The other F-words.....

Flooding

Here's hoping you never experience it. Since flooding is one of those life events that if you experience even once...changes your perspective on quite a number of things.

Firstly, we have too much shit. No seriously, if you have ever been through a flood and you need to rapidly remove all of your belongings that are floating in a 1000 square feet of space, you will realize in a real hurry that you have belongings that make no sense at all. Moving gives you the same feeling but not necessarily with the same intensity if you have time to pack gradually. Both events end in tossing things into the dumpster just to prevent any more heavy lifting when you no longer have the energy to deal.

Why do we keep so much organized paper garbage in bookcases? I still have binders of  notes from culinary school from 10 years ago, and not one, but two filing cabinets. One drawer in the filing cabinet is just dedicated to warranties for household appliances. This makes me very lame.

We have an entire furnace room filled with children's toys in labelled rubber maid bins. Toys that the kids have barely sneezed on in the last 5 years but somehow whenever I threaten to garage sale them, I get a protest that rivals most Occupy Wall Street movements.

Bunk beds are the worst piece of furniture known to man to have to take apart and move quickly, unless you are in a barracks and have an entire military unit to disassemble them. Hate them and subsequently sold them after the second flood, especially since my husband is too short to help me remove the top bunk from the bottom one and I'm too big to get into the top bunk to change the sheets.

I remember a time when the only belongings I had were in a backpack and I could disappear on a dime. Somewhere in between our lives now and my life then is some form of reasonable.

Freakouts

Secondly, don't expect your kids to behave and think the way, say an adult or someone of sound mind might behave in a state of emergency. Kids live in a land of wonder and find beauty in the most tragic of circumstances. We always appreciate this about our children in hindsight and wish we could be more child-like overall but in the midst of a household disaster you might just lose your damn mind as a parent.

I'll give you an example of what this looks like in my world in case you don't have children yet. Upon coming home to discover our home was flooded the first time around, it was just me and the kids. Disaster, as a rule, strikes when my husband is away. It's like a cat and mouse game with me and my higher power. (I envision someone above thinking, "Hey, she's looking a little bored down there, too much going through the motions, too much putting her feet up with a glass of wine and some Corrie on the tele. Let's throw some crazy ass shit at her to deal with so she can feel empowered.").

Once I got past the sucker punch of realization, I quickly instructed the kids to grab whatever the hell they could carry and get it to higher ground upstairs or in the garage as fast as they possibly could. My two youngest are the muscle in the family, both gemini's, they are like power rangers in the face of danger. They went to work grabbing and flinging as instructed.

Like a maniac, I began the hauling and heaving of all of the heavy items upstairs, things that the kids couldn't carry like chairs, dressers, night stands, mattresses and beds. As a woman on a mission, I neglected to see my oldest daughter, my fairy child, until the 20th or so trip up the stairs. She was twirling in a circle, no bigger than a foot, a tiny section of carpet that was completely dry, arms outstretched with a happy look of contentment upon her beautiful face.

"What the HELL are you doing?!", shouted my completely freaked out, psycho mother self to my daughter.

"I'm in the circle of peace", responded my daughter with a wide eyed innocence having been abruptly disturbed from her happy imaginary cloud land inside her head.

"There no circle of peace here!!! Only a circle of Hell!! Now, get back to work!!", was my Mother of the Year response.

Frustration

Insurance after natural disasters such as flooding is a complicated, difficult and often a frustrating issue. One important point to remember is that the insurance company will try to settle a claim for as little money as possible, and their adjusters work towards that goal.

Some adjusters and companies that offer assistance for flood relief have sold their soul to the devil.  These people make money off of other people's disasters for a living and sympathy is hard to find. They also have personalities that dirt would envy. Our first flood resulted in a $1200 bill for three basement dryers for a period of three days. The second time we begged and borrowed equipment from friends. It cost us a few bottles of wine and some gift cards.

