Chuggin' Along

Tomorrow will start week 5 since we've been "homeless" (we left mid-day four Thursdays ago), and I think we're in pretty fine spirits considering. :)

Benjamin is doing GREAT at school - and in fact seemed pretty disappointed to not be going to school on Saturday - and was not shy to let me know! He fussed whenever we went back upstairs after being downstairs (ie instead of heading out the door), brought me his shoes several times and mine once, and even tried to hand me my work briefcase. Sorry Ben, I had to keep saying, no school today. You're stuck with me. I didn't quite know whether to be happy that he enjoyed going to school so much, or somewhat sad that he quite markedly prefers school over hanging out at home with mom. I'm going with happy, because I feel zero guilt dropping him off each morning. And he has yet to shed a tear over my departure.

We've made some progress with the house. The contractor we hired to complete the flood remediation piece (dry wall tear-out and "microban" application (to halt any mold growth)) began work last Thursday. Through them, we hired movers to box up our stuff and put it in a storage locker - and they did this on Saturday. It's the first time we've done this (ie instead of packing it ourselves) - wish we could have enjoyed the experience a bit more. :) Mark was there for the first couple of hours giving guidance to the flood remediation workers, who were still working around our stuff and around the movers. But they did much of the packing without us there, so I'm hoping our stuff is in good shape when we get to it - which will likely not be for a number of weeks yet. It makes me a bit nervous about what condition we'll find stuff - and it will be hard to sort through since we have no idea what stuff is in which boxes. But in the end it's just stuff, I suppose, and we're looking at this as a good exercise to rid ourselves of non-essentials. In fact, I'm probably going to want to clean and sanitize just about everything before bringing it back into the house - as I don't know what was touched by flood waters, and the stuff that wasn't touched may be boxed up with stuff that was... Our plan is to try to find our bed (or borrow an air mattress) and bring Ben's pack-n-play with us when the house is ready to be inhabited again and slowly bring over a car-full of boxes each day to sort and clean - eventually renting a truck for the final furniture. Not going to be an easy process, but I'm looking forward to a much simpler household in the end.

Right now our house has been completely gutted, and the air movers are blowing air around our house. I'm not sure how much longer they stay. Mark met with the first contractor for the repair/rebuild today. We had been really close to hiring this contractor to do some work in remodeling our carport/garage - so now we'll divert the funds to home repair. We already know that insurance will not cover all the necessary rebuild pieces, and we want to make a few upgrades as well (flooring and bathroom, primarily - but also possibly some electrical re-wiring). We'll get an estimate when he has the dimension information from the insurance company (about a week), and I'm a bit nervous about what the final price tag will be. Mark is meeting with this contractor's flooring subcontractor tomorrow, and with an alternate prime contractor on Friday.

Our Contractor (Chris is his name - probably should start just calling him by name, as there may be many more entries that refer to him!) gave us an initial ballpark estimate of 6 weeks - 2 months to complete the work. So Thanksgiving will be the earliest we could be back in the house. I had my eyes on Thanksgiving, but I may need to re-adjust to Christmas to make it more realistic and not be disappointed.

So below are some pictures from various stages of our house

These first few pictures were what the house looked like when I returned from Oregon. As you can see, our stuff was everywhere and Mark had begun cutting away the bottom few inches (then finally bottom foot or so) or the drywall. Little did I know this was just the beginning!

Then the professionals came and removed even more wall. This is my favorite picture to just show how weird this all was. Four feet and down the wall was cut away, but then everything higher was left in-tact. Notice the quilts on the wall in this picture below. They normally hung above our bed. The contractor originally thought they could work around our stuff. So they piled it all in the middle of each room and draped a tarp over it to protect it from dust.

These pictures show our house getting closer to finished as far as the remediation goes...

Here's our kitchen. Yep, this is the kitchen that Mark personally remodelled just two years ago. They ripped out the base cabinets, but were able to salvage the granite. A separate contractor was brought in to remove and store the granite. Hope we can find his phone number when it comes time to put it back...

Here is a shot from Ben's room looking towards the guest room. We had wood floors over concrete slab - and apparently this was how wood floors were installed in the 50s - the boards the flooring was nailed to "floats" on tar on top of the slab. Interesting.

Here's a shot from our Den looking towards the percussion studio. In this room we had paneling, so the entire wall had to come down. You're looking at the back of the top half of the drywall from the studio. That paneling is one thing we won't miss.

