On Christmas 2015

Christmas with a child is a lot different than any old, regular Christmas. It's different in that, you can't get plowed on egg nog Christmas night and party with your pants off. You have to be somewhat respectable, simply because there may be photos and/or videos taken, and no one wants to see your pasty ass on camera. I'll get this disclaimer out of the way right now, I'll admit it, I was pretty excited about Christmas this year because G actually seemed to almost give a shit. We talked about Santa, even though, before G existed, J and I always said, if we have have kids, we're not going to fill their head with lies about Santa, the Easter Bunny, etc. Yeah, that lasted real long.

G seemed to be interested in the idea of Santa, not so much Santa himself. In his eyes, Santa is some scumbag in a red suit plying kids with candy so they'll sit on his lap. While the boy has become increasingly interested in candy, he cannot be duped to talk to strangers just because he's got a white beard and a candy cane, and promises to bring presents. There were Santa encounters, of course. You couldn't go anywhere in the month of December without seeing the fat man. Luckily for me, G had no interest in standing in line to come any where near the old coot. For this I am grateful. Instead, during one even in particular where there was a line out the door to see the old "S" word, G told me he didn't want to see him, talk to him, or sit on his lap. We lurked just outside of where Santa was sitting and peered in a giant picture window and watched as kid after kid climbed up on his lap. I told him, even though he wasn't face to face with the fat man, he could still tell him what he wanted for Christmas and he would hear anyway because he's magic. This sweet boy of mine said Santa, I don't want anything for Christmas. Shit, I sure wish "Santa" would have known that before he went crazy trying to find the perfect items for the boy.

Admittedly, I was probably more excited for Christmas morning that anyone. I had big plans for the boy to leave out carrots for "Santa's Reindeer", we'd leave out some of the ugly ass cookies we made right before the holiday, and a sip of milk. I'd make sure to leave evidence of Santa's presence, with the carrots being gone, a bite out of a cookie, you know, the same old song and dance. However, the boy just wanted to party his ass off on Christmas Eve, we didn't get home until way past his bedtime and he needed/wanted to go to bed as soon as we walked in. Okay, no problem. I still crept up and down the stairs as he slept, placing all his presents under the tree, trying to contain my excitement for the next morning when he would open all the carefully thought out gifts that Santa got him.

And, you know what? When it came down to it, he could have really cared less about the whole affair. For weeks we talked about Santa coming and leaving presents under his tree because he was such a good boy, and he genuinely seemed stoked about it. He did "Face Time" with one of his lady birds Christmas morning who wanted to see him open the gifts she got him. He point blank told her, "I don't want to open your presents." Great, I've got a 2 year old Grinch on my hands. He came around eventually, of course, but this kid needed some serious convincing. Some of the things I thought he would go totally ape-shit over, he just gave a passing glance and moved on to the next. Way to leave Santa crestfallen, boy. However, there are a few items that seem to be his new pride and joy, the cheap drum set for kids, which, I've quickly discovered that I'll need to start socking some cash away for real drums, because this boy has a passion, and his Paw Patrol truck and cars. To be fair, the boy really packed it in this Christmas, with so many different things. I'm sure he's overwhelmed, and like his mother, can only concentrate on a thing or two at a time.  

Overall, it was a successful holiday. Despite me making him weep because I made him come home with me Christmas Eve instead of spending the night with grandma and papa, and then making him weep again on leftovers day, because he had to come home with me again. Maybe I smell funny? His social anxiety was also slightly present Christmas Eve as he preferred to retreat to the basement away from the rip-roaring party crowd, but there were no meltdowns from being overwhelmed, score!

Sure, I can reminisce about Christmas' past where the hooch was a staple and crayfish were talking at the dinner table, but honestly, I enjoy having G around to spend the holidays with, as cliche as it is, the boy might have brought back the magic feeling of Christmas.

