Treaty of Versailles (aka, our offensive has failed)

About a month ago I was going to do a post called “Stripping for the Neighbors”, however absolutely nothing insane happened while I was doing this activity outside, in the driveway.  Either I’ve lost my girlish touch or people are just not interested in watching two grown women strip four layers of lead paint off drawers and molding from the bathroom.  No limbs were lost, no children eating paint chips, basically nothing remotely typical of my life occurred.  Needless to say, no post.

Today, of course, is a different story.  You see, I’ve come to realize that there comes a point when living in an old house where you and the house must call a truce.  At some point, the amount of rooms you have torn apart and dismantled will overwhelm you and the house, in the meantime annoyed to be so violated, keeps throwing little hiccups your way that prevent you from actually fixing the destruction you’ve wreaked.  For example, we have open plaster on all of the upstairs bedrooms that need to be finished and a gaping hole to a parallel universe where our main floor bath used to be.  The house has decided that our basement toilet should start leaking (and it’s out of commission waiting for parts), the hot water heater is leaking (still working though), and tonight we found an active leak (running water and mold) in the ceiling of the keg closet next to the dining room (don’t ask how this amazing space came to be).  The keg leak has necessitated “Lonnie” cut a hole in our ceiling to find the leak source, only to discover that it is from the master bathroom toilet (now out of commission awaiting parts). The truce is called to prevent anyone from getting hurt—“Lonnie’s” injuries stemming from some random construction accident and the house’s injuries from me slamming sledge hammers into it in abject despair.  Did I mention that the neighborhood historical society decided to have our block on the garden tour this year?  Of all the fricken years, you pick the year we move in and are up to our ears in projects?  Three weekends wasted getting landscaping done.

New awesome moldy hole in ceiling

Gaping Hole to Parallel Universe





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the white flag is up (actually it’s a set of dirty tighty whiteys we use as rags) and we will have a meeting of diplomats to establish a peace treaty.  The refugees are down to one bathroom!  The keg is in the formal dining (horror!), there is a new hole in the ceiling (and the accompanying dust that followed which I'm not even bothering to clean), the main floor hole to a parallel universe that hasn’t been touched in weeks (and I’m antsy to finish it), and I need to defrost the 1950s freezer AGAIN.  We’re not ready to surrender, but boy oh boy this truce is needed.  And I can’t figure out how to get the smell of dog pee out of the carpet!  Peroxide is not working and I’m taking suggestions because scissors is my next level of attack and I guarantee there will be casualties.

Now, I don’t want to scare anyone away from getting an old house.  They are lovely and have tons of character and fun things to discover.  But when invading a foreign country (i.e. old house), do not plan to completely establish your own government right away (i.e. fix broke shit)…work with the locals and go slowly to avoid an insurgency of busy work (i.e. everything else breaking) that prevents effective leadership.  See that, see what I did?!  I merged concepts from ACSC into a post about home remodeling.  Woo Hoo, the lead paint is starting to work its magic on my synapses.  I’d go take a nice bath to relax…if I had one.  Instead, I shall endeavor to save the beer that’s left in the keg from spoiling.  It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make in these uncertain times.

We've Discovered a Wormhole!

As many of you know, we bought a house that was built around 1924.  It was famous back then for having a curved green shingle roof and was the subject of many newspaper articles in the past.  The house still has the curved shingle roof, although the last owners didn't make it green (we will fix that!).  Many other parts of the house are original as well, including all the bathrooms.  We know this because spearmint green tile is ugly, and the stamp on the bottom of the bathtub says 1928 (it was in the added bathroom).

In an effort to modernize the house a little, like adding wiring that won't burn the house down, we are tackling projects one room at a time.  The focus of our zeal is currently aimed at the main floor bathroom.  This bath sits in the back of the house and was part of a late-1920s addition on the house.  The floor sags just a bit here and so removing the bathroom is part of a effort to lift and support this section of the house.  The foundation is solid all around, but the bathroom was completely lined with 3" of solid concrete, then tiled over, then a 500lb tub was added.  In total, over 3000lbs.  I'm not sure WHY the floor would sag???!!  So, we needed to remove the entire bathroom to support the floor joyces (sp?) underneath and create an oasis of calm in our new main floor bath.