And finally here's a shot in our master bathroom. This is where the sink/vanity were - and the tile did not extend behind it, so the entire thing had to be removed. They actually found mold behind the tile too, so pretty much all the bathroom tile had to come down. We're not terribly disappointed about that, as we had intended to remodel the bathrooms eventually, just not right now and not in this manner.

And what blog entry would be complete without a few pictures of the B-dogg?

Daddy and Ben snuggling one morning soon after our reunion as a family post-hurricane

Ben recently discovered the joy of "folding" laundry. He spent a good twenty minutes sorting the laundry when I captured this picture. Too bad I had both clean and dirty laundry accessible at this time...

Ben's First Day of School!
Ben and his teacher Ms. Nathalie

Finally, thank you again for all the phone calls and notes - I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to pretty much everyone. Slowly but surely our life is beginning to resemble something normal again. Okay, maybe normal is not the word, as most people don't live on the third story of their friends' home - but as normal as normal can be for a family displaced who is trying to rebuild their home. All this to say, I will get back to you - eventually!

The Long Haul

The story keeps unraveling, and it's amazing to me how much damage 3 inches of water can wreak.

Today marks the beginning of week 4 of being homeless. Our spirits are pretty high, I think, considering - but the daily stresses prove for moments of pretty significant lows. Mark and I are trying to take a divide and conquer approach so that we don't get overwhelmed and frustrated - but it's hard to relinquish some of the "control" over the situation. We've pretty much decided that he's going to take the lead in figuring things out, hiring contractors, etc. and will ask for my input on big decisions/when he needs it - of course, keeping me clued into the process. I'm taking the lead on making sure Ben has something to do during the day (which means taking him to and from school, and then finding something to do "after school," as our Loft, as wonderful as it is, is pretty limited in its' capacity to entertain an almost 16-month old), and then we co-team for mornings and evenings - as it takes two to get him ready and fed and all three of us out the door in the morning, and similarly fed and ready for bed at night. (Remember, that we are on the third floor - the kitchen is on the first floor, and is not babyproofed, so it's two flights up and down with Ben, and he pretty much has to be strapped in to his high chair if we're downstairs).

The amount of work that needs to be done to the house seems to grow daily. The claims agent came to the house on Monday (or maybe it was Tuesday, I can't quite remember already). She recommends that all the flooring be replaced and the bottom 4-feet of wall be removed for the entire house. This is convenient for some reasons (ie we can finally get rid of the den paneling that we've wanted removed for some time), and really a headache for others (the base kitchen cabinets which Mark personally installed must be replaced, and the granite salvaged for the new cabinets).

Time-wise we're thinking this may take another 6 weeks, but we could be drastically off in either direction. Once we actually hire a contractor for the entirety of the work, we should have a better estimate.

We're also losing a lot of furniture - not necessarily because it's horribly damaged, but because of the big "question mark" whether it has some damage. The claims agent is pretty aggressive in declaring things that can be claimed and replaced, which is generous - and I suppose we'd rather err on the side of replacing things that maybe don't need to be replaced, then find out something is mildewy or rusty further down the road. But neither of us are big on shopping for big ticket items, and the number of things that we'll have to make decisions about can be pretty overwhelming for us.

Then there's the job of hiring contractors. Some do it all (tear out, sanitize/de-mold and reconstruct). Some only do a little. Some can start right away, some have a wait. They all say that our stuff needs to be removed and put into storage (the stuff we're keeping, that is) - but some will clean, pack and store it for you. Some won't. And then finding a place to store it is hard to come by now. Plus, it looks like we may have to pay for this part out-of-pocket. Ugh.

We actually hired a company to start the work today (as they came out to do an estimate and said they could start right away - the house is starting to stink from the water trapped behind the paneling, so we are anxious to get started), and they said that they didn't actually need to remove our stuff. But then later decided that they do. But they won't move it. So Mark's trying to find a moving company that will move and store it. Or he's considering firing the current contractor and hiring one of the other companies that will move and store it in addition to the removal/sanitation. Too many decisions.

I know this is rambling, but it feels good to be connected again, and if I don't just start typing some of our experiences, I'll get overwhelmed and not know where to begin, and I really want to document this whole experience. I think you get a taste for what we're going through.

On the bright side, Benjamin started "School" (MDO) on Monday, and he is doing just GREAT! Seriously, it is such a relief now to think that he'll not only be able to handle the separation, but that he can do it five days a week, and that he is actually doing well and having fun. It just thrills me, and takes so much stress off Mark and I, as it's overwhelming to try to both work, take care of all this mess with our house, let alone care for a small child in someone else's house.

