It rhymes with moon.

We started working on Hopper's room last week. So we've been working on getting it cleaned out for going on two weeks. We are for the most part finished. I do have to hang some things, caulk around part of the baseboards some more and clean off her desk, but overall it's done. It's such a relief.

Seven years ago or so, we bought some peel and stick linoleum tiles for the floor in Hopper's room. At the time, it was Bugster's room. And I worked as hard as I could to get the tile all down while Bugster was on a missions trip to Mexico, but I never quite got it finished. At the time, she said she didn't want me to finish it, because she didn't want to wait to move everything back in and enjoy her room, so it's sat unfinished all these years.

This time, I decided to finish it once and for all. I cut the last small piece of tile last night and put it in place. Before placing that last piece of tile, I'd replaced about a dozen full tiles that had been gouged or ripped up. Putting the new tiles down wasn't any big thing, but it took some elbow grease and way too much time to get the old ones up, but it was worth it. The floor looks so much better now.

I got the baseboards installed and caulked in the last few days, too. They look great, although I do have to go over some of the caulking. The floor in the basement is cement, and it's anything but level, so parts of the baseboards sat as much as a quarter inch off the floor while other parts of the baseboards were flush with the floor. Caulking tends to shrink a bit as it dries, so I need to go over the parts where it's obvious that it needs a bit more. I'll make sure to put some touch up paint on any nail holes I missed the first go round, too.

Mom helped me sort the stuff that was piled in the bedroom when the basement flooded almost 2 years ago. There was a lot that went in the trash or the donation box. It is so nice to have it all out of there. Mom also helped by washing the windows and the bedskirt and curtains for the room. Then this morning, she scrubbed the floor for me. I cannot express what a huge help Mom has been over the last couple of months while she's been here. We have accomplished so much with her help that I'd still be working on alone, if she weren't here!

We picked up some new mattresses for Hopper's bed a week or so ago knowing we'd be getting her back in her bedroom soon. We had a pop up trundle bed under her bed, but we didn't have a mattress on it yet. We just hadn't gotten to that point before the basement flooded. So now Hopper's bed has it's new mattress on it, and her trundle is in use as I type this. Mom is Hopper's sleepover guest tonight, (her first ever), and they were both excited about it. 

Once again, I'm so very thankful for Mom being here. Having Gramma sleep in her bedroom the first night she's slept alone in almost 2 years has proved invaluable. Hopper was freaking out about sleeping down there again and had a bit of a meltdown. We're hoping the anxiety she's suffered over the thought of sleeping in her own room again will be a thing of the past now that she's spent her first night in there.


Tomorrow, we'll work on getting the mattress on Scooter's trundle bed and take down the part of the bunk bed Hopper's been using the last couple of years and put it in the garage with the other half. Her room is going to look so much bigger with only one bed in there! Gramma will be Scooter's first ever sleepover guest tomorrow night. They're both looking forward to it.

I'll get before and after pictures posted someday. I'd say soon, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to it. I've got to find the card the before pictures are on and take after pics. I don't want to take the time while Mom's here. I'm enjoying having her around way too much and don't want to miss out on any time with her.


I'll be back soon, though. 


It just depends on what your definition of 'soon' is.

Untitled. Because once again I'm too tired to think of a title.

:::::raising hand:::::


I'm still here. 

Still making progress.

Still dehoarding. 

But I think I may have overdone things yesterday. I've had pain off and on in my elbows since I was on the antibiotic I took for the post-op infection in my incision a few weeks ago. But I'm having a lot of pain in my right elbow today. I'm pretty sure it's tendinitis, so I'm going to have to take it easier over the next several days.


I have so much I want to blog about, but I just haven't been able to find the time. It seems every time I find the time to blog I sit down to the keyboard only to fall asleep.

Mom is still here and still helping me out. I can't get over how much we've gotten accomplished since she's been here. I will forever be grateful for her help. And I will store all the wonderful memories we've made together in my heart to pull out in the future when I need a smile.

Yesterday, I got the inside of Hopper's closet repainted. The bottom third of it had to be replaced when the basement flooded right at 2 years ago, and although it had been fixed, it still needed painted. The flood also loosened several tiles in the closet, so I got those replaced yesterday as well. 