Our friends, Deana and Homer, came over to help with demo which pretty much involved grabbing anything metal and heavy and slamming it into the walls and floor.  Talk therapy has nothing on renovation demo!  We were able to save some of the green tiles to add to the new bath, for sentimental purposes, and the old cast iron bathtub (which is worth about $900! Can you believe that!?) is currently for sale on craigslist.

Homer smashing tiles

The toilet and vanity were pretty easy to get out, but the tiles were directly attached to the concrete beneath it, which was attached to a thick metal mesh, which was nailed into the struts, which were lined with 2x6 wood sheets, which I think was put together with some sort of ancient mystical force field to prevent anyone from ever removing the ugly green tile.

We were hoping to find gold ring or some massive wads of cash in the walls, but we only found some vintage linoleum pieces, 2 adult diapers (unused thank Gods!), and bricks.  Seriously, who hides bricks in the walls.  Did one of carpenters think, "well, I've got these extra bricks and I have nowhere to store them, I think I'll just encase them in the wall".  Who does that?


Taking out concrete floor

Once we had everything out, even the ceiling, we could see into the center of the universe.  Or the basement crawl space, at this point it is all about equally mysterious.  After the men got creative with the saws, hacking off any pipes they found offensive, they started jacking up the floor.  It was pretty incredible to actually watch the doors we couldn't close actually move and close!  It's amazing what true perpendicular lines can create.

Of course, in the process of all this incredible workmanship and demolition, Lonnie forgot to put a cover over the hole that goes into the office.  This means our demo managed to put a huge layer of concrete and plaster dust all over my computer, school work, and pretty much everything else in the office.  Does anyone remember our last little adventure with a "fine layer of concrete dust?"  Yeah, my reaction this time was similar, hide in the corner and suck my thumb because the dust makes me crazy and I don't want to clean it again!

The beauty of this newly opened space, besides watching Lonnie clean up all his dust mess, is that we will have a level floor with heated tiles and a premier access to a wormhole that goes to Andromeda.  Can't you see it?  It's on the lower left hand side of the picture...our excavation to China can continue unnoticed.  All I need it a Tardis shower surround and all will be right with the world.

And at some point I should probably figure out the design of this bathroom, now that the dust has settled.
 

Welcome to the Neighborhood

So about 3 years ago, when we moved to the house now referred to as "the pot house", I was 6 months pregnant with twins and it was -7 degrees out.  I vowed I would never again move in the month of January.  The Universe said "hahahahahahahha, whatever Be-atch" and here were are again...moving in January. 

"Lonnie" found our beautiful 1924 home when he first arrived in Wichita and spent 3 months without me and the kids.  I'm sure there are tons of fun things he did he won't discuss, but walking the neighborhoods was definitely one he will.  Within a week of our arrival, he walked us by this house.  It was cool, but from the outside appeared to need a lot of work.  When we came to a dead end of looking at places, we discovered our realtor's husband had actually grown up in the house.  We took one look and were hooked.  That was in October.  When it was warm.  And I wasn't up to my ears in a broken workplace and a PhD program.

It is now January (technically February).  They are calling for 8" of snow tonight (note: we got it!).  To make matters worse, we decided that there were some big projects in the house that we wanted to get done before our move.  The timeline always makes more sense when you just talk about it.  One project was to remove all the wallpaper.  You all know how that went!!!  I managed to get most of the second floor done.  Another big job was to refinish the floors on the second story.  Since the house was empty, this project made sense.  That was until the floor guys couldn't start until the week we moved, meaning we would need an alternative sleeping arrangement until the floors were finished.  We debated doing the floors over the summer, but the thought of having to move everything to the upstairs then out of the upstairs and back again just made me want to hurt something...mostly "Lonnie" because it was his idea.  We choose to press with floors now and sleep in the camper for a week.  Totally not a problem.  We lived in the camper for a year.  No big deal.

