Rainbow to the Rescue in Pensacola
This post is about an amazing blessing. You won’t think it is a blessing at first, you will think it borders on disaster, but stop. Think about it.
Late this afternoon, our contractor friend was in putting bars in the guest suite that people can use to help navigate around, help lift themselves off the toilet, etc. We were busy looking for a stud for the shower bars when it started raining.
“That’s raining pretty hard.” he said.
“It rains like that all the time,” I said blithely.
But it really was coming down, and it wasn’t just for a few minutes, it poured, and it kept pouring. The lightning was really close and we heard a loud CRACK! and then BANG and the power transformer on the post near my house was hit, but my power must come from somewhere else because, by the Grace of God, we didn’t lose power.
“Oh no! This has never happened before!” I exclaimed as I saw water seeping in the guest suite where we were working. (This has been cleaned up a little bit for this family blog.)
I thought it was coming in under the French doors, but when I grabbed the old towels for soaking up purposes, I saw that there was more . . . coming from under the walls! Horrors! I was almost stopped still in my tracks – there aren’t enough towels in Pensacola to handle the amount of water seeping in!
“This is a task for Rainbow!” my contractor said, and ran for his truck, to exchange it for his Rainbow truck (he is both a contractor and a Rainbow franchise operator).
While Dave was gone, his assistant, Bobby, used their wet vac to get as much water up as he could, dumping the full tank several times out the window as we struggled. Finally, the rain slowed, and we could mop up the remaining wetness. He started a fan.
Dave came back with the big Rainbow truck and an intimidating amount of equipment. Now I will go into a parenthetical gripe about men and their toys. The biggest part of me is incredibly grateful to have this resourceful man who helps us with our construction and renovation needs, and then is there, like Superman, to the rescue, when disaster strikes. Another part of me wishes he didn’t have that excited gleam in his eye. My problem is his challenge – he loves the adrenalin.
Honestly, it’s only a small part, and mostly it’s because I wish I didn’t have any problem at all. Dave has a meter that shows where water is still sitting in the grout between the tiles, and how it has soaked the baseboards and begun to creep up the sheet rock. He explains how in Florida, where the humidity is so high, the sheet rock can’t always dry out fast enough to avoid mold formation, and that even though it eventually may dry on its own, the mold can survive until the next moisture hits. Oh aarrgh!
Hours later, we have huge fans running, and we have dry air in oscilations being wafted into our walls to insure they dry thoroughly, but not too much. We have machines taking readings. Our insurance company says we are doing all the right things and the adjuster will come by on Monday or Tuesday.
This was supposed to be a quiet Saturday night. If it had been a normal quiet Saturday night, we might have been upstairs, watching some TV, listening to the lightening and not worrying too much about it. We would have gotten up in the morning and gone to church. We might not have even known our guest suite was flooded for days!
So honestly, I feel blessed. I am blessed that if this disaster had to happen, I had people with me who knew exactly what to do, and did it.
As they left, the Gulf Power people were out fixing the exploding power transformer, and I thought how many heroes there are on this earth, people who do their job under the worst circumstances, people who leave their families to serve because there are jobs that must be done.
God bless you, all of you, health workers, police, firemen, electricians, plumbers, emergency services, soldiers and sailors and airmen – all who sacrifice and serve. May you sleep well at night, and may God bless you and your families who support you.
I had a disaster, but I was surrounded by every resource I needed to deal with it. Thanks be to God.
If you have a disaster, and you live in the greater Pensacola area, I can recommend:
Rainbow International Restoration Services
David Murphy
O: 850-994-4411
Cell: 850-281-0232
Taming Chaos
My daughter-in-law has a genius for taming chaos, and I learn a lot from her just by being in her house. One idea has helped me a lot – baskets.
Quilters use a lot of equipment, and it can really get messy. I have baskets of scraps that I mean to cut into usable pieces, baskets of tools, baskets of my office supplies, and now – a basket of rulers.
Before:
After:
The Quilt Room is ready for me. It may look messy to you, but this is the clutter of creativity, the clutter of works in progress, not the clutter of chaos. Right now, I know where all my tools are, I know where to find all my blue fabrics, I can put my hands on just the ruler I need, the iron is up and ready to take care of straying seams and the sewing machine is plugged in. Wooo HOOOO on me!
