Tragedy Hits Home

I know I've made an attempt to convey some level of anonymity here.  I've refrained from naming the specific town in Vermont that we're now calling "home."  (Facebook friends & local friends of course know exactly where I live, but this is a public blog & I have readers that I've never met).  What I'm about to share will more than likely give that away completely, but I've decided that that little piece of pseudo-security was worth sacrificing in light of what I'm about to share. 

Let me start by saying this.  Vermont is ranked one of the safest states in the country.  This is a place where you can leave your car running in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot while you run in for your morning coffee.  A place where we were actually laughed at by our landlord when we asked for the house key (said he hasn't locked his door for 30 years!).  I looked up the latest statistics & Vermont's murder rate per 100,000 people is one.  One.  Missouri's is 7.  (Not to mention all of the other criteria they calculate.  And keep in mind that there are 600,000 people in our whole state whereas Missouri has millions).  And I looked back as far as 2001 and there hasn't been a murder in this city specifically in the last 11 years at least.
Mathew & I were raised in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.  (Currently ranked #3 in the world.  Go STL! lol).  We certainly weren't in the heart of the violence by any means, but heard enough of the tragic things that went on from day to day on the news & in the papers that we essentially became numb to it.  It was life.  But now we're far far away from all of that.  In a place where it's so easy to get lulled into that sense of security.  Where it's easy to forget that bad people can truly be anywhere.

Last Sunday, a woman was reported missing.  A woman about my age, a mom, a science teacher at the Academy.  Her car was found on the side of the road in a neighboring town still running with her two year old son, unharmed, still in the back seat.
Monday she was found dead.
Wednesday, a husband & wife were arrested & confessed to the entire nauseating & senseless crime.  All of the horrific details were given to the public and, while I won't spell them out for you here, I will tell you that it was unbelievably awful and seemingly completely without motive.  His words were that he wanted to "get a girl."  No more, no less.  He only knew her because he plowed her driveway a couple years ago & called her because he knew she would be good-natured enough to come to his "aid" when he said he needed help with a broken down car.

I never had the priviledge of knowing this woman.  But from what I hear she was a great person & an inspiring teacher, and that she absolutely adored her son.  It's absolutely horrible that something like this would happen to her, or anyone at all.

So why am I telling you about all of this?  Well, in a weird way it has made me so much more proud of where I live.  Yeah, I know I just told you that a really really bad guy just did the most horrible thing a person could do not far from my home.  But what I haven't told you yet is how my town reacted.

Since Monday, our town has been eerily quiet & somber.  There are 8,000 people in this town.  I'm certain that she didn't know *everyone.*  Yet everyone was saddened.  It seemed as if everyone lost a member of their own family.  Come Tuesday, there were luminieres lining the whole street leading to the academy where she worked, each personally handmade by her students, and great big "We love you Ms. Jenkins!" signs hanging from the building.   By Wednesday there were donation collections & fundraisers popping up in every business & at every register at the grocery store asking for donations to support her son who was left behind.  All week there have been moments of silence for her on the radio & dedications in her honor.  And today.  Today was the most impressive of all.  There was a memorial service for her this afternoon.  And today, the entire town has been draped in pink.

Every tree is lined with pink ribbon, many front porches are decorated in pink.  Even the cars at the three car dealerships in town are covered in pink balloons.  And nearly every. single. person. in this town is wearing pink.  Even my boys went to school today wearing pink bandannas around their heads in support.  Absolutely no one has turned a blind eye to this.  NO one is going about their daily business as if nothing has happened.  NO one is allowing this abhorrent couple to gain anything by what they've done.

So yes, in light of this recent event, I am even more proud of the place we've chosen to raise our family.  We of all people know that you can't run & hide from bad people.  There are going to be people no matter where you are that make bad choices.  But I am so proud to know that I not only live in a beautiful place, I live in a truly beautiful community.  And that is what makes me proud to call this place "home."

American Pickers

Ever watched that show?  Fascinating.  How two people know so much stuff about random crap is beyond me.  And the people that hoard said random crap are equally entertaining!  Mathew watches it from time to time & sometimes I watch it too.  (And frankly, sometimes just watching the show about them digging through piles & piles of junk stresses me out too much, so sometimes I don't!  I know, I'm whacko).

Anyhoo, When we acquired this crazy house, we also acquired all of the JUNK that this elderly couple stored there over the last 30 some odd years.  Most of it truly was crap.  But some of it looked pretty cool!  Most of it not necessarily to our taste, but stuff that looked like it might have value to the right collector.  So, what did we do?  We sent an email to the American Pickers show!

