It rained Friday afternoon.  I prayed that we would be able to load the bedroom and dining room furniture that had been donated to me in the open trailer and get it to the new place without ruining everything.  We covered things the best that we could and hoped the rain that had begun to taper off wouldn’t suddenly become another downpour.  That wet night made me appreciate the hot sun the next day as over 15 friends and assorted older children converged to help me move.

Move.  It seemed like such a relative term.  We gathered up industrial grade trash bags filled with our belongings that had been salvaged from a drenched apartment.  Wet boxes held crystal serving pieces that barely had a scratch on them.  Crates borrowed from a nearby grocery store held soaking wet yearbooks from middle school and high school where mold had rapidly grown over the past week.  More memories that had to be thrown out.

Less than two hours later, those bags and boxes sat piled on a vinyl green tarp spread out in the living room to protect the pale carpet from any debris or mud that was brought inside.  We will be going through those bags for at least the next week, if not more.  Sorting, cleaning, tossing, and saving.

We were still staying with a friend since the new place wasn’t anywhere near ready to be stayed in overnight.  It was nice not to have to sort though bags and boxes to find shampoo or a towel that may or may not need to be laundered before it could be pressed into service.  That time would come all too soon.  For the moment, we enjoyed being in her home and using it as a base camp of sorts.  The alarm clock was set to go off early for a full morning of church activities.   After church, the frantic pace of my to-do list was quickly wearing on my nerves.  Too much needed to happen in too short a time period.  By 6:00 that evening I decided that The Boy and I needed to call it a night and spend some quality time on the couch.  The Girl had left earlier in the day for an overnight trip to a theme park with her scout troop.  I was glad she decided not to cancel on them at the last minute.

Earlier in the week, I made the decision to use a portion of my savings along with monies donated by my coworkers to purchase a living room set.  None of the upholstered items or wood pieces, with the exception of a small side board, were salvaged from the flooded living room of the apartment.  With it being Memorial Day weekend, there were sales and bargains to be had at most furniture stores.

Monday morning I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep.  This was much later than I’ve been sleeping lately.  I tossed and turned for about an hour before grabbing a nearby magazine and read in bed for the next little bit.  I gave up on drifting off when the sun began to shine through the window’s wooden shutters.  It was easier to quit fighting it, make a pot of coffee, and enjoy the silence of the early morning.  An hour later, E-Dubya shuffled into the room and joined me on the couch for some cuddle time. 

We ate a lazy breakfast and then headed down to Ocala to a furniture store there I’d always wanted to visit.  It was a brief, yet successful shopping trip that we capped off with a visit to Chuck E. Cheese’s for The Boy to have some pizza and play video games for a little while. 

When I can manage to spend large chunks of time at home I see things from two different perspectives.  I see what all we’ve accomplished already in last few days and at the same time I see what all there is left to do and that thought exhausts me.  This has not been a normal move, not in any sense of the word.  There aren’t neatly taped and labeled boxes stacked along the walls of each room waiting to be systematically unpacked.  There is chaos all around me and I just want it over and settled.  I’m tired of the knots in my stomach that are ever present these days.  I’m tired of the million things to do, and the unrealistic expectation I know I’ve set of myself in accomplishing these tasks.  I’m ready to sit on my sofa and be bored.  I want to stare at the wall and have absolutely nothing to do but stare.  Those days are coming.  I do see them.  I’m just impatient.

On Saturday, May 20th, a grand celebration had been planned for E-Dubya’s 7th birthday.  The invitations had gone out, the rsvp’s had come back, and after the week we had had, there was no way we were cancelling this birthday party.  I’m still not sure who needed it more – The Boy or The Mamma.  Let’s just call it a toss up.  It was therapeutic for all of us to be surrounded by our friends.  Not that I had been alone one single time in the previous days but to be able to sit there and talk for the first time without completely dissolving into a puddle on the floor was a mini-milestone to celebrate in and of itself.

The next day, Sunday, couldn’t have come fast enough for me.  There was no place I would have rather been except for my church home.  I had been feeding off of the prayers of my church family all week long and wanted nothing more than to step into the choir loft, robed up, hands held high and sing praises to my Lord.  Praises for keeping my family safe, praises for His provisions, praises for His love and praises for His faithfulness.

That afternoon, after spending several days pouring over every available rental listing in our price range and preferred area, and calling realtor after realtor filtering the list down to those still available, I had an appointment to view three listings in one large neighborhood on the southwest side of town.  I was fortunate that the one listing that was available for immediate occupancy was actually the nicest of the three – all that was left to do was take care of the paperwork.

The rest of the week passed in a frenzied blur.  Getting caught back up at work after being out unexpectedly for three days was a struggle.  Not so much because of the length of my to-do list but more because of my inability to focus.  There was simply so much going on in my head and keeping track of things was starting to become a real challenge.  I even told my co-workers, “If you need me to do something, make me write it down or I promise you I will forget.”

Friday finally came, the lease was finally signed, and late that afternoon I finally had the keys in my hand to a new beginning.

