If there is anyone out there who actually follows my blog, you may have noticed that I am WAY behind! I’m hoping that at some point I will have time to catch up, but in the meantime here is a re-cap of the month of August.
Nic and I went to Australia at the beginning of the month and I had planned on spending the day we returned catching up with my brother and sister, doing laundry, uploading pictures, and blogging. Well, instead we came home to a completely flooded house! So, as you can imagine, the day was instead spent crying, cleaning, calling insurance companies, calling cleaning companies, watching said cleaning company tear apart our house, and filling it with 30 or so dryers and a few gigantic de-humidifiers for good measure. We spent most of that first week, feeling completely chaotic and unsettled since most of our house was off-limits. It was about 105° from the heat of all the dryers and we couldn’t use any of our appliances because they were using all our electricity. Needless to say, it wasn’t the best welcome home I’ve ever had.
We did have a really nice weekend in Mammoth the weekend of August 19th-21st to celebrate Nic’s birthday. We went to a wine festival and got to see Parachute, Michelle Branch and the Goo Goo Dolls perform. We did discover upon return, when we had absolutely no clothes left (we were going on 3 weeks of living out of a suitcase, and neither of us own tons of clothes), that the Drying Company broke our dryer vent during the drying process, so we added that to our rapidly growing list of repairs.
On Tuesday, July 23rd, I went to the Taylor Swift concert, which was a nice break from our construction zone house.
On the 27th, our house turned on us again! Amidst AT&T men attempting to repair our tv and internet (both suddenly stopped working the day before) we noticed a rather large crack in our ceiling. When I stepped in a large puddle on the stairs below it and moments later watched large drops of water fall, I knew our arch nemesis, water, was back! Our air conditioner was leaking! My dad and Nic spent the entire “hottest day of the summer” in our boiling hot attic attempting to patch the leak to no avail, so that meant a few more days of no air conditioner, and another repair to be added to the list.
That night, we had a fabulous time at the Teno’s house celebrating the marriage of Jocelyn and Chris. I got to see tons of Acton friends I don’t see very often, sport cowboy boots, drink margaritas, dance the night away, and Nic got to drive a bunch of wet drunks home. ;) Hopefully I get some pictures from the mystery camera we used all night before I write a more detailed post about that fabulously funny evening.
On Sunday, I went with my mom, sister, Judy, and her mom Dorothy to see The Help. It was a wonderful movie that I highly recommend. After the movie, we met up with Sabrina’s friend Kelly and her mom Laura for lunch at Gourmet 88.
On Monday morning, as I was stepping out of the shower, I heard Nic’s phone ring and my heart sank. Anytime someone calls early in the morning, I pretty much assume its bad news, especially since Nic had skyped his mom the day before and we knew Nic’s Pop, who has been in the hospital for weeks, wasn’t doing well. When Nic told me Pop was gone, I burst into tears. As you can imagine, the last few days have been very difficult for both of us. In addition to dealing with Pop passing away, his death has finally forced me to deal with the passing of my mom’s best friend Kelli. My first instinct today was to dedicate a post to Pop, but then I realized I still hadn’t written the one I’ve been telling myself to write for Kelli for a while now. I think, since Kelli’s death was very unexpected, by not writing about it on facebook or in my blog, I could pretend like it didn’t happen and denial has been a great place for me to hang out. Now with Pop passing, I suddenly feel very guilty for not recognizing Kelli in the way she deserves. I hope people will realize that not only do people grieve differently, but I grieve different deaths differently. So in honor of two of the three wonderful people I have lost this year (Mark Wood is remembered here) I will be writing a post for each of them.
As this month comes to an end I look back amazed at how much happiness, excitement, stress and sadness can occur in 31 days. This month has been a roller coaster for sure, but it has reminded me that each day is a gift, that houses can be re-built, that the most important things in life aren’t things at all; it’s all the wonderful family and friends that bless my life in so many ways. I know it is cliché, but make sure you tell your loved ones how much they mean to you because you never know how much time you have with them.
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