Hopper will be back in her bedroom this weekend. I should be able to finish it all up tomorrow. The sorting is done. I have a few empty boxes to take out to the trash and some clothes to put away. Other than that the floor needs scrubbed, the baseboards need to be installed, and we need to spray well for spiders. Hopper should be able to sleep in her room tomorrow night.


I'd like to update more, but the typing is getting to me. 

I'll be back soon for more than a weekly update.

Just checkin in...

I'm feeling much better than I expected to feel 11 days post-op. I am just so relieved to have the surgery out of the way and to be feeling the way I am. I definitely feel better than I did at this point in the recovery after my c-sections, so I'm quite happy about that.

When I went in to get the staples out last week, I asked the doctor, if it was okay for me to go through the boxes that The Hubster was bringing in from the pod on the driveway. She said that it was as long as I rested, if I felt tired. So I've been sorting and resting as needed. I've gotten through quite a bit so far, and I couldn't be happier.

We're about halfway through the pod at this point. Things have either been tossed in the trash, cleaned for donation, set aside for someone else, or kept for our use. So far, we're keeping very little except the craft stuff. And we're on such a roll that decisions are coming easier for me all the time. 

We're about halfway through the pod at this time. Tomorrow, we're going to get it emptied. We want it off the driveway. Granted, that means we'll have to put what remains where it will fit, and it will take up quite a bit of room downstairs and in the garage, but I'll continue to work on sorting as many boxes as possible, so we can get the basement cleared as quickly as we can. 


We're hoping to completely clean the pod out tomorrow and call the company on Monday to come and pick it up. The company has up to a week after we call to pick it up. That being the case, we will be able to park in the driveway before Christmas! We are SO thrilled with that! The driveway is going to look so naked once it's gone. 


That's okay.


Nudity has it's place.

Tea, anyone?

I'm exhausted but thrilled tonight. I'm feeling much better today. Almost human, even.

Three dear friends have provided 5 meals for us over the last 4 days. We'll be heating up one that was left at our door this morning tomorrow for dinner. It looks wonderful, and it's such a huge blessing! I have some absolutely amazing friends!

Hopper and Scooter were sick all last week, and they were still sick over the weekend, so they missed school again today. I know that it hit poor Hopper the hardest, because of the amount of stress she's been under with me going in for surgery. Now that she sees me feeling better, she's starting to feel better. They'll be going back to school tomorrow. They're excited and ready to go.


This afternoon, I was feeling well enough that I asked The Hubster to help me out in the pod. He helped me by getting boxes down and letting me peak in them, so I'd know whether or not I'd be able to do a quick sorting on them. He ended up taking 7 boxes downstairs for me to sort, and there's no evidence that they were even brought in. 

Thankfully, Mom was here when I went through the box of tea party stuff. It was nice to be able to bounce thoughts off her, and it made it easier to make decisions I knew needed making but couldn't bring myself to make. First out of the box were some acrylic stemmed glasses the girls had used to toast during the different tea parties we had when they were growing up. Because I am fairly certain they contain BPA, and I'm not willing to take the chance with the girls using them, I threw them in the trash. We'll come across something else eventually. Something that will be perfect and safe for them to use.


The box had 4 brand new tea dish sets in it, too. They were adorable, and they were once the girls had used when they were little, but they've been boxed up since we moved 9.5 years ago. They were returned to their original boxes after our tea parties, so the china wouldn't break, chip or crack. I wasn't sure what to do with them. They were gifts from Mom and Dad, and they were special.


But the news stories from the last several years kept nagging at me in the back of my mind. You know. Those stories about how China had laced toys of all sorts that were to be sold in the USA with lead. So we looked at all 4 sets of tea party dishes, and low and behold, they were all made in China. I was surprised to even find a label on the end of one box that said that it was not to be used as a toy nor for food service. Who makes a set of tea party dishes that's not supposed to be used as tea party dishes?


Mom gave her blessing for me to get rid of them. She agreed that it wasn't worth the risk to Hopper and Scooter's health to keep them around. So they're gone. It's such a relief to know that the decision has been made. It would have been a very hard decision for me to have made on my own. Thanks to Mom, I was able to make a very difficult decision that would have had me stumbling around for weeks. 


