not for the faint of heart......

y'all remember this??

that was a bad day. the culmination of all the things i hadn't thought bothered me. mostly, a hormonal overreaction about how i feel like i have lost my autonomy, waaa, waa, waaa. BUT there was something else going on. yes, not all of my problems come from a single source.

i have a hard time compartmentalizing, and when a bunch of things go wrong in different arenas in my life, i lump them all together and just kind of freak out.

what on earth am i talking about, might you ask?

this.

if you don't know, about 4 years ago, we bought a condo in hawaii, COMPLETELY renovated it (like, floors, tub, toilet, all appliances.....everything), and lived in it for about 2 years, the market tanked, we lost a LOT of equity, and then got orders to move to georgia. so we rented it out.

that was the easy part. since then, it's been a bit of a nightmare, balancing living so far away (a 10 hour plane ride, 6 hours time difference, across the continent AND the pacific. you get it. it's far), having a new baby, and dealing with life in a new place, PLUS being LANDLORDS (what an ugly word, am i right??). in april, by some divine intervention, we decided to get a management company, to take some of the stress out of it. i call it a divine intervention because a month later, this happened.

the main line into the house backed up with sewage, and FLOODED the whole condo. with poop.

that's our hallway. joel, the craftsman that he is, mitered those corners and laid that floor himself. we actually did ALL off the work ourselves, which kind of makes this even more devastating.

this WAS our guest room. the floor swelled and bowed from all the "moisture", aka poo water.

by the way, has anyone ever tried dealing with a home owner's association? what about HOA insurance? and, by the way, did i mention the 6 hour time difference? yeah. it's been a fun month or so. fortunately, we have AMAZING insurance, and an awesome property manager, or else i really might have lost my mind.