For the Birds

My Charley has been on a bit of a flying thing lately. When I get him out in the evenings, sometimes he decides that he is not going to sit on his perch nicely or play on his hanging playgym, but instead he flies around the room. Usually, he flies like a boomerang; he circles a couple of times and then lands on my head or wants me to catch him in mid air by putting my arm up for him to perch on. Sometimes he’s just down right silly and flies into someplace where I have to go help him get out of, like behind furniture.

Last night, he landed on the curtain rod above my desk. He was pretty pleased with himself up there, and I let him stay for a while but then I had to get him down before he went and soiled my curtains. Silly goose.

**Disclaimer**  This post is in no way intended to be an attack on the person whose comment I am discussing, I just truly feel the need to clear up a few misconceptions, in case that is the way everyone sees me. I don’t want anyone else to attack the commenter either.

I received a comment today from a regular reader on my previous post (where I asked readers to help me think of resources for saving money when building a house) and I found it quite disturbing. I hope that the commenter just really misunderstood the circumstances and/or some of the comments posted before his. A couple of commenters recommended Habitat for Humanity stores to me as a source for purchasing inexpensive building supplies, and the reader responded with a comment about how that organization was there to help those in need, not overprivileged people such as myself, someone who is enjoying the American Dream as a rocket scientist, and that if I really care about building the house I should sell my current home to pool resources to build, even if it meant giving up my comfortable lifestyle. The comment went on to address how I should learn to be happy with what I have, and think about those less fortunate.

First, I want to address the Habitat for Humanity Stores. Purchasing things at these stores helps those in need, and allows the organization to build as many as ten more houses per year for each store. This is not ‘taking’ from them. I looked it up and this is a great resource for saving money during construction, plus it actually helps the needy and the environment by ‘rechanneling good, usable materials into use.’ There is nothing wrong with purchasing from these stores.  I think that the commenter just misunderstood what was being suggested on this one.

I really need to clear up the part about us being ‘rocket scientists enjoying enormous success known as the American Dream.’  I have to say that this really floored me. Is that what most of you think about me and Andy?  That we walk around in white lab coats and rake in bucketloads of money? Because it is far from the truth. We are technicians; hands-on, blue collar workers. We make okay money, but with ever increasing costs of everything and trying to save for retirement it is hard to get ahead. We also work on a program that is coming to an end, and the next space program is forecast to require 5,000 fewer workers, a reduction of nearly 50%. Who knows what the future holds for us?  That is why we are working to get our degrees- so that we have more options.

Now for the part about how if building on Tortoise Hollow is something I truly believe in, I should sell the main house and pool all my ‘assets’ to the project. Does anyone think that if this was a possibility it wouldn’t have already happened?  As I explained to the commenter, we borrowed against our current home to purchase the property. Then the housing market took a dump and property values dropped sharply. If we could even sell this house, we could not get enough for it to do anything more than cover what we owe on it. There are no assets to be pooled. And then we would have to find a temporary place to live that would take us and our six dogs, two parrots and two tortoises.  Eventually the market should recover, and then we will once again have equity in our home, but for now it is gone. It has nothing to do with us not wanting to give up our comfortable lifestyle. The commenter insinuated that we should not resort to begging to achieve our dream.  I have no idea where that came from, because I don’t see any mention of begging anywhere in my post, only resourcefulness.

The commenter also mentioned that I should learn to be happy with what I have because maybe having what I want will not bring happiness. That is odd to me, because who said I am looking for happiness? I am already happy. Even someone that is happy will have frustrations in life; they are not immune. And I disagree that I should just be content with what I have. Life without dreams would be a miserable one. To just go and say, “okay, well I guess this is the best things will ever be” and not constantly strive to achieve more and do more and make life better is a defeatist attitude, and one that you will not find around here. While the commenter said that my posts are all about self pity- I disagree.  I was very proud of myself yesterday for dealing with the bad news the way I did and taking a positive spin on things by searching for new solutions. After nearly three years and as many disappointments as we have been through, how many people could say they would have handled it as well?

And finally, the commenter said this: “Please for once imagine your lives as those much less fortunate than you.”  That stung a little, because apparently I am seen as someone who cares only about herself.  I work hard to help those less fortunate than myself on a regular basis, although my favorite charities deal with animal rescue. I did not realize that I came across as such a heartless, self-absorbed person. Truly, this has been an eye-opener to me.

So, we’ve been sitting around brainstorming, because it seems to be the thing to do. So far, what we are thinking is that we will forget about getting a mortgage, and instead each of us will take out a 401K loan for $50,000. That would give us $100,000 to work with, plus we have about $11,000 left from what we saved for the project. With that money, we would do most of the site work for both the house and the workshop, then build a slightly larger than originally planned, two-story workshop that would be our temporary home. When the market changes later on, or gradually over time we could work on building the main house, then the workshop would be converted to an actual workshop with an apartment on the second floor. Even still, the money might be pretty tight in getting that accomplished. Our builder is on board with the idea and is going to meet with us this week to discuss the options. We are going to have to be vigilant in saving money on the project wherever we can.

