I haven't touched this blog since Christmas of 2013. But so much has gone through my mind in the past few weeks that I can't help but think that the most appropriate place for me to get it all out is here. The place where I started to share my family's crazy journey.
In the past 3 1/2 years, I've met so many more friends and had so many changes in my life that it got to the point where I was exhausted retelling my story. So I didn't. I was really really over being the girl with all the drama. My poor family had enough and I've made it a point to simply move forward. But given that, there are a lot of people who may be reading this who don't know why us moving into our house is such a big deal. I'll try to catch you up with the Readers Digest version.
April 2010: My family was home, playing in the living room on a morning we had off of work. 9:30 am, we looked outside and thought, "huh. The sky looks really ugly..." And then the storm hit that we didn't know was coming. It was loud and scary and the windows "honked" from the pressure of the wind. We were paralyzed in the middle of our living room huddled with our kids and the thought never occurred to us to follow through with the tornado drills that we practiced hundreds of times growing up. It was over as soon as it started, practically. Once the storm passed, Matt & I went outside to assess the damage. Family was fine. Inside the house was fine. ::Breathe:: Damage to the roof for sure, damage to the cars, 30 foot evergreens twisted and ripped in half, barn standing on a splinter, patio furniture and grill lifted up from the back porch and flung up then slammed down nearly a half of a mile away in our corn field. Luckily even the dog, who was outside at the time, was fine. This wasn't fun, but we were going to be okay.
May 2010: 6 weeks have gone by and our insurance company still won't help us. They've given us zero dollars so far, partly because they have yet to confirm a tornado entered our area. (?!) Which of course we fought daily and valiantly. Meanwhile, we're furiously tarping our roof and consolidating our furniture to one end of the house as the ceilings are starting to fall in from all the water. Matt has a video (on an old phone- this was pre-iCloud days) where there is a literal waterfall coming through the hall closet.
Finally, Matt got a supervisor from our insurance company to come out to our house and assess the damage. As soon as I arrived to the house he met me at the door and said "yeah, this house is not livable. We need to get you out." I cried happy tears! Servpro was already there packing up our stuff. Finally we were going to get help!!
NOPE.
May 2010 - August 2011: We moved TEN TIMES. From rental houses, to friends houses, to multiple multiple hotel rooms for the five of us. Work was being done to the the house, but we got pennies on the dollar from insurance. They claimed that they wouldn't pay for the majority of our damage expenses because it was due to water & mold. Duh! The mold wouldn't be there if you didn't let the water get in in the first place, or if you helped us clean it up and rectify it before SIX WEEKS had gone by! I had enough. I completely broke. It got to the point where going to the property made me physically ill. Matt had been begging me for the past decade (not even exaggerating) to move to Vermont. I finally caved. We had nothing to lose and whatever picture I had in my head of living so far from "home," nothing could be worse than this. (Which, for the record, it was the best decision we ever made. No qualms admitting that one).
August 9, 2011: My 31st birthday. We sign a contract on this house that my crazy husband has been in love with this whole time. An abandoned, neglected, historic home that needs a complete gut job. Because we're insane.
September, 2011: We move to Vermont. We move into a tiny rental house with a one year contract because surely it won't take more than a year of exclusively working on this house to make it livable. HA!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 2012: We move into another house with a month to month rental agreement because surely it won't take that much longer.
HHHHAAAAAA!!!!!! 5 years later...
July 24, 2017: Come hell or high water, after a major surge to finish some major things on the house, we move in.
(PHEW! Even the Readers Digest version is lengthy!)
So now you're up to speed on the basics of our life for the past 7 1/2 years. Now comes the part where I need to vent all of the heavy emotions that I've been experiencing for the last 2 weeks.
Have you ever felt extreme elation, anxiousness, and grief all at the same time?? Because that's been me. On loop. For two weeks. I feel like everything has been on pause for the last 6 years since we moved here. And as all of our belongings have been in storage, so have all of my emotions from our ordeal. And as we opened the lock on our storage locker and had to go through all of our stuff, it opened up this wound for me that I tried to pretend was healed.
Here's the thing: First and foremost, I am SO THRILLED to finally be "home." To finally have the opportunity to settle and feel like we can start again. Everything for the past 7 1/2 years has been temporary. And for a couple of years, Natalie didn't even say the word "home." The only life she knew was in addresses. It's not done yet, but it's so close to *beautiful* and this house is going to be something to be admired. We are SO GRATEFUL to have all that we do. Truly. I can't stress that enough. And we also acknowledge that this is a path we chose for ourselves. We could have picked any little house, moved in, and made it work. But we chose the difficult route for the end game. This house is going to be amazing very soon and we are so happy to be in.
But moving day was so much harder than I bargained for. Working full time with three kids busy schedules while trying to pack didn't work so there was a huge scramble to move out. Okay fine. Stressful, but whatever. Round one of stuff gets to the house, I'm met by some amazing friends who are happy to help, and although the house didn't get clean before we started to move in our stuff, I'm happy. I'm seeing where things are going to go, excited to have our furniture back that I haven't seen since 2010, and thrilled to unpack the new.
