I miss.

I miss my home. 

I miss that Jesse and I both had two pillows and one of mine had to be a small, feather one to scrunch up under my head at night. 

I miss my daughter being a safe distance away from the TV from her bedroom so I don't have to have the TV practically on mute until she falls asleep. 

I miss the upstairs. I have not seen it since the fire. That's where my daughter's room was, the room we gave the most attention to when planning furniture and paint color. I miss the wall decal I was so excited to find and spent quite a while perfectly on the wall. 

I miss our new laundry room and the laundry baskets I had lined up against the wall, each serving a certain color. I miss knowing what food was in my kitchen and where to find it. I miss the handwritten recipe of Mom's spaghetti I so proudly copied down and tried to imitate. 

I miss my home. 

And man I miss my cat. 

Just wanna say...

I miss living in my house. 

That is all. 

We Aren't Invincible

We're all guilty of it.

We ignore warning labels.
We drive short distances without our seatbelts.
We take the batteries out of our smoke alarms because it just won't stop beeping in the middle of the night.

We shake our heads at a car full of teenagers driving too fast and say, "They think they're invincible."

But don't we all?  Until tragedy strikes us, we all walk around feeling a little bit invincible.

I did too.  I still remember the sympathy I felt for the family of students who lost their home to a fire last year.  I rushed home during my planning to gather up some stuff to donate to them.  I felt sad for them when they passed me down the hall.  But I never thought it could happen to me. 

Well, it did.  And, I hate to say it, but it could to you too.  In case it does, please stop what you're doing right now and learn from my tragedy by doing the following:

Make sure you have adequate insurance.  When Jesse and I first bought our home, we hadn't sold our first house.  We felt pretty strapped for cash, so we bought the minimum coverage.  As soon as our first home sold, our insurance agent, Macky Hagan, advised us to up our insurance, promising us the current plan would not even touch what it would cost to replace our home.  He was right.  Thankfully, we listened.  If we hadn't, we would not be able to move back into our home. We would currently be homeless...with a hefty mortgage. 

Photograph/video your belongings.  I'd actually never heard this piece of advice - until after the fire. But as I sat on my front porch trying to remember every single article of clothing, every single toy that we lost from my toddler's room, I sure I wish I had.  It is a daunting task to try to remember the brand name, the age, and the quantity of every item in each room of your home. Photographic evidence, kept in a safety deposit box, is a great idea. 

Check your wiring (especially if you live in an older home).  Evidently we had four generations of wires in our basement.   One of them was obviously faulty.  This fire was going to happen to us.  It was just a matter of time.  We are incredibly blessed that time happened in the middle of the day when no one was home.

Have an escape plan if you have a second floor.  This is the warning I ignored, and the one that now gives me nightmares.  I'll never forget someone scolding me when I told her that Emerson's nursery would be upstairs while our bedroom was downstairs.  She exclaimed, "You can't let her sleep alone upstairs until she knows how to climb out of a window!".  I ignored the advice, thinking she was being dramatic.  She wasn't.  Our fire went straight up our steps.  It charred the steps and the wall of Emerson's nursery.  If we had been home, I would not have been able to get to her, and we had no way for her to get out.  My daughter would have been stuck upstairs alone.  That is the thought that haunts me to this day - it was difficult to type - but it is important for people to hear.  We won't move back into our home until there is a landing off the second floor.  I hope you at least will buy ladders.

Make sure you have smoke alarms - even in your basement.  The only way we would have been able to get our daughter from the upstairs is if we'd had the time to do so - and the only way that could've been possible was through smoke alarms in the place where it all began, in our basement.  You can't have enough of them.

Scan your pictures and save them somewhere besides your own computer.  Since our fire was electric, we were told that anything plugged into the wall would be a loss.  Thankfully, that turned out to be incorrect as Jesse's hard drive was repairable.  But we lost numerous photo albums, scrapbooks, and picture frames in that fire.  Scanning them onto our computer almost wasn't enough.  Burn your pictures onto a CD and put that CD in a safe.

Buy a safe!  Or a firesafe box.  Or a safety deposit box.  Have a spot where you can keep small family heirlooms, important papers, etc. 

We aren't invincible. Tragedies happen. The only thing we can do is be prepared for when they do. 

I don't want to forget...

Emerson refuses to call Aunt Ackie's house "home."  If we are at Mom's, and I say, "Are you ready to go home?" her immediate response is, "Not home. Auntie Ackie's house."  This is without fail every time. 

When we drive by the house, Emerson has to wave at the house (well, we all do...she has even started fussing at Eliot for not waving) and say, "Get better soon house! We miss you! We love you!"  

When Emerson first looked in the front door, her reaction was, "There's no toys in there." 

It took almost a month for Emerson to mention Moe. Even after talking about cats and pets, she never said a word. Today, though, she was talking to Uncle Michael about Molly and she said, "I have a cat. His name is Moe. He's at our house."  It makes me both sad and relieved to know she hasn't forgotten about him completely. 

Off Color Jokes

I get that we have to laugh about this.  As they say, if you aren't laughing, you're crying. 
But some people have chosen really bad jokes that frankly are not funny.

