Good lord, things have been a royal pain in the patootie since I posted last about our lovely flooding. It took forEVer to get the homeowner's insurance rolling on cleanup and repairs. I have been using the jimmy-rigged Sir Maytag (remember, I married MacGyver) on the less possessed cycle outside and it's been working okay--the only thing is that the patio always ends up with a lot of water where the hoses join because there is water that squirts out. The insurance finally did the analysis towards the end of the week last week and then had the restoration company come and do cleanup/demolition in the kitchen on Friday. They literally called on Friday and asked if they could be there in 20 minutes.
I had to squirrel my daughter away in our bedroom to sleep (she has had flipped sleeping patterns again and had just gone to bed), because our room is the furthest away from the main part of the house. I was worried about the treatment they were going to use once they got the flooring torn up to eliminate any mold or mildew that may have started, because she is so chemically sensitive. My husband gave them a heads-up on the fact that she has severe allergies and they assured him that this should be fine.
Once they started spraying I knew she was NOT going to be fine. She was extremely frustrated when she woke up. She started off setting up a computer table in our room to camp out there, but after awhile she realized her legs were feeling heavy and she fell back asleep for several hours, then went outside. We have a patio off to the side of our house, between the house and garage. My husband set up a camp chair, table and space heater for her and she ate quinoa and vegetable stir-fry I had made (cooking outside on a camp stove) for when she got up. I was so tired from being up all night that I didn't know about those arrangements--when I went outside and saw her she looked like a homeless person warming her hands over a barrel or something. We kind of joked about it later and she said the same thought crossed her mind, especially when she found herself warming her hands over the food while she was eating. It was horrible. She pretty much stayed outside just so she could breathe and when she was ready to go back to sleep she laid in our room again. When they came on Saturday to do readings they asked how we were and I said, "Sick." He said that was so weird because in five years of doing this they've never had complaints. Uh-huh, whatever. I know we're the weird allergy people but seriously??? That first night my eyes were burning and my skin was prickling and the next day I felt mildly sick to my stomach. When my husband got back from work he opened the garage and made a hangout for her with the space heater, table, chair, an old TV, the Wii system so she could play games or watch Netflix, and a boom box. That way at least she didn't have to just sit outside and freeze and would have something to do.
Yesterday when I got up I saw that he had set up our tent just in back of the patio facing in so she could sleep there if she wanted to. It's a two-room tent and he put the air mattress in there with her bedding, etc. I went out there to check on her and she was in a lot of pain and nauseous. I have learned how to do some energy work, so I was able to do some and ease her symptoms and she finally slept peacefully. She wanted me to lay there with her for quite awhile. At some point the restoration company came to take readings on the drying process, and then I heard my husband moving things around on the patio. He set up a long table as a cooking station, and an old couch facing opposite to where the tent is, with the TV and game system he had set up in the garage on the end of the table facing the couch. Then he put a tarp up to where you enter the patio from our side door to block the view from the street, and the wind because it was pretty chilly. It is such an awesome setup, really. It looks like a little apartment the way he has it enclosed, but outside. He even put a welcome mat at the door of the tent. :) When she got up, she was pretty excited. At one point when she was laying on the couch either doing stuff on the iPad or game system I checked on her and said, "So how does it feel to live like a hobo?" and she laughed and said, "Pretty luxurious hobo, if you ask me!" Hubby and I have been kind of taking turns staying up during the night and keeping watch since our family room window looks out to the patio. I've been freezing because the weather has been chilly but we've had to keep the windows open to air the fumes out. I still can't believe how ridiculous this whole thing has been, but I feel like we're handling it pretty well under the circumstances. If you're not gonna laugh what are you gonna do??? My maternal grandmother would be finding the humor all over the place in this if she were still alive, and would be loving how clever my husband has been with setting things up.
HOW cute is my husband??? He is so sweet and is seriously the cutest dad ever. Who else has a guy so sweet that he would even put a welcome mat in front of the door of the tent? He is adorable. He sure loves his "little girl."
I have to say that I am glad to have all the equipment off finally--they came and turned it all off and took it away today. The sounds from the machine and fans were driving me mad. Now I get to wait for whenever they decide to replace the floorboards and linoleum. Oh, and after us telling them that the spray made her sick they said, "Maybe we should use this less allergenic one when we do the downstairs." I wanted to kick someone, especially because WE TOLD THEM we deal with allergies!!! They should do tile instead of linoleum or something, and eat the difference in cost for all the crap this has put us through.
And in even more exciting news, they discovered asbestos in the ceiling downstairs and had to have a separate company come out and take a look at that. When they start work downstairs, it will look like a scene from E.T. with the plastic tubing coming out of the house and everything. Who knows how long it will take to get everything fixed once they tear everything out down there. Maybe at the end of all this my defunct washing machine will prove to be a blessing, because everything that is being done is thousands of dollars in work that we can't afford, and we are planning on trying to move next year. The flooring in the kitchen needed to be replaced anyway but we don't have the funds right now, and we didn't know about the asbestos.
We are definitely looking like the classy people on the block. I need to do laundry again and need to figure out how to do that without flooding out the cool new outdoor apartment. LOL
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