Where Were You When ...?

Eight years ago today, on September 11, 2001, the United States of America was attacked and our lives changed forever.

(photo courtesy of the National Parks Service)

Read more ...

VA Letter to Veterans - You Have ALS!

Being a veteran, I was absolutely livid when hearing of this:

VA Letter to Veterans - Congratulations! You Have ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease)
Can you imagine being told you have a deadly disease, by means of an impersonal letter from the VA? That's what happened last week to over 1000 veterans.
Read more ...

I'd love to hear what you think.

A Special Day - A Special Lady

It's been a rough month.

As posted earlier, I made an unplanned trip home due to my mother's illness. Sadly, she passed on June 13th, just moments before my plane landed. I was denied the opportunity to say my final good-byes, but most of my siblings and other family members were there, so I'm happy to know that she wasn't alone and that she passed quietly with no suffering. I also take comfort that she is in a much better place now and I will see her again.

Recalling fond memories prompted me to pen a short story that I published this morning - Ma's Fudge - A Slightly-Biased Opinion of the Best Chocolate Fudge

'Margaret Mary Hunkins'
Grammar School Photo - Circa 1930s

'Peggy Hunkins'
Circa 1940s

'Gram'
With my son Brian, Dec 1981

Enjoying a favorite pastime

'Gram'
With my son Paul, Summer of 2000

Today is Ma's birthday; she would have been 83.
Happy Birthday, Ma. I love you ...

Going Home

It's Sat morning, shortly before 6 a.m. and I'm packing for a trip home.

Mom is in the end stages of COPD/emphysema and has taken a turn for the worse. I will be flying home this morning and would ask for prayer for traveling mercies, for Mom's comfort, and the family to come together during this trying time.

I don't know when I'll be back and probably won't be blogging while I'm gone. If I could leave you with one thought today it would be ...

If you don't smoke, don't start.
If you do smoke, QUIT

Did You Know Mice Liked Apples?

The last lines of my last post were "What next? I don't think I want to know ... "

I was right - I didn't ...

If you haven't before, read this post and this post first to understand what I'm dealing with.

Did you know mice liked apples?

(click photos to enlarge - if you aren't squeemish)

I got up Monday morning to find a couple of chunks missing from an apple in a bowl on my kitchen counter. Upon further inspection, I realized that the culprit had left plenty of evidence behind. Lovely ... NOT!


I got rid of the apples and made sure there was no more open foodstuffs on the counter, but further signs yesterday told me that they hadn't given up so easily and were still recon'ing the area. Ok, time to bring out the big guns - mouse traps.

Later in the day I called my lender and fed some info to the fraud dept to hopefully get things going on the issues with the home I purchased in March of this year. As soon as I hung up the phone, I went into the kitchen for a glass of water and noticed something out of the corner of my eye that didn't look right. My washer and dryer are still in the middle of the room, and it appeared that something was hanging out of the back of the dryer, where the hole for the vent hose was. I started to take a step closer, but there wasn't a lot of light in that area and something told me to back off. I'm glad I followed my gut ...

I hollered for Tom and told him what I saw and asked him to have a look. He confirmed what my initial reaction was - it was a big snake! After a scream or two, I grabbed the camera and jumped onto a chair while Tom chased it around the laundry room. He was able to capture it and get it to the garage to kill it, but not before it bit him.


I was sufficiently freaked out for some time, as you can imagine, but when things calmed down a bit I wanted to make sure that I had good pictures for my reports. Here you can see him stretched out next to the tape measure - he was a full 4 FEET LONG!





We covered up the space as best we could, but it still can't be completely enclosed until joists and subfloor are replaced, and I can't do that until an inspection and investigation is completed. So yes, the nightmares continue as a result of this stupid hole in the floor. I slept very little last night, tossed and turned for hours at a time, thinking about what else may be lurking in the house that I haven't stumbled upon yet. The few snatches of sleep that I did get here and there were filled with dreams, one that I remember about a big plant growing up the wall along the open area, that appeared to be wanting to take over. Talk about 'Little Shop of Horrors'!

To recap ...

Large hole in the structure.
Black mold growing up the wall.
Musty dampness throughout that area and the bathroom (which is behind that wall).
Mushrooms growing out of the side of the subfloor.
Mice in the kitchen.
And now a snake in my house, no doubt looking for the mice ...