I got some fun pictures of us with Ben dressed up for his first day of school, and him with his teacher in the classroom, but I'll have to post them when I figure out how to do it on our laptop.

So some details about the program: It's 9-3 M-F at a nearby (nearby to our house, not our loft) Lutheran church. The teacher is FANTASTIC, and is pretty much the reason we chose the school. I'm not sure how I feel about the teachers for the next class, but we really feel this was the best place to introduce Ben to "corporate care." I am still a huge fan of Montessori, so we're still working on finding an appropriate program for Ben's next move. But I hope he'll be in his current class for the next 6-months.

But anyways, the church just opened up the "infant" program (12-18 months) in January, so it's quite small. It has four students and one teacher (although it's still not full, so two days per week, it's just three students and one teacher), and the teacher has a master's degree in Early Childhood Education. I can really tell she knows this age group and how to properly stimulate them. And the infant room is large, as it doubles as the church nursery on Sundays, so the kids have lots of room to move around. We visited the class a few times before enrolling Ben, and it was so peaceful (probably because there were only two kids enrolled at the time), and the children seemed content. A huge bonus for me was that the teacher was totally happy to chat with us, and seemed really at ease with us being there. (more some other day on the Montessori that we pulled Ben out of prior to enrollment - which was largely due to this factor). She's got a neat little schedule for them, which includes daily stroller walks, time on the playground or time in the gym (with many balls, ride on toys, etc available), and the kids go to Chapel twice per week where they have music and bible stories. She also has one or two "learning objectives" per day - ie. she has pictures of some toys in a bucket for a "matching" game. Today they shined a flashlight on objects and talked about "on" and "off." And the children sleep on Nap Matts, which Ben took to immediately! He saw the other kids lay down on their matts, so he did the same, and is apparently already the best sleeper in the class - sleeping for 1.5-2 hours! She's great with the kids, great with me (ie gives me "nuggets" about Ben's day when I pick him up), and Ben seems happy when I pick him up. Today he was smiling and "flirting" with his teacher when I was holding him and talking to her at pick-up time - a great sign. And he only fussed a bit on the first day that I dropped him off. Day 2 & 3 Mark dropped him off, and apparently he didn't fuss a bit - and even walked into the classroom himself. I couldn't be more pleased with the school and how he's doing, and I think it is such a HUGE blessing amid all that we're going through. Please keep your fingers crossed that it continues this way!

So, I think that catches up for the most part of what we've been up to the last few days. I'll try to update more often, as it does help me feel less scattered and a bit more normal. But now I'd like to catch the rest of the vice presidential debate, and perhaps have a bowl of Blue Bell (full fat!) mint chocolate chip ice cream. Yum!

Oh - and THANK YOU to whoever sent the packages of board books! What a treat for Ben to have some new books to look at - not only because so many of his flooded out - but also because I tried to go to the library today to pay for the borrowed books that were destroyed (and to check out some new ones) - and apparently it sustained some damage as well, as it had a sign that said "Closed until further notice." Please let us know if you sent the books so we can properly thank you!

Good night, everyone!

First Pictures

I don't know if this will work, but a friend took pictures of our house upon their first clean-up visit (before we got there). The pictures are meant for insurance purposes, so there are a lot of just water on the floor - but at least they'll give you an idea of what they arrived to...

