m packing; if I’m not packing, I’m taking care of Braden; and if he is taken care of, I’m packing… and you know the never ending cycle. So those of you that haven’t written me off totally, here is what’s been going on: Braden had his First Birthday! After a lot of time planning and a slight dent in the budget, we had family over for hamburgers, cake and ice cream. It was a success and we had a ton of fun.

Recently we also had One Year pictures and family pictures taken. Not only did I get to put in my work hours, rush to get ready, drive 30-45 minutes to Plano to the photographer, but I also had the delight of dealing with a 12 month old that didn't sleep hardly at all the night before. Man... great day!

This one is my favorite. He is wearing John's hat. We are going to have his picture taken in it every year until he grows into it.

This one we had printed in Black and white and it is PRECIOUS!!! Apologies fo rthe lack of cropping on some of these... I am of course pressed for time.

Our beautiful family (if I do say so myself!). God has blessed us richly!

In other news- we have sold our house and close on Tuesday, July 29. We have to be out by Wednesday where we are moving in with my mother (prayer requests please) for two weeks until we can close on the house that we are buying. Yes, contract #3 was the charm, but we are still hoping for a smooth ending to this process.

The house that we are look at to buy is in Richardson (my old stomping grounds). We were told about the house before it even went on the market so we didn’t have a lot of pressure with putting down a contract trying to beat others to the punch, etc. This was nice because we got to meet with our lender to iron out the financial details before we got in over our heads (trying to be smart about everything). I refrained from bringing along my laptop to show the lender my financial spreadsheet that our family goes by monthly (I figured he was out of gold stars anyway). I do have to say that it feels good to actually have a grasp on what we are doing and where every penny is going. There really is power in that (and no, I don’t go kissing my Dave Ramsey poster every night).

So about this house in Richardson- Luckily it is in a great neighborhood and is selling for $30-$40K less that the others due to repair/update work that needs to be done to it. John and I are up for the task of remodeling as long as Braden is in a good neighborhood with a good school. We are actually looking forward to making some of the changes that we have discussed (putting up drywall, building a new fence, painting, flooring…the list is forever long). We seem to think that we can do it ourselves (again- prayer requests please). What we really like about it is that it is a lot more space than what we have now (of course after packing things up, that kinda seems like a bad thing: more space = more junk). It is a four bedroom house, two living areas, two dining areas, a separate office, laundry room, two covered patio areas, and a fireplace (which we don’t have now). Yes, my child will actually get to hang his stocking this year on a mantel without me having to come up with some lame excuse about Santa coming in through the back door that takes the strength of Hercules to open.

Now about my title up above- This past weekend I had the honor of being McGruff the Crime Dog’s assistant. Now had this been 25 years ago, I would have been in Heaven getting to help the ever so famous crime fighting detective dog “take a bite out of crime.” However, I am 30 years old and standing outside one of Garland’s ghetto Walmarts in the 103 degree heat from 2:00 to 4:00 on a Saturday was not my idea of a dream come true. Regardless, one of my lieutenant friends asked me to help out and of course, the word “no” never enters my mind. So there I was this past Saturday passing out police badge stickers and helping kids get their picture taken with McGruff. Very quickly I came to the realization that McGruff has been out of the lime light a little too long because not only did MOST of the kids not have a clue as to who McGruff was, but even some of the parents were saying, “Look! It’s Smokey the Bear!”
WHAT!!!! Are you people idiots?!?! Smokey the Bear doesn’t have big floppy ears. Smokey the Bear doesn’t wear a big trench coat. SMOKEY THE BEAR DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A DOG! Good grief!

Now I do have to keep in mind that we were at a GHETTO Walmart, where I am sure most of the clientele tends to avoided all police dogs (real and animated).

Rookies

I’ve been lacking in posts the past few weeks due to life dumping a truck load of lemons in my way. Since my cupboards lack the simple food staples to make a delicious lemon meringue pie, I have been forced to start squeezing them like crazy- only to make lemon juice (no sugar for the “aid” either, but have no fear, payday was just the other day)! Here’s what’s been going on:

I realized I have now come full circle in life. The other day I had the one childhood prank that I did, pulled on me. Yes, I am one of those adults that was targeted for the never boring “ring-and-run” prank (and yes, I was one of those kids that did that). Was it well deserved? I have no doubt, as Karma has a funny way of waiting until you reach “the other side.” So I am standing at my kitchen sink when I heard the door bell ring. I look up to see out my kitchen window a little tubby white kid waddling by with a Camel-Bak of water strapped to his back (talk about preparing for a hard days work!). Of course to amuse whoever was watching, I opened the front door, put on my Academy Award winning shocked face and then shut the door again. I was also looking out to make sure there wasn’t a flaming bag of you know what on the door step (and no, I was not one of those kids!). Not but five minutes later I see a group of three kids (tubby included) standing in the street just hanging out. While the thought crossed my mind to go out to them and point out their rookie mistakes:
1. don’t send your slowest guy to do it,
2. don’t stand out in front of the house that you just pranked five minutes ago,
3. don’t prank a house that has all their windows open

I refrained, smiled to myself, and secretly wished them "happy pranking."

I also took a moment to think back on the poor elderly neighbors that I used to prank. Ahhh, who am I kidding, I deserved a flaming bag of poop!

On another sour note, I locked myself out of the house the other day. Did I mention that Braden was inside? I came home from Walmart and put Braden in his highchair so I could go back out to the car and get the remainder of the groceries. I loaded up my arms with bags, got to the back door and... nothing, that was as far as I got. Luckily, after running around the house in my Sunday clothes (heels included), I called my mom to come over with my house key and let me in. What was ironic was the fact that I had a set of house keys hanging on the front door, I just couldn't break into the lock box to get to them. In only a slight panic (he was in his highchair after all), I found my Swiss army knife in my car, prayed to God to give me any James Bond lock picking abilities he could give me and pulled out the flimsy metal tweezers and went to town. Who was I kidding? After 20 minutes, I kissed my career as a locksmith goodbye. I was dripping with sweat in my 101 degree garage with the bottom of my feet throbbing from being rubbed raw because I was running around the outside of the house in my heels (it’s like they weren’t made for running). Never fear, Crazy Gran to the rescue. My mom got there and let me in. Braden was crying hysterically, but physically okay (the jury is still out on psychology). Is this a right of passage for the Rookie mother?

Our house now has a third contract on it. The first contract was a no go because the lady low-balled us so badly, we were going to have to pay her to buy it (we said no thank you). The second contract we can only chalk up to buyer’s remorse. The couple put a contract down, got the inspection and then proceeded to tell us that they didn’t want the house until we fixed/repaired/updated EVERYTHING the inspector listed (we said have a nice life). This third contract we are hoping is the “third times a charm” sort of deal. While it has truly been amazing that we have had three contracts with only about 15 walk-throughs, we are praying that this is it and we will close at the end of July. The search for our new house is still on.