To save money, we would do things such as using a cistern to collect rainwater from the roof, like they do in the islands.  When I lived in St. Thomas, I had a cistern for water and it is a very simple system- a tank, a pump to pump it into the house, and of course, a metal roof with a gutter angled to channel the water into the tank.  This setup would save a lot of money, because we are facing somewhere around $25,000 for a water main extension, water meter, hook-up fees, etc. 

I also had the idea to beef up the Tortoise Hollow site, and to advertise it in this community to show everyone what the county has put us through.  I would like to set it up so that people that live nearby that have building materials they want to donate or get rid of could contact us and help us triumph over the seemingly insurmountable odds the county has put us at. Like a whole ‘it takes a village to build a house’ kind of thing. If we work on it this way, anytime someone digs a hole for a new pool in the area and needs a place to dump the dirt- there we would be. If someone has a few leftover cinder blocks they need to get rid of, we’d take them. I could scour the listings on Craigslist regularly looking for things like doors, hardware, etc. We could piecemeal it little by little that way.

Anyway, that is what we have come up with so far. If you have any ideas, let me know- we’re open to suggestions.

First I want to say, please don’t tell me that this is all happening to us for a reason. I know that- everything happens because of some type of reason, and in this case that reason was absolutely negligent incompetence. Incompetence by the county led to excessive delays in us getting a building permit for our house, and that led to us not being able to get a mortgage because the housing market collapsed and the lenders are running scared.

This house has been ripped away from me so many times in the past 32 months that my heart is raw from it. Perhaps this is the final time.

All of the flood waters that were standing in our neighborhood Thursday were gone by the next morning, so that was a good thing. We went to work Friday, though I don’t think it was the most productive workday ever. Now that it is the weekend we have spent a lot of time cleaning up the yard and pool and getting everything back in good shape. I tried to slice my eyeball with a palm frond as I was tossing it over the fence, but luckily I did not succeed.

Well, Fay is on her way out after visiting with us for several days. She made a terrible guest; she was really messy. The waters in the hood have started to recede and we haven’t gotten much rain throughout the day today, so conditions should be improving shortly. We are supposed to go back to work in the morning. If we continue to get rain and it doesn’t look much better then, I am not going to go in anyway. We leave for work in the dark and the last thing we need is to be driving through large stretches of standing water in the dark. I’ll make the decision in the morning, though.

Andy ventured out to the store a couple of hours ago, though he almost turned around and went back due to the submerged roads. Here are the pictures he took at the front of the neighborhood. This is after the waters had gone down quite a bit, too.

We got a little break between rain bands and practically everyone in the neighborhood was out milling about. There are a few houses at the end of the street that have water in them, and a few more that it is just coming in the garages of.

Tropical Storm Fay is right over the top of us for yet another day (still no work for us!) and is dumping rain, rain, and more rain. Some places in the county have received over thirty inches of rain so far. Here we are doing fine, but the water has gotten higher than we have ever seen it in the seven years we have lived here. Our street looks more like a river right now. I don’t think the post office will be delivering mail to us today. Click on the pictures to see them larger.

Here’s a couple of shots of our palm tree jungle in the backyard; I just thought it looked cool blowing around in the wind and rain.

So, anyway, we are doing well. I don’t know when Fay will stop dumping rain on us, but at least we have a two story house. Just kidding, I doubt it will come to that. Our house is still a few feet above the water, so we just have to wait this thing out.

There isn’t much drama to the tropical storm for us, mostly it has just been happiness at having time off work.  We found out tonight that we get yet another day off.  Yipee!

While bumming around the house tonight, I noticed that there was some drama across the street at the house diagonal to us.  The fire department has been there for some time and firefighters have been climbing up in the attic and all over the roof in the horrible nasty rainy weather. One of the firefighters came down from the roof a bit ago to get a chain saw, which he then started up on the front porch of the house then carried up the ladder to the guys on the roof. Those poor guys have been up there on the roof for more than an hour now in the blinding rain. Major sucky.

If you haven’t been watching it, Tropical Storm Fay is sitting right over the top of us and just churning away. For most of the day today it remained stationary in position, dumping tremendous amounts of rain on some areas. We are doing fine and just enjoying our time off. Our biggest problem has been getting the dogs to go outside to pee and poop in the rain, but they have been pretty good about it.

There are some places in the county that have received over 24 inches of rain and it is still falling, so naturally there is a lot of flooding in those areas. We have good drainage where we are so we haven’t had a problem. Some people have huge catfish swimming on their lawns and can canoe down their streets. It still remains undecided whether we will be back at work tomorrow or not. The space center is closed until at least 8 am tomorrow, but they are meeting right now to make a further determination. The schools are still closed tomorrow and there are many road closures due to flooding, so we will see.