No, we did not get selected to be on the show.  Don't get too excited. ;)

But, we found a guy to haul away all the scrap metal & we found an antique dealer or two to take some of the old furniture, and we unloaded truckfulls of trash to the dump & went on our merry way of tearing down the walls.  Most of the junk is long gone, but there still are a few things left hanging around that we haven't found homes for.

Old photo from what the house looked like when we bought it.  Awesome, huh?

Soooo, Mathew is at the house yesterday, working on the porch and a few other things, and this random dude just shows up.  (He almost took the day off.  Glad he didn't!)  Says he's a "picker" and saw us working on this house, and he wondered if he could take a look around.  Ok, cool.  Whatever.  Well this guy found quite a few things that he was excited to have!  Several of which we didn't think had value at all & we were just going to get rid of!  After it was all said & done, we made about 500 bucks from the random junk that was left lying around!  Plus that was a few less things we had to worry about hauling away.  Sweet! :)  How cool is that!

Now, all of the windows are in in the whole house and it already looks SO much better.  With all of this beautiful weather we've been having, we're having this weird "construction ADD" I like to call it.  ("Ooh, we could start this project next!  Oh wait, if we do this then it will help the outside look better.  Oh, but we really need to start on this part...")  Aah!  It's hard to decide where our priorities are at this point.  We're just so excited to be getting stuff DONE!  Fireplace footings are poured & the floor is cut out, but we had a freeze after that was started & the basement still isn't thawed out, so that's on hold.  Matt tore out half the front porch, but found that the brick under the window needs to be re-mortared before we can rebuild to porch, so that's stalled.  The weather's nice enough to finish the back roof, so that's being torn out as of today.  And Mathew is attending an electrician's class tonight to make sure he knows what he's doing to wire the electricity.  A little bit of a lot of things are being started.  I'll be excited to see what gets finished next! :)

On the homefront though, Mark has some exciting news.  He got his braces taken off!  Woohoo!  Such an exciting moment for a kid. 

He'll have to get them put back on in another year or two, but for now he's enjoying the freedom.  Gavin, on the same day, had to have two teeth pulled to move along his orthodontic journey. :(  Poor dude.  But he did a great job and the tooth fairy was quite kind, so he's okay with it. ;)  And Natalie?  Well she's just busy being her cute little self.
I'll update again soon! :)

Progress!

Such a catch 22. I'm sad to see winter go because here it is just so beautiful. Plus, we've been so busy with the house stuff & work & everything else that I feel like we didn't get to enjoy it as much as I would have liked to. (Next year, mountain fun every weekend, I'm tellin ya!) Now I'm not being totally naive, I'm sure we'll probably get slammed with another snow storm soon before it's all totally said & done, but for the last several days it has been niiiiicceee... and we've taken full advantage. I'm so happy to have warm weather! (Not you midwest people's version of warm lol! But we're ecstatic with our 50 degrees! ;)) We can actually go to the house & put in several hours worth of work & not have crying, shivering, miserable kids hanging on our legs. "Can we gooooo noooooowwww??" Oy.

Of course, with just my luck, as soon as we have this gorgeous weather I have to work nights the last couple of days & miss it. Bummer. But Mathew had a pretty funny story from today. (Well, funny for me because I wasn't there to deal with it! lol) So anyway, today he took Natalie & Copper to the house to do some work to let me have quiet in the house & get some sleep. Usually we'll tie him outside to play (no fence yet to just let him roam) but Mathew planned to put in a few windows, so he let the dog play inside & keep Natalie company instead. (He's needy & gets lonely all by himself.) So Matt's in the living room doing his thing with the windows & the thought does not occur to him that he has just created this great big gaping hole in the wall by taking the old one out. Copper thought "FREEDOM!" and seriously leapt out of the window and took off! (He he he!! I can laugh because I didn't have to chase him down the busy street!) Well, Mathew's not exactly Copper's number one fan. He tolerates him because the rest of us love him so much. But this seriously pissed him off lol. He chased him for a little while, about a couple of blocks up to the grocery store, when he said "screw it. I'm not chasing you anymore. Bye bye." So he turns around & starts to walk back to the house. Copper thinks, "well that's no fun" and just followed him home. End of story. Ha ha! That dog is lucky he's cute let me tell ya. ;)

So anyway, now we have all of the windows in the living room installed! WooHoo! I'm seriously so excited to finally see something be *improved* on the house now instead of just torn apart! I drove by to see it on my way out to work & was just beaming. Yay! No more boarded up window in the front! :) Matt says he was drawing a lot of attention too as he was putting them in. Everyone's out walking on this gorgeous day and he said at least 4 people stopped to talk to him. So here's what it looks like:

Yeah yeah. It's still ugly, but those windows make such a huge improvement!! He's hoping to finish the windows in at least the front of the house tomorrow. Yay! Hopefully I will be able to stay awake & help him out. We'll see how that goes... ;)

My hubby is broken :(

Poor Matt. He just can't seem to catch a break lately. Wednesday, while I was at work, Matt called me. (He *never* calls me at work unless it's emergent, so of course I panicked!) He says, totally calm, "So... I was picking up a box in the garage and I felt this 'pop!' come from my back. I suddenly felt, like, this whooshing sensation go all the way around me and I fell to my knees in so much pain and I couldn't get up. And now my leg's all numb too. So, should I go to your ER or the one here in town?"

