Damage Control

BEFORE:

WITH EVERYTHING OUT:

Last week, we sent our little boy off to Vacation Bible School ("Crocodile Dock")... and while he was safe in the arms of the Wild Woman, we began the daunting challenge of remodeling Josh's room...and as usual, we bit off more than we were expecting. Once again, we had a room that had been made over thirty years ago, with particle board flooring that had been damaged badly when the pipes broke those many years ago. Again, we suspected there were issues (the warped beams were a good clue, and the questionable parts of the floor were another), but we didn't have the time or resources to allot to them until this last week, so we just put down some strong boards on any place we worried about, and kept on trekking. Not five minutes after the first protective board was moved out of place, Jon put his foot down, and this happened:

It was an omen,but we didn't know it yet. This room was going to do all in its power to KILL us (or at least give us many, many reasons to thump severely on each other). Call it Amityville-lite -- all of the horror, half the caffeine. As my mother quipped, it was such a brilliant move for us to pick the most humid days of the year to try to work in a room with no cross ventilation.

We were suckered in by the floor...it was freakishly easy to rip it out thanks to the pipe-flood, and for a little bit, we actually thought we were going to be ahead of the game. Then, we came to the realization that the load-bearing walls had been attached to the flooring (that we were trying to remove), and not to the floor beams. We also found out that there was a section of wall that hadn't been insulated in the first place (when they moved the window)...and that once again, the insulation beneath the floor had taken in water from the pipe-flood, and then fallen on to the ground and disintegrated. That we could take care of...unfortunately, the problem of correcting the walls safely remained...and became a back and forth argument between the home improvement team for three days. It would only have been a prolonged discussion for two, but Jon had inhaled copious amounts of dust when we ripped floor and walls, and became very, very ill...complete with high grade fevers and chills the entire first night (and much of the second day)...and it was all he could do to function the next day. Love my husband's side of the family, I really do...but no project can be completed without the males (primarily Harry, Tim, and Larry) grousing at each other over every nail placement. Believe it or not, it's a process that actually does work for them. Somehow, they will eventually hit on the best solution, but I have a really hard time waiting the process out...and a harder time listening to it when I'm on the outside of the current "discussion". I mused to myself that I knew where all the measuring tapes were, ...that I could step out of the room and let them settle things the old-fashioned way...but it didn't _quite_ get to that point. Almost....awfully dang close, but Not _Quite_.

On the first day, we had three fans going in there, and that was a foolish, foolish mistake. The dust went everywhere. Regretfully, we put our fans aside, and began spritzing the room with a water bottle to keep the dust down. Jon and I tried to wear masks (no one else seemed interested), but they kept making us overheat more, and with mine, I could wear the mask and overheat AND have my glasses fogged up constantly...and be completely unable to see any of the lurking, rusted nails underfoot. Gack!

So here's a lovely combination : take three and a half days of no floor; a frantic mother missing her sprog terribly, and absolutely convinced that her three-year old was going to have a homesick meltdown and beg to come home to the bombsite house; a hot, airless room; four guys who argued their way from beginning to end of project; and my usual lack of tact and timing. All of us were in early and left late every day, and it still took forever to get the walls corrected...Jon was doing the lion's share, Harry was of course giving him a run for his money. Torey turned out to be a wizard with a saw blade, and Tim, though truly frustrated that he couldn't do more, brought his experience as a carpenter to bear and called out instructions like a four-star general. Work was getting done...things were happening...but they were simply not things that seemed visible...and they were not things that got a floor down. Now, I know this may come as a shock to you, but I loathe, LOATHE!!!! remodeling. Mom and Dad always had a couple of projects going on...the house always had at least one room underway, if not more...and at our house, everyone piled in, beat a path through the room and then got the rest of house back where it belonged. In this case, the impression that I got was that I really wasn't wanted in Josh's room...(and since I will concede that my personal tension may have been ratcheting up the mood levels substantially, I kind of understand that) and Jon kept throwing busywork at me like sorting through boxes or working in other rooms in the house. However, in my mind, I needed to be working in Josh's room, not puttering around and this just raised my stress level more. By the thousandth time I heard the phrase, "Well, it's really just a one person job." I was honest-to-God going to change my name to Norman Bates and just go flippin' Hitchcock-ian on all of them. I kid you not, I could feel the blood slamming up my neck, and I actually saw white and black spots in front of my eyes. Our physical resources were limited. Torey helped occasionally, but was more there to help Tim...Tim really wanted to be in the thick of it, but sadly wasn't up to it (as it was, he pushed himself far too much, and was in agony for days after the fact)...it was Jon and Harry chugging through...and I (because of my lack of carpentry knowledge) was relegated to the role of aggravated (and, who am I kidding? Aggravating) bystander and occasional gopher.