A couple of boxes had old photo albums or paper in them. I saved the albums that had no pictures in them or that had none, but I really liked. The rest went in a box to go to the thrift store. I saved all the paper for now. We won't have to buy theme paper for the next 20 years, I'm sure, but it will all eventually get used, whether by Hopper and Scooter or by Frank, Bugster or Bubster for school.

I also found my stash of construction paper that I'd always had dreams of using with the girls, lots of scrap paper that I currently have put up with the construction paper, but that I'm willing to donate to the girls' classrooms, and a bunch of scrap booking supplies that I look forward to using eventually. It is so nice for it to finally be in it's place!


When all was said and done, I ended up with 1 huge black bag of trash, 5 empty boxes, 1 box of paperwork that I'll have to get to sorting later, and 1 box that will be going to a charity thrift store. 

While I was sorting through the boxes, Mom worked on sorting the laundry and worked in the laundry room. And while it looks like the family room just threw up several bushel baskets full of clothes, the majority of the laundry room floor can be seen for the first time in years. I'm thrilled. We can't wait to get started on things tomorrow!


I'll still be taking it easy, and we'll stop for the breaks along the way, but I feel very hopeful that we may actually able to get this pod emptied and the craft area stocked. 


So am I tired tonight? Absolutely. But I'm also thrilled beyond anything at the blessing the last few days have held.

Monkey? What monkey?

Today, we worked on getting one of the shelves that K painted the other day in the cubby area under the stairs. Let's just say we had to get creative. Even though we measured accurately, the board didn't fit. Turns out the cubby area is not square. Not a right angle in sight, so we are dealing with a parallelogram rather than a rectangle.

Once we finally got the board in place, it fit just fine on the left side, but it stuck out almost an inch in front on the right side, and there was a gap of an inch or so in the back on the right. Since we're planning on putting something a little smoother on top of the plywood, so it won't snag the fabric I store there, we just cut the edge of the front off and stuck it in the gap in the back. However, we've now got to deal with the angles for the cover piece and for the other shelves we'll be putting in.

I'm not exactly sure what we'll be doing to get the angles right. I need to be able to think straight to figure out what to do, and I'm tired enough that thinking isn't a strong point right now. I know there's a construction tool, a compass of some sort, that you can open up into the corner of a box to measure the angle. Something like that could be handy to have around for other uses, so if it's not too expensive, we may spring for one. If not, I'll have to resort to geometry. And geometry means I need to think, so I guess that means I also need to get sleep. Ha.

I was able to finish all the touch up paint for the dark green paint and all but the side of one doorway for the light green, so I'll be able to finish the last of the touch up painting tomorrow. I'll still have to do some painting inside the cubbies when we figure out what we're going to do in there, but at least I'll be able to put the other paint cans away. I'm glad I'm almost done with it.

Mom's dog that we've been sitting has loved hanging out with us downstairs while we work. He often grabs one of his toys and brings it to us to toss, so he can run after it. However, Scooter has fallen in love with two of his toys, and she tries to keep them for herself instead of letting him play with them. She lets us know she loves them by petting them and hugging them. It's been funny to watch her.

Today, she put his little monkey toy in her back 'pocket'. You only thought skirts didn't have back pockets.

That's whatcha get for thinking!

Of logs and meadows, crown moulding and stripes. Oh. And pictures to boot.

I'm tired tonight, but I'll sleep like a log. A very restful log with moss growing on it in the shade of a warm and sunny meadow.

I worked for twelve hours in the basement today. My elbow has rug burn on it from having to paint the caulking that bled into the paint above the baseboards. We tried using clear caulking, but it didn't look like we'd used it at all once it dried, and where we could see it, it turned yellow. So we had to go with white instead. The only problem was that it bled into the green.

Bugster and Frank came over last night and volunteered to help out. They helped with some of the touch up painting that needed done, and I'm so very grateful for the extra hands! Bugster painted the bottoms of the dark stripes where they meet the baseboards, and Frank painted the tops of the crown moulding where it met the ceiling, because the caulking dulled the finish of the paint. It was really obvious when the light shone on it just right, and it would have driven me nuts, so it was nice having it done.

You can see in the picture how crisp and clean the top of the wide stripe to the left looks compared to the other two stripes. That's the difference it made to cover up the caulking that bled into the paint. And as time consuming as it was, it was so worth doing. It makes the entire room look so much better.