There is no flooding insurance in Canada. The only monies you can claim is under Property Coverage: extension of coverage to water damage (ground water). Our amount of coverage in our policy is $10,000. I really hope yours is much, much more. If we wanted our insurance to cover our damaged belongings, tear out of flooded property, equipment to dry out our home, repairs and furniture storage, we would need about $25,000. Frankly, our furniture in the basement is shit, so if you have nice furniture, make it $30,000.

If you don't have $30K of coverage in your policy, then this means your regular family life will be exchanged for a self imposed chain gang lifestyle for several months, on average 2-3, until you manage to get the work done yourself. Now, $10K will cover that and if your are lucky, you can swing for a couple of bottles of booze to numb the pain.

Fuckups

When it came time to sort out the flooding source, the cause of our pain and financial fisting, we couldn't have made worse decisions. This should be your first priority. Having a contractor friend sort out installing a new sump pump and having your husband otherwise known as Anti-handy Andy pick out an appropriate new sump pump is a REALLY stupid way of ensuring that your home has a pretty good chance of flooding, not once but twice. Using anyone other than a qualified plumber to do these things is like choosing a lobotomist to do your rectal exam.

There were other factors the second time around too, but in our haste to get our lives back to normal, we should have spent more time focused on flood prevention instead of looking at cheap carpet samples. We now have a much deeper hole that's been dug by our super plumber and have two sump pumps installed, including one that is attached to a marine battery and will give us 1-2 hours of pumping in case the power goes out. Time enough to beg a generator off of a friend until we get one of our own.

Digging outside our foundation to install a pipe to allow water to drain towards the back of the property is on our list of fun times ahead for the spring with the idea that if we keep water from coming in, it will also keep water from coming up. Rocket science....

Why didn't we do this the first time around? I'll blame it on the fact that we spent time learning calculus and things about the industrial revolution in high school instead of learning how to build a deck or fix a leaking toilet that's cracked or how important creosote removal is in fire prevention or how to properly care for your furnace so that you don't kill your entire family with carbon monoxide. Those are stupid subjects not worthy of learning...apparently. Almost everyone in their lifetime will live in a house of some sort, but only a handful of our entire civilization will ever need to know how to calculate the slope of a curve. Fuck me, if I can figure out how they determine school curriculums.

Did I forget to mention that installing carpet twice is a dumb ass idea for a basement that floods. Duh! This is painfully stupid when you are hauling it to the dump and it still looks the way it arrived only now its sopping wet and unrecoverable. LVT, is the way to go, a vinyl flooring product that can get wet, requires no sub floor and monkeys can put it together. Actually that is an insult to monkeys. Sorry monkeys.

Friends & Family

If you have any of these miraculous people in your life and they care about what happens to you and your family and they are not psycho's, allow yourself the honour and privilege of accepting help. So, so hard for me to do since accepting help undermines my feelings of independence, opens me up to vulnerability (psycho's cause trust issues so avoid them) and challenges my need to feel that I have the strength to cope with difficulty all on my own.

There are so many gifts in the act of generosity for the giver well beyond free wine and gift cards or so I am told. Giving increases happiness, fulfillment and purpose of life in ways that having a large bank account never will or so says, "Psychology Today". I'm trying to focus on the generosity of being humble in accepting help from others. I hear that it will make me a better person, so for now, let's just go with that.

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Freedom

We can easily become prisoners of our own frustration and despair, whether it be problems at home, work or otherwise. As a Chef, I often get asked if regular kitchens resemble the Gordon Ramsay world of "Hell's Kitchen". Then answer is not everyday. If it did, there would be a hell of a lot more bloodshed on that show. People being stabbed in the eye and punched in the throat. Good realty TV fodder, not sure why they don't...more Chefs would watch it, if they did.