While in one sense, Jon's desire to have the other rooms sorted out would have made sense, everything from Josh's room, including the things from the demolished shelves we HAD been using for storage was now everywhere else in the house. I had no place to put anything...I couldn't move around my own house...especially since all of Josh's furniture was crowding everything else up...Tim and Harry and Torey and Jon continued their "pronounced and prolonged discussion" regarding every conceivable nuance (at one point, it literally took me forty minutes just to drag a supply list out of them), but the project still seemed (from my now very tensed and highly frustrated perspective) to be really and truly bottle necked...all effort seemed focused on one aspect of the project, but no one was working on prepping other parts of the project. In my head, I felt the hours slipping by like they were heavy rocks sliding down my back. I was thinking, "We can multi-task. I can hammer some nails into those beams on the other side of the floor...Someone could string wire for the insulation as I went through...we could have this done and ready to go for when they wanted to move on. That way it wouldn't take as long to deal with it." Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to voice that opinion at the exact moment that everybody had finally had enough, and Tim and Torey left the project all together. Harry had already "done his time" for the evening, but came back from bowling to try to help us some more. Jon and I were hot and tired...and I continued on my tact parade...and this led to us snapping at each other...Something that rarely, RARELY happens... but by the end, we called it quits and were almost smiling at each other again. We (meaning Jon) decided that I would have to go down to Mom's to help with Josh, and Jon and Harry and Larry would do what they could to pull it all together. I hated the situation...Not only could I not help with the one part of the project I actually would have been good at, but Jon was forced to miss Josh's first ever song and dance program.

Jon hated breaking his promise to Josh...but before I left, things FINALLY, FINALLY started going our way. Larry came in to check the wiring (and thank God he did, as we found three patches of bare wire!!!!) Harry, bless his heart, helped Jon get the floor down, and while I hated to leave at that point, Josh, once I told him I was going to stay for a few days seemed to relax a little (though I somehow still managed to remain completely wound for sound the entire visit)...and I was pelted by running Josh kisses for two hours after my arrival...I was so grateful for the Bible School set up...it kept him occupied...it kept him busy...it tired him out too much to dwell on the homesickness, but there was still tension in him...(and I can't honestly say if it was the length of the visit....or if he was wicking it off of me). I discovered literally an hour before his program that the video camera may have been plugged in, but that it wasn't charging. Thankfully, I got the kinks out and managed to swing 91 minutes of charge...but as the program drew on, I started panicking again...I was getting a message from the camera telling me that the tape had Five Minutes left...then Four Minutes Left...Then Three Minutes Left...and at Two Minutes Left...the program was over, and the kids were out of the sanctuary. Josh was the youngest participant in this year's Bible school (not including the baby "mascots" who really couldn't do much more than coo and goo) by eighteen months, but according to Mom, he held his own. Back at the ranch, Jon (with Harry and Larry's help) was a sanding fiend. Much of his time was spent literally waiting for paint to dry, but he finally got it done, whipped together Josh's new shelving, and got most of Josh's things back in place. Throughout the process, we had a series of casualties in the furniture contingent...One chair broke...our dining room table imploded under the extra, unaccustomed weight of more boxes and tools...Josh's changing table sadly did not make it through the process (which may have been just as well, the old hoss had hung in and gone above and beyond the call for months and months after a normal table would have just keeled over and died...and we had a moment of silence for its passing)...our shop vac started having issues and may not recover...and right now my front porch and the side of the house look an awful lot like a set from The Beverly Hillbillies, but

the room,

when we finally came home,

was just unbelievably cool!!!!

... Josh was absolutely thrilled...and so was I....


Now, if only I just didn't have to put the rest of the house back together again.