So while Bugster worked on the bottom of the stripes last night, I worked on finishing up the light green stripes today, doing both the top and bottom of those that weren't finished yesterday. I also did the entire workout room today. It took several hours, but I'm so glad it's done.

The workout room is as done as it's going to be until next Spring, when we can get the oak door with the windows in it stained and hung. If we have time before my surgery, we'll put the trim around the windows, but I'm okay, if we don't get to it. The rest of the workout room is done, and it's nice to have it out of the way.

The corner boxes were a bit harder to deal with. And although this picture isn't the best, you can get an idea of how they look before and after, with the left side being the before and the right being the after. I'll post more pictures later on. I just wanted to get these up to show what we did today. One other thing we did today was finish covering the television cable, so it blended in better than just having a black cable line hanging down the wall. Most of it will be covered by the bookshelf/entertainment center, but I still wanted it to look nice. We may not always use that bookshelf as an entertainment center. We used some white plastic cable covers that we'd gotten a year ago. The cable originates upstairs on the far wall, goes through the floor upstairs, through the ceiling downstairs, and is hidden under the crown moulding until it comes out at the opposite end of the family room. I love the fact that it's not on the floor with us having to trip over it or try to hide it behind furniture. And while it's a bit of an optical illusion and looks like we have a raised board in the edge of that section of wall, we're pleased with how it looks.

I'm hoping we'll finish up the family room and hallway completely tomorrow. I'd love to get the cubbies hung up above the refrigerator and stove tomorrow, but it will be fine, if it doesn't happen. Once we're done downstairs, I'll be able to concentrate on getting the kitchen and living room cleaned up again. It has been sadly neglected while I've worked downstairs, but it will be done in time for us to enjoy Thanksgiving together around the table.

Tonight?

I have a date with a warm meadow and a little bit of shade.

The end is near.

Today has been a long but productive day.

I spoke with the school to reschedule Hopper's IEP staffing. We had to cancel the first two appointments, because the kids were sick. Exploding gastrointestinal issues aren't conducive to getting out of the house for a meeting. We got the letter on Saturday saying that the final date we could have the staffing was the day I was going in for surgery. But of course. I explained how critical it is for us to have this particular staffing, because Hopper ages out of the program either in May or December of next year, and the date hinges on what happens at this meeting. I got a call at the end of the day. They made a special appointment for us 10 days after I have surgery. Hopefully, I'll be feeling well enough to go by then, but at least The Hubster will have the time off to attend, if I can't. It's quite the relief.

I also got a call from the school saying Hopper wasn't feeling well and had a headache and claimed her ears hurt. I went down to the school to pick her up, and she started crying. She didn't want to come home. She asked to take ibuprofen. I asked, if it was okay, if we tried the ibuprofen out to see, if it worked. They were okay with it, so I went home. I called back 45 minutes later, and she was apparently doing fine.

However, an hour after that the school called again. She apparently had taken a turn for the worse, and she totally freaked the teacher and aides out. When I got there to pick her up, they had her sitting in a wheelchair, and she was all slumped over. They kept talking about how they'd never seen her like that before, and they were quite concerned. They said she complained about her back hurting and that her leg or knee were also hurting her.

I absolutely believe they were very concerned about her. However, I also think she had their number. When she got out of the car, she didn't limp, and she ran downstairs when we got home to see a young woman who had come over to help me out. There appeared to be no pain at all. However, she has been asleep since shortly after she got home, so she definitely isn't feeling well. She just isn't on death's door or in need of a wheelchair. I think she's constipated and doesn't know how to say what that feels like, so it's manifested itself as a headache, ear ache, back ache and sore knee all in the course of a few hours today. We'll keep her home tomorrow and see how she does. She'll go back to school Wednesday, if she's feeling better.

We'll leave the wheelchair out of the entire equation.

The young woman, K, who was helping me out today is a year younger than Hopper. We've known her and her family for most of her life, and I just can't say enough wonderful things about all of them. I needed some help with getting as much done downstairs as possible, so I can relax knowing it's all done before I have surgery. It's the stuff that's kills my back to do on my own. Hubster and I talked about it, and we figured it was worth paying someone to help me get as much done as possible, so we can get rid of the pod and the payment we're making on it each month.

