My new year started off with the flu, this should have been a clear indication of what was looming in the near future.
I really had a chaotic fall season; full of busy parenting days watching our child grow, taking her to dance classes and swimming. Immersing her in community events and watching her personality shine through, we were hoping for some downtime. The start of the extreme chaos I would say, was that early fall morning when I came into her room thinking; “Wow. She peed right in the middle of the floor and all over her stool, how on earth did she do that?”
Then I felt it. Tap. Tap. Tap. On the back of my head, water dripping around to my face. I look up and tap, right in my forehead. Water dripping through the ceiling and down her beautiful chandelier. Ensue panic mode, as we just had torrential rains and more on the way. After a few days of panic, phone calls, having my father pop down from two hours away. It was decided the roof was toast and at the back of the house, the roof actually was caving in. Wow. okay, so off to the bank to try and secure some finances to fix this. Knowing full well we live paycheck to paycheck and have quite a bit of consumer debt and having just taken out a loan for a used pop up trailer and gear (that past spring…wanting to give our daughter the amazing nature experiences), this was going to be a stretch. So, after getting approved from a friend who is a banker, we sat through contracting quotes and chose one we had a good feeling about, had great reviews on the better business bureau and had great references. They came, rather quickly and tarped off the roof for us. Am Roofing came a week later and replaced the back half of the roof and re-shingled etc the whole thing.
We realized it was going to be tough financially but we could make it and continued on through our fall plans, finishing up shooting a wedding, family shoots and enjoying the time watching Sophia explore her world.
Later that fall, as I descended into the basement to edit photos, the computer would not turn on. As I sat there in holy shit mode, I frantically prayed, “please turn on, please god, please spirits around me, please turn on the computer, make it work, please, I beg you, not now, please, we have one wedding almost finished editing and we have a whole series of mini-sessions to put into the computer, please please please….PLEASE TURN ON”
No such luck. After taking it to Futureshop’s geek squad, they told us the hard drive was toast, and when they put the new hard drive in we discovered our time machine backup drive was also toast. WTF. What is a time machine backup drive? it is all the files on the computer, our edits, our actions everything backed up on a separate hard drive. It now was gone too. We lost months of editing work. We could try and take it to Recovery Force, but it could cost up to $500 which we didn’t have. We had all of our clients raw files backed up on TWO external hard drives, and for the latest mini-sessions we had shot, they were still on cards. So, we were okay that way, we didn’t loose any client files. We needed a new computer right away and one that was powerful enough to edit, and so we had to finance with a Futureshop card, paying a low monthly fee to not pay for a year. Great, more debt. With contracts and a business to run, we really couldn’t go without a computer. Because we purposely didn’t shoot a lot of weddings to spend more time creating memories with our daughter this past summer, our business account was drained.
Heading into the holiday season, my favorite time of year, we knew it was going to be a skimpy Christmas for sure. We spend the holidays back and forth between family and getting our cuddles in with our daughter. We were very much in the mindset that the new year would bring better fortune.
While all of this was going on, My husband and I went to some counselling together, for me. I was really struggling with my body image and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t sick to the eating plan I had for myself. Why, when I did loose 40lbs I didn’t feel any different about my inner-self and quickly gained back all of the weight. I wanted to know what was wrong with me. Our therapist was very good and talked to me about things I’d never talked about, she made me look at how I use food. To cut this story a bit shorter, it turns out that I have an eating disorder, binge eating disorder. It is not something that I knew, or was aware of, but as I’m learning about it I’ve realized that I need to be more compassionate towards myself. I will always be ‘recovering’ and never ‘recovered’ as my drug is something my body needs to survive. I’m reading about the emotional relationships between food and people. I’m applying a few techniques that the therapist has helped me with. The biggest mantra “All food is good” this mantra, after a lifetime of dieting, isn’t something that is easily digestible. Sure, there are foods that are more beneficial via nutrients and healthy but realizing that “all food is OK” has really struck a cord deep in me. It’s an on going battle, and I’m learning.
Then the flu hit me. It started off with a terrible head cold, and then for two days I was bed ridden with my body aching and shivering. I couldn’t get warm, my throat and sinuses were killing me and all I wanted was some relief and sleep. How could this be? I had the flu shot. I managed to drag myself out of the house to join my family and friends for new years fireworks downtown. It took me a few days after that to start coming around to feeling better.
The night of January 10th, I was about to take a shower and realized there was no heat coming from the air vents, “Hun, can you check to see if the pilot light is out on the furnace?”