One day while I was sitting outside trying to mentally inventory every belonging from Emerson's nursery that we lost, someone stopped by and walked up to the porch.  The first thing he said was, "mmm, I've always loved the small of a good campfire."

Yeah, hilarious.

The first day the Rumpke dumpster sat in front of our home, overflowing with our furniture and pieces of our walls, someone smiled and said, "Mind if I throw some stuff in your all's dumpster?"

heehee

Recently, when Jesse attended an event in someone's home, he asked if he could go through a certain door.  "You can do whatever you want," he was told, "as long as you don't burn down the house."

Ummm.

A week after the fire, I ran into an old high school friend and he said, "Hi Smoky!"

Riiight.

People, you aren't funny.  So stop trying to be.
If Jesse and I want to make jokes in order to make light of our situation, feel free to laugh.
Otherwise, just stop.

Me

I am not taking this well. 

Besides the obvious (this situation sucks), for some reason, I can't seem to move on.
Even worse, I am, at the core, very sad, whereas normally I am annoyingly happy.  Sure, I get distracted and I laugh and I'm usually smiling - but deep down, there is a constant sadness.
I've even noticed that I'm having a hard time connecting to people with whom I've grown close.  There's an awkward divide that I can't seem to cross.

Jesse and I have discussed at length why I could be struggling moreso than him.

Of course, there's the simple fact that I'm more sentimental, more emotionally, more, well, female than him.  But it seems to be more than that.  I seem to be mourning the loss of our things worse than Jesse.  I think this is why...

For one, this fire happened on our third day of school.  I had just spent FOUR MONTHS off of work, at our home.  That is a lot of time to be in your home.  Half of those were spent with both of my children home with me all day.  This means that I had lots of time making memories in our home right before I lost it.  Lots of time to get connected to certain rooms, toys, and routines.

It also is the reason I've had nightmares about what I would've done had I'd been home, where Jesse recently hasn't had to think about that much.

Another reason I'm struggling so much is Moe.  While Jesse loved Moe, he did not have the relationship with him that I did.  Moe and I were together long before I even met Jesse.

I also think a reason is my lifelong fear of fire.  This has not helped that fear - it has intensified it.  The other night, while eating supper at my aunt's house with my family and my sister, the smoke alarm started blaring.  Both Mik and Jesse commented on the look of panic in my eyes.  I felt like I was about to have a panic attack.  It was nothing - some smoke from the oven that we quickly dispersed - but I honestly thought for a second that we were jinxed.

Yet another reason is that I'm simply not excited about renovating.  I have never wanted to build a home because I knew I didn't want to face all of those decisions.  I find it all stressful and overwhelming.  So, while Jesse has been able to lose himself in searching for ideas on light fixtures and paint colors, I can't quit thinking about how the house used to be.

I'm not sure what it's going to take for me to move on from this.  My mom and Jesse has mentioned therapy.  I don't know that it's necessary, though.  The sadness hasn't kept me from living my life.  I'm hoping that I eventually will just get over it.

You JUST did!

Finally, someone said it.  Every time we talk to someone about the fire, they love to point out all the remodeling we get to do.  They get all excited about the fact that now we get to make the house the way we want it.
But finally, the other day, our cousin, Christina, said what I've been thinking all along: "You JUST did it!"

EXACTLY.

It was just three years ago we bought that house.  It was just three years ago that Jesse and I spent an entire summer standing in that house scraping layer after layer of wallpaper and replacing it with paint.  We went to Home-A-Rama to get ideas on the house and came home excited about paint colors and decorating ideas.  We became best friends with the cashier at the paint shop in town as we borrowed paint samples, chose paint colors, and redid paint colors.  Saturday night dates were spent at Lowe's picking out chandeliers, blinds, and ceiling fans.  The search for silver curtains to hang in our dining room became the search for the Holy Grail until we finally found the perfect set.  Finding the right shade of green for the kitchen was a task we never did quite get - after painting it three times, we gave up.  The couch-hunt was a fun one, although handing the ecstatic Macy's worker our credit card hurt a little.  Little did we know we'd regret that couch decision, since microfiber isn't the greatest for baby spit up and poo.  Finally pulling the blankets from our windows when we finally found the right shades for our kitchen was exciting, even though Mom was convinced you could see us through them when you drove down Spalding Ave.  Front porch swing.  Rugs.  Prints.  So many decisions to make that house our home.  We JUST did it.

And it isn't even that.

It was just four years ago that we got married - which means it was just four years ago we stood in Macy's and Bed, Bath & Beyond with little scan guns choosing every little detail we'd want to fill our home.  Dishes - are the bowls big enough? Too big?  Do we want square plates or round plates?  Solid or patterned? 
Do we need an ice cream scooper?  A pizza cutter?  A hot dog slicer?
How many spatulas, cutting boards, mixing spoons, etc do we really need?
What color bedding will fit that perfect shade of paint we have in our bedroom?  Is it too manly or too feminine?
How many picture frames will we need?  What size? What shape?  
Will that garbage can fit in our kitchen? 

You get the point.

And don't even get me started on the fact that it was also just three years ago I did the same for baby stuff.

Seriously.  We JUST did this.