Expect Deyays

How tired am I? So tired that I started a conversation with my son in the car–ten minutes AFTER I dropped him off at school. I was kind of mad he didn’t answer me…

I really can’t complain; all of our challenges are definitely of the first-world variety. We’ve been in a hotel for two weeks while our house is de-molded (one more week to go!) and I know that’s a privilege. Yet…I want to go home. As more mold have been found and more facets of repair have been layered on, I kept thinking of my favorite local digital road work sign: EXPECT DEYAYS

The sign cheerfully sits beside a roundabout under construction near our house. I had many reasons to look forward to moving into our new house—many! I REALLY looked forward to the shorter drive to school that would soon begin at that roundabout. I knew we wouldn’t get it right away, since the shorter road was under construction, but I'm excited for it to happen.

S. started the high school schedule this year, so I make at least four roundtrips to school each day. Saving ten minutes per leg saves me almost an hour and a half per day—that’s no small amount!

So when the road, due to open in August, didn’t finish on time, I was bummed but not overly so. I expected delays. It’s now due to open in November.

Blue=current options. Red/yellow=future option!

I haven’t been quite so calm about all the delays in our mold remediation process. My home is my sanctuary, so it’s hard to have mold, dust, dirt, and lots of strangers in it, especially since they’ve had to destroy and rebuild parts of it with all our belongings inside. I didn’t quite expect all the delays; I definitely didn’t expect the DEYAYS.

Yet they have come. One night we went down to the hotel pool to de-stress and met a delightful young man named Jensen who favored us with renditions of his favorite Jimmy Buffett songs—“Knees of My Heart,” “Volcano,” and “Come to the Moon.” Pretty good taste for a three-year-old! YAY! Thank you, Jensen.

Speaking of taste, our son, newly turned eleven, seems to be having a growth spurt—at least if the three-course breakfasts he’s downing at the hotel buffet are any indication. This morning, Big A and I decided that it might be a good thing that the HVAC contractor who goofed is buying those breakfasts! Yay!

I’ve been disappointed in my goals for the month—painting the kids’ Harry Potter bathroom, for one. Instead, I took out my frustration on creating a kick-butt Fire Swamp in the back of our van for Trunk or Treat. YAY!

Flame Spurts! (Candy) Lightning Sand! R.O. U.S.!!!

The dog has gone nearly everywhere with me and made lots of friends—far more than I have, thanks to his puppy magic. And the folks at the hotel simply could not be any nicer. Yay! We’ve had lots of random, silly fun as a family. Yay! And ice cream, lots of ice cream. Yay!

Our new home almost seems surreal; spending three weeks away after five months there has set it at a distance, in a way. Yet, as we all count down the days to our return home, I can’t help thinking what a wonderful partner and children I’ve been blessed with in this life. Yay!

EXPECT DEYAYS, everybody!

Bruno hoping for DEYAYS!

We've Got Mold Again

Or in this case, DO NOT auto-correct!

Yes, we've got mold again. Apparently mold brings out the blogger in me. Hopefully, lack of mold brings out the reader in you. Misused song lyrics aside, I actually started this blog during a mold remediation in our previous house; it's tradition at this point!

I’ve spent considerable time trying to decide how many circles of heck we have in our home right now. And it’s heck, not hell, because, really, they’re just petty annoyances. Wait, though—would lots of CONSTANT petty annoyances be worse than say, eternally burning in a lake of fire? Nah, we’ve definitely got heck.

So a slight construction error, a teeny oversight, a small piece of wallboard missing between our Florida-hot attic and the air handler closet convinced our chill air handler to sweat things a bit, then the sweat went and invited mold to the party. Luckily, we saw all the cars parked on the front lawn and called the cops before the party got out of hand. Or into the ducts.

The mess did manage to roll downhill, though, soaking the studs and wallboard between the front hall and master closet. Party on, dudes!

So, at this precise moment, our air handler has been kicked out of the house; it’s sleeping it off in the garage. Amazing new antimicrobial sprays have been sprayed. Damaged wallboard has been ripped out in the air handler closet upstairs and the hall downstairs. And we have four dehumidifiers running and two portable A/C units trying to cool the great room and master suite.

After a lot of thought on the above situation, I decided we don’t have circles of heck in the house, exactly—more like a Venn diagram of heck.

The first circle, the upstairs, has been abandoned. It’s excessively hot and proportionally miserable. The second circle, the back of the house, is almost cool but sounds roughly like the inside of a jet engine. The white noise rises to the level of—honestly, I can’t choose from the metaphors the leap to mind. Feel free to insert your own image here. The third circle, the front of the house, is moderately hot but somewhat quieter.

In the center, where these three circles overlap (and, ironically, where Harry Potter lived) is the Heckmouth beneath the stairs. Basically, the attic is still open to the air handler closet, but now the wall below the air handler closet has been opened to the house. With a dehumidifier in front.

In practice, it’s like having a giant fireplace in the center of the house. Hot attic air pours down through the wall and into the hallway. You can warm your hands on it as you go by.

Welcome to the Heckmouth.

Night and...

...day! (Not pictured: 7 more machines)

And, you know, it’s unscheduled work for the trades—they fit emergencies like this around their regular work. They come as they can. The dog loses his mind. My husband loses it at the dog. The kids aren’t sleeping well. All the first-world problems. Heck, I tell you. Sheer heck.

So standing here, in the middle of my third mold remediation, I’ve finally figured out that having my home, my sanctuary, my introvert’s snail shell completely invaded by random people from multiple trades doing unexpected and messy things—well, all that brings me to a place where I have nothing to lose.

And that, it turns out, happens to be where I need to be to create.

I’ve been trying to write more lately and basically, in a nutshell, more or less have written…less. I’ve read a lot of helpful advice about the discipline of writing every day, I’ve guilted myself with thoughts of how much housework or editing I could be doing with the time I’m setting aside to write. I’ve tried to back myself into writing like a nervous mare with a shirt over her eyes. Nope.

So the problem’s not lack of time or motivation or ideas, it’s just regulation anxiety-induced paralysis. Writer’s block with a healthy side of self-editing because, after all, I edit for a living.

For now, that’s all in the past. I’m at honey-badger-level of don’t care. Sidebar—do honey badgers regularly get their homes torn apart? In the end, I am producing mold-inspired blogs, poetry contest entries, and chunks of longer works in progress. And, wow, that sounds like some really messed up Pinterest recipe board--Mold-Inspired Writing for Fall!

To paraphrase Buffy the Vampire Slayer again, and Willow for the first time, "I think we've kind of played the scene." Look for more scenes from the Heckmouth coming soon to a blog near you!