I'm not dead yet!

If I blogged more often , then maybe I would remember how to log in to this bastard.
I keep meaning to blog, I even compose entries in my head and then I get the lazy and they never make it to the computer.

And today it's gonna be lazy bullet points!

• I bought some horseradish cheddar I thought would be nice, like a cheese spread sorta kinda, for crackers. I put some on a triscuit last night and GODDAMN. It was like eating a glob of wasabi. I thought my nose was going to bleed. I can't wait to see what happens to my husband when he eats it...muwhahahaha.
• My house is never going to be finished. Ahhhhh. Flail arms, breathe, flail some more. That is less than helpful. The carpet is now out of the dining room. That floor looks like shit, too. Which is probably better than if for some odd reason it had looked great. Now it at least matches the living room in its shitness. I have begun to collect things for the kitchen makeover, but I'm still not feeling moved to strike on it. The bathroom has been calling me so it is probably going to win this round. It should not take too long to do. It's a tiny room. I always say that, I am always wrong. Always.
  
• I am so looking forward to spring! I have been drooling over gardening sites, seed catalogs and wondering how to care for my new apple trees and roses. Just a could months until my newly planted assload of bulbs should begin to appear. I forget what I have even planted. And what other goodies lurk as remnants of the old garden. I am envisioning drifts of snapdragons. Ooooh, exciting!
• I made lotion from scratch today with coconut oil, olive oil, beeswax, and mint tea. Do you know how delicious coconut oil smells? Well, it smells delicious. I scented it lightly with apple and peppermint oil and it's pretty greasy stuff, but I think I like it. I would rather be greasy for a while than have a migraine, right? I sincerely hope I did not ruin my new blender.
  
• Old navy had a 20% off coupon today. Damn you Old Navy!!! *shakes fists*
  
• I am still getting used to living in a bungalow where the second floor is smaller than the first so it has overhanging roofs. ON sunny days like today bit icebergs fall down on the lower level and scare the bejeesus out of me every now and then. Yeesh!
• One of these days I will write a real blog post again, with real knitting and fiber content.
  

You say you want a resolution...

With deepest apologies to the fab four.

So, well....I have had a hell of a year, eh?

Everyone has, I know. So of course, what's on tap for 2011? I have been thinking about that for days now.
I'm still in the phase where when we pull up to the house sometimes I have to just sit there for a second and look at it and enjoy the cuteness and think "how the hell did I get here?" and wonder how it was ever possible.

So what am I wanting to change in the new year? I changed pretty much everything in the last 4 months of this year.
in 2011 I plan to:

• not buy any yarn for personal projects until February 23. Longer if I can do it. I would really like to use up some stash this year.
  

• Choose locally more often.

• Return my library books faster, thus depriving Milwaukee county of tens of dollars in late fees.

• Embark on the kitchen and main bath renos which will surely be a test of my patience, creativity, and skills. I have been watching kitchen shows on DIYNetwork for weeks now and their idea of a barebones kitchen is 15,000. Yeah, well, I plan to do it for less than $1500. Because I don't have anything more and even that is stretching it. All my existing appliances are staying, I'm not gutting anything, and I plan to use paint and elbow grease to pull off a fucking miracle. Oh, there will be pictures, do not fear.

• I want to write more in 2011. Blogging as well as personal essays and getting back to fiction. Shitty fiction. I was all revved up for NaNoWriMo this year and did the first two days and then thought "What the hell am I trying to do here? Push myself the rest of the way around the bend?" So I stopped and let it go.

• Letting more things go. It's a good thing.
  

• I need to finish unpacking. I am such a freaking slackMASTER!

• I want to knit more things, too. I had such a good creative mojo going on until July 22. I want to catch that wave and do stuff again in 2011. I have continued to be creative but it's been more about creatively jamming all my shit into boxes, picking paint colors which I love, but damn...after a while even that gets old, creatively financing this move and creatively living in a construction zone while I scraped and painted and sanded. I wanna do some fun creative stuff. I have not been able to even unpack my beading crap yet and I miss it. I have barely sewed in the past 5 months.
  