Mid shower, I hear my dear hubby explaining the belt is broken on the motor and he was headed out to get a new one. I cut the shower short and got dressed, Sophia already asleep in bed, I sat on the couch waiting to hear from my dear husband. Canadian Tire was closed, even though it said online and on their phone that it was open, Home Depot was closed, Walmart was open but didn’t stock the right size belt. Panic. It was going to be -22 and the temperature in the house was dropping. We had one little space heater which I turned on and pointed into my daughters room, and lit all the candles in the livingroom. We have reliance coverage for a reason, so I called them as my husband drove over to a friends house to pick up a belt that might fit. Reliance couldn’t send anyone to our house that evening, all the techs were busy on calls around our area and most likely would be working into the wee hours of the morning. Not good. My husband came home with the belt from our friends and it was too big. Super Panic Mode. What do we do? Thankfully our friends who gave us the belt to try also had an inferred heater, which we went out and picked up and it saved us. It heated the whole upper floor of the house. That next morning my husband went out to Canadian Tire to get the right size belt he needed, while he was gone the Reliance tech came. He was very professional and almost a bit cold at first but that is because he was pretty busy examining and looking at the 35 year old beast of a furnace we had. Jason came back with the right size belt and they got the furnace working. Now, thank god we called Reliance. He finished his exam of the now working furnace to tell us the heat pump was cracked and it was leaking Carbon Monoxide at 13ppm into our house. WTF. We had two carbon monoxide monitors in the house, one by the furnace and one upstairs by our bedrooms. None of which picked up on the leak. I just cried. I wept really. He had to legally shut our furnace down. My husband and I looked at each other white faced, How on earth are we going to afford this? What if we hadn’t had called Reliance and the leak got bigger? We’d be dead. I was just done. Emotionally done. The tech kindly explained that a man named Glen would be coming tomorrow on a Sunday just for us, as this was the winter and it was an “emergency”. Glen was really a lifesaver. He came in, very polite and personable. While he was talking all I could think was, how? how are we going to afford this? Renting would be our only option. Renting/financing would be our only way. I got approved for the financing and I don’t know how. They gave us credits to cover a few months of payment and hopefully we can get a few rebates ($650) from Ontario Hydro. When we do have to start paying, I’m really not sure how we’ll be able to. Once approved, they came out and installed the new furnace system, it came with an air conditioning unit (as we only had a heat pump and it was broken) and yeah, the silver lining, we’ll have air conditioning this summer. They installed it that Monday. I was shocked and surprised at how quickly everything happened, I’m still in shock.
While the technicians from Reliance were installing the furnace, one of them noticed a sound coming from our main water supply. He told my husband it sounded like it was leaking outside and to get the city into look at it. So, after they left, that Tuesday morning my husband called the City Water Works department and Bryce came out to look at everything. Turns out there is a leak. The leak is on our side of the hook-up. It is our responsibility to get fixed and we needed to get it fixed asap. How can this be happening? What are we going to do? I was in tears, sobbing tears, shock, and tears. I even thought, who had cursed us? who would wish this upon us? We have no money left, we are beyond our ceiling of debt load to which we’ll never really be able to pay back, and neither one of us can afford another loan. What. Do. We. DO?
We had a few good stress arguments at which we were getting divorced, only to really realize, yeah its the stress and we really do love each other. We needed to start looking at contractors because maybe just maybe it won’t be that expensive and miracles do happen. The first quote came in $7,900.00.
I froze when my husband told me, I was at work. I then tried to compose myself while trying not to cry. I think it came out like a whimper, wail. When I came home that night, my husband picked up our daughter from daycare, tv was her parent that night as we sat at the kitchen table in complete dismay.
Why us? What are we going to do? What? How? Where? All the questions we just sat, our heads spinning, and he says “We’re going to have to use my RRSP’s, I don’t have a lot in there, but we’re going to have to pull out the max and that is barely going to cover the contractor. We won’t have anything left to fix the driveway, the front yard, the walkway, everything will just be dirt”
I hung my head and whispered “Ok, it’s our only option left”
We went down the YellowPages for plumbers in our area and called them all. Most couldn’t do excavating or a project this big. We eventually found 5 quotes. We picked one on Friday; “Bob’s your Plumber” and he comes highly recommended, no dings on the better business bureau, and when we went to the city to fill out our permits for the work, they said “oh that’s Bob, just write down Bob, he’s great”.
Over this past weekend, my mother and father came and got our daughter and are looking after her for the week. She loves going with them and they’ll spoil her and take her to play with her cousin. Thank god for them, I don’t think we’d be good parents this week, no water, basement tore apart and front lawn and driveway dug up.
The water got shut off yesterday at noon, as the contractor wanted a good day for the water to drain away before digging. They start digging tomorrow.
My husband and I are more somber these days, more compassionate with one another, either through lack of energy or just being whipped into submission by life. Maybe its the realization we have no idea how were going to afford everything.
We realize though, that all of these things are happening for a reason.
Had the roof not leaked on my head, it could have caved in shortly after creating more damage. Had I not looked for answers for myself, I would have binge ate my way through the last few months (although sometimes I have, the frequency is far less). Had the stores been open and we replaced the belt on the furnace ourselves, we would have never known about the leaking death, and the unimaginable could have happened. Had we not had the reliance tech installing the new system say to us, get that sound checked out, we’d never known about the water main leak and far worse could have happened.
I know that moving forward through the chaos, there lies the silver lining, the positive in every situation, we will be ok. I am putting it out there that all goes amazing and everything gets fixed to plan and approved!
I pray that things now move upwards and forward and only great amazing things ahead, that I and we attract positiveness and kindness.
I and we, are grateful to all who have helped us and support(ed) us and all that we have received. I pray for exceptional wellness not only for myself but my husband and daughter, my family and friends. On to better luck, love and good fortune.
Hugs and Loves