To Hoard Or Not To Hoard

The last couple of weeks have been a great opportunity to teach my children how to serve. 
One family, who lost nearly everything to the recent South Carolina floods have become special people to my children. The husband, who is in the advanced stages of ALS, had to be be BOATED out of his house to the safety of the hospital. His wife and daughter were left to grab what they could save- which wasn't much.
Our church leaders asked us to come help with the clearing out of their home and the experience was heartbreaking. 

Watching years of a family's life together pile up soggy and soiled on the side of the street had the toughest of us weeping. Husband and I salvaged the things that we knew could be saved (what would have meant something had it been ours). 
I spent over an hour trying to separate pages of her journal- can you even imagine the loss? My focus was on the pages and I never looked at any of the writing, but I can only assume that their journey (when they discovered his illness) was probably recorded in that book. 
Husband saved his vinyl collection. Music is his life, we couldn't bear to let those go to the street.

This family will start over. It will be hard and some precious things can't be replaced, but they have accepted it all with grace.

Three weeks after the flood, we were surprised with another call. There was a single, disabled sister whose belongings were still outside and there was another storm coming. 

"Can you help move it all back in?" 

I approached the kids with the request. The 12 year-old put down his Kindle and started putting on his shoes. 
The 15 year-old asked, "Who? Why?" and when it was explained to him, shut off his computer and started getting ready. 
The 9 year-old was gathering her jacket and the 16 year-old asked, "WHY does everybody always call us?". 
Legitimate question coming from a boy who leaves for school at 6am and comes home at 5pm, participates in school government and sports and has one day a week that's his--and that's the day we keep pulling him out of the house. 
Question asked, he didn't even wait for an answer to get up and go to the car. 
This was on Halloween. Trick-or-Treating (for their first time in America) would commence in a few hours. I love my children.

My heart sank when we pulled up into the neighborhood. Silly me assumed that her stuff was in boxes, but it wasn't. And a lot of it was wet and moldy. 

We were given directions as to which room to take everything and told to wear masks and gloves before entering the other room that would house the remaining stuff. 
It's still hot here in South Carolina, so the floor was dark, wet and areas of that house had been stewing in the heat for the past three weeks. 

This is where I need to question myself: How much is too much to subject one's children to?  

#parentingFAIL:

MOST of the stuff we carried should have been thrown away weeks ago. A lot of it was not salvageable. 
I've watched enough hoarding shows in my life (and fight my own hoarding tendencies) to know that it's not easy to part with things, damaged or not, but I had to stand my ground over a 
particle board desk that had furry, green mold growing up the sides. 
"I understand you want to keep the desk, but this is NOT good for your health". 
"I'll clean it later" she said. 
But she wanted MY teenagers to carry it. 

We carried boxes littered with mouse droppings. The actual Hoarders crew would have refused and gone home for the day, but because we were "serving", we did it.

This experience will have me questioning that next call that comes in. 
Serving that first family was easy. We worked for 4-5 hours in the heat, only leaving to celebrate at Miss Ky's birthday dinner, sunburned and tired. No regrets. 
The second opportunity to serve made me realize that I don't always put my kids first like I profess. If I did, I would've had them sit in the car while we moved the flood-contaminated debris back into an unsafe house.

What are you holding onto? Any keepsake that doesn't actually bring you joy when you hold it? Get rid of it. You won't even miss it.
I could get profound and ask if there are any 'moldy' memories that do nothing but make you sick with guilt or regret, but that's deep. Maybe another day...

495

Update on Number One Son: He sent me TWO very sincere text message "thank you"s and phoned me to make sure I got them. He's forgiven.

This is my 495th Blog post

For those of you die-hards that didn't erase me from your reader (thank you PM, I know you used to really dislike this reader-overload time of year), I am having a celebration/giveaway for my 500th post!!

Thursday, November 12th will be my 500th post.

The post of honour will contain fascinating information about MUD or BLOOD or BOTH
and I will be giving away a prize of MUDDY or BLOODy-related items.

I'm envisioning the stampede already.

Ok, seriously. You will be very pleased, not disgusted by my prize.

Hmmmm... still too cryptic? Are you kidding?

HINT: The key words have been mentioned several times throughout my previous 494 blog posts-- the most recent dirt (mud) being dished in September.