WHAT!?!

So let me back up a bit for those of you who don't know Matt or don't know this about him. His back is pretty jacked up. He's 32 years old & feels at least twice that. See, he was rear-ended three times in the span of about a year and a half (I was there for one of them when I was 23 weeks pregnant with Natalie. Good times.), and his back was damaged so repeatedly that despite everything he does he's never quite been able to heal. He's been to orthopedists, chiropractors, various physical therapists... you name it. We had one PT in KC who was pretty great (we love Drew!), but once we moved away he went downhill pretty fast. And let's face it. He's stubborn as hell and has this "I can do it" attitude and doesn't recognize his limits sometimes. Fixing up this house hasn't helped.

So anyway, I digress. So this happens on Wednesday morning, while he's watching all three kids and I'm at work helpless. I tell him to call his doctors office & see what they think & get back to me. He does and sends me a quick text a few minutes later "heading your way. Call you when I get there." Ok cool. So his doctor thought it sounded serious enough that he needed the big hospital where they have facilities to do maybe an MRI and have specialists who can treat him. He gets to my hospital just as I'm about to send my patient for a procedure, so I had perfect timing to go see him and make sure he's okay. Or so I thought. I get down to the ED just 15 minutes after he told me he arrived. Just 15 minutes! And he was already walking out the door.

Oh my freaking God! Are you kidding me?

He says the doctor barely even looked at him. Told him to take three flexeril and lay down for three days (What!). He came in telling them he had a 10 out of 10 pain rating and no one even so much as offered him a tylenol! The doctor gave him a script for naproxen (aleve) and when Matt said that doesn't help him he just said "well then I don't know what to tell you." What!?! I was LIVID. And at that point there was nothing I could do to help. I just had to watch him walk out the door (unable to even stand up straight) with my three kids in tow so I could go back to work. Words cannot express how angry I was at how he was (not) treated.

So that night & the next day he loaded up with advil, ultram, & flexeril to bring his pain level from a 10 to about an 8. I insisted he call the dr again & go in to see her. Thank God for the nurse practitioner!! :) I do love nurse practitioners. They seem to take the time to listen so much more than doctors are ever able to do.

Anyway, she was pretty certain that he herniated a disk & she gave him this suped-up attack plan to finally help him actually diagnose & heal his back! Yay! Steroids for a week, x-ray, appointments for a spine specialists (& subsequent MRI with them), and a highly recommended physical therapist. Yay! She was going to prescribe some pain meds for the night before he started the steroids, but thought the advil/ultram/flexeril concoction would work just as well. Ok. Cool. That night (Thursday) we went to a party with my work friends & he did pretty well on all of that. Except we forgot one thing.

Steroids don't work for two to three days. And you can't take advil or ultram while on them.

CRAP!

I have never seen this man so miserable. It was torture just to watch him. And the NP was out of the office on Friday and the nurse that took his call didn't do a damn thing to help him either. So he had to suffer until yesterday when he finally started to notice some improvement.

I am so incredibly sick of how horribly my husband has been treated. For years really. His doctor in KC treated him like a drug seeker and only doled out a few ultram a month after numerous calls for refills. (Ultram! It's seriously no stronger than advil and that's the strongest thing he's ever taken!) And the ED too! I know Mathew is a pretty stoic guy. I can take one look at him and know he's in unbelievable pain, but to someone who doesn't know him he may not look that bad on a day to day basis. He's not the guy to scream in pain. He'll carry on a conversation. But with this it was obvious how badly he was hurting, and it makes me so sad and angry that our society has switched from helping those who hurt with the ungodly amounts of resources we have at our fingertips, to immediately assuming a person is a drug addict if they ask for pain relief. It's horrible! And I can't tell you how hard it is to be a nurse, a person who's job it is to relieve pain & suffering to the best of my ability, and come home & look at the man I love more than anything in this world & not be able to help him.

So anyway, I'm impressed if you made it this far in my little rant. He's doing a little better for now. Needless to say I have no idea what kind of damper this puts on our timeline for fixing the house, but that's not a priority right now. We'll deal with that as it comes. PT appointments are for tomorrow. Say some prayers that we can finally make him better!