Just like a Slattery

I’m getting my front yard dug up!

To replace my water line!

All the way from the street to the house!

So after all is said and done, more needs to be done.

I’m living like a hoarder here. The things that belong in the closet are still all over the guest room bed and floor and my bedroom floor and I can’t find anything in a hurry.

This morning I went outside with the dog and there was a  giant puddle in the yard.

It being early and all, I thought, “Oh, dew.”

Then I thought, “Oh, dew doesn’t stand.”

If I haven’t mentioned it, I’ve had a headache since this whole giant mess started.

I knew the puddle was a problem, but I had a tennis match to get ready for, so I got the dog back inside and found some migraine meds and got myself together for my match.

Then I remembered my racquet was over at Glenlake being restrung and I really needed to get a move on then.

Once I got to the courts, I called Dekalb County Watershed, which, if you’ve never had to call them, is extremely efficient and pleasant to deal with. They sent somebody right over to deal with The Puddle.

After a thrilling 45-minute chokefest, I went to Publix, only to find that I cannot have any more migraine pills until Wednesday, but that was okay, because I knew that when I got home, the water problem would be fixed.

Not so. I have a private water leak. And they turned my water off at the street.

On the upside, my brother is here and he brought a Boston butt and we had burritos for dinner.

I’ve already called a plumber  and he’ll be here in the morning. While the insulation men are here. Before the ceiling men come back.

I’m expecting it to rain frogs tomorrow.

People keep telling me that I’m so lucky that it wasn’t worse, that I’m so strong and capable to manage and handle all this on my own.

Every second of every day, I realize how close I was to losing every single thing. There’s really no telling how long that insulation was smoldering – it burned the wiring for the hard-wired smoke detector out, so it could have been burning even when I slept.

If I had lost my dog, I would have been devastated.

I try not to think about it too much or I will freak out, and keep on freaking out, just because I can.

I’m not really managing or handling anything so much as I’m like a rock in the river and the water is washing over me.

There are things that have to be done, and I don’t have a lot of control over any of it, I just do it. I did call the electrician and hire him, but after the insurance adjustor came, it all got away from me.

There’s a lockbox on my front door with a key in it, and all day, every day, people are in and out doing God only knows what to put it all back like it was.

Friday it was Barron and whatever-his-name was doing the surprise ceiling removal. Yesterday it was Manuel and Antonio come to get the air scrubbers; over the weekend, they were in and out every 4-6 hours fiddling with the machines. Today it was some project manager named Brian checking it all out and giving me a timeline.

I’ve stashed my valuables as best I can. My clothes, formerly orderly in the closet, are all piled on the guest bed, and my shoes are in a pile on the floor. Every day I go and pick something from the pile to wear.

I don’t know who’s coming tomorrow, but presumably they will start patching the ceiling and sanding it, and then some more, different, people will come and do the finish work next week. Between all that, Jeremy and Greg, who I do know, will come and put the insulation in.

I am not accustomed to such a lack of control. Every single day since this has started, I have set the alarm and told the dog “see you in a little bit, puppy,” and left, only to have to drive around the block and turn the alarm off for whoever might be letting themselves in later.

My friend Lori says that “all things work together for good.” There is a larger lesson in this, even though I don’t know what it is yet. Maybe it’s too teach me to be even more patient than I already am.

I am incredibly grateful that it wasn’t worse than it was.  I am incredibly grateful that I have the resources and good sense to keep plodding along.

That fire? That one in my attic? It was Kind of a Big Deal.

Actually, it was a really big deal.

It wasn’t big in that I lost everything I own and my little dog too way, but as I like to remind people who say, “oh, my headaches are nothing like yours,” all pain is painful.

The electrician came not very long after I called him, and it turned out that it was, in fact, an electrical fire, because the whole house was running off one wire up in the joists and that wire just got overloaded and BAM! that was it.

It appears to have originated where a fire alarm was hard-wired into the house and spread from there. It didn’t spread any further than it did because the insulation was so old that it was no longer light and fluffy like it should be, but compacted down to about an inch or so thick, so it never fully caught – it just smoldered and stunk up the joint.

So the house had to be rewired properly.

And the insulation had to all come out, and will be replaced with TAP insulation, which is flame retardant, and is seeded with stuff that repels bugs and other creatures you don’t want in the house.

And then the insurance adjustor came and said I was going to have to call Service Master or somebody to come wash and seal the walls and joists, or the smell would linger forever, so I did.

And Service Master sent two men who brought some air scrubber machines that both blow and suck in the attic and eave space to clean the air, and then a contractor came and he said, “Welp. The part of the ceiling that’s charred is going to have to come out,” and I was thrown for a loop, because on your average Thursday, you don’t expect some man you’ve never met before to tell you that your beautiful blue living room is fixing to be torn apart.

And then Friday, I came home from work and there was a strange truck in the driveway and two men in my house and I said, “Well, hello,” and they pointed at the ceiling and there was a 16″ strip cut out of my ceiling from my front door all the way to the back of the house, through the water heater closet and my two clothes closets, and the contents of my closets were on the beds and all over the floors, just like somebody had a search warrant and tore the place to pieces, only neatly.

I knew, of course, that eventually they were going to do something like that, only I didn’t know it would happen so soon, and I was knocked back with shock. I didn’t know what else to do, so I put on some tennis clothes and left them there with it.

They patched up the long black hole with heavy black plastic that they’ve nailed to the ceiling with strips of cardboard, because apparently the upstairs has to be sealed off tightly for the air scrubbers to work.

The air scrubbers make the house sound like its engine is always running. It’s like being in a submarine, sort of. I’m not one to turn the television up loud, but I’ve had to turn it to the ungodly volume of 52 or so to hear it. It’s craziness.

I haven’t touched the plastic that seals off the door to the upstairs (where the laundry studio is) because I haven’t the heart, so I haven’t done laundry. I’m just picking clothes out of the piles that are now all on the guest bed, and picking shoes that are in the heap on my bedroom floor.

I did go through the things they took out of the bedroom closet and make a pile for the Goodwill, and I went through some old papers, too. I found a paystub from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1994 in which I netted $224.34, which I thought, at the time, was a ton of money. And I paid for my own insurance.

I also found a series of letters that my friend Andy and I had faxed back and forth to each, back before email, because that was how we communicated, by letter, but not really. And I found a pen and ink drawing that my friend Rob did for me before he moved to Florida with Trisha, the love of his life and my good and great friend.

Mostly I just wander around and think, “Oh, my God. This could have been so much worse.” I wasn’t home when it happened, or I don’t think I was. There’s no telling how long that fire smoldered without me knowing it. Thank God nothing happened to my dog.

My friends have been so gracious and kind. Jason came over and looked at it for me. Tara and Landon gave me a referral for an excellent electrician. Lynn didn’t freak all the way out when I called and said, “I’m fixing to cry.” Pete came over and translated what was going on. I’ve talked to my daddy several times a day for advice and he’s told me what to do and when. I told my brother about the ceiling and he simply offered to do whatever’s necessary to make it all look right. Nobody has looked at me funny when I’ve shown up wearing odd combinations of clothing.

The insurance is covering all but my $500 deductible, which is great, because I think I’m at about $14,000 now in damages, and counting. All I lost was some bad wiring and some old insulation.

When it’s all over, you can come over and plug something in. It’ll be safe.