I am beyond excited! K and I worked downstairs today, and we got so much accomplished. The trim work (crown moulding, baseboards and trim) that we've only worked on sporadically for the last year has finally met it's match. K filled the last of the nail holes with putty and she filled gaps between the crown moulding and corner boxes. I worked on filling gaps, too, but I only did one of the corner boxes. The rest of the time, I was caulking the door trim.

The original door trim that we replaced must have been slightly different in thickness. It was wooden. What we replaced it with was the MDF stuff. It could also be that we just weren't sure of what we were doing, but let me just say there were gaps. I used a paintable caulking, so we can go over it all with paint, so it doesn't show, when we're all done. But I am absolutely thrilled and amazed!

The caulking makes everything looked finished. It makes it look like The Hubster and I knew what we were doing when we installed the trim. And it makes it look like the gaps weren't our fault. They've disappeared! Finally, after all this time, I feel like we're going to be able to finish the basement before I go in for surgery. I am so excited!

Tomorrow, K and I will be working on some shelving, since we have to use the saws outside, and it's supposed to be warmer. Once we get done with them, we'll go back downstairs and work on the trim. Then hopefully, we'll be able to work on painting the shelves later in the week when it's warmer. I'm just so excited that we're making such good progress.

The end is in sight!!

Better than shuffleboard.

We had carpet installed in the basement for the first time after the pipe burst and flooded the basement 18 months ago. Before it was carpeted, the floor was linoleum covered concrete. The linoleum was a dark, depressing gray with darker gray spots in it. The only color on the floor was the shuffleboard court that had been pieced together with colored pieces of linoleum.

It was horrible on so many levels. When we first bought the house, I had visions of Bugster's having friends over and playing shuffleboard in the basement. It could be fun. I knew they would think it was silly, but that they'd have fun with it. However, within a few months, I realized that would never happen. I knew we had way too much stuff to ever have the entire floor cleared in order to dedicate half the basement to shuffleboard. Wasn't going to happen.

The walls of the basement were depressing enough. They were wood paneling, but they were the dark gray with darker shades of gray in the grain of the wood. If I look back at pictures, I'm sure the walls won't be as I remember them. For all I know they won't even be gray. One thing that I know I remember correctly is that they were very, very dark. Add the two tones of gray for the floor, and the basement was melancholic and cave-like.

There are other reasons the basement felt oppressive, but I think you get the idea. It wasn't really a place where we wanted to spend a lot of time, and I wanted to change that. So I hung a huge chalkboard on the wall for the girls to play with, and we put a cute little wool rug in front of the faux fireplace, so they could pretend to be sitting by the fire when they dressed up in their dress up clothes. At one point, I even moved the furniture around toward the end of the room around to create a partition and put a bed back there for a spare bedroom.

I tried. In one attempt to make the family room more appealing and cheery, I painted the paneling. I'd paint the large sections a light green followed by a skinny section painted light blue followed once again by a large light green section and ending the overall pattern with a skinny stripe of light pink. In the pin stripes between the larger vertical stripes, I used a small syringe filled with white paint to allow it to flow all the way down the wall in the grooves. It filled in the areas between stripes nicely and with the baseboards painted white and the fresh coat of white paint on the ceiling, it looked like a totally different room. The only problem was that I'd only gotten half done with the paint job before life exploded, and I didn't get back to it before the flood.

Fast forward to today...

The Hubster and I worked on our new family room today. It doesn't come close to resembling the room it was when we bought the house. The shuffleboard has been replaced with a thick and amazingly comfortable carpet. The walls, which are no longer paneling are painted two shades of sage green topped with a nice white crown moulding and tall white baseboards. There are still a few holes that need filled with wood putty and painted over to finish it off, but we're almost done down there.

Besides working on the crown moulding today, we got the treadmill in it's final resting place. It was much easier said than done. Treadmills are heavy even when they fold up and have wheels to help making move them easier. We put it off for entirely too long, so we're thrilled it's finally where it needs to be, so we can use it. We got the chain shortened on the hubby's heavy bag that's hanging mere feet from the treadmill, and got the mats put in place, so we can eventually move his pull up/dip/exercise station down there as well.

We finished cutting the holes in the rest of the doors that we'll have hung downstairs by next weekend.