What I do tell people is that unlike other workplaces, the insane stress that is often put upon kitchen staff brings out the absolute best and the absolute worst of everyone that you work with. Most workplaces hide the ugly bits behind insincere smiles, politically correct behaviour and HR paperwork. There is no place to hide in the kitchen. It will make you fall in love with the people you work with and hate their guts all at once. As a result, most kitchen teams are a tight unit because of the freedom that comes from being vulnerable to the good, the bad and the ugly behaviour of everyone on the team.

The only price tag that comes with finding a way to deal with what life throws at you, is acceptance. This requires letting go of self-will, circumstances beyond our control, self-pity, rage, unrealistic expectations, and blame. Surrender does not mean weakness or giving in. It means asking for help when we need it. Acceptance allows us the freedom to work on the things we can control versus the things we can't.

We have the power to set ourselves free from our personal shortcomings that chain us to our problems. They do not need to define our quality of life, emotional well-being or level of joy and happiness. I do not have to accept misery and allow it to distort my everyday thinking.

Being a bit of a perfectionist (I know this will come as a gigantic surprise to most of you...shocking!), I can often cling stubbornly to the ideas of what I think life ought to be. It puts massive demands upon myself and others, makes big problems out of little ones, increases despair when things don't go as planned and makes me struggle to accept things as they are.

Learning to not be touched too deeply by the happenings around me that are essentially unimportant is my life lesson. My daughter is teaching me how to do that with her "circle of peace".

We are your average Canadian family, and we use the F-word. 

We're all gonna blow.....

For those of you who didn't know me in the 90's, I am huge Ani Difranco fan. I, once upon a time, looked like Bjork mated with Liz Phair and gave birth to Gwen Stefani, wore boots that made the military jealous and got my haircuts from Angry Dyke's R Us. This is not an insult to butch looking lesbians, but rather a compliment to my adoration of women who embraced the term, "Righteous Babe", didn't take any shit and screamed their way though the Alternative Grunge of my era. If I could get over my genetic fascination with guy genitalia, I would totally join my sisters in arms.

Previous to that, I went through my more feminine side of my feminist revolution. If you don't believe me, I can send you a photo...no, shit...there were moments when I looked like Boy George.

At the bright age of 19, I lived in the YMCA, which sounds like a groovin' place to be if you are one of the Village people, but trust me, when I say this, that there are much, much better places to live. Think scary spiders, think psycho weirdos, think this is the last place you ever, ever want your 19 year old to live. It wasn't the first time I was living in some pretty questionable circumstances and obviously it won't be the last, now that I am ghetto livin' for the second time in my fixer upper in what is supposed to be my family friendly home sweet home.

"You can't get through it , you can't get over it, you can't get around. Just like a dream. you'll open your mouth to scream and you won't make a sound..."

It's been another strange week. Relationship break-ups, more floods to other people's houses, heart attacks, bladder cancer, broken hips, pulled hamstrings....there isn't a person that I have talked to lately that has good news. Luckily, we are just dealing with Casa Cayendo...it's just a stupid, broken, flooded house, so all is well.

"Cause, I am not a pretty girl, that is not what i do. I ain't no damsel in distress and I don't need to be rescued. So put me down punk, maybe you'd prefer maiden fair, isn't there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere...."

As easy as it was to go through my, "Punch me if you dare" exterior of the 90's, it's pretty tough to pull that shit with a house full of children that I am raising to have authentic selves, and that I have protected from the harsh upbringing that made me tough as nails and capable of taking the worst kind of crap that life can deal at you at any moment.

This is the hard part. As much as I can shut down and not feel (frankly, that's easy), it's difficult watching my kids reaction to what we are going through for the second time. My son, after finishing up the moving of the furniture, handed me five bucks out of his wallet and said,"I got it Mom, don't worry."

My daughter, cried her eyes out and asked me how we were ever going to fix this....again. I reminded her, that I started out with nothing, just the clothes on my back and a backpack. Now, I have a her and her brother and her sister, so everything else means nothing, it's just a whole bunch of shit that is easily replaced.