RULES: Folks that comment on the celebratory post (500th, Thursday the 12th, keep up with me, will you?) BEFORE the 501st post goes up (on Friday the 13th), will be entered to win.

BONUS: You clever bloggers that actually take the time to decipher my little riddle of "mud" and "blood" and comment on the post(s)most likely to be to what I am referring, will have double entries on (each) post that you leave a comment declaring you have found one of my favourite things. Those comments can begin now and must be completed before the 500th post (the celebratory one, remember? Thursday the 12th) is published.

It's getting complicated, I don't want to play....

Disclaimer:
Let's be realistic.

It is NaBloPoMo where blogtime is precious, so don't go reading EVERY single verbose post that mentions these either of these two words.

ONE comment for Blood and ONE for Mud will get you double entries on each one.

• ReCaP: Comment on Thursday, Nov. 12th.
  
• For bonus entries, comment now until the 12th on any post that may be referring to Bloody or Muddy things I love.
  

If you're still stumped,
call me.

ONE prize winner. I always lose my mind and want to send everyone something. That statement is for me, not anyone else.

What two cryptic words
would you use to describe
some of your favourite things?

Google, Rescue Me!

It's officially the National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), are you an inny or an outy?

It also marks my blogiversary.

One night when I thought I couldn't handle anymore that life wanted to spew at me, I got on the internet and did a couple of searches.
One was something in the way of, "I hate being a wife" and the other was "Why are my kids pooping their pants?" Believe it or not, I got hits for both.

With the second search, I discovered that what was currently happening to my boys was stress related (Dad was deployed to the desert) and could affect them for years after the fact.
So I'm here to tell you now, if out of the blue your normally potty trained, no-issues kid begins leaving deposits in his underwear resulting in your hands becoming cracked and your motivation to get up in the morning less than positive, don't freak out. It can begin with a constipation problem and result in the inability to recognize when those muscles are working. Ours began when I was too stressed to take on another thing, so I started buying cheaper underpants and threw the highly offensive ones out. One less thing for my hands to deal with.

The first search found me a few blogs. Mostly women who were in unrewarding relationships (that's an understatement), and since my relationship was fine other than the fact I was essentially a single mom, I refined my search to "military wife" and found Jen from Get in The Car! I laughed out loud for the first time in months. Clicking through her place took me to NaBloPoMo.

It was after the first week of November, so I knew I couldn't technically post every day for the month, but I thought I'd try to do as many as I could. I knew NOTHING about making my own blog, but met nice people along the way willing to teach me everything from linking to meme etiquette. I still see those people commenting on other blogs, they're still out here.

That's my beginning, and it's been a wild ride since. I have made connections that I hope I never lose. I know more about some of you than I know about my own family members and believe it or not, I'd much rather meet up one day with some of you than some of my family members (Disney World 2009 anyone?).
Again, I am coming up on the same stress that sent me out here and I approach it with dread (because I remember too clearly how close I came to that proverbial edge). But-- I have a different support system now (as opposed to NONE), and as Painted Maypole pointed out, "...but YOU... you have a BLOG. bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Yes. Yes I do. We'll be o.k.

So my nosy questions for you today are (feel free to answer any one or all-- notice how you weren't given the option of "none" hah!):

Why did you start blogging? Were you technology challenged, or was this like breathing to you? Do you remember the first blog that really hooked you?

This May Be Your Only Warning

We're back from our holiday to the midlands, and I have 485 photos to share. That's the first warning.

We saw and did loads of wonderful English things that will have to be recorded here in my very public journal... your second warning.

I am terribly behind on blog reading and responding to emails now ("Poor You! That's what you get for playing hookie", you say?) and I agreed to NaBloPoMo again this year (third warning), despite watching Chris go a little whacky on his 31-day stint (whacky, but VERY entertaining).

I am warning you that you may come here to an empty blog (I mean no post, not empty-headed, that's a given) because Mr. Mac is mad at me for going away.
When I hopped in here to spread my holiday joy with him, he shut down-- mid email load. I lost 15 emails. gone. floating in cyber space. Then as I was reading number 38 or so, he shut down again.

Since yesterday, it's a hit or miss how much he'll let me do before turning himself completely off.
He's really miffed.

You will either be hearing from me every day for the next 30 days....

or you won't.

Don't say you haven't been warned.