So much has happened, it’s hard to recall everything and keep it in chronological order. Plenty of times, I have thought about this blog, what it has meant to me, the things I wanted and still want to do with it, and even at times whether I wanted to return to it or not- not only because of low readership, but also because the setup I had for doing things changed so drastically that I questioned if I could even document things as I once had for sharing. In the long run, I wanted to return to this blog, but it was a matter of timing and motivation. To be honest, it still is. There may be more incidents of patches of time passing between posts; it seems to be unavoidable and I am sorry for that because it isn’t ever a lack of care that’s the cause.
So... why such an extended period of silence? It's actually been more than depression/motivation this time. A lot more.
In 2015, my mom started having some very serious medical issues, which haven’t been fully explained and never will be. She underwent medical treatment for pain and ended up in worse condition as a result. It’s far more than a mere coincidence to me, but officially proving it and forcing compensation is apparently not worth the trouble, esp if you’re poor, so we just live with the grave misfortune that this has happened. My mom is now immobile. If she stands, she is weak, dizzy, and/or lightheaded and can’t be on her feet longer than needed to get from one seat immediately to the next. This was proven in October that year when I guided her to the shower and turned to position her shower chair. My back was turned for literally no more than 3 seconds and she passed out, fell straight down from a standing position at the sink right on to her legs. She dislocated her ankle and broke it badly in three places. It required the permanent installation of plates and screws. She still experiences pain from this, but it is somewhat better than amputation. While in the hospital for this she also had a heart attack, which extended her stay even further.
There was no way that she could return home in a cast and try to use the stairs when she already had so much trouble with using them. In our home, her bedroom was on the upper level and mine was in the basement. My area also served as a kitchenette, art/design studio, music studio, dj booth, dark room, and more. Once my mom started having issues with low blood sugar levels and partial complex seizures, I had her staying in my room most of the time so that I could monitor her better. For her to return home would mean renovating the house so that she could live on the main floor, outfitting it with handicap bars, rails, and more, plus ramps outside for wheelchair access, and trying to convert a half-bathroom into something usable for bathing and possibly washing hair. At this time I was not driving anymore so I had to rely on an acquaintance to give me rides to the house and to do any other chores, and we stayed at a cheap hotel out of town while all this would happen. Fast forward 3.5 years and transplant us into an extended stay hotel and we are still out yet the circumstances became worse.
Between juggling so many things and finding the right conditions for making a 25 mile trek out to our house and getting back to the hotel before dark, left me with very little time to get things done alone. It meant that progress was exceedingly difficult and slow and frustrations were spiking occasionally as a result. My mom had to get her car because her contact was becoming increasingly unreliable and finally (nearly) completely disassociated himself from us soI was then relying on her for transportation, which at times wasn’t that much better for various reasons. We were essentially doing our best considering all obstacles we had to face, and there were quite a few.
Two days before my birthday in March 2018, we were taking a trip to the house to check mail, look for packages, and do a few other chores while we still had a few hours of daylight remaining. The winter had been hard and long with inclement weather, bad road conditions especially in that neighborhood, various ailments from which we all had been suffering. It had been a while since the last time we were there- about 3 months. What I would encounter would permanently affect our lives and it was barely the beginning of a long, horrible nightmare.
My prescription glasses were broken and I was alternating between two different readers, but I didn’t have my midrange focus with me and this was going to make what I was about to see difficult to assess. Upon trying to open the front door, I felt a lot of resistance and had to put my weight into it a couple times. There was a pile of mail behind it and it was very heavy. I started to realize that it was so heavy and difficult to push around because it was wet- soaking wet, turning into pulp and starting to show signs of mold and mildew. At first I thought a storm had leaked under the door. Then I realized that some other things nearby didn’t look right, either. Things were knocked over, it was darker than normal, I was stepping on something both spongey and crunchy, and I was hearing something that sounded like cross between static and a waterfall- I hadn’t even heard fire hydrants sound like this. As I entered the main floor of my home and my eyes were trying to adjust, I realized some very horrible things: the lights were not working, everything was wet and smelled pretty bad, water water was dripping from the ceiling, about 90% of the ceiling was missing and I was staring at rafters and the underside of soft-flooring (big planks of plywood). The drywall ceiling had collapsed and was on the floor, soaked and deteriorating, as I got to the middle of the house, the noise I was hearing was getting louder and then I saw the ceiling in the living room and realized there was water actively flooding the house at full pressure in a great white fan of water spraying out ceaselessly. I can tell you watching that fiasco become clear to me was about as bad as the time I ran a hatchet into my foot. It really was traumatic and I have recalled this moment as many times as that one. Absolutely everything was soaked and I knew that there was no way I could possibly handle it all alone. It filled me with dread and despair, because without knowing every last fact I knew we had just lost a ton of things. I just didn’t know how much worse it would become.
We had the county shut off the water supply within about 30 minutes and proceeded to take action as quickly as possible without knowing the first thing about what professionals were needed or how to go about accomplishing anything ourselves because everything was completely up to us to figure out how to handle. No insurance, no financial assistance, no knowledge of these matters- we were easy targets still are to some extent. The first person came highly recommended, however she ran a cleaning business and “saving” homes was only her hobby and she had never handled anything like this before. She hired a crew to do the bulk of the work. What was done was sporadic, took too long which allowed the mold and mildew to worsen, and upon going over there I discovered that things were missing that had no right to be missing nor purpose in being touched. This crew most likely had stolen items from our home, both inside and out. Eventually they bailed before finishing their job and became unreachable. We learned more about the matter and the terms and professionals involved, determined not to make the same mistake twice. After speaking to a few companies and getting prices, we settled on one that seemed very promising and within our limited budget. He turned out to be running a franchise branch and didn’t spend much time personally overseeing the work being accomplished. He couldn’t get the job done as quickly and as cheaply as proposed, items weren’t salvaged or cleaned properly beyond a few select items, parts of the house infrastructure were actually worse than he or his contractor acquaintance had claimed. Things were allowed to continue to rot and disintegrate after being loosely bagged and improperly stored, causing further damages. This was not learned until well after the job was complete and by that point he refused to do anything further that he had agreed to do unless we paid more money, which he had already extracted from us.
This leads into settling on a contractor and we went through a similar process to hopefully find the right one. When two leading internet companies referred the same contractor, we felt a glimmer of hope again, especially after meeting with a man who claimed to be the project manager. We finally felt like we were out of the woods and on the right path. This was not the case. They have virtually used every trick in the book to take advantage of us and after legal consultation it would appear that trying to take them to court to force completion in an affordable and expedited manner would cost more than it’s worth. I reached out online to various acquaintances and this was the best I got- a realtor who seemed to view our predicament as a couple of easy deals to be accomplished in ways we did not want. Eventually I stopped hearing from him- or at least at this point, I hope I have because I thought that he would help everything work out via field knowledge and experience as well as via contacts. I am so dismayed. So basically we are still at square one, trying to get the contractor to comply, communicate, and complete the job without any other costs or nasty surprises.