• And of course there is the usual: finding balance. Oh, it's so elusive. I commit to working on this as well. In addition to the kitchen fix up, I need to paint and spruce up the upstairs living room and include a little yoga corner down the hall from my craft cave. And then unpack my yoga dvds so I can make that happen on a regular basis. I picked a sunny yellow for this room and can already picture how delightful it will be to settle in there and work on simmering down. In my mind I can erase the 1950 sculpted green carpet...ahhh.
  

I guess that's kind of a lot. But it's nothing compared to this year and none of this was planned. I wish everyone a year full of light, laughter, dry basements, and much joy!

So that happened....

I have been busy.
Last time I blogged was nearly 3 months ago. I was till starry eyed about being able to sell my house and was painting it and making it pretty.
HA.
Oh, so naive!
So here is how it went down. We started to go to open houses, we looked at houses all over the city and outside of the city. We googlemapped and Trulia-ed and Zillowed our asses off. Two neighbors down the street from us had major dig up your front yard sewer repairs done. Our neighbor next door gave us reason to believe the likelihood of a sinkhole near us was more than a passing obession of mine with the discovery of some long neglected storm sewer pipes the city put in 50 years ago and then abandoned. In our yards. We saw many house going up for sale all around us with people who are just done and fed up, and also some houses where people just packed up, moved out and walked away from their mortgages. And of course we had the bank-owned house rotting next door to us that was never cleaned out.

And I was going through the motions, but still not sold on selling the house. Because it was my home, my first home where I was in control, where no one was yelly and scary and where no one could kick me out. I loved my little house. Too much. I was so in love with feeling stable and safe there. And then one day I was scrubbing the kitchen counter grout, the grout I put in myself, and I realized the safety? The stability? The house did not create that. I have a stable and secure life now because that is what my husband and I have created. We argue, yes, but no one is a drunk, no one screams, no one carries on and stirs up drama for the hell of it. What we have isn't confined to a specific house.

It was eye opening to realize all of that. So, we called a national house flipping company and set up an appointment. The whole thing went like this:
September 8: he came to see the house, gave a lowball offer and then said he had to check some other numbers before letting us know.
September 9: he called back and cut his offer in half and told us he might know some other people... I wasn't completely on board with selling it until I realized that even the "we buy any house" guy might not even be willing to buy our house. Then I realized I wanted to get the fuck out. I cried. A lot. And then put on some lipstick and went out to see a house we had driven past several times.
September 10: we wrote an offer on the house we saw! Jeff called back lowballing man and told him we'd take whatever he was offering, send us paperwork to accept.
September 12: the seller accepted our offer
October 4: our 13th anniversary. We closed on our new house! We moved in on October 9.
October 18: we are officially no longer the owners of Shitty House.

And now it's a month later and we are still settling in, painting like mad and trying to figure out which box we put any of our crap in. And it's coming along slowly but surely.

And in the middle of all of this FEMA did reverse their decision and decided to cover individual claims, but by then we were in the middle of buying the new house and would have to make an insurance claim which would be two large claims within 3 years which could make us unable to get a policy on the new house or possibly make it more difficult for the buyer to insure our house and then we still might get next to nothing from FEMA. Our neighbor got $200. For her furnace and water heater and the cleanup costs. Yes, that is two hundred. We had more at stake than we stood to gain so we didn't file with them in the end. We just left it, cleaned and scoured with a new water heater but no operational furnace.

So that is what is going with me so far. I'm starting over and so far it doesn't suck.

It's the deshit.

The deshitting (decluttering) continues apace.
I have just about an entire plastic tote's worth of tea. Seriously. It's a bit out of control. I had no idea how much I had. And I tossed anything not sealed or that I knew was freakishly old, and anything with caffeine. I had an entire cupboard full of tea in my tiny kitchen! Ridonkulous.
Part of it is the amount of knitting swaps I do. I get a lot of tea in them and it's always good and then I get a new swap and have a new favorite.... I kept 5-6 varieties out in a red gingham tin I unearthed and the rest is into storage for now! Also in that tote was a big ass cast iron dutch oven and lid, though. So it's not wall to wall tea. And some metal mixing bowls, and some recipe books.

