Tuesday, July 1, 2014

If There's One Post You Don't Read Today...

... this can be it.  Because I'll fully admit that tonight I'm venting... and using my blog as my journal... and if you don't want to think of me as totally whiny right this second it might be a good one to scroll on by... 

My blogging has been taking a back seat lately to the giant basement cleanup I started a little over a week ago.  It seems that the second trimester urge to nest and clean has arrived without the accompanying energy boost.  I'm not totally shocked since I spent all forty weeks of Patch's pregnancy desperately waiting for an energy boost that never really arrived.  But since I was in the first trimester and in no shape to clean up the entirety of the last flood in the basement (I cleaned the quarter of the basement I used and just looked at the rest and wanted to cry) I let it go for a while and just refused to go near the rest... but I've taken two hours each night over the last eight days and begun the process of bleaching everything inside the range of flood #6 (that would be the sixth time I've walked into the basement to find it with various levels of water running or seeping into it, in less than two years).

If we have not moved before flood #7, I might go insane.  If we're here and the water creeps in either through the water table (not so bad) or from the sewer line with the clay joints and all those tree roots (very bad) I might lose my mind... The greatest challenge has been the various places the water comes in.  When the water table is too high it creeps in from the east side of the house and runs from one side to the other.  If the sewer backs up it comes in through the south side of the house and floods everything in sight.  So when I move everything to get away from the rising water table I inevitably put it near the place where the sewer will back up if it gets out of hand and if I move everything to flee from the sewer backing up it's immediately set right in the path of the rising water table.  And since the "hazmat" team that did the first sewer clean up left.... remnants of the incident... on the floors and smeared on the walls... I decided it's best not to even ask for them to come back and so I'm doing the cleanup myself.

However my body seems to think that I should just sleep all the time, day and night... so slow and steady is my current cleaning motto.  Which is all one long, long way of explaining why for the first time in a very long time I haven't been blogging just about every day.

And it doesn't help that I've been in stormy little rain cloud mode this week (if you can't tell).  Between someone breaking into our garage and stealing Paul's run down (and run over) old bike (which actually turned into a blessing because he found a better bike for a very good price second hand on Craiglist), and discovering that there are roughly 60 serious-criminal-offenders-of-the-type-they-register-online (and having gone through the list person by person I can say that the vast majority were very serious) in a one mile radius of our house, and waking up to local news on a daily basis that has included two missing persons (one who was found... not alive...) and two stabbings in the past week and I've pretty much been saying "we have to move... we just have to..." to Paul in a frantically hormonal (and I'm sure annoying) tone about a dozen times a day.

And the next person who says "there are people like that everywhere" to me may get an earful about how I'm tired of seeing headlines about violent crimes fairly close to my house.  Because while there are "people like that" everywhere I'm ready to move someplace where there isn't quite such a high proportion.  Ten miles north or south or east or west would do.  Just not right here in the middle of everything, even if quite a bit is within convenient walking distance from our current place.

Also, the local refrain I see on media facebook pages of "at least it's not Detroit" is not really all that comforting.

Although what this really probably comes down to is that it's been 90 degrees and humid in the upstairs of our house today and I'm just grumpy.  I shouldn't be.  I'm reminding myself that this is the home stretch right now for Paul's education and that we're so blessed in so many ways that I try to remind myself of every single day... and that we've lived where we live for 22 months and that I should be able to survive two more (especially since most of our water problems have been in spring and spring is long gone).

So... my goal tomorrow is to put this week's attitude of stormy little rain cloud behind me and remember all the things that I should be thankful for... and hopefully that will give me something to write that is actually worth reading!

6 comments:

  1. I'll say a little prayer for you. Besides your personal trials you have the nagging worry of crime around you. When the area has more than a minimal level of crime and (now you can see online) criminals, it creates a stress that's hard to measure but truly affects you over the long haul.
    You can pray to the Guardian Angels to watch over your family and your home, and you can make sure to bless the house, and ask God to protect you from anyone seeking to harm you and yours. Then don't worry.
    Hopefully you'll be able to move soon, within months, and some of these worries will vanish.
    Just make sure before you move in someplace you ask about basement flooding! BTW, I feel your pain with regards to the basement flooding. Last night water was pouring in down the basement steps, under the closed outer door. Pouring. Like a waterfall. It was also backing up from the street sewer drain. This was the result of the severe thunderstorms that came through Chicago last night. (I know they were headed to Michigan - hope you didn't flood again!) So I was up until 2:30 am yesterday manning a pump to get the water out. Not too much got wet but I had to keep turning the pump off when the water level caused it to make that sucking sound, and turn it on when the water level got about 3 inches above the pump base, about every 5 minutes, on 5 minutes, off 10. (We don't have an automatic sump pump with a floater switch, but I think we need to get one!) Today our new neighbors were trying to dry out a rather nice looking area rug they must have had in the basement. They just moved in June 1, and probably never imagined the basement would flood. So sorry for them.
    Hope the cooler weather will make your mood a little better. You really are in the home stretch with regards to Paul's education, and him finishing that will be such an uplift.
    So God bless. I'll be praying for you. ~ Bonnie
    By the way, I finally figured out how to use OpenID to post here, so I'm going to use that from now on. That will be one less person using the Anonymous account.

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  2. ((HUGS)) and prayers for you, friend!! Come to the west side of the state! It's much nicer! Still floody at times but the rest is better! ;) Plus I would love to have a friend near by!

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  3. What is your plan after law school is done? Does Paul have a job lined up in Michigan or will you be potentially moving out of state?

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  4. Yeah, you need to move. While there ARE bad people everywhere, they do tend to congregate in low-income areas. That's just the reality. Better to live in the worst home in the best neighborhood than the nicest home in the worst neighborhood. As your kids get older, they'll want to ride bikes out front, walk to the drugstore - and you just can't have that happening in that area. Plus, what quality of children live in the neighborhood? I'd assume that as a homeschooling family, having the kids play with the neighbors is even more important than for kids who get those peer interactions at school. If the rest of the families in the 'hood are.... less than what you'd like your children hanging around, you gotta go. You can only keep the kids locked up on your property and right under your wings for so long. True that kids are never 100% safe in any circumstance, but why not increase the odds of them finding good friends and being safe playing in the neighborhood?

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  5. I totally understand how you feel about your living quarters Cam. We are currently maxed out on space and the violence here is really bad too, lots of innocent people being shot, gang retaliations, gunshots at night, etc, to the point where I'm afraid to walk by myself around here. Two more years...

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  6. Hugs and prayers....what a difficult situation.

    Trulia.com is a wonderful website when it comes to finding homes. You can plug in any home address and there is a link which gives you crime stats for that neighborhood and breaks the crimes down (violent, non-violent, etc.).

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