http://picasaweb.google.com/mamcqueen/IKE08Flooding?authkey=p8mBJiEosM4#

Update

Greetings everyone. This is Mark again. I enjoyed writing those few posts, so maybe I'll just do a few more. Don't worry, I promise Katherine will write some more too. Here's the latest news:
Katherine and Ben got back Thursday night. It was an immense delight to see them again. We're really enjoying being a family, going for walks, adjusting to our new routine, etc. However, the day after they got back, the difficult realities of the situation set in a little bit. Our temporary home was not baby proofed which required constant watching of Benjamin. The electricity was still not working at our flooded house. We didn't know how long the repairs would take - a couple weeks or three months or more. There is still a ton of work to do cataloging damaged household items, calling contractors, etc and how were we going to do that while still working and taking care of our active toddler? All these uncertainties made for a pretty stressful period. Fortunately, many of those questions have been answered and we're feeling fairly peaceful about what's happening. First is that we're more comfortable with our temporary housing. We're staying with a couple that are friends from our church small group. They're in their mid 50's and unfailingly generous. The have a house right in the middle of town, and it's one of these newer homes which has a small footprint but is tall. So we have the third floor all to ourselves. I think I'm going to start referring to it as our "loft." That sounds pretty cool. It's got a living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom. We moved some furniture around, removed some knick-knacks, found a better location for a baby gate, and got it pretty well baby proofed.
The electricity came back on this morning at our house which will make working there a whole lot nicer. (Count 'em - 16 days without power!) I met with a flood mitigation guy today who explained the process including that it would only take about a week once we get approval from the insurance company. It may take a few more weeks after that to have a contractor put new sheetrock up and replace floors, but hopefully this will take about a month, maybe a little more. Finally, Benjamin is all set to start his mother's day out program tomorrow. Originally we wanted him to go three days a week. Given the circumstances, we're going to start him going for five days and hopefully move to three days once things settle down a bit.
We have a number of really kind friends and family who've helped us with housing, babysitting, and a WHOLE bunch of labor right after the flood. They are a truly amazing blessing.
In case you're curious, last weekend's symphony concert was everything I'd hoped. Interestingly, I don't think the audience liked it very much. I will admit this particular piece of music is probably most enjoyed by a true art lover. It deals with weighty subject matter via sung poetry, and includes a lot of slow, reflective type music. Houston is not a real artsy type of city so I guess I'm not surprised. Maybe next time we go to New York...

Sometimes life just stinks

Hi everyone, Mark again. Katherine returns tomorrow so it won't be long until someone with real writing skills will be authoring these entries. For now, I'm just going to rant and rave. We finally have an insurance adjuster. Her name is Judy Hill, she's from South Carolina, and sounds VERY southern. Maybe she'll bring some of that southern hospitality to our insurance settlement. Even though a company will be coming in to do official water remediation, she strongly recommended we go ahead and cut out the bottom foot or so of all the sheetrock in our house to get things started drying out. Especially on exterior walls where the insulation is full of water. I had some guys come over last night, borrowed a generator for light and we went to town on the house. Wow, what a messy, messy job. It was really gross - you'd pull out a piece of insulation which is literally dripping water all over the floor and mixing with the drywall dust, making this pasty stuff on the floor. Fortunately, it dries quickly and I'll be doing a good mopping this afternoon.
The hard part about this is that it seems unlikely we'll be able to live in the house for a while. The musty smell might go away in a couple days as things dry out, but there's just no way to childproof all the bits of drywall hanging down and other things causing the house to be a complete mess. All the folks working with me on this project concurred it would be a bad idea to bring Ben back there. It looks like initially we'll stay with some friends who've generously offered part of their house until we get an idea how long this will take. Then we'll see after that.
It also seems our area of town is almost last on the city's electricity restoration plan. We were originally told to expect it back by Thursday, but that's now been revised to Sunday. I have seen almost no activity in the area although supposedly there are about 12,000 crewmen working on the restoration. Hmmmppphhh!
On the positive side, I started back to work today at the symphony. We're performing music of my favorite composer this weekend, Dmitri Shostakovich - his 13th Symphony. I've always felt you can readily hear in his music the very deep struggles he had throughout his life. Over the course of a season, there are usually two or three weeks which are really special and this will likely be one of them. Also, it's going to be wonderful to have Katherine and Ben back, even if we can't stay at home. It'll be nice to have their company as well as another piece of normal life returning to place. I realize this post is fairly negative and full of complaining. Sorry about that. It's all true, but at the same time I'm trying to see the positives in this experience. Ultimately, I think it is in times of struggle when we grow as people, and in my case, as a Christian. It's been amazing to see the vast generosity of a number of people who've helped us. And I've been stretched in my ability to ask for and receive help. So in that sense, I welcome this struggle.

There is hope!