And from the garage The Man has removed a reel mower (we had two, do not even ask), that was snatched up. Our kitchen table? Spent 2 days outdoors. It was super cute handpainted by me when I was really in a whimsicle fuckery (props to regretsy) phase, but the table was free from a friend's basement and was really too large for the breakfast bay, so it gots to go. It went today. Our electric snow blower (oh,the Wisconsin snow laughed at that one!) that the starter sort of caught fire when I was using it? Someone started to look at it, but when hubs walked by they ran away. So we put a sign on it saying it was broken and free. Gone.
Garbage pickup is Wednesday for us, and the city will take a LOT of crap, so we just put stuff on the curb and if it's gets taken, sweet. If not, the garbage guys will deal with it.

I just went out and helped figure out some keeping/tossing stuff and guess what I realized. Ok, so remember how when this "500 year rain" happened, I wasn't even home? So I never actually SAW my neighborhood in the worst of it? I saw many neighborhoods near mine that were terrifying, but not mine. Well, MY GARAGE FLOODED. That is so fanfuckingtastico. It looks like 2 inches of water at the front of the garage judging by the water line on the things I had stored there. I know, it's been a month, but I avoid my messy garage, it's the manly domain and he likes it to be ferociously slovenly. He walks in, takes whatever tool, power equipment, mulch, dirt and drops it 2 feet in front of the door. A huge pile of shit builds up and then he complains that he can't find anything. So he was sorting through the junk and came to get me to rule on a few items. He held up this little table I had out there to say "keep or toss" and I just looked at the legs thinking "where did that come from? it was in the house up until a few months ago? What did I spill on it to go exactly two inches up every leg of this table? And cover it with grass and yuck?" and he kept asking me where to put this stupid table while my mind was just trying to absorb all of that at once and process how bad it must have been and then I just stood there looking around and seeing that everything has a 2 inch water line on it. A second table, a bookshelf, a carpet steamer, my plastic bin of calcium chloride for the roof, the wheels on the garden cart.....the whole damn thing flooded.

It is completely amazing that we did not end up with more than 4-5 feet of water in our basement now, we could have been flooded all the way up to the first floor and then some. Because it took us so long to get home and the gates were opened so dumping into the lake could begin, the street was empty when we got here. I knew it had been up over the curb, but ...wow. I'm pretty glad I didn't know until now....I think.

But there appears to be no real damage, it was all crap stuck in a nasty garage so it must not have meant too much to me. Aside from possibly the starter on our electric mower which went out about 2 weeks ago...... The transformer was probably sitting in water and gave the mower a jolt while it charged and after a few charge, use cycles..kaput on a 1 year old mower. Black and Decker already replaced the starter for us with a better one, so now I feel guilty. But only slightly.

But mainly, OH MY GOD HOLY BALLS OF SHIT, MY GARAGE FLOODED. It's a shitty, tiny gross bare studs detached building. and it's elevated maybe 4 inches on a concrete pad. You have to step carefully over the threshold or take a header into sharp, oily, dangerous yard implement hell. And it's set back from the street further from my house, ON A HILL and my driveway? Is like 5 car lengths long. Not big cars, but we very comfortably parked three there for 2 years when we had three cars and had plenty of room left. The water was THAT FAR UP PAST MY WHOLE DAMN HOUSE!
It kind of gives me the vapors. I have to get the hell out of here before I end up in a curled up in a corner pulling my eyelashes out.

Yeah, I'm still here

1. FEMA basically told us all to suck it. They count basements only if they are sleeping spaces, mine is obviously barely suitable as a "most expensive appliances storing space" since it is a "turd collection and festering space". So, yeah. That's nice.