We'd like to take this time to thank every member of our families for truly going above and beyond the call to help us get this completed. Jon, Tim, Harry, Larry, Torey, Mom, Dad...and all of the Bible School-ians of Roscoe United Methodist, you have our deepest thanks and appreciation. And I know that I personally gave everyone of you reasons to wring my neck several times over, and I am also very grateful that none of you rose to the bait...



From Jon and I....and especially from Josh, Thanks so much for all that you have done.

SWEDISH FISH ...Made in Canada

It's true (just check any bag of the candy), but I am the only person in the world who thinks that is funny...


Josh's Song List May '09
Stand By Me; the lion sleeps tonight; mr.mifistofelees

<-- On the left, a picture of Josh at age three at story time



This is a picture of what Josh should
look like as a teenager -->

wonder if he'll still be wearing the cunning,
paper-bunny-ears
...or the uber-cool, kool-aid 'stache.

Outtakes:

Josh was in his room playing, and started into his usual, "Daddy-Daddy-Daddy! Come here!." Jon decided to be ornery and replied, "I'm not Daddy, I'm Bob."Undaunted, Josh took up the chant again. "Daddy-Daddy-Daddy!"Jon grinned, and replied, "I'm telling you, I'm not Daddy. I'm Bob."And from the other room we heard, "Come here, Bob!"

"I don't like you. You're a mean mommy. Mommy, I love you. Can I take my nap in your room, 'cuz I love you and you are bootiful?!"

The Boy Wonders...and changes his art style (he began drawing flames, then moved on to amoeba (amoeba? multiple-amoeba) and now he's working on his spider-people series -- but Picasso's rages are nothing to Josh's anger that he can't draw a perfect circle or a perfect smiley face.

Let there be sunlight...and we have said that it is good...for sunlight brings the end of cabin fever, and Josh and Harry can cavort outside, feeding Harry's dog, riding around on the tractor, setting the garden to rights... Story time has come to a temporary end...and Josh surprised me by reciting Little Miss Muffet and Jack and Jill to me. I knew he was flirting and dancing, and running around like a wild thing, but who knew, he'd been listening all along.


I have begun my quest to incorporate all of the silly, bad movies I adore into Josh's on-going media education, starting with Adam West's Batman...he loves Catwoman, but prefers her in the catsuit, not the miniskirt. Ohhhh, this does not bode well.

We have been trying to explain death to Josh...and why daddy is sad...and why he had to say goodbye to a friend he can't see anymore. I can't say that I found Bill's death to be unexpected, given his health problems, ...but it occurred much faster than I thought it would. He had severe liver issues, was diagnosed with something called Casselman's Syndrome (which was described to me as being everything in a cancer, without actually being a cancer -- does that somehow make it "Cancer-Lite"?), and was left with a depleted immune system...and any infection would have been devastating. He was another of those big men with the big laugh...and he was always very nice to Josh and I...according to Jon, he knew every one's stories...and everyone knew he knew every one's stories. And if he didn't know a story, he'd just make a call to someone who did. All that Josh understands is that Daddy gets very quiet and sad when he mentions his friend, Bill, and he keeps trying to help in the only way he knows how...he reaches out and hugs Jon...he places his forehead on Jon's and his nose on his nose, and whispers, "Don't be sad, Daddy." Since I didn't really have the benefit of knowing Bill better, my grief comes from watching this...from watching Jon, in his grief, try patiently to explain that he misses his friend.... and watching the small boy who knows something is wrong, and wants to make it better...and my knowing that Josh is with the best of intentions, causing Jon more pain because the explanations must be repeated, over and over again. To his credit, Jon has calmly and quietly borne through the repetitions, no matter what it cost him internally. Josh has taken more than a passing interest in cemeteries lately...and rather than go in to the rest of it, I just mention that they are pretty, quiet places that people visit occasionally. Somehow, I think he's moving on to other topics, though...every monument is now irrevocably linked with the Easter Island Moa statue from Night at the Museum...and each tombstone gets the immediate shriek, "GUM-GUM!!!" Once again, I find myself envying his resilience.