Lost in Space
Did you think I might have dropped off the face of the earth? The truth is so much more mundane, I am just up to my neck in boxes, and the tedious task of unloading those boxes and trying to find the right place for each of the myriad objects is frustrating and totally not worth sharing with you.
It was only a year ago I did this same move, on a smaller scale, the move from Kuwait to Doha. Only one year ago this month. This move is more complicated, with another whole household coming in, and now all our Doha goods have arrived, and I get to put everything away.
I decided to do things differently, and it worked for me. Normally, I am methodical. I choose a box, empty the box, put everything away, break down the box and move to the next box.
This time, I opened the box, and if I just wasn’t ready to deal with that box, I moved on to the next box. I would put away what could be more easily put away. Occasionally, I have had to run to the local Target store and buy some more put-it-together storage organization pieces, and that slows me down a little, but helps me store things for effectively and efficiently – I like to know where things are. If you have to go looking for things, and you can’t find them, then they are useless, no?
And, last and most freeing of all, now that I am working upstairs – when I finished with a box, I just tossed it over the landing, down into the entryway! LLLOOOLLLL! You cannot imagine the joy it gave me! Just toss, and it’s gone, and it makes a satisfying racket when it hits the floor, or the other boxes!
I also had a collection of boxes in what was called ‘the butler’s pantry’ in the house brochure. It is a room between the guest suite, laundry and garage, where there are two wine refrigerators – one for white and one for red – and more glass fronted cupboards, where AdventureMan stored all our wine and beer glasses. He also keeps beer in the white wine refrigerator, as we don’t drink that much wine.
Yesterday morning, once I had finished the last box, I broke down all the boxes at once. When you do it all at once, it takes like less than one minute per box. I had all the boxes broken down and into the garage in about 40 minutes. Wooo HOOO on me!
I still have chaos in two rooms, the room we call the Grandchildren’s Room, next to ours, upstairs. I have piles of things I haven’t used for years, but I keep hanging on to because I might want to use them sometime. Hmmmm. Actually, I love this room. It has the best light of all the rooms in the house, with a Southern window and a Western window. Lots of light.
And then, there is my quilt room. Quilters collect fabric, and being mildly obsessive compulsive, I like to have my fabric in order, by color, by type (floral? checked? baby quilt? Batik? Christmas?) and sometimes by nationality (African? French? Dutch?) or project (blocks from Germany? blocks from Doha?). Quilters often also have a lot of equipment, including more than one sewing machine and cutting tools, patterns, books, embellishments, etc. It is a real mess to put away:
You can see the chair in this room – to the right of that chair are two large bookcases, and in the lower part near the chair is also my “office.” That chair is where I do my morning Bible readings and where I write many of these posts, while AdventureMan is still snoozing. When I am working, AdventureMan comes in and sits in that chair to talk to me. There is an identical one in his office, where I sit when I am talking with him, and where I sit when we are watching the upstairs TV. AdventureMan jokes that we are wearing a hole in the carpet as we go back and forth to each other’s offices. 🙂
My kitchen has a couple clear counters, now, although there are still things I am trying to find places for. There are two ‘areas of sanity’ – the living room and the family room. I don’t have a lot up on the walls yet, but a few little things. Putting things up is fun for me, so I save that to encourage myself to get everything away – once I have everything put away, I can have a little fun. 🙂
As you can see, I still have work to do, but I wanted to take a minute to bring you up to date. 🙂
Sorting Through Our Lives
At lunch, on our anniversary, AdventureMan and I played a game, a game we call “the top three”. He started it. “What are your top three thrills in our life together?” he asked . . .
We came up with contenders, debated relative merits, but agreed on #1 – the birth of our son. Then there were the top three vacations, the top three surprises, etc. It’s always fun; and together remember things you wouldn’t remember on your own.
Every now and then you get a glimpse of what makes life worthwhile, and you are additionally blessed by knowing how happy you are at the time you are happy.
One of those days was today.
Yesterday, we went by to see our son and his wife and our little adorable grandson had a cough.
“Do you need for us to take care of him tomorrow?” we asked.
Oh! If we could take care of him in the morning, that would be wonderful! And so, promptly at 0730, we were at their doorstep, and our morning passed – oh, happily! – taking care of our adorable grandson. He has a bad cough, but he is on the mend, and we had some fun.