My oldest daughter has refrained from discussing our current situation with anyone, including her closest girlfriends. She is embarrassed and wants no pity from no one...have no idea where she gets this from. I brought home a clothing donation from a friend at work on Friday who was eager to offload some Lu-Lu Lemon sweatshirts and she responded with,"Really?! Now, people are sending us clothes out of pity?!".

It's a hard road to keep a stiff upper lip when you see your kids are struggling, even more when they see you struggling. As proud as I am that my boy has faith and wants to help out...I go from pride of realizing that my kids have the right stuff to feeling like a parent who has failed each and every one of them.

That's why its easier to just keep focusing on the positive. We've been fortunate with friends who have offered to pitch in, drop off dehumidifiers, heaters, wine and hugs....next door neighborhood dinners, hot tub weekends away, cookies on our doorstep and dump trailers. Just when you think you might be alone in this mortal coil, the universe does a pretty good job of reminding you that you are not far from the people that matter the most.

"I got friends all over this country. I got friends in other countries too. I got friends I haven't met yet, I got friends I never knew.

So it's pretty simple... I can invest energy in being pissed off, depressed and verklempt or I can just get on with things and get it done. When bad things happen, good things come out of the woodwork. We have been blessed with friends who have offered help, hugs and hands.

Research on the internet.... it's a wonderful thing. I have no idea why we didn't have a look at flooring options that would withstand the damage of a flood the first time around but like most of us, it's an ostrich in the sand approach to most of life's problems. That's why if you don't listen...to the universe, your higher power or a deity of choice they will slap you in the ass a second time until you get the message to wake the fuck up.

"I do it for the joy it brings, because I am a joyful girl, because the world owes me nothing and we owe each other the world. I do it because it's the least I can do, I do it because I learned it from you and I do it just because I want to."

The investment we make everyday matters. Hear me.....the giving we do everyday MATTERS. We all have those moments where we think, "What the fuck?! Why bother?! What' s the point?!".....even the best of us. I can guarantee that you will get back what you give, even Mother Theresa understood that,

It's about investing in the right relationships. Seriously, this is easy stuff and yet so many of us screw it up, including myself. I spent half of my life trying to fix the fucked up relationships that didn't have a hope in hell of being normal and yet, I tried. We assume that the relationships that matter are the ones that we entered into the world with, the ones we think will secure a future for us, the ones that we think are somehow good for us because of lust or greed or unrealistic expectations. But it's really pretty simple....it's the people we are responsible for, the people who genuinely love us back and the people that are worth the investment. Even more, it's just because...sometimes you get nothing back and that's okay...it's an investment in you.

"I was a long time coming, I'll be a long time gone. You've got your whole life to do something, and that's not very long. So, why don't you give me a call, when you're willing to fight, for what you think is real and for what you think is right."

I am going to fix this. My son's feeling of responsibility, my daughters despair and my oldest daughters embarrassment. They are the only relationships that matter to me the most at this moment. My job as a mother is to do the best work I can for my family, even if that means putting on a brave face, taking one for the team, gathering my big girl pants and sucking it up. It's not about what's happening to me but what I can do about making it not such a big deal. There are bigger dramas out there than a flooded basement.

"They say goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine, and the little plastic castle is a surprise every time. And it's hard to say of the're happy but they don't seem much to mind."

We are your average Canadian family and we owe our lives to the people that we love.........

Everything's Almost Free Today.......

The last time this happened I lost my job, my home became a hell for 68 days, my marriage was severely tested and so was my sanity. To get a grip, I sent myself to a powerless cottage in the woods, a meditation resort called Windhorse Farm where in Tom's Cabin, complete with sawdust outhouse and woodstove, I read Shambala magazines and prayed to a higher power to save me from myself.

This time, who knows? Anyone know an exorcist.....cause I'm feeling a little pukey.