A tale of two schools...I was more nervous than Josh as we went in for our scouting-out interviews...I slept less, woke more often. We dressed, we went to Mickey-D's...and arrived nearly an hour earlier than I had anticipated. Misty was darling...Josh pulled his "I'm so shy, I shall hide behind my mommy and no one will see me" routine...but within two minutes she was on the floor, in her nice business outfit, laying flat out, and showing him their new baby tadpoles. Josh was entranced...and suddenly couldn't leave my side fast enough. The school was decorated with a different theme in every room...and in the preschool room, there were orcas swimming all over the walls. More intriguing to Josh was the bunny Diamond-Bunny-Scout, a much-handled, much-loved black and white lop. Josh, who hasn't seen many bunnies in his lifetime, was simply amazed. They were good folks, and it looks like they try to have more than the state requirement of adults per students there...everyone was quite happy to answer my questions, and Josh was in and playing with the kids like he'd been there all his life. By the time we had to leave (though we were invited to stay longer), not only did Josh not want to go, but the kids didn't want Josh to go. The next day, he was in a royal snit because I wasn't taking him back to "His School" that day. On Friday, we checked out the second school...and it was lovely and bright, and much bigger than I had imagined...but as Josh entered his possible classroom, he was met with the shouts of four preschool boys roaring out the names of shapes. I'll grant I was impressed with the fact that they knew what a cylinder and a sphere were, but Josh was a bit buffalo-ed, as he always is when encountering unexpected noise. Ms. Cheryl is a larger than life character, with seemingly boundless energy, and a gazillion crafty-creative ideas, and certainly showed both genuine affection and the right amount of firm discretion with her charges...but Josh wasn't certain what to make of them at first...and for about the first fifteen minutes, he was more comfortable exploring the far side of the room (the part that had no one else in it) than he was getting involved with the loud-fest. Josh eventually was drawn into the shape game, and got six of them correct, and Ms. Cheryl crowed his triumph to everyone. I like her...I like the other ladies and I think Josh liked them too...but this time, when I slipped away to chat with the administrator, Josh wasn't completely involved in all of the goings on...and very much noticed my absence...and this didn't happen at the first school. (He's been telling me even days after the fact that he really missed me when I was gone while he visited the second school.) While the second school did not have a bunny, it did (temporarily) have a bouncy-inflatable castle that the staff brought in to combat the rotten weather of the last few days. Josh LOVED the bouncy thing. LOVED it, and bounced around like a weebil on crack...(now there's a picture in my head!)...he'd fall down, he bounce up...he'd laugh like a manic. However, when I took my notes back to Jon and gave him my assessment of both, I couldn't see a lot of daylight between them, and poor Josh wasn't able to tell us which one he like more because in his mind, they were both mixing up. There were aspects of both that we really adore...one may be more play-based...the other more focused-on-the-educational, but both tried to adhere to the National Education Guidelines...and both were essentially doing the same section of the curriculum at the same time, just approaching it differently. After much discussion, we decided on the school with the bunny, and Josh will be starting mid-June, just after returning from Bible School. There will be a lot of changes then...he should also be coming home to his newly re-moded room...the good news is that we won't be dealing with plumbing and sealing as much this time around...the bad news is that I am fairly certain that the flooring and the wall-paneling will be much harder to rip out .

Ooohhhh, we put so much time into last weekend's re-mod of the bathroom that our date weekend fell completely by the wayside. Our seventh anniversary passed quietly, bobbing gently beneath a hail of paneling and flex pipe. There was nothing left of either of us but two giant aches at the end of it, and I spent far too many days wandering around the local hardware stores, and trying not to blush as I asked perfect strangers what kind of caulk they thought I needed to get things done. Jon let me run with this for a while (his grin should have given me fair warning, but I was distracted by the bathroom demolition) before he mentioned that I should specify that I needed caulk-ING for a home improvement project. I will never be able to show my face in Lowes again.