He loves his jumpy-thing, which we call a Johnny Jump-Up, but it isn’t, it’s like calling all tissues “Kleenex” or all copies a “Xerox”:
He has discovered his hands and feet; I love watching him, it’s pure motion, every leg and every arm going at once:
Well, he can’t talk yet, not clearly, so he blows bubbles to tell us how much he loves us:
“Oh!” exclaims AdventureMan, “You have to take a picture of him while he is sleeping, he is so beautiful.”
LOL! I had swaddled him, and he tried to tell me I had done it wrong, but I didn’t listen. When I went back 10 minutes later, he was still squalling AND he was no longer swaddled. I re-swaddled, this time, doing it right and tight, and before I even put him in his crib, he was sound asleep.
He did manage somehow to get one arm out:
On the way home, we picked up some roasting chickens for dinner, to roast with fresh rosemary and basil from our own garden. Yummm. AdventureMan will deliver one to our son and his wife around dinner time.
We are happy AND we know it. It’s a great day in Pensacola.
The Last Box
Today, as the Cox Cable man was setting up our TV, Internet and Phone bundle, we were unpacking the last box.
“Where are you going to put the phones?” the Stan-the-cable-guy asked.
We looked blank.
It has been so long since we have relied on a land-line. We hadn’t even thought about it. We carry our mobile phones with us, or at least I do. Now that AdventureMan has semi-retired, he has his people (me) carry the phone, LOL!
We actually do have a phone; we put in out in the box to send to the Jr. League big sale our daughter in law works with. It’s an old princess phone. I don’t even remember using it, it’s so old. I don’t know where the other phones have gone, but that’s phones . . .
Guess we have to go out and buy some phones, LOL!
After all our moaning and groaning, we think we have everything. Only some weird things are missing. Like we have ONE cushion for our outdoor seating area; two identical benches that used to have two identical cushions.
Now that we have internet again, I will share some photos of the last week. The first photos are from the day the movers are arriving – two days before we expected them. Notice the nice peach/rose on the walls, please. 🙂
We are lucky to have this room, although we didn’t care that much about it when we bought the house. It is a butler’s pantry, with lighted glassed shelves for glassware, and two wine refrigerators, one to keep white wine chilled, and the other to keep red wine at cellar temperature. Actually, it is good for water, and beer, too. 🙂 But since our major china cabinet has a broken foot, I really needed a place I could put things away, and this turned out to be a Godsend.
Butler's Pantry
Above is my bathroom; I love the little orange trees painted on my cabinet, and the little step that pulls out to make me taller.
LOL, here is where we were really camping out, in the guest room, while we waited for our storage goods to come. Yes, it’s a mess. There is actually a chair in the room, too, but aside from the bed and the chair, we had no furniture. We had thought we would cook, but who wants to eat standing up? Or sitting on a bed?
The moving truck arrives, some things are packed, some things are loose. It’s not all our goods; the driver tells us he has four different loads on the same truck. Aarrgh.
One of the first things off the truck was my dressing table mirror – broken. The driver said off the top that he had broken it when he was packing the truck. His honesty took away any anger we might have felt, and I know we can get a new mirror cut. It was the only major damage we had, and it wasn’t that bad.
Some of our pieces had some mildew on them, but it came of with just a little vinegar. We had to toss two old featherbeds and some of my clothing, which also seemed to have been in some area which had moisture problems while in storage.
This is the family room after the delivery.
The living room – we love these little loveseat/couches and were astonished at how well they weathered 12 years of storage without a mark – they still look new, and they are twenty something years old, but reupholstered. No, not by me, I didn’t know how yet.
First, we created an area of sanity. You have to have a place you can go where there is no mess. You create one, and then . . . you start widening the area. We started with this outside area, then the living room, then the family room. The kitchen is still a little bit chaotic, but that is because I have to wash all the dishes and china and crystal before they can go back on shelves. It isn’t that hard, it is just numbingly boring unwrapping each piece.
I think I told you about each spoon being wrapped separately:
Each piece has to be unwrapped . . . horrors!
That was the last box. 🙂
No, not everything is in place yet, but our areas of sanity, of order, are larger now. We have moved upstairs to our bedroom and study area; we have another bedroom next door to ours for visiting grandchildren or overflow guests for larger family gatherings. Our clothes are unpacked and put away, and we still have some empty places on shelves and in closets for the final wave – the Doha shipment – which won’t arrive until late June or July, we are guessing.