On Living In Chaos

Most of you who follow me on Facebook know all about the epic shit storm that is my home. The mess that started all the stress about a year and a half ago. See, J and I were shopping for a new home, while the "gettin' was good" so we could raise G in a nice little area with a great school district. We looked for months and months, even considered shit holes that should be condemned as a nice little fixer-upper project. Well, after looking at a plethora of said shit holes, we decided that undertaking such a huge project with a boy under a year old would be moronic on our part.

Eventually, we found our little abode. It had everything we were looking for. Great area, close to the freeway for work, great school district, big lot. It was freshly remodeled and looked great. Granted, there were some issues. The attic was covered in mold due to poor ventilation, which was taken care of prior to closing, there had been some foundation work done in the family room and basement which we received receipts and warranties for, okay, a little off-putting, but the work was guaranteed right? There had been evidence of a little bit of water in the basement, but definitely not a swimming pool's worth of water, we weren't overly concerned.

The problems didn't become apparent until the first Spring that we lived there. We began to notice a horizontal crack in the drywall in the family room, right at the ground line, strange, right? This is a wall that had formally been worked on. I contacted the contractor who worked on it and he deduced in time that there was some movement happening and that fix would be under warranty. Great! We wouldn't have to worry about a huge fix we couldn't afford.

To make a extremely long and boring story short, it took a year and half of nagging and legal involvement to get said contractor back over to complete the warranty work. These "C" channels and tie-backs are the fix and we currently get to look at these until we get this wall re-built. Merry Christmas. However, this wall shouldn't be doing much moving in the foreseeable future. This fix, if we were responsible would have cost in the ball park of $21,000. Nice, right?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Moving on to the basement. We knew we had to find the source of the little stream of water flowing into the basement every time it rained even remotely hard. J knocked out all the drywall and found it covered in mold. Hooray! It took only a moment to realize why we had water coming into the house. "Step cracks" are typically not a huge deal, they are in fact, pretty common, but do you know what's not common? When your shit is vertically cracking and you can see the road from your basement! Uncovering this little gem created a sea of "Holy shit!" responses. 

But did we try to contact our insurance company to see if they could help? Yes, of course. Guess what, they won't help. They can not do anything for foundation issues. Thanks Bro, I'm glad you're getting our hard earned money every year to not protect our house from this shit. Well, what about the legal route? Did you try to sue the seller? Absolutely, but sadly, being an investor, their ass is covered, so we got to bend over and look at this...

The good news is... if you can see it through this hot mess is, my boss knows people, who know people. So, after having several contractors and builders over, we settled on someone we were very happy with to tear this shit down and rebuild a brand new wall. So, after a week of hiring said contractor, we do have a beautiful new wall that should be as strong as a bomb shelter.

We got to have the front part of the house ripped off, a giant hole dug to rip out the old wall, our porch and walkway needed to be ripped out because water was just flowing underneath the porch. The sump pump was not connected under ground which allowed water to just sit there and freeze and melt year after year. Luckily now, we have a working sump pipe, we'll have a new porch which is properly waterproofed, and in the Spring, we'll take advantage of having the walkway ripped out to install a lovely brick paver walkway. Silver Lining?                        

Finally, we long suspected our garage was sinking as well. We had it tuck pointed when we moved in. A year later, there were giant step cracks about an inch wide right where the tuck pointing was completed, just at this front corner. However, after having the brick stripped, our contractor found that there were no wall ties (which are required) so the weight of the brick was pulling on the wall and pushing down on itself creating the broken bricks. Good news? Maybe... or maybe this shit really is sinking, though upon putting a level on the foundation, it's as level as can be. Initially we were planning on having the garage underpinned, which upon conversations with an engineer and our contractor, it was ultimately decided underpinning would be a waste of money that we don't have.

The place is coming along. We'll have most of the brick back on the house today, possibly a new porch poured. The mess will work itself out. It supposed to rain for the entirety of Christmas week, but at least I won't have to worry about making G wait to open presents while I get down in the basement and mop up rain water. 

After this wonderful experience, we're hoping this place will be worth it in the end. One of our neighbors pretty pointedly said, "Well, this just shows your commitment to staying in the neighborhood for the next 50 years!" Yeah, pretty much, because who the hell wants to deal with this again?