We are $2800 from paying off our housing flood disaster of October 2011, after 2 years and 2 months of Austerity Measures living for a family of five.

And now, we are flooded...........again.

So the Austerity Measures we were hoping to continue living with to fix the bathroom that doesn't work, the decks that are falling off of our house, the patio door that will give you a hernia, the front door no one can open, the kitchen with the rotting cupboards and the windows which freeze from the inside are going to have to wait a little longer.

We get to replace the basement for the third time since moving in. The idea of looking at carpet samples and visions of my days ahead with a crow bar are making me nauseous.

There will be no retreat for me this time, that is, unless I entertain the crazy thoughts in my head by converting our shed in the backyard into a Looneybin recovery center, complete with a bottle of wine I got from Christmas for some liquid cheer which I was ironically saving for a "Rainy Day", my daughter's posters of the boys from One Direction so I can make fun of their hair, and the chemicals I need to start a friendly, neighborhood meth lab as a side job.

My mother-in-love was kind enough to remind me that everything happens for a reason. Right now, I've got some pretty nutty ideas of what that reason must be. Maybe my higher power hates me, or the house is cursed, or I didn't spend enough time reading The Secret in the last year.....or it could be the rain and a sump pump that stopped working when we lost our power in the middle of the night. Does everything have to be an Oprah aha moment? Fuck Oprah and her billions....its so easy to get lost in your existential self when you worry for nothing.....gah!!!

Resisting the urge to follow my greatest instinct, which is to "GTFO" as my daughter would anagram it, is my biggest challenge right now. I don't want to FEEL anything, I don't want to acknowledge that this is happening AGAIN, and I really think we would all be better off with a blow torch and a match right now.

Because I have bigger dreams for this family than just fixing our "Dream" home over and over to infinity and beyond. As good as the Austerity Measures have been, making us more financially accountable, creative and focused, I don't want to Extreme Coupon forever.

I refuse to go into thousands of dollars worth of debt again. So for now, its camping upstairs with furniture. A date with a crowbar and hammer to face in the days ahead. Two daughters displaced out of their bedrooms, my office furniture as well as everything else relocated to the space in between our dining room, living room, and everywhere in between, mattresses piled sky high in the hallway much to the cat's pleasure, work boots to wear for showering in the only working bathroom that's located downstairs and an uncertain future as to how to prevent this from ever happening again.

We're about to have the biggest garage sale this neighborhood's ever seen. "Our line of credit balance will not budge" is going to be my new mantra and this blog will need to be changed to,"Family Minimalism Measures", cause I WILL NOT go into a penny of debt this time.

Being so focused on our bottom line budgeting in the last two years can be a positive thing. But here's the flip side....when looking at the spreadsheet of our life, you can get a little too caught up in the details of when things will get easier. Knowing that our last payment would be made in just a few short months....you can cling to the idea that when all the debt is gone, life will be good, the pressure will be off and the projects you really want to pursue can now be entertained.

There is a danger in that thinking, it's what gets so many of us into trouble. Its living in the future, not being present in the now, and obviously, hopelessly misguided, since the idea of being able to have some control over life's outcomes is unrealistic. Giving up is not an option, but thinking that somehow if I relentlessly pursue a goal, all will be well, throws a lot of monkey wrenches into other aspects of your life. The "when this happens, I will be happy" thinking is a dangerous place to live in your head.

So now what?

House sitting in the French countryside taking care of sheep, a reality show based on the five of us becoming Real Canadian Gypsy's, selling up and buying a houseboat to live on in the Caribbean, moving to Ecuador where the cost of living is cheap and I can start my own taco stand, packing up the car with suitcases, the kids and driving off into the sunset are all good options that I can't seem to let go of right now.

If I could get some sleep, maybe it will all go away and this is just a bad dream. Or maybe it won't. What I know for sure is that I will no longer put my dreams on hold for the sake of a house.

We are your Average Canadian Family and anybody need a four slice toaster, real cheap?