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This was our first real family vacation in over 15 years.
My wife and daughter and I flew to Orlando to meet my mother and my sister.
My daughter is three and a half years old, and she's never been with my mom and my sister at the same time before.
My sister lives in Miami, and has been seriously ill for years. My wife and daughter and I visited her in the hospital last year.
My mother lives in North Carolina. Mom has also been pretty sick. Right after my grandmother died, mom had an elective surgery on September 11th, 2003 and ended up on a respirator in intensive care for a month. Then she spent a month in a nursing home, followed by six months in our little two-bedroom house.
So anyway, from February 16th until the 22nd, the five of us had a great time in Disney World.
And then, excited to be returning home, our taxi pulled into the driveway and there was a waterfall cascading off the front of our house.
The floor of every room was soaked. Water was pouring out of holes in the ceiling. Water was dripping everywhere.
In the cold and dark, we turned off the water at the valve and rescued a few things like photo albums and computers.
The last few days have been an endless ordeal of insurance adjusters and contractors and inventorying what has been lost and what may be saved.
Many of our home movies on videotape have gotten wet-- before they could be archived onto DVD.
My wife had bought be a DVD recorder for Christmas, and I was in the process of doing that. Both the box of tapes and the DVD recorder were in the living room-- where they got wet.
I hired a cleaning and restoration company, and I have to say they work hard and they work fast. Sometimes too fast. I had eight guys in my house speaking three different languages, all working at once all over the place and I had to try and stay on top of what was going on. Were they throwing away things I needed to keep? Were they throwing away things I needed to inventory for insurance? Were they bagging laundry separately from other items? Who the hell keeps putting wet coaxial cable inside this box of stuff I need to take back to my hotel?
Strangers have handled every scrap of my personal belongings, from my underpants to my photo albums to my collection of avante garde cinema verite that I forgot was in a particular drawer.
And some of those strangers are Conservatives and Republicans. One has a "W" sticker on his car, and another is a Rush Limbaugh fan who gave me some good-natured ribbing about my Al Franken bumpersticker. I'm at the mercy of the 34% who still think Bush is doing a heckuva job.
I wish there were something like BuyBlue.org that dealt with emergency services and recovery. I didn't have time to go online and find "Blue" companies. I trust these guys to to good, professional work, and I am sure they are looking after my best interests (but I know that their "bottom line" comes first, of course).
I'm fortunate that I have insurance that will hopefully cover much of this, but they're giving me a hard time, so I hired a private adjuster. Especially since I have so much stuff to deal with, I wanted someone who will deal with the insurance issues for me. One less thing to worry about.
For days, the plumber had been fighting with the cleaning company over whether or not we should put electric heaters in the house. The cleaner said, putting in heat would cause mold. The plumber said not putting in heat would make more pipes break.
Plumber: Save the pipes!
Cleaner: Kill the mold!
Plumber: Save the pipes!
Cleaner: Kill the mold!
Finally, at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, the plumber won the battle and sent everyone on a late-night scramble to find the last of the oil-filled electric heaters still available for sale at the start of air conditioner season.
Now, my central heat system is back up and running in the house and there are huge drying machines in every room.
The place is gutted and empty and will be sitting like that for a few days while the walls dry out.
I've got a nice, warm hotel with an indoor pool-- only had time to use it once since I've been here though. I've been back from Florida since Feb 22nd, and this is my first chance to post Online-- hardly enough time to go swimming, let alone read the blogs or post online here. I'm going to be here at least two more weeks. It bothers me that the hotel is one of those Republican ones, but I never forget for a minute how lucky I am to be here and not buried in the mud in the Philippines or in a FEMA trailer somewhere. Indoor pool, free breakfast, a kitchen with a stove and microwave and full-sized fridge... I'm damned luckier than most.
The nice lady at the front desk expressed admiration for my bumperstickers, though. At least I'm keeping one liberal here gainfully employed.
Kenneling my dogs is going to cost more than repairing the pipes-- neither of which is covered. I still haven't had time to get out to visit them yet. It looks like I won't have much to do at the house next week, so I'm going to drop-in, take them for a walk, and make sure they have enough of their own brand of food.
My daughter hasn't been inside the house yet since the flood. She asks about it and talks about it though. We try to shield her from what happened as much as we can, but we also want to make sure she understands. She knows the house is damaged because it got too much water in it. The floors were all wet, but now they're dry and we just have to finish fixing it before we can go home. She seems pretty okay with that.
One of her favorite toys was a doll that she named "Baby Grampa." We left Baby Grampa in her crib when we went away. He's one of those $9 talking dolls that I bought at Kaybee Toy and Hobby before I learned that Mitt Romney's holding company owned the chain. My daughter wanted to take her to Florida with us, but I told her we didn't have room. We could take Happy Bear, Pink Kitty, and Raggy Anne.
I bought Baby Grampa two years ago for christmas. My daughter asked me, "What's the baby's name?" I told her the baby doesn't have a name. You have to give him a name. I said, "You're the baby's mommy. You have to give him a name." She still didn't get it. I told her, "You're the baby's mommy, I'm the baby's grampa..." So, she decided to name him "Baby Grampa."
Baby Grampa was one of those things I tried to rescue the night we arrived home. He looked and felt dry, but when I squeezed him, he didn't speak, he just made this awful electronic crackling sound. Baby Grampa drowned.
I wasn't going to tell my daughter. I was just going to try and find a new one. But my wife asked her, "Would you be sad if Baby Grampa was broken?" My daughter said, "No, I want a better doll that cries real tears."
We explained that she can't sleep with a doll that cries real tears because it would make the bed wet. So, now we have Baby Flower (my daughter picked that name, too). Baby Flower doesn't cry real tears, but she does talk and cry and laugh.
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