This is Mark again. Thank you, Lara, for the suggestion on starting my own blog. I actually do have a blog, which has one entry from the day I started it. Realistically, I'm not generally a reflective type of person, at least not in a bloggy way. (New word for the day?) I'm always lamenting not having enough time for the things I really care about, so I probably won't keep this up. But in the meantime, my daily trip to the public library computers have been an enjoyable diversion to get connected to the world as well as enjoying some air conditioning.
Two signs of progress came today. I awoke this morning to the sound of big machines picking up the massive piles of yard waste lining our street. I felt kind of bad for them working on a Sunday morning, but I guess it's necessary. Literally every street in Houston is lined with huge piles of brush, often large trees cut into sections. I have been very impressed with the city of Houston's ability to get things moving quickly - water treatment plants were quickly restored, libraries opened quickly. Our mayor here kicks butt. I thought a newspaper columnist said it well - "Mayor Bill White is the argument against term limits."
Yesterday, I went with a team from our church to an area hit much harder by Ike. We went south of Houston to a little town called Alvin. It's not all the way to Galveston, but a lot closer than where we live. We split up into smaller teams to work on different projects in the area. My project was kind of frustrating in that it really required experts in tree cutting, not ordinary volunteers. This family had a large tree in their yard that was tangled in some power lines (non-energized). We really didn't make much headway on it until some folks came later who had experience with this stuff. I didn't know how much planning goes into removing a fallen tree - whatever section is being cut can't fall on people or things, can't remove support for the person in the tree, and can't bind the saw as it's being cut. It was surprising to see the extent of damage down there. We drove by large fields with huge trees where most of the tops of the trees had been blown off by the high winds. We're talking 50-100 foot tall, fully mature trees. Some other folks worked in houses dealing with flood damage where they got three feet of water in the house. As a reference, ours got about three inches.
The other sign of progress just happened an hour ago. I was having lunch with some friends after church. While we were there, the lights came back on!! It really was an amazing moment, one I wouldn't have fully appreciated without being sans electricity for almost a week. Maybe when I get home, our lights will be on....
That's all for today. Have a nice week!

Update and Reflections from Mark

Hi there. This is Mark writing - Katherine has graciously allowed me to hijack her blog to provide you with some updates on how things are going down here as well as some reflections on Ike.


It is now one week since Ike made landfall and we are still without electricity. The electric company says that exactly half of Houston's 2 million residents have power - guess we're the unlucky ones. They have been quick to point out that places like next door "Oak Forest" and our subdivision "Ella Lee Forest" have been harder to restore because of the trees. Unfortunate, but I'll gladly wait a few more days for electricity and enjoy the lovely trees from then on. Houston has been VERY fortunate to receive a significant cool front the day after Ike. This last week would have been a far worse scenario if we'd had our usual mid 90's and very high humidity. Of course, this front was the one responsible for flooding our house, but I still think it's worth it for the rest of the city. That being said, the heat is returning more and more each day. Last night was the first one where I had trouble sleeping because of it. Hopefully the juice will return soon!
One of the hardest parts about this is the waiting. When will we get electricity? When will work start back up? (Mine has been announced, then cancelled, then reannounced.) Most of all, when will the ball start rolling with the insurance company? We filed our claim Tuesday afternoon and were told we'd be assigned an adjuster within 48 hours. Over 96 hours later, still no adjuster. I'm trying not to be upset, remembering they're getting absolutely hammered with claims, but the waiting is very hard. Especially since we don't know much about mold and water damage, and there are many different opinions out there. When we got back, one neighbor was furiously tearing out sheetrock. Most neighbors have thought it's okay to wait for the insurance people to do their thing then start the work. I tore out a few sections of sheetrock along the baseboards and there sure is a lot of water in there. It's okay on the interior walls but the insulation on the exterior ones is like a wet sponge for the first couple inches. Not knowing how to proceed has been frustrating.
Perhaps my greatest personal revelation from all this is that I am a bone fide family man. I love Benjamin immensely, but I've had a very difficult time adjusting to life with a baby/toddler, particularly regarding my introverted need for alone time. When we made the decision for Katherine and Ben to go to Oregon until the house gets back in order and the electricity returns, there was a part of me that was looking forward to a week by myself. I have enjoyed that somewhat, but now the loneliness is really setting in. Most of our friends are couples, many have kids, and there really aren't folks I feel comfortable calling by myself to do something social. All that to say, I'm ready for my sweet wife and son to return - Thursday can't come soon enough.
I did my first "brick" yesterday. No, not some hurricane recovery effort but a kind of workout. I've entered my first triathlon which is in three weeks. I'm feeling pretty good about the three aspects of it individually, but putting them together is totally new. A brick is a bike/run combination. It was harder than I expected - the legs do not like running when they've already been beat up on the bike.
Many thanks to those of you who've been thinking of us and praying for us and the house. So far, I've found only a few things that aren't just "stuff that can be replaced." Once I can use our computer at home, I'll try to post some pictures. I've got hundreds for the insurance adjuster, but we'll save the choice ones for this blog.