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Isn’t Life Just Weird

Well, we finally made it back to our house–Audrey and I spent two months with our friends and Stuart spent nearly three months away. The last bits of work (floor, priming, painting, trim) being done by us so we could finally just get him back in the house and living with us. So incredibly frustrating. But he’s back. Sort of.

The weekend after he moved back then he took off to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Luckily, I got to go along, too, to chaperone since it was a school trip. Four days of hanging out with high schoolers was plenty, though I can’t complain much. They’re great kids, some I’ve known for years. And I got to see top-notch plays, which I would have never had the chance to do otherwise. We saw “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Imaginary Invalid,” “Measure by Measure” and “The Language Archive.” I bailed on “Julius Caesar” one night thanks to just not feeling good. I think it was a mix of elevation and loneliness, neither of which I am used to. But the plays were marvelous. It was wonderful to hang out with my son again, it’s been a long three months without him around. Of course, he left again, two days after returning, to be an Outdoor School counselor yet again. I’ll see him again on Friday and this time he’s sticking around for a little while.

I’m still looking for work, but decided to put my skills to some use while I hunted for a “real” job. The results are at my new Etsy store: Crinkle Dreams. Crazy and fun and everything I really love to do. I hadn’t really thought about how the crafty movement had used to Internet to blossom and truthfully, I wish it had happened just a few years earlier when I’d had Girly Girl Aprons going. I’d worked so hard to make that a viable business. It did well, but I grew tired of trying to convince people to wear aprons. And now, six years later, everyone is wearing and selling them. Oh well. Now, it’s mixed fabric specialties, mostly. Purses, wallets and my time-consuming favorite: baby quilts. Two more are in process, one a custom order and the other, an overly pink one. Sweet.

Vietnam still calls my name, but I’ll be heading to Belize this summer with the GuyFriend instead. Vietnam for the long-term next year, I think. Audrey can start high school in Hanoi and it will make me so very happy.

And Stuart? He’ll be graduating in just two weeks. So strange. All of it.

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Nothing works like I expect.

At the beginning of February, I’d just lost/quit my job at the school and I was eager to put more effort into my book project and into my work at a local PR agency. My part-time job in social media had potential, I figured. Life had been so stressful working the two jobs on top of the solo parenting, holidays, birthdays and friendships. It felt like a new beginning to be free of that job and it was a perfect moment to celebrate the lunar new year. We had friends over and ate pho and hoa qua dam and banana flower salad. We exchanged gifts in red boxes and toasted to the Year of the Cat with lemongrass and coconut sake.

A week later things started to fall apart.

Audrey had first noticed a wet spot on Stuart’s floor a month earlier, but we chalked it up as a mystery–maybe a spilled drink, a footprint still wet from the shower. None of us really cared. When she noticed it again, the floorboards were already starting to buckle. The water had been seeping in through the cement walls that abut the soil on the southwest side of the house. A downspout, never connected, and a disjointed driveway had combined forces to funnel rain into the area around Stuart’s room. The cement became saturated, then leaked into the room. Up through the floor and in through the walls. Moving his bed away from the wall, we suddenly realized this was a much bigger problem than we’d thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stachybotrys_chartarum
Stachybotrys Chartarum is bad--very, very bad.

So, Stuart started sleeping on the couch, waiting for the contractor to come and fix the walls, replace the flooring. But the couch is a small IKEA version, too small for him and too uncomfortable to sleep on night after night. He hadn’t been feeling well for months and adding in the back pain from limited sleep positions was too much for him. Instead, he slept with the door open on the longer couch in his own room. I didn’t want him on the bed.

Two weeks went by before the contractor finally came to take a look. Then it was worse news. It wasn’t just in the area that we could see and it was the bad kind of mold. Two entire walls and all the flooring had to be removed. Disturbing the mold made it even worse and within just a couple of hours of their arrival and dismantling of the wall, I knew we had to leave. My lungs ached. My head was pounding. I picked up the kids from school, we came home to pack a couple sets of clothes and headed out. A friend had offered to let us stay until the house was breathing-friendly again and I took him up on the offer.

Five weeks after our harried arrival, we are still at his house.

Well, Audrey and I are here. Stuart has been staying with his own friends, making it to school by himself and behaving like the adult he technically is. He is feeling a million times better, away from the deadly black mold that had infiltrated his room. Thirty-five days later, the room is still being de-humidified. The floor is bare cement, the wall are covered with insulation, awaiting complete dryness before they are covered with sheetrock. Nearly everything that was in Stuart’s room is now in the living room; one mattress is in the upstairs dining room. The other leans against the wall of the living room. It’s complete and utter chaos, and there is no end in sight yet.

So we stay here and his home has become our home. I cook dinner for everyone and make sure the kids get off to school before starting my PR agency work. It’s become the new norm and, to be honest, I like it. But it isn’t going to stay this way for long. I have to find more work. I have to get us into our own place. He’s been kind enough to let us stay indefinitely, but I worry that the patience will wear thin and I’d like to leave on a good note, not with anyone being angry or exasperated. But there’s just no telling.

In this month of craziness, we have enjoyed ourselves though. We had a surprise snow day.

The girls, mine and his, have learned to like each other.

I got a new-to-me desk (borrowed from Stuart’s room) set up at the friend’s house.

And we’ve learned to really enjoy being together whenever we can. With Stuart living elsewhere, it’s given both kids the opportunity to miss each other, to truly appreciate each other. They see one another at school and share lunch a time or two each week.

And I have realized what it means to have a best friend, someone who is there for me (and my kids) no matter what, and I am incredibly grateful.