Breakfast at Charly’s

Remember when I said that my day off on Thursday was refreshing? Yeah, that’s over.

Rather than trying to totally rehash the day’s events, I’m going to cut and paste a couple of emails I sent to friends on my BlackBerry while I sat in the living room feeling nauseous, trying to wash the nasty that settled in my throat down with a can of Diet Coke and rubbing my burning eyes.

Email one:

Things have been crazy (no pun intended). We’ve had to rip up a lot of the basement. It’s a huge fucking mess and now we’re stalled with everything else until we fix the damage. The air isn’t healthy to breathe because of the mold we’ve found and there are other things we have to fix before we can move anything down there. Just being down there for short periods of time have made Jeff and I sick to our stomachs and get headaches. I don’t know if we can address this ourselves or if this is something that we’ll have to contract out.

My mom hasn’t been doing all that great and is having a lot of trouble with pain. She likes us being here so often because she has been feeling poorly and it makes her nervous to be alone. Nights are especially hard. She’s never had a problem with fearing being alone otherwise; it’s just being alone, sick and no one in the house if she needs someone that bothers her now.

Finally, combine the above with our needing to get out of our house as quickly as we can, I have no free time and my stress level hovers between cancer and IRS audit. And if you’re wondering, I haven’t been able to do much at my own house because I’m so tired when I get home at night. I will have to because I have no choice. I guess I’ll sleep when I retire. Heh.

Glad you asked?

Being the super-swell friend that she is, she said she was glad she asked and made me smile in her reply. She’s going through a very, very tough time herself right now so it’s amazing that she’s so supportive. That came out wrong; it’s not amazing that she’s supportive — it’s amazing she has the energy to be supportive if that makes any sense. We could both use a long cruise and tall drinks.

Email two:

Today’s dramarrific update:I discovered more damage today after I decided to rip down a wall to see if there was damage behind it (I seem to have a thing for demolition). Sure enough my suspicions were confirmed.

I’m wondering if a call to the insurance company is in order. I don’t think they cover water coming in from outside but they may cover the damage from the pipe bursting. I don’t know about the time elapsed but she has never once made a claim so it doesn’t hurt to ask I guess. At the very least Jeff and I will learn how to refinish a basement.

I am so pissed.

I should have taken a picture and might once I get to Home Depot or Lowes and pick up some respirators and goggles. I’m not going down there without them now. I hope my mom steers clear and sticks to the laundry room on the other side of the basement and only if she really needs to be down there. I suspect she’ll take a peek even though I warned her about the dangers of breathing that stuff in. As for insurance, I checked her policy and it seems we have a good chance at having at least the abatement covered with a low deductible. I’m going to call on Monday — fingers crossed!

Iain wanted so badly to help and couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t let him down there. I haven’t seen him ever as angry as I did today. He got really worked up last week when he thought we weren’t going to Big Boy and stopped at Mike and Kelly’s and that was a meltdown on a scale I hadn’t thought I’d seen in the past. Today was much worse. Now that I’m writing about it I hope this isn’t a sign for behavioral problems to come. So far we’ve been fairly lucky. I tried explaining to him that I didn’t want him to get sick and that once it was properly cleaned he could help us build a new wall etc. He wanted to get it cleaned right.now. so he could help us build the wall right.now. He was really frustrated and angry and couldn’t hold back the tears although they were strained because he was trying his hardest not to cry. I finally got him calmed down but I felt really bad because he was so upset. Hugging him very tightly seems to be a technique that works fairly well right now. He responds well to the pressure (it’s an Autism thing). Ugh.

After being in the basement for just a short time, both Jeff and I were feeling like ass. I don’t think it’s a case of psychosomatic symptoms because we were getting them before we realized there was this much of a problem (or any at all). The smell has increased in intensity as we’ve displaced more and more things and it seems with time I have felt worse and worse physically each time I’ve worked down there. Now, I’ve also been very stressed and tired so that doesn’t help. Now that we’ve been pulling up floor tile and especially today after I ripped out that wall, we’ve been sick to our stomachs with burning throats and eyes afterward. I should have taped plastic up where we were working but at that point I was only interested in getting back upstairs (hence my lack of photojournalistic coverage — now I’m disappointed because I haven’t taken a picture this whole time and I really should have taken before and after pics of all my work).

(This entry is going to be two miles long I swear.)

Yesterday we took my mom to Lowes to look at some cabinets I fancied for the kitchen. She thought they were okay but since her taste and mine differ greatly, she was drawn to other styles. She’s given me the final say since she knows I’m not going to make the kitchen look ridiculous and because we’re paying for it. Heh. We were looking at counter tops, too, and leave it to her to fancy the most expensive one in a color that wouldn’t match with a bevel that costs . . . $2 an inch! Sure, I like to buy nice things as much as the next person but I am not in this lifetime ever going to spend money for a bevel that costs that much. She started going on about doing it right if we’re going to do it at all but I had to remind her that we had to buy food to stock this kitchen and if we couldn’t pay our house payment then we wouldn’t have a home to house said kitchen. She conceded and agreed.

Another stunning news event was that my mother now believes me that we’re in a recession and that the economy is really really really bad in Michigan. She started telling me this “news” this morning over coffee as if I’d never mentioned it before and she was filling me in on something I had no idea about. She mentioned how she saw on TV about how many homes weren’t selling and being foreclosed and how people were losing their jobs left and right. I pointed out that I had told her all this a few times already and asked why she hadn’t believed me. She said she did believe me but she didn’t realize how bad it was until she saw it on TV. Translation: I heard you talking about something but since I hadn’t seen it on TV I figured you were probably exaggerating and that was the bit I bothered listening to. Otherwise I was thinking about what to do with the throw rug in the front room and where I was going to fit three closets full of clothing rather than sort through it. But I believed you.

Sigh.

Comments

Bentobitch said September 9, 2007, 11:42 pm:

First I’m going to give you a ton of shit for not wearing a face mask in the first place before the smell even started. Just the dust alone from moving stuff is bad. Take care of yourself! Remember that the first step to caring for others is taking care of yourself, too.

For the behavioural concerns, I wouldn’t worry about it long term. There’s a lot going on and it’s confusing but once things stabilize and he knows what’s what again it should clear up. When stuff like that goes on here I wander in circles flapping my sleeves and saying, “I don’t know what to do!” Then they tell me, “Kai, you don’t have to do anything.” and I say, “I know what I don’t have to do. But I don’t know what I should DO!”

You can try Bear Hugs For Transition Times or a book similar to that. I got it in a whack of old secondhand homeschooling books so it’s kind of older but it’s for exactly what it says. It’s for groups but it’s not hard to fit it to just the one and it helps center a lot and it’s quiet fun.
For Hei when she starts getting worked up while I’m explaining something, I squat down and take both her hands and apply pressure to the palms and sort of massage there with my thumbs. Both her arms make a direct line to me so it centers her in on what I’m saying and the pressure… well, you know about that.

Congratulations to him on his 100%, too, btw!