We still don’t have any phones. That goes on our “To Do” list, which is monstrous, no matter how we keep nibbling away at it. And the Qatteri cat is happy; the fuller the house is, the happier he is.
Whew!
Pensacola Ale House and Customer Service
“I think she’s having a problem,” I said to AdventureMan as he huffed because the waitress hadn’t been by the table and he needed something. She – and the manager – were at the table behind AdventureMan, and that couple was raising a stink about something and the waitress and the manager were placating them.
No matter what they did, the woman kept complaining. The man looked embarrassed; you get the impression the woman was trying to get their meals comped or something.
When the waitress came to our table, she took our orders and then we waited again, a long time, before our meals came. The waitress was running around, there was a huge crowd in the Ale House, and we could tell she was a little flustered from her experience with the couple at the next table.
This being retired and living temporarily in a hotel is a real change for us. It means when things are slow, it’s OK. We aren’t in a hurry, we don’t have anywhere we have to be and AdventureMan is only as tired as his exercise program and jet lag force him to be.
Our appetizer came, smoked fish spread and crackers and oh, YUMMM. So good. When our main dishes came, AdventureMan got salad and a big bowl of chili, but I got Chicken Oriental, not Oriental Chicken Salad. I sent it back. No big deal, but I really, REALLY love their Oriental Chicken Salad.
The waitress apologized, and apologized, and we could see she was having a bad night. Of course, it took a while for me to get my order, but it was worth it. Did I mention how I love their Oriental Chicken Salad? There used to be a chicken salad at Chili’s that I liked, Crispy Chicken Salad, and I loved that, except I only wished the chicken were grilled, not fried. At the Pensacola Ale House, the chicken is grilled. There is nothing not to love. The crispy noodles, the tangy salad dressing – it is all good.
It was our son and his wife who told us we would like this place, and they were right. It has a great variety – we could see a lot of burgers, steaks, chicken, Osso Bucco – and everything that went by us was something we would love to try sometime.
When we had finished, the waitress came by again and we assured her we were fine, she had done fine with us, and the mistaken order was no big deal, and it wasn’t. She brought the bill, we paid, and then, when she brought back our change, she brought this – “on the house,” she said, “for being so nice:”
We were so full. Dinner had been so good. But we took a couple bites, just to be polite. It was an Oreo cookie crust, with vanilla ice cream, and another layer of gooey warm caramel before another layer of Oreo crust. It was DIVINE. We ate the whole thing. Well, we left a couple bites, just to be polite. We have a very funny Kuwaiti friend; we could hear him saying “haven’t you ever seen food before?” It was irresistible. It was amazing. Can you tell, we hardly ever eat desserts?
Watching Paint Dry
‘Watching Paint Dry’ is synonymous with BORING, but watching paint dry is exactly what I am doing. Yes. Seriously.
Many moves ago, I was about to paint a room a color I loved when a thought struck me – maybe I ought to preview the paint, paint a small area and see how it looked when it dried. Thank God I followed that tiny nagging thought. Bought the smallest amount I could, which I believe was a gallon, painted a small portion of the wall – and was horrified to see what I had thought would be a subtle color turn a very purple kind of pink.
Now, paint manufacturers have done a very smart thing – they have small, one pint containers that can be made up in any color. Paint changes with the light; I’m trying to find a warm neutral to cover the too-brown caramel, so I had several made up, and I’ve daubed the walls in different places, different lights. I want to see how they look when the paint dries.
The two larger ones are the two that I liked the best, but I want to keep watching, see what grows on me. The first one on the left, Early Sunset, is the one I thought would be my favorite, but it went totally neutral, blah, on the wall. There was one paint I liked, but I hated the name, Muffin Mix. The two front runners are Lilting Laughter and Abalone Pink.
Family Room (three different walls)
Living Room (living room is too dark!)
Dining Room is even darker:
What is interesting to me is how different the same background color looks in every photo – you wouldn’t even think it is the same paint if you didn’t know. That’s why I test. I want to see how it changes in different light.
I’m going to do some under-daubing in dusty rose and terra-cotta, then sponge over the daubs with the lighter neutral, hoping to get a Mediterranean / Tuscan kind of effect. The house is ‘blonde’ brick with white columns, so a Mediterranean (or Arabian Gulf) villa look would work for us, and help us adjust to our new location.
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