You know, I just knew the weekend wouldn't be a smooth one when my phone started ringing frantically an hour into my drive home (from dropping Josh off at Mom's). I pulled off and flipped it just as my mother began calling again, begging me to meet her at the ER with Josh. He had been bouncing on her bed and, after being told to be careful, he could fall (again, please note the bias in favor of the grandchild...when I was jumping on her bed at that age, the response was " KIMBERLY CORIE, STOP JUMPING ON THE BED, RIGHT NOW!!!)-- he slipped on the sheets and clipped his lip on the foot board. I had to whip around and redo two-thirds of my route -- as much for Josh, as for Mom, who seemed far more upset than he was (We later joked that if Mom needed a sedative, they could add it to the tab :P ). When I got to the ER, He looked a mess, there were blood drops all over his shirt, his lip was swollen, and still dripping, but he was lucky...his teeth were in good shape, there was no sign of a concussion, and while he did bite the inside of his lower lip rather deeply, the bleeding cut was actually a separate wound (meaning his teeth hadn't gone through his lip) and the outer wound was located just below the vermilion line of his lip...if it had been more on the pink part, he would have had stitches. Despite his appearance, I knew he was actually in pretty good shape. He saw me, glared and pulled himself into a Grandpa Dave hug, and his poor, swollen baby lip stretched into a five-mile pout...The message was pretty dang clear. "This is my party, Mommy, and you aren't invited." Even with all the drama, he wasn't about to give up a moment of his time in the glorious Land of Grandma Marsha, and the first words out of my mouth (after I gave him a quick once over) were, "No, baby. I'm not here to take you home." Then he relaxed. He flirted with the nurses, he played games, and I knew he was going to be okay. I was so happy to rediscover an old friend of mine from my former-former place of employment. If anyone was going to help Mom's adrenaline ease down and make Josh feel comfortable in the tricky ER waiting room, it was Letitia, and she played her cards perfectly...laughing, calming, acknowledging that small children are prone to finding ways to keep life interesting (Dad pointed out to Mom that I had actually jumped out of second story window when I was a kid, and I not only managed to end up with all my limbs still intact, but became a rather productive member of society to boot...Technically -- and I reiterate, because I'm sure I mentioned this story before, -- I didn't "Jump Out of A Second Story Window", ...I climbed out, held onto the window ledge, dropped a foot onto the covered roof of the outdoor basement stairs, and THEN I jumped off the roof of the basement stairs and did a perfect tuck and roll that only knocked the breath out of me for a few minutes. Either way, Mom didn't seem to appreciate the sentiment.) The doc gave Josh some antibiotics, and we were told to put Polysporin on his lip at night, after he was asleep, and they fully expect that it will heal up without a scar...I asked Josh if he wanted me to stay (because by that point it was 9:40 p.m.), but he refused...Again, the message was clear...I was cramping his style. So, we hit up the local pharmacy, got his scrip filled, and I gave him a final hug and then headed out. It was all that Jon could do to not just hit the road in a dead sprint and meet us at the hospital, but since I had the car, and since (really) it hadn't seemed that drastic a situation even when I first heard about it, I told him to relax and I relayed the news as I had it. Mom's still worried about whether Jon and I will let her have Josh down to play again...and Jon himself is wondering about this, too, but they'll be okay. Josh's lip is healing nicely, and it looks like it will heal just as the doc said, so that's helping every body's blood pressure. As for myself, I see the humor in it. Mom keeps checking in to see how Josh is doing, and I am fighting a profound urge to send her a picture of Charles Laughton as Quasimodo...and telling her that the rest of his lip fell off, that he's developed a hunch, and has been dashing about the house, yelling, "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!!" Mom says that she may not be in a joking mood about Josh's lip for several years, but Jon thinks I'm pretty funny.

Our latest adventures involved catching up with Jon's best friend (& Best Man) Jeff and his family (Michelle, Luke, Emma and special guest star, Logan...this darling little boy that I can't help comparing to a marmoset trying to eat an apple bigger than his head...he was gentle and tiny, and light, and had HUUUUGGGGE eyes under a mop of brown hair) for a trip to the zoo. Herding four little ducklings under the age of six was a hoot, but it was harder to manage the whole zoo with them in tow. Still, it was (on my end) a very cute experience, and minus a few expected meltdowns, all small ones were on their best behavior. I think my favorite part of the whole day came near the end, when we went to one of our favorite places, and Josh got to play in the water fountains for the first time in his life. As the night came on, the fountains lit up with blues, and soft pinks, and yellows, and purples...and Josh, ecstatic, chased every glittering drop of water -- his lips were chattering when we finally convinced him that it was time to go home...but he was still laughing as we settled him into his car seat. It was the kind of laugh you think of when you read Barrie's line "…when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." -- full of bubbles, and light, bright eyes and simple joys.