I used Goo Gone to get rid of the tape residue on the oak cabinets we'd gotten to use in my craft area. As i was cleaning the gunk off them, I started really getting excited about organizing my craft things. They sparkled, and it was just plain contagious!

I'm excited that we're getting that much closer to finishing things up. Once we're done down there, I can get back to the dehoarding.

I'm ready.

Plastic surgery.

Didn't get quite as much done as I'd envisioned today, but I got a fair amount finished.

We worked in the basement today. As we were working on getting the plastic we'd put down to protect the carpet a year ago pulled up from the floor, some of it got stuck around the wheel under a heavy bookshelf. In our attempts to free the plastic from the wheel, we tipped the bookshelf back a bit too far, and one of the wheels snapped off. It's fine that we didn't need the wheels on it, because the books would have likely weighed down the shelf too much to be able to use them effectively anyway, but it took awhile to tip it over and get the other wheels off.

And let me tell you, it was heavy! It took brute strength on my husband's part to maneuver it into position. Unfortunately, I had no brute strength to contribute. We finally got it tucked into the corner where it needed to go, but it wasn't easy. It's hard to move heavy furniture into place on carpet. The carpet tugs and catches on the base and makes it feel 100 pounds heavier than the 100 pounds or so it already weighs. Still. We got it in place.

We also emptied most of the main room of the basement that had been flooded over a year ago. We still have to finish filling the holes in the trim that we've been wanting to get to for months now, but I'm hoping we'll get to them tomorrow. Without all the excess down there, it is a lot easier to move around, so I'm hoping it will go fairly quickly. Once the patching has been done, all we'll have to do is dab a little paint to cover up the patch jobs, and we'll be finished.

I got the doors put back on a cabinet I'd painted some months ago, and we secured the hutch to the base, so it was one more small accomplishment. The only problem is that I realized it's a bit too big for where I was thinking of putting it, so it looks like I'll be figuring out where this piece of furniture will go. Who knows? Maybe I'll try to get my money out of it on Craigslist.

We also got all the furniture that I still need to paint out on the back porch. I have to put another coat on 3 different doors that we're replacing. They've each had 2 or 3 coats, but they still need one more. Then there's the bookcase that we'll be using as an entertainment center that needs painted. It needs at least 3 coats of paint. Thankfully, I'll be able to paint these pieces of furniture whether the girls are at school or at home, so I'll be a painting machine this week.

I'll also be working on even more laundry. I was able to get 5 loads washed, dried, folded and put away today. While I don't always get the clothes put away, I always make sure to fold them when they're dry. I absolutely can't stand wrinkles. Ok. I accept some wrinkles. I'm trying to age gracefully. I just can't stand wearing wrinkled clothes. They don't feel right. They bunch in places they're not supposed to bunch, and they're just not comfortable. So I fold them. I don't necessarily get them out of the baskets and put away right away.

But at least they're folded.

Help! I don't like hum a dity!

The humidity has been horrible today. We've had heavy rains off and on and just a general thickness to the air. I don't like it when it's muggy. It makes it harder to breathe. Add the cold we have on top of it, and yeah. I'll just be glad when the sun dries up the humidity. Hopefully tomorrow. And I really am thankful for the rain. We needed it desperately. It just doesn't take much moisture in the air to feel like it's too much when one lives in a steppe climate.

Ok. I'm done with my whine. I've already finished my cheese. So..onto other business...

In spite of the humidity and overall blechness to the day, we got a little bit accomplished. The hubster and I finally installed all the light fixtures we bought almost a year ago for the basement. In fact, we just finished. They look so nice! They have an iron vine design that wraps around the light fixture. We got 5 fixtures plus a lamp all in the same design for less than $150 last summer. They were being clearanced at one of the local hardware stores, and we'd already decided that was the style we wanted, so we were thrilled when they went on sale so cheap. They should have cost us right at $300 total. It was a nice little savings for us.

Eventually, I'll get a picture up. Right now, though, I'm going to go relax with my wonderful husband and my trusty heating pad.

The powdered sugar has been retired to the freezer for when we need it again. Thankfully, my knee is back to normal.

I'm done. Sort of.

Ok. My work on the insurance claim is done.

Finished.

Almost.

It's not for lack of trying.

I did.

It's not for lack of finishing the paperwork.

I did that, too.

