My latest round of adventures included water damage to my new to me home this past March. (See “Life With Lemons” blog post). This was a two dimensional water damage adventure. In addition to the damage caused by “rising water”, I had a totally separate water issue from what turned out to be a shower renovation gone terribly wrong.
So almost from the very beginning, there was an adventure within an adventure. Ah. A sub-adventure within a grand adventure.
Life gave me lemons, and I made lemonade. I went so far as to put a positive spin on this new refreshment, and I tried my best to accept and embrace it, even though I have never liked lemons. This is not a “yay, me” thing, but a “Praise God” thing, because I could not have maintained this perspective on my own.
Part 2 of Life With Lemons begins with the restoration and repair in my home.
It was a season where I still saw lemonade as a new good thing in my life, but it got to the point that I felt bombarded with having to make it and taste it and choose to like it so often. I felt… “lemonaded”.
It turned out that this work on my home led to an entirely new group of small, but still frustrating, sub-adventures. An entire sub file folder all related to the work on my home. A file folder that was full. Full of a variety of lemonade flavors. Who knew that lemonade had its own set of lemonade flavors? From super subtle to super sour. And I got to taste everything from kind of sour to very sour, repeatedly. That super subtle lemonade flavor? It left the building. Or maybe the sour taste lingered so that every taste had an extra shot of sour in it.
I tried, oh how I tried, to adjust my taste buds to my new reality. I had lemonade that was so tart there was no choice but to make a sour face. I had flavors that were various degrees of more subtle tartness, but even those still had me making a face because sour taste is not my friend. And I never knew which lemonade flavor was coming next. While I did my best to get to know each flavor and try to learn to like it, if I’m honest, there was no lemonade during this time that was not uncomfortably sour, at least a little. And as they say… “too much of a good thing” is…well, not a good thing. I had chosen lemonade as a good thing, but I got so tired of it presenting itself to me continually in some variation of flavor for months. No wonder lemonade’s subtlety seemed to keep decreasing and it was just sour or more sour. My taster was exhausted!
The work to repair/restore my home began at the end of May. Things rocked along pretty well for the first couple of weeks. Then the sub adventures began. And my learning curve began to form as I discovered the varying flavors of lemonade.
The mess. I’ve been through home renovation before, and I know that dust is just part of the fun. But that experience was a long time ago, in 2009. Sometimes it’s easy to forget what you want to forget. I already knew that anything to do with sheet rock = lots of dust. But this time around I added a new messy element - tile floors. I was not familiar with how messy the process of laying and grouting tile is. I swept everywhere I could, usually a combo of concrete floors and new floor tile, every day. I wiped down most everything often. But really, it was just for me to feel like I was doing something toward keeping my home sort of??? clean. Also, the only room in my home not affected was my front bedroom. So it was very full of all the stuff that could not reside where it belonged during this time. It was like a chaotic disorganized storeroom in its own category of a mess.
The stress of their presence. The contractor was very nice and oversaw and did wonderful high quality work. His helpers were great too. All the workers were very accomodating and kind. But they were just... there. Day in, day out, usually all day long. It's impossible to relax with workers in your house, no matter how great they are. Yes, I could leave them to their work and get out and do my own thing, but I could not enjoy the comfort of being home in my safe and happy place when they were present. That underlying baseline of stress got old.
Fleas. Around mid-June, my home experienced a flea infestation because the workers were probably bringing in the little critters from my front yard or from another home they were also working in. This was no fun, especially for my poor fur baby cat, who was only indoors so she wasn’t treated for fleas. She was so miserable, and I felt horrible about placing her in this situation. I got the medication and treated her the next day after I realized what was happening, but it took a full 24 hours for her symptoms to go away. I took a crash course and treated my home too.
Illness. Around July 4th, I got sick with an upper respiratory infection and workers had to miss several days. As a rule I don’t run fever, but I did with this illness. I have been blessed with good health. I can’t remember the last time I was so sick that I ran fever and felt so horrible. And then my body decided to have a reaction to a common antibiotic I’ve taken before, and steps had to be taken to stop that reaction which ended up making me feel worse. Ugh.