Living Room, isn't it gorgeous!?

It never gets below 30 degrees in Montgomery, Alabama.  If it did, I was sleeping through it.  However, it is really cold in January in Wichita, and since there is no water hooked up to the camper, we were still planning to use the bathrooms in the house, and just sleep in the camper.  No one gets up at night to pee!  No one!  (flashbacks of Iraq living, getting fully dressed and armed to pee, not cool). 

This would all be fine, except that about 2 weeks before we moved in, the main floor bathroom was discovered to have a major leak making it unusable.  Additionally, the plumber was unable to fix it because there was no access to the pipes via the basement without the crawlspace having 2 feet times 209 feet of dirt removed (hooray for unexpected major projects!!!).  Sooooo, we had to find someone willing to dig out the crawlspace so we could access the pipes to fix the plumbing to be able to use the main floor bathroom.  She swallowed the spider to catch the fly....and it couldn't be started until, wait for it...the week we moved in.

All our usable bathrooms are on now located on the second floor.  We can't access the second floor because of the floor refinishing.  The camper is not hooked up to water and sewer.  Dare I say that we should have our own reality show?!  (note: we actually discovered a working toilet in the basement when we moved in, no really, we didn't know it was there.  It's in a room that looks like a closet near the stairs, Harry Potter style. Problem of potty kinda solved, kids haven't had a bath since Sat because we haven't figured that out yet).

Home Sweet Trailer...Again

So our big, and extremely dirty, camper is parked in front of our new house, in this older posh neighborhood, and we swear our neighbors must truly think the Clampett's have moved in!  This was all just funny speculation until the cops showed up at our door yesterday morning.

Apparently, some (or one with OCD) of our neighbors have called to complain that someone is living in a trailer in the neighborhood.  Gee...who could that be?  So the cops came to inquire about the complaints, which I might add have never been addressed to anyone in this family.  Nor, might I add, have any of the neighbors knocked on our door in welcome, disgust, or just plain curiosity.  As a matter of fact, you can't really see or hear anyone in the neighborhood at all most of the time and the loudest sound I ever hear is me yelling for Chewy the Deaf Dog to come inside.  When the situation was explained to the cops they just shook their heads like "really, we are here for this?"  First world problems, sigh.  No one arrested, no one pregnant, no pot...first 6 months here and we're doing good!

So here's the real problem.  I'm torn between TP'ing all the neighbors' homes in spite or just letting it all go.  Because the tattler is probably just the mean old lady that "Lonnie" met a few days ago who just scowls at our trailer everyday she walks by with her evil little dog who tried to attack "Lonnie".  I would actually wish her ill except that the Universe would bring it back on me in some terrible way, like forcing me to a week of unusable bathrooms in a new house in single digit weather (oh, wait...).  So instead, I hope that in her next life she lives in a trailer park.  In North Dakota.

Editors note: I wrote this last night, and today we learned the plumber is able to come by tomorrow because they can access the pipes. Soon we will have a shower and main floor potty.  Also, today we had a snow day (even the base was closed) and we did meet the neighbors across the street.  They totally understood our trailer issue and had done something similar when they were restoring their home (which you can see behind the trailer in the picture). They have 3 girls and definitely will not get their house TPed by me.

Living the High Life...

When Life Gets You Down…Hell, read this and you won’t be anymore…

In the realm of stories that only happen to me (and “Lonnie” now by association), this is truly the weirdest, most upsetting at the time, and funniest of them all.  Thankfully no one died, or got arrested, or pregnant.  Let me set the stage:

We had driven the 8 hours from Wichita to Colorado back in November.  No one really chooses to do this, but it was cheaper than flying.  We went mostly at night so the barren, brown wasteland of West Kansas was hidden from sight.  And so the kids, the dog, and Grandpa would sleep (we got 2 out of 3).  We were going to Colorado to see The Book of Mormon (epic!) which was “Lonnie’s” birthday present to me, and to pick up a variety of items that we had left in our Colorado house while we were in Alabama.  “Lonnie” had lent his wood working tools to a friend and our house in Peyton still had most of our décor and furniture.  We were planning on getting our things and checking on our rental houses.