2. I guess I'm moving. I don't now when, or where or anything, but we can't do this anymore. We can't afford to do this anymore. I have no idea how the hell I am going to sell this house, but I'mma try to do it. We are painting and sprucing like a pair of mofos right now. Kitchen is going from applemint to sky blue (called bubble) and pretty blue bedroom is half painted "steamed milk" with "extra white" trim. Yeah, it's exciting. I may very well have to sell it to a house flipper. I don't feel great about that, but I also don't know what to do. The Man? Is all for selling it to the first bastard who will agree to buy it for any price. So we will finish the painting projects, but we will get some feedback from an investor or a realtor before we embark on fixing the plaster ceiling in the living room. From the roof leak that seems fucking impossible to ever fix EVER.

3. I am basically freaking out about all of it. All the time.
it's not helping that he decides to paint the kitchen while it's still dirty, does not pack anything up and just carries it all to a clean room and farking leaves it, all piled up precariously, and then walks away. Like this:
This does not make me happy, not even a little tiny bit. It makes me bitchy. A whole LOT.

You can haz updates!

1. Servpro was just here to pick up their 4 huge ass fans and 3 huge ass dehumidifiers. If you want to feel better about your carbon footprint, rent a few of those puppies in the summer and see what a real big foot looks like. So glad we do the budget pay so I won't feel it all in this month's bill.
The total damage was...gulp.....$2600.73.
Oh that sucks. But you know my saying, it beats a lake of shit in the basement!

2. Hot water, coming soon! Maybe it's my Pisces mojo, maybe it's just me but I love water. Looking at Lake Michigan calms me, swimming thrills me, if it didn't make me have to pee ever 5 minutes I would probably have a tabletop fountain. My morning shower is very important to me. If I feel bleah, tired, cold, cramptastic, achey, even sad, I take a nice hot shower. I have felt all of those things since July 22 and I canot just go hop in the shower! Some people drink (or knit obsessively...ok, I do that too) I shower! Wait, not like 23 time a day, but I really miss that easy once a day shower. And even though I can wash with hot water, you can't just stand under it and let it relax your back muscles when you have to be bending over to scoop it up with a rubbermaid food storage container, you know? I cannot wait for hot water again!

3. Washer and Dryer: yah, we're going to get them again. We did laundry over the weekend and it was $25!! That's 1200 a year, which is $400 more than a new set, not even counting damaged clothing from washed tubs with snags in them from people washing work overalls and stuff. Also, we have found ONE laudromat that isn't scary. And it's actually pretty nice, it's behind the CVS on 76th by Park Bank. but it's always jam packed!! And it's still $25 a week to do the wash there!!

4. my cursed afghan continues. not cursing, but growing. This is the afghan I had the ucontrollable urge to make when the flooding hit. it was not raining or even looking like rain when I left mah house! it's way bigger now, but Erma already seems to approve. I'm not too sure about it the more I see of it, but The Man loves it and it does seem to be nice and warm. and will hopefully soften up with a vigorous washing and tumble dry. I realized i was doing half-double crochets for the center, so switched to double crochets which helps it not feel quite so much like an X-ray blanket now. Good times.

Cleanin' on uuuu-uuuup!

on the Northwest side!
I don't have a piece of the pie, though. At this point, I probably cannot afford a piece of the pie!
Guess who dropped by yesterday?
Awwwww, yeah. Not bad, it only took 6 days this time. Honestly, I think they got overwhelmed really fast. We called on Saturday morning once the water was down and we knew we still had intact walls and they thought they might be here Monday. We knew from experience that they were going to get slammed. They did. People who waited for the weekend to clean out and then saw how bad it was, people who had been unable to even get to their homes until the weekend and people who realized the damage was worse than they thought all found their phones and started calling.
But we don't have drywall down there and it's an old drafty house, so mold was not a huge concern for us, aside from a pile of wet clothes down there rotting away, of course.
But now my house smells sort of chemically clean, with a dull roar from all the drying equipment in the basement and it should be smooth sailing from now on. At least until the next big rain, right?
Ugh.