To be continued…

In all fairness to this poor blog that I keep ignoring, I thought it work better if I posted an update on all that’s been going on the last 10 days. It seems like a half life has gone by since the night of the fire. The initial shock that had me walking around like a zombie for four days has thankfully worn off. Level heads prevail like they usually do with me and life must go on.

Here’s a time table on what’s happened:

05/19 – The night of the fire. Awful, awful night. There are parts to that night that are crystal clear and large chunks that are a complete blur. I remember running to my van to race home and all I could think was, “They’re wrong. They’ve got the wrong building. They’re wrong. It’s not my apartment. They’re wrong, they must be wrong.” As soon as my cheeks hit the seat of my van, I started praying. Actually it was more like shouting to God. “Please don’t let it be my apartment. God I’m not ready for this. God please scoop me up and bring me home to you right now. Don’t let this be true. God please let everyone be safe. No matter what, keep everyone safe, don’t let anyone get hurt.”

05/20 – The day after. Zombie=me. My Momma and Step-Dad arrived from Tallahassee early that morning. BW brought the kids to me so he could go to work and all I wanted to do was cuddle with them. I had to start thinking logically about what needed to be done immediately versus what could wait. Offers of assistance and donations begun pouring in – and when I say pouring in, I’m talking an epic flood. I’m so grateful God has surrounded me with an amazing network of friends who were more than willing to take the load from my shoulders about so many things. It allowed me to think of odd ball things like getting an emergency pair of glasses made and a spare sample pair of contacts because all I had were the contacts in my eyes that night. It’s kinda gross what 24 hours of crying will do to a pair of contacts. Momma took me shopping for a few immediate toiletry items and a few basic outfits to get me through the next few days. I had the hardest time focusing on what I needed to get from toothbrushes (she had to send me back for toothpaste) to shampoo (she had to send me back again for hairspray). I was stopped dead in my tracks when I had to decide on what type of hair dryer to get. Seriously? A purchase like that I’ll spend a week researching brands and types online before making a decision – a far cry from the 30 seconds I felt I had to spend deciding what to buy that night.

I sent Momma back home to Tallahassee that afternoon. They would have stayed but I felt like I needed to get started the next day on my own with the search for permanent housing and the 1,382,943 other details I saw headed my way. I went by the apartment four times that day searching for our cat, Tink. He had been missing since the previous night and based on others in the area, we were guessing he was one of several cats seen running from the building as the firefighters began entering the individual apartments. “KITTY KITTY KITTY… WHO’S HUNGRY?” Which actually sounds like “who’s hawngry” because that smart cat knows what that means! But no Tink came running from the bushes.

05/21 -Salvage crew arrives. We had been encouraged the day before when firefighters who were on the scene again said they would go into our apartment and pull a few items out (valuables, etc.) if we’d direct them to their location. I was deeply touched to see one of the firefighters recognize my son from the afterschool program where his own daughter attends. He took off his glove so he could shake E-Dubya’s hand and said, “hey buddy…how are you doing?” This same man brought me my jewelry box, my lap top, my photo albums (wet!), my daughter’s baby blanket, and my framed photos that he pulled off the walls. Since the day before had yielded such treasures as these, I had high hopes for what we would be able to salvage. But I was also prepared for the worst. Having followed along via blogging & Facebook on a friend who has also lost her apartment to a fire months before, emotionally I knew this day would be rough.

We had been told that we would not be allowed to enter the apartments so it caught me off guard when they said we could go in (after signing injury liability waivers of course). I would have signed just about anything at that point for the opportunity to go in, but I did have two of my girlfriends who were with me read over the waivers just in case. About an hour later along with 7 other guys I carefully climbed over slippery debris and slowly entered the apartment. I started pointing out things for them to bag up and as I made my way deeper in the apartment, my ears perked up to a sound I thought I had heard. I convinced myself in the next second that I was losing my mind and just hearing things. Less than one minute later, I heard workers call out from my bedroom, “WE GOT THE CAT! WE GOT THE CAT! THERE’S A CAT IN HERE!” Tink had been in the apartment the entire time, hiding out whenever anyone entered. Anyone, that is, till he heard my voice and then the meowing started. I really had heard him when I first came in. You would have thought we’d just pulled a toddler from an abandoned well the way we were all cheering, shouting and clapping.

The next hour was excruciating as we slowly made our way through the entire apartment grabbing this and that, emptying a dry shelf just above a wet muddy shelf of books. My heart broke a thousand times as I said good bye to the things I was leaving behind. I know – they are just “things” – but they were MY things that had real memories attached to them. Since we’d never expected to pull much more than a few bags and boxes, we weren’t prepared with the growing mound of personal items, pots & pans, my china/crystal/silver, Christmas decorations and even some smaller wood furniture items from the kids’ room. The SOS for help that I put out on Facebook was answered and a friend brought a box truck from his office out and with the help of some other angels who showed up to resuce me, we got it all loaded, transported, and then offloaded into a temporary storage location that a man from our church was allowing me to use at no cost.

Home for me is my best friend’s spare bed room. Home became a relative term this week. But that night, home is where I was trying my hardest to finalize plans for my son’s birthday party that had been scheduled for that following day. Because there was NO WAY we were cancelling that party.

To be continued…