Next we get to the storage facility and I felt like I was punched in the gut. Tears flowing down my face and I couldn't control it. Pretty sure the moving guys thought I'd lost my mind! lol #1: there is So. Much. Stuff. Oh holy shit what are we going to do with it all? More on that later. But next, as we're digging through and putting boxes and furniture into the truck, we're noticing there's extensive water damage on a lot of our stuff. We've learned later that there was a flood in our storage facility 3 years ago and we were never told. Awesome. Insult to injury. So I'm looking at boxes labelled "Persian Art" or "photos" that are soaking wet. And the bottom third of my dining room furniture that's covered in mold. My father-in-law's chair destroyed. My table broken in the cross-country move. FUUUUUCCCKKKK.
Meanwhile, my husband is making a pile of things he already knows to get rid of. One of which is my child's wagon. Because she was a toddler when all of this started. And my life's been on pause. And now she's in the third grade. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. On one hand we've bent over backwards to make sure that the kids never felt that any of this was hard in any way or that they've gone without or missed anything. But I have in front of me what I had for my child and she missed. It's so stupid I know, but it started this grief process I didn't know I needed to go through. Gavin has since disclosed to me that he just doesn't remember those 15 months in Kansas before we moved. He's blocked it out. This was much harder on my kids than I ever realized and that kills me.
So... we get all of our stuff moved into the house. SO. Much. Stuff. First of all, we had a 5,000 square foot house at one point. Our house now is half that size and our furniture is Midwest big, not New England conservative. We can figure that out. But what the hell is up with all of these boxes?! This is insane!
After the first week, I was going to take a week off of work to unpack and settle in. So we can deal with this. I think??
But first lets get to the house. Pretty? Yes. Ready? Noooo. I wasn't aiming for perfect. I was aiming for functional. After moving in we discovered that there was a problem with the wiring. Outlets in the kitchen, with the exception of the oven and refrigerator, don't work. We still haven't figured out why. The oven, turns on so we take for granted that it's fine. But turns out, NOPE! It doesn't actually heat. The manufacturer has no idea why it's not working, and can't help with a warranty because, guess what? It's past it's warranty as it sat dormant in storage waiting for the kitchen to be ready. We need to buy a new fucking range. GAH!! Sink: Plumbing not yet installed. Can't get a drink of water let alone wash a dish. Laundry? Also brand new and doesn't work? WTF. A week later we come to find out that drywall got placed before the plumbing was finished- so the washer wasn't getting water! LOL! Okay, so that one was an easy fix, thank God. But now we've been in the house for over two weeks and the most I've been able to do is make stew in my crockpot in the laundry room. I'm really over it.
Okay, so now back to the unpacking. This is what has really gotten me. And at the same time I feel really stupid for it being so hard. As we've unpacked, there has still been a number of silly boxes that were packed by Servpro with next to nothing in them. That's been fun to unpack as it eliminated clutter in a big hurry. (Matt went through a bunch in storage 5+ years ago, but not nearly enough). But unpacking has hit the "play" button from our paused life in 2010. Can you imagine taking everything off of your refrigerator right now- bills, photos, kids art, reminders- and pack it up only to unpack it over 7 years from now? Super weird. A lot of stuff we've looked forward to having again has been wonderful to see. A lot of our Persian art, my Kitchenaid mixer (!), and photos! Baby books! Scrapbooks!! Ahh. That stuff made me so happy. I don't know where I'm going to put it, but I have the stuff back that makes it our home!!!
But so much of what we've unpacked has been overwhelming. For one thing, tons of stuff that were packed, if we had packed ourselves we wouldn't have brought this stuff here. First of all, Matt had recently closed his mortgage company before things happened. We had a ton of stuff from his office in our basement that got packed up (anyone need a fax machine?). And Matt, being the crazy guy I married, was planning on starting this retail store in our town before we moved. Thousands of CD's, t-shirts, toys, collectibles, etc were packed up and brought to Vermont and now we don't know what to do with it. Ebay to the rescue I guess! Then there's that "unpause" thing we talked about. It's a little entertaining and a little sad to unpack the technological stuff from 2010 now in 2017. I've unpacked thousands of CD's, a ton of DVD's, a number of flip phones, gigantic computers, a video camera, and a freakin' palm pilot! Granted, that was probably sitting in my desk drawer from a couple of years beforehand, but holy crap! It's amazing how much has changed in that relatively short span of time. WTH do I do with that stuff?! And my babies. Ugh. Every box of toys and dress up clothes I unpack I want to cry all over again. I have teenagers with deep voices who shave and date, and I'm unpacking their Mr. Incredible costume and ninja turtles. My baby girl is up to my shoulder in height and is too big for me to hold anymore, but I've unpacked her alphabet caterpillar and little lambs that decorated her bedroom. It's hard to accept how much time has passed since everything happened and to realize how long it's been since we've felt home and secure.
So, yeah. I've been dealing with a lot of emotions over the past couple of weeks. It's like the last hurdle we have to power through for us to heal. But it's the last one. It really is. Soon we'll get through all of this stuff that's taken over our house. (we appreciate your patience as you wait for pictures! It'll get there!) Soon we'll fix all of the problems that are making living hard now and soon we'll finish all of the last details that will make our home complete. And as my birthday approaches tomorrow, it marks an important date in our story: 6 years since we've bought this house and we're finally in, making it ours.
For now, we're home. We're together, and we're healthy. And despite all of the "difficult" we're getting through right now, nothing will ever be more important than that. We're just very ready to start our next chapter. Hopefully they next one will be boring.
