Home Again

Well usually I don't write about things I don't like, but a lot of them happened in November so I will inform and then move on to the happy ending, which I am loving. I love happy endings so much I have a really bad habit of reading the ends of books, then deciding if it was a happy enough ending for me to spend my precious time reading the rest of the book. It is a rare book that can get me to read it from front to back. But I digress.

So we left for our trip to Florida and I had gotten a little sick with some wierdish stuff and some flu-like symptoms. I didn't think it was swine flu because I had already gotten that earlier... Anyway I figured I'd be fine or get better there and instead when we got back to Fairbanks my Dad picked me up and brought me right to the emergency room. Apparently I got a little virus called hand-foot-and mouth which normally kids only get but I have been on some meds that suppress my immune system and I got it and then it wreaked havoc with my body. So after a second trip to the ER I was getting worse and checked into the hospital for a solid week. Meanwhile... when we had gotten home we realized our tenant's furnace had a fuel line break and - whoops- it had spilled approximately 10 gallons of diesel fuel into our floor boards, making both sides of our duplex and every material item in it simply reek. We then moved into my in-laws house to escape the fumes (a couple of days after that is when I moved into the hospital, leaving Mia in the capable hands of Nana, Papa, and Daddy). Shout-out to the in-laws who were amazingly generous in housing us!!!

This next part is where my husband gets nominated for sainthood. So he gets the fuel line fixed, step one. Then he thinks he's going to have to rip up the whole floor to get rid of the smell, but he tries an odor-eating spray and an odor-sealing paint x 3 applications first to see if we can avoid a major unplanned remodel. The paint is applied at close quarters in a literal crawl space under our house. Meanwhile he's working his job and pulling extra Daddy hours due to me being AWOL. The paint stuff works, the smell starts to diminish.... he cleans both sides carpets... he does exactly one-million loads of laundry to get the smell out of all our clothes, linens, everything.... and I really think Saint Jason has a nice ring to it. No he's not perfect but neither was Mother Theresa. And he's not the only one on the list. Our parents, Granddad, Nana, Papa, Oma, numerous friends.... we have had tons of support and people loving on us in this month of chaos and we are so grateful. I almost wrote soooooo grateful, but it looked insincere.

And now for the happy ending. We are home again and I love it here and every little thing and quirk about this place including the red pipe upstairs that has always made me vaguely uncomfortable - I LOVE. I never ever want to move from this home at this moment in time. I love the older carpet. I love the fact there are month-old cheerios in the couch. I love that for some odd reason the bathroom is the hottest room in the house. And I forgot what it looked like, and I forgot I had pretty things and pictures of my family and little candles and funky pottery and art on the walls that friends have painted for me. It is wonderful to be home again.

My glorious mothers (Mom and Mom-In-Law) helped us move in last night and folded laundry and cooked us food and shopped for us! Mia was really shocked at first and then really excited to see all her toys and her house again, too. And she went right back into all her little routines, it was so awesome. God is good to us and I have seriously 10 billion things to be thankful this holiday season. And I love this time of year. A savior has come. Christ the Lord! (Heart bursting into song even though all I'm doing externally is grinning.)