I'm going to be smart this time. I'm not going to ask.

(On a more positive note, there was a dead mouse in the trap this morning. Pretty sad when a dead mouse is a good thing).

Am I Hallucinating?

Unbelievable.

(Read this post for a bit of background)

I'm still dealing with this huge hole down to the crawlspace beneath my laundry room and I'm about at my whit's end on how to deal with it. I actually broke down into tears this afternoon after what I found shortly before noon today ...

Mushrooms!

Yes, I have mushrooms growing in my house - not down in the dirt beneath the crawlspace, but growing out the side of the damp, exposed subfloor.

(click to enlarge)

Since no agency I've contacted yet has been very helpful, I called the structural inspector this afternoon to attempt to deal with him personally, but had to leave a message. If I don't hear something by close of business on Monday, I will be calling everyone I can think of on Tuesday morning, starting with the Dept of Commerce/Real Estate Division, the Health Dept and finally the media.

Large hole in the structure.
Black mold growing up the wall.
Musty dampness throughout that area and the bathroom (which is behind that wall).
And now mushrooms ...

What next?

I don't think I want to know ...

Happy Homeowner?

I've been MIA for a while and what you'll read below is one reason why.

Most of you know that I purchased a home recently and was ecstatic to be a homeowner once again.

Well, that was short lived, and I feel like I'm in the middle of a nightmare.

I tore the wallpaper out of the bathroom so I could prep to paint and put in new sink/vanity and such, but all that came to a screeching halt with a discovery I made when I pulled off the baseboard.

From that point it went on to a 3.5'x 7.5' hole in my laundry area, which is open to the bare earth in the crawl space below. It's been open like that for three weeks while I've been trying to get someone to help me out of this mess. Several floor joists are wet and rotted through, and the moisture had seeped up through the bathroom floor on the other side of that wall as well. The odor was horrendous, and there is black mold on that wall.

I had to repair and install a new kitchen floor before I could even purchase the house due to issues that we DID know about, and that floor is already far from level, and it's been only three months. It seems I've been finding some new issue just about every day, and I'm ready for the nightmare to end. There was even a dead cat decomposing under the laundry area - how nice.

I can't go any further with painting or other projects or even move the rest of my things in from storage until these issues with the floors are fixed. There are definite structural issues with the home and I believe several people had their hand in sweeping those issues under the proverbial rug in order to get me into the home.

I opted for a VA guaranteed loan and the appraiser did his job, but he ok'd the sale based on reports from other professionals that the house was structurally sound, when in fact it was never inspected properly. I was getting very little help from my realtor and at a loss as to where else to turn, so contacted the regional office of the Veteran's Administration to see what assistance they might be in a position to provide.

The gentleman I spoke with on Friday had never handled a case like this, but seemed to think that the VA would want to be involved, and had already requested the complete file on the sale from my lender. I wrote a detailed report of everything that transpired from the day I first looked at the property, through the closing process, to where we are today and emailed that last night. He'll have some good reading to start off his work week - it's 10 pages worth, but I didn't want to leave out a single detail.

So now I wait some more. I pray that someone can start the ball rolling and get this fixed quickly, but I'm not holding my breath (actually, I should be - it stinks in here). I haven't been able to use my laundry for three weeks (so far) , I'm trying to keep the hole covered so my cat can't get down there, and it's just downright nasty around here and I want it to end.

Here are a couple of photos showing the mess around me. All are clickable to enlarge.

This is what I found when I peeled back a small area of the linoleum in the bathroom.


Beneath the linoleum was all wet, but the dark portion on the right is wood that is rotted almost all the way through.

This pic is the wet subfloor and joists that were underneath the platform for washer/dryer. All that was left to rot, and it slowly creeped through to the bathroom flooring on the other side of that wall.


The lighter wood is the frame that was built to put over the rotted areas, that the platform set on.


This picture is after we picked up the frame on the left side. You can see where one joist was, but as soon as we touched it, it basically disintegrated.



You can see just how wet and rotted this joist is.


I'll spare you the photo of the dead cat.

Anyway, it's in the hands of the Veteran's Administration now, or at least I hope it is. Somehow I have the feeling this is just the beginning of a long battle.