Covid exposure. Around the same time, the contractor and one of his helpers both became sick too, but it turned out that they had Covid. I tested negative thank God. They had to get over their symptoms and recover and quarantine.
AC issues. I began to notice that my air conditioning was having a problem cooling back in June when we had our first Texas “heat wave” for the summer. It was struggling some to keep up with the temperature I had it set for. But because workers were going in and out all day long, I thought it made sense that the issue was caused by all the extra heat that was coming inside. I believed in my brilliant logic. But then, we had another heat wave in July, worse than the one in June. Around July 20th, I began to see that the AC was keeping up less and less, the temperature in my home was gradually rising higher, and the system could no longer cool down all the way to the temperature that was set on the thermostat. In one of my more intelligent moves, (not) I decided to test my theory of the cause of this issue on a Saturday when workers did not come. So much for that, because the issue got worse that day, as in a lot worse, and I had to face the hard truth on Saturday evening that there was a real problem that needed to be fixed. After several frantic calls and texts to a well versed in AC (and very patient) friend, I contacted a company she referred and they ended up coming on Sunday to fix my issue, which Praise God turned out not to be anything major.
Once the AC was fixed, I figured out quickly that really, it had been limping along for a long time. It made a huge difference when it worked like it was supposed to!
Water leak outside and water cut off. A day or two before the work on my home was finished, the contractor started to replace my faucet out in front of my house because an existent slight leak got worse as they used the water hose a whole lot. He began to take off the old water hose attachment/knob assembly, and the pipe out of the house split and began leaking. He and his helper worked late that evening to sorter/weld the pipe to fix the split, and then capped it off. Late the next day, I was out watering my front flower bed and I saw water flowing from this pipe and cap, so I contacted the contractor and said “Should I be concerned about this?” with video attachment. I ended up having the water cut off until he could come back the next morning to fix it.
Five gallon bucket stubborn top. Another issue related to having no water for several hours: I couldn’t get the top off the five gallon bucket... One of the workers who came over and turned the water off for me took my five gallon bucket and filled it with water and brought it back so I could flush the toilet until they had the water back on. Before I went to bed, I got ready to fill the toilet tank with water from the bucket, and the top would not come off, as in, it would not budge. Seriously? I ended up getting a screwdriver and after several attempts was able to pry off the lid. At this point, I just started laughing. Sometimes it’s helpful to see the humor in life’s hassles and it felt good to laugh at myself.
Fortunately, when the workers arrived the next morning and immediately began working on repairing the pipe out front, it didn’t take too long to get it fixed again and turn the water back on.
Having no water when you are not expecting to have to deal with this was very sour lemonade indeed. But then, it reminded me of how much I take for granted. A good reminder of all I have been blessed with that I’m not often grateful for.
So…let’s review. The mess, the stress, fleas, illness, Covid exposure, AC issues, water leak that led to water being cut off for about 14 hours, and… the top on the 5 gallon bucket would not come off without a fight.
A full sub folder of sub-adventures that took place during the work to fix up my home. Learning how lemonade has many levels of sourness and becoming so very weary of lemonade making and tasting and ingesting.
But finally, over four months after the water damage incident brought new adventures, my home is fully restored. Now it's beautiful again - more beautiful than before. I made a few changes that I love. My rustic décor is gone – no more concrete floors and flood cut walls. The ongoing mess and hassles and stress of having workers in my home several days a week is gone. I'm back in my peaceful sanctuary that's an invitation to my eyes and sweetness to my heart. My home is homey again. Insert relieved sigh. Aaahhh.
I got “lemonaded”. Overwhelmed with too much lemonade, in too many shades of sour, too frequently. But you know what? I still want to have some lemonade now and then to remind myself how I made peace with lemons and at the same time appreciate that I no longer have to make and drink lemonade all the time. I also want to remember and appreciate that by God’s grace I was able to stay somewhat positive throughout this unwelcome and unanticipated season.
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