The next morning, as we drove through the Black Forest, the devastation from last summer’s fire was evident and upsetting.  All those homes and people simply burned out.   Thankfully our house had been saved and the renters had everything in tip top shape.  Things got brighter as we headed toward Peyton.  I was feeling a bit nostalgic as we pulled into our old neighborhood.  The beautiful view and stillness of the valley were ever present.  “Lonnie” and I had Orion with us, having left everyone else with Grandma (best idea ever!).  Lonnie had called our renter earlier in the week to let him know we were coming out.  He never called back, but we knew he occasionally went back to Florida during the year.  As we pulled up the driveway we noted things that would need to be done: driveway grating, some tree trimming.  The house was quiet and no cars around.  I noticed a new door on the barn and “Lonnie” figured our tenant, who worked on cars, had put in a paint sprayer.  I saw some insulation propped on the basement window and was curious.  A few other little things looked different and I started getting nervous.

As we walked up to the house it appeared that all the lights were on, the pond was running, and other things were powered up.  Interesting for a vacant house.  It took a few tries to open the front door, and for a moment we were worried the locks had been changed, but no, “Lonnie” is just a dork.  As we entered the house, the warmth and smell of the tropics hit us like a wall.  A man suddenly came out of one bedroom and was talking on a cell phone.  He no espeaka the English.  In my butchered Spanish I told him that we were the owners of the house and wanted to get some of our things.  He motioned that he was going to call someone to help.  The kid, Alex, couldn’t have been more than 20 years old and was a bit freaked out that we were there.  All told, we were a bit freaked out that HE was there! 

All the furniture was in the main living area, but things were tidy and not abused.  I couldn’t figure out what was wrong until we went downstairs and looked in our mechanical room.  That’s when the actual enormity of the situation became apparent.  Thousands of dollars of professional electrical grid wiring and paneling had been added to our house!!  “Lonnie” and I looked at each other and we realized what was going on with the smell, the locked rooms, and the power.  Wait for it.....

Our house was being used as a colossal indoor marijuana cultivation plant!!!

At this point you are probably all saying:
1. Thank God that’s not us
2. Did we ever lend Kelly anything and is it in that house?
3. Did you scarf any joints?

Standing in that mechanical room, I started to shake.  Orion was still upstairs with the Spanish kid Alex (he wasn’t Mexican, his dialect was unfamiliar to me-maybe Cuban), our stuff reeked of frat house reefer and we were now in a very dangerous situation because we knew the kid had called someone.  Remember, this was all before everything was legal.  We tried getting into our garage and family room but they were locked.  “Lonnie” said, “I think we need to get out of here now”.  He tried calling our tenant, but our cell reception in Peyton was always sketchy.  I walked upstairs and took Orion outside to prevent him from a contact high while Lonnie was attempting to talk with Alex.  All I could think of while I was outside crying and trying to keep cool for Orion was “I saw the guy had a pellet gun, I know where the pellets are, how many people could I take out from the porch?”  Yes, in the heat of the moment I went on the offensive.  I did all the zombie-apocalypse scenarios at that house…No one was going to ruin my house and get out alive!

I went back inside and “Lonnie” had spoken to our tenant. He started asking me, “What do you want from the house right now?”  I started listing off things that I couldn’t bear to have ruined or destroyed if this whole situation went south, so we started grabbing things off the walls and taking them to the truck.  As we were doing that, a SUV pulled up (I reminded myself of the gun location) and 2 men got out.  Both were pleasant and spoke English.  We explained that this was our house; we wanted to get our stuff and needed to get in the locked rooms.  They readily complied and it was in the garage that we saw the depth of the operation.  Our entire garage and barn, plus our twins old bedroom were growing rooms.  Hundreds, yes hundreds, of 7’ tall pot plants being lovingly grown under heat lamps (which necessitated that new power grid).  In the family room were racks and racks of drying pot plus an incubator for clones (clones are baby plants, I only know this because I’ve been googling all things pot, not because I’m some streetwise dealer.  I also know that there was at least $300K of Grow in the house, because I did the math!). 