It's because no matter how good an email client one has, they're just not built to handle close to 1GB of any sort of file. And this file is awfully darn close to 1 gig. If I were to keep trying to send this through email to the insurance adjuster, I'd have to send over 50 attachments.

Yeah. That's not happening.

We'd put it all on CDs, but we don't have a CD-R installed on the computer. We do, however, have a DVD-R that also writes CDs sitting in a box in the study waiting for the Reformat Fairy to do it's magic on the computer, so we can install it.

I don't know why I have such high expectations from these fictitious fairies. They never come through for me.

On the other hand...there's someone who always comes through...

Just got off the phone with the hubs. He'll be stopping at Walmart and picking up a jump drive to put everything on. He'll be dropping it off at the adjuster's office tomorrow on the way to work.

I will probably hold my breath until then.

I'm hoping it will keep me from coughing.

I think I can. I think I can.

So today, as I thought I was almost done with the insurance claim, I remembered I had pictures in my phone and on our camera. It's been hard going through them, as most have been the artwork the kids did that was destroyed.

I did figure out what I'm going to ask for the artwork. I feel it's fair. If not, I'm sure they'll tell me. I'm asking $10 each. That way, I can get a photo printed off of each one in the same approximate size of the lost artwork, and I can pay someone to photoshop the mildew and stains out of the pictures. I'm hoping that they think $10 each is fair, since otherwise we won't be able to use them. Besides, I personally think they're worth hundreds of dollars each, since we can never again go back to when our children were little and have them make them again.

Once I figured out how I was going to handle the claim, I got busy numbering each piece of artwork. I knew there were quite a few pieces, but I didn't really know how many until I started counting. My hands are actually cramping a bit from all the typing I've been doing on them. I think it's a touch of carpel tunnel. It's irritating. I want to just get this done, so I've put on my wrist brace, and I'm hoping that will keep it in check until I finish up.

All told, we lost 79 pieces of the kids artwork. Virtually everything that our oldest made was in the box that got wet. And I *did* have plans to use it. You see, I have this really cool murphy table. When it hangs on the wall, it looks like a picture frame. When you're using it, it comes down and the picture frame is underneath the table to be protected until it's visible again.

Here it is in the folded position on one of the pictures for the insurance claim.


And that wall? The one that's painstakingly painted in pastel stripes? Yeah. That took me forever and a day! It had been really dark, super ugly and depressing paneling. I was about halfway finished painting the room when the flood happened and ruined my paint job. I had to laugh. One of the guys working on the removal of the molded and mildewed things asked, if we wanted to try to keep a panel or two that I'd painted. I thanked him, but asked him to please get it out of my sight!

Working on this insurance claim has had my emotions running the gamut. Up. Down. Up. Down. It's spurred me on to dehoard, no doubt about it. But it's also been hard looking at the things we lost. I know that once I submit the claim I'll be fine. It will no longer be looming, and I will be able to move on.

So.

I will finish this and get it sent tomorrow.

No.
Matter.
What.

I know I can. I know I can.

But of course!

My mouth is falling apart. Ok. Maybe not my mouth, but my teeth are. I broke two of them recently...one last week, and one tonight. Thankfully, I don't have any pain except for the sharpness that cuts into my tongue. I'm pretty sure both teeth had temporary crowns on them, so I guess I'll have to get the permanent crowns at this point. I have an appointment later in the week for my cleaning, and I'll make an appointment then to get them fixed.

I felt the best today that I have in almost 3 weeks. The antibiotics are kicking in, and I'm ever so grateful! I was able to get several loads of laundry done today, and I'll be doing more tomorrow when I get home from my doctor's appointment. I'm just going to count on everything being okay when I see the specialist, so I can get busy. I'm looking forward to finally being able to make some progress on dehoarding again. Finally.

My goal for the week is to get all the paperwork turned in for the insurance claim on the basement flood, so we can close the claim out. It's going to take a bit to get it all together, but I'm hoping that I'll finish by next weekend. Then I'll turn my attention to finally finishing up the crown moulding that I had to abandon when I got sick. If we get the basement finished, then we can start weeding through the stuff from the basement and get the pod off our driveway. It will be nice to not have to park on the street when we get it done.

My mind is racing with everything that I need to get finished.

I think I'll write a list.