Progress

I guess? Things are going so slowly at this point. I'm not as overwhelmed as I had been, even with way more to do, but it just seems so slow. There really has been progress though. A couple of bags ready for Goodwill, and a huge bin of clothes to pass down to a friend. You can almost see the floor in the two kids' bedrooms (the other bedroom has a king sized mattress on the floor so its not as though you could see floor in there anyway). David worked on the sink in the hall bath, and it's not something he can fix, so we'll call the plumber on Monday. My shoulder is doing a lot better, there's a dull ache, but that is way better than my normal pain level. I have been able to use it again the last couple of days. I haven't scheduled my PT yet though. I tried to call, but the script is missing. I have to call the office 1st thing Monday to get it faxed to the PT office. We have two birthday parties this afternoon, and we have to take dinner to David's parents. MIL had surgery this week and she is recovering well. So, lots of little ramblings for a quick update.

Wordless Wednesday-Field Day 09

Hopeful yet slightly anxious anticipation

I've finally done it. I finally made a Dr app't about my shoulder. I gave up a few years ago and decided I'd just have to live my life in pain, and I'll just suck it up and deal with it. Only problem is that now instead of just shoulder pain, I'm having serious flare-ups. Actually, I think this is beyond a flare, that sounds like a temporary increase in pain. My flare ups are kind of like that. Limited movement and increased pain. Those I can deal with. The newer problems that seem to be increasing in both frequency and intensity are awful. My should spasms and many other muscles spasm with it until my ear is pressed to my shoulder (hard enough to cause bruising) and my arm is curled up against my chest, and I lose feeling in my fingers and it feels like the muscles back there are tearing apart. I am unable to move and unable to do anything about it. So far it has happened when David is around and he spends an hour or so working on the muscles to relax them just enough so that I can sleep it off. It doesn't fix the problem, but after an "attack" I am utterly exhausted and need to curl up and sleep. The recovery time varies as does the intensity of the attacks. They can be triggered by doing something, or I could just be sitting in the wrong position. Kind of hard to avoid that. It is really really painful, and I know I need to do something about it. I am very prayerful that the Dr will be able to figure out something that will help me because I have told a few people that I am at the point where I am willing to consider amputation as an option. I don't think it would help, but I feel like I could adjust to one arm easier than I could these attacks. I know that seems melodramatic and really kind of dismissive of amputees, and I can assure that is not at all how it is meant. It's just that I truly cannot continue to live this way. The problem is that I hate Dr's. Not the people, just going to see them, it makes me really nervous and I always have this feeling that they won't believe me. That they'll think I'm making it up to get meds. (In reality I'd way prefer not to have meds and still have some left from my last visit after my wreck in 03.) I know it's silly, but it's kind of like that wasp/bee phobia I had. My mind tells me it's silly, but my emotions still react.

So the app't is this afternoon and we're about to leave and I'm very anxious and very very hopeful. I'm really praying for some answers. I'll update later.

Showers of Blessings

Isn't it amazing how God works? The smallest details He has figured out long before we even realize what's going on. I thought of the title of this post before I even realized the irony of it. Definitely a God thing.

So we came home to find a colossal mess downstairs. I've been way overwhelmed, and wanting to sort through and purge a TON of stuff, but am so overwhelmed I had trouble getting started. Wow, God answers prayers in ways we would never have dreamed of. After the initial panic and feeling even more overwhelmed by all the work ahead of us, it has been amazing to see God's hand in the whole situation. He has provided all of our needs. (Not that it should be a surprise, but I think the ways have been a bit unexpected.)

Lets see: First, the insurance is not covering any of our expenses. Doesn't seem very positive, right? Well, we had been saving up and had put away some money to do a renovation to convert part of the garage into an office for David since he works from home. That money will cover what we need to fix this mess we have found. What a wonderful provision.

Another related provision is that we had to tear out all of the existing floors and walls down there. In so doing, we open up the entire space so that we can rearrance the layout into something that will work even better for us. The previous layout was very awkward but not something we had ever thought about being able to change. This way we retain the garage space but will be able to move the laundry area a bit to give us a tad more space and then we can expand the bathroom a bit to make it more convenient, and we can use part of the space to create an office for David inside the basement. This way we don't have this huge awkwardly laid out master bedroom and then outside in the far part of the garage an office space. We keep the 2 car garage and still get all the things we needed, and in a much better arrangement.

The expense: Well, I know I already mentioned that we had some savings for renovations, but this involves major demolition and reconstruction that was not in the plan. Like replacing the carpet that we put in last fall? We have a friend that we had lost touch with a year or more ago. David knew he knew some people in the restoration business, so he called him to get some references. Guess what that friend is doing now? He came out and used his fancy equipment to take measurements and tell us exactly what needed to go, and then loaned us the equipment to dry it out. He told us exactly how to do it, and how they clean it up. Wow. Talk about Providential Planning? Something that could have cost us $100's to $1000's of dollars we're getting at no cost except manual labor. I am still in total awe of this one.

The added plus in there? You know how I was so overwhelmed and thinking we needed to go through stuff and purge? I really don't have a lot of choice in the matter now. It's so amazing, I just can't comprehend the plan.

We still have a long way to go, and we're sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the Littles room, but we haven't lost anything of value, and God has shown us a bit of His plan for us and it's so much more than we expected. We are truly so amazingly blessed. Showers of blessings indeed.

Wordless Wednesday-Amazement

Nightmares

Talk about your worst nightmare coming true. So I'm falling apart and my house is seriously worse than it has ever been in my entire life, so bad that you truly can't believe it. Yeah, that's when it floods and I have a gazillion people in and out of the house. That sounds great. I have tons of offers to help, but there's really not a lot anyone can do, I've just got to wade through the mess and try to figure things out. In the meantime, the recovery guy has to come and poke around, and the A/C guy should be here already, and David's cousin is here helping him rearrange the furniture. How absolutely humiliating. We can't even more things out of the way b/c everything is piled up everywhere. I am mostly running in circles simply moving piles from one place to another. I cannot ever let it get like this again. I simply can't.

It never rains but it pours

Really? I post a blog about how unbelievably overwhelmed I am, then go on a really quick cross country trip with my family tagging along on a business trip with David. We got home yesterday afternoon (Mother's Day, ironically enough) to be met with a gagging odor emanating from our garage and basement. Apparently the insane amount of rain along with flash floods in our area caused some water problems in our basement and garage. Some actually sounds a bit weak in this case. It's not a flood in the terms that you would think of a flood, but it seems that almost everything in our basement @ floor-ish level has been affected. It's called hydrostatic pressure. There's not really anything we can do about it, and since we're not in a flood zone, there's not flood insurance and so insurance is happy to inform us that we're on our own. This is going to be a huge undertaking. The (new) carpeting will have to be completely torn out, as well as the walls. God has provided, even in this. We had been saving some money for a small renovation to enclose part of the garage into an office space for David since he works from home. We'll use this to help replace the walls and flooring. In the meantime, everything in the garage has to be sorted and a very lot of it tossed. We are going to have to condense all of our living space into the 1200 sf upstairs area. I've been "in the process" of decluttering because we simply have too much stuff, guess this will really motivate me, huh?