What doesn't kill you ...

It's finally come to a place where I can tell you about it.  Most of you know at this point but writing about it has helped me come to some conclusions about what I needed to learn through the whole situation.  Also, I didn't write about it earlier because there was no resolution and I didn't (and still don't) want to drag anyone's reputation through the mud.  All that to say, here's the brief version, especially for you, Stacey!


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I bought this house.  

Almost a year ago exactly, I talked about it here.  That post receives the most visits, which is kind of funny to me.  Anyway, after a long road of ups and downs to even purchase this place, it finally happened and we moved in at the end of May 2011.  Last summer was marked by home owner trepidation, illness, dead squirrels, a leaky ceiling, a leaky basement, scary spiders, a few gunshots near by, some 911 calls and a lot of laughs along the way.


Now I live there with these dear women (plus Melissa who lives in Haiti too).

In the fall, over my sabbatical, I found some renewed energy to invest in my new home.  Some paint and Patty's genius furniture moving skills helped it start to feel like it was really mine.  In October, I got the air ducts cleaned and all seemed ok.  That's when we started to REALLY smell this awful sewer smell in the downstairs bathroom.  The whole time, that bathroom had smelled a bit musty, and over the summer we had a crazy fly problem, in the fall it was a gnat problem, but it didn't all seem to add up.  Post vent cleaning the smell was BAD.  Really bad.  Up to that point, no one had lived on the first floor and used that bathroom regularly.  One of my roommates had moved in down there and let me know that there was a bad smell that was super strong some times and more subtle at others.  I think she was being nice, it was always an overpowering smell!  (Little did we know, the duct work had been knocked loosed in the cleaning process and was an open hole to the cesspool below.)


It took three plumbers to find the problem.  Finally, I found a trusted master plumber.  If you need one, look no further.  Ask me and I'll give you his info.  He was the only one to crawl back under my kitchen floor, bless his heart. 


After an hour of research under my kitchen/bathroom floor, he had found the problem.  The master bathroom toilet on the second floor had never been connected to the sewer line.  It wasn't connected to anything.  It had been emptying into the "crawl space" under my kitchen floor and under the first floor bathroom.  No lie.  (Go ahead and insert your best puns here.  The jokes have certainly abounded.)  What should have been a $30 pipe and 10 minutes of work was now going to cost thousands of dollars.


I bought the house from the city.  A non profit organization had been the overseer of the work, but apparently this house was rehabbed during a major leadership change.  When I brought it to their attention, I was met with very little response for the last 2 months.  As the whole thing progressed, I had to hire a lab testing company to prove that there was mold there from all the moisture sitting there.  The remediation of that mold  (which is most likely the cause of our deathly ill summer of 2011) was going to cost $15,000 at least.  Over two months of fighting it all, I found myself with very few options, the last one being to hire a lawyer.    In April of last year, when I was in process of buying this home I  dreamt of all the worst scenarios, but with my best imagination I never came up with THIS.


I don't know what happened last week, but I snapped.  I woke up Wednesday morning and wrote an email I never knew I was capable of.  Fierce and forceful, with the next step being my lawyer.  Many had been praying that resolution would come and breakthrough would open up. With in an hour, I had the response I had been waiting for.  The city and the organization were going to take responsibility and pay for the contractor and plumber of my choice to pay for the remediation.   


I'm still reflection on what in the WORLD I am to learn through all of this.  So far, I've made these observations:
-  My city, the place I love, my missional address, has way more deep rooted strong holds than I knew when I moved here.  It's a tangled up place and I'm very thankful now that I don't have to take on the powers that be!
- I'm a fighter!
- Sometimes we pay a price we don't deserve.  We have to be ready for that reality because things don't always work to our favor.  And, sometimes you have to absolutely fight for it.
-  My love for this place hasn't waned at all.  It's quirky, it's frustrating, it's weird, sometimes it's absurd, but I absolutely love it.  Even after being tested in this way, I still feel the same.
- Pioneers require support.  I have the best support ever.
- Being met with troubles doesn't mean we shouldn't have done something.  Don't be surprised by trouble. Expect it.  EXPECT IT.
-  I don't ever want to talk about my bathroom problems EVER again.


In conclusion, I think Kelly Clarkson says it all.  This is exactly how I feel about the mold I've lived with for a year now!