I’m not sure the point at which I went from crying to laughing about the situation (with a touch of the munchies in there as well), but I pretty quickly realized for myself that I needed to lock it up (Lonnie is always cool, but I could tell he was furious) and play it cool.  I smiled, asked questions about the plants, and commented on how good they looked to one of the men.  He seemed very proud of his crop.  They had insisted the operation was all legal for medical marijuana (which was OK back in November) and certainly didn’t act like petty criminals.  Big time criminals maybe, but petty no.  The men helped us take things out of the house and load our trailer.  While the men were doing that, I snuck through the house and took pictures with my camera phone, totally playing the spy and marveling at the fact that I stayed calm enough to remember to get evidence.  They should make a movie about this.  I will be played by Nicole Kidman. 

After a few hours, we finally loaded all we could fit into the trailer.  There were still tons of our things left at the house, but we just didn’t have room.  Orion had been put in the truck early on in the situation and given his computer, so he was a happy and drug-free boy.  I was getting a headache, both from the pot and the stress, but I made sure we even took the light fixtures out that we had custom fitted in the house.  Hell, I found a screwdriver and took off my decorative wall plates from the light switches!  I walked around the house in a daze (so this is what getting high is like) not knowing what to mourn--the abuse of our home or the fact that I was seeing a drug ring up close.  I actually, at one point, started talking TO the house, apologizing that it had been so badly used.  Yup, went a little crazy there.  I am so white bread sometimes. So many questions kept coming up in my head “What was this guy (our tenant) planning to do if we came back to the house as we originally had planned, how are we going to get this smell out of everything, this guy better just buy the house now, what happens if he won’t buy it, will we get busted for the pot flakes in the carpet runner I just stuck in the trailer?”  So many things just spinning in my brain, but I just remembered to smile, be courteous, and act cool.  I could totally work for the DEA.

As we headed back to Grandma’s house, “Lonnie” and I held hands and talked in amazement at how this type of thing doesn’t happen to normal people, it happens to us.  Why do we always have adventures like this?  The entire trailer smelled like a frat house by the time we got to Grandma’s.  Of course, the risk to our military careers was first and foremost (since Colorado may do what it wants, but Uncle Sam still says nay, otherwise we would have been demanding our cut!!).  We both called our commanders for full disclosure. “Lonnie’s” commander didn’t think there was a problem since “pot’s legal in Colorado, right?” and my commander laughed, then quickly apologized and was sympathetic.  Well, at least we won’t get fired.  Thankfully since then, the tenant has signed a purchase agreement and has cleaned all the pot from the house (we had a friend go inspect and all is good).  We will be heading back this month to do a final move of the rest of our stuff.  We’ll see if the mattresses can ever be used again.  (Editor's note: we got all our stuff out of the house 2 weeks ago, Alex is Cuban--my suspicion confirmed--the mattresses are still suspect and one fridge can't be opened without summoning drug dogs from a mile away...otherwise all is well).

With my little “almost cancer” scare a few weeks ago, I now can add “was involved in a cartel” off my bucket list.  Didn’t even know it was there.

 

Did I mention I hate wallpaper?

“Lonnie” and I have discovered why Buckwheat, the ugly mass on my armpit, exists.  The cause is now one more reason that I hate wallpaper.  Our recently purchased, awesome, 1924 home in Wichita is full of wallpaper.  I mean it covers everything. Some of you may have read my little diatribes against wallpaper, but I’m really thinking of rewriting Dante’s Inferno with the levels of hell reserved for each manner in which wallpaper is misused.  Each of these levels has been found in our house (except for the inventor, which would be weird).  Here is an overview:

Level 1: Inventor of wallpaper, so he has to go through all the other levels to see what his creation hath wroth before reaching redemption.
Level 2: Painted over wallpaper, while extremely lazy does make it easier to strip off.  Still a pain
Level 3: More than one layer of wallpaper, really lazy, seriously can’t you just take the crap off??
Level 4: Three or more layers, are you freaking kidding me? You had 13 kids living in this house and not once did you use them for manual labor?  That’s just stupid.  And lazy.
Level 5: Wallpaper on the ceiling.  I hate you…
Lever 6: So instead of just removing it, you plastered over the wallpaper in sections, and then reapplied new wallpaper?!?!  And why does it look like old lady underwear?
Level 7: Load-bearing wallpaper. Because putting up glue and paper is going to ensure that the canyon sized crack in the plaster will NEVER come down?! Idiots! Morons!! Four letter words!!!!!!!!!

As you can see, I’m a bit frustrated by the wallpaper and we are working really hard to get as much down as possible before we move in at the end of the month.  Here is where Buckwheat comes in.  I’m right handed.  I’ve done nothing but go to work and scrape wallpaper for almost 3 weeks.  The location of Buckwheat is on the rear part of my armpit, near the lymph nodes, but actually a part of my shoulder muscle.  Yes, the ugly mass on my arm, that my doctor thought was cancer, was actually caused BY STRIPPING WALLPAPER!!!!!  It is a highly developed, strangely located, muscle that is activated by the upward and overhead scraping motion used to remove wallpaper.  When we discovered this little reality, we laughed.  But my detestation of wallpaper is now infinitely more vast.  Heaven help the inventor when I get there (now many decades years in the future)….

I'm baaaack, and needing some support!

So, I might have cancer. Non-hodgkins Lymphoma to be exact.  I’ve been having some “girl symptoms” over the past few months and so I went to the doctor thinking I might be going through early menopause (wouldn’t THAT be awesome).  She found the lump near my armpit that I never noticed or felt, but when she put me naked in front of the mirror (uncool because I hadn't shaved) and said “raise your arms”…there it was.  It looked like a bulging muscle which if I had it on both sides I would know that all those pushups were working!  Instead, it looked kinda gross and of course now that I was aware of it, it started bothering me.  That’s the crazy thing about cancer, or any other potentially deadly illness, the moment you become aware is the moment it tries to kill you.  Before, when you are ignorant, your brain isn’t running through every horrible scenario from missing your 3 year old daughter’s future wedding to how are we going to afford that trip to Everest for my bucket list?  You are happy and ignorant and the ugly mass in your arm doesn’t truly exist.  And then it does.  And everything changes.

I’m not a worry wart or a fatalist.  But even the most positive person has some fear when you are confronted with the possibility of cancer.  It’s not necessarily that I may die.  That will happen someday anyway.  It’s the possibility of being sick and bald right before that.  It’s the possibility of being too ill to participate in my life which is currently quite awesome.  I could probably even handle the baldness, because ‘Lonnie” and I have already made tentative plans (diagnosis pending) to be involved in St. Baldrick’s Day to donate our hair and get our kids to do it to.  We’ll be a whole family of baldies!!  Best family photo ever! 

I normally wouldn’t write about something like this until I had full diagnostics because I’m not a worrier and I like to be sure about things before I invoke the potential sympathy of others.  But this seems different.  There is more evidence of possible badness other than the ugly mass in my arm--which shall remain nameless at this point, but I’m leaning toward Fred--like a low white blood cell count.  I have a CT scan this afternoon and I guess all I’m writing this for is to get out my anxiety and ask for positive energy from everyone that everything is normal and to not be afraid.  I’m also starting a preliminary “name the ugly mass under my arm” contest…so get your votes in ASAP because if it is lymphoma, the mass will be in a surgical jar with formaldehyde pretty soon.  Also taking suggestions for bald head tattoos (I’m sure that’s in regulations?) because I’m sure I’ll get bored with hats.

I did not come to Wichita to die.  More to come…