let's catch up

So, it's been quite a while since I have written a post. I feel terrible about that...can you ever forgive me? Perhaps when I tell you what I have been up to, you will understand.
December, is, of course, always a busy month. My lovely boyfriend Dave was here several times and the last time he was here I got to meet his 5 children, all of whom are awesome.
Christmas went reasonably well and my kids were very sweet and not greedy and pissed off about the amount of gifts they received.
My ex-husband has managed to stay sober since the week before Thanksgiving, which is always nice. I have even been able to let him have the kids a couple of times, which is AWESOME for me. It's nice to get some time to myself again.
January has not been great so far. On the 6th I came home from work to find that my basement full of water. FULL of water. Apparently the water for my sprinklers was never shut off and the result was a pipe that froze and burst. I'm not sure what my thought process was as I plunged into the freezing cold water but I did find where the water was coming from before I realized I could no longer feel my toes and got the heck out of there. I returned to dry land (upstairs) and called Advanced Restoration Services. Still not thinking clearly, I returned to the basement with a bucket and attempted to bail out the mid-calf-deep water by dumping it in the shower. Since it was coming in 10 buckets at a time and I was freezing my toes off again, it didn't take me long to realize that this was not a good idea. I went back upstairs and rubbed the life back into my toes as I waited for help to arrive. The first on the scene was a man wearing running shoes, who fearlessly forged his way into the basement. After soaking his shoes and up the leg of his pants, he realized that to stop the water he would have to go outside and jump into my window well...in the freezing cold. Poor bastard. He then returned to the basement until his colleagues arrived...all twelve of them. The men and women of ARS got to work removing all of my belongings from the basement. They brought the soaking wet items up the stairs and through my kitchen and into my garage as I tried in vain to keep my hardwood floors clean and dry. After getting all my stuff out of the basement, they finally brought in the big hoses to suck out the water. Couldn't they have been sucking the water out while they were hauling the stuff out? I don't want to tell them how to do their jobs but it seems like a good idea to me. Anyway, after nearly 7 hours of working on my basement, a little after midnight, the clean-up crew had done all they could. They left behind 18 high-powered fans to dry out the carpet, which brought me to my next catastrophe.
Yesterday, January 9th, I was taking a nap when I was awoken by an annoying beeping noise coming from the basement. I was in bed, wondering what could possibly be the cause of this noise and wondering when it would stop so I could go back to sleep. Finally I decided to get out of bed to try to find the source of the noise. My bedroom door was closed to keep out the noise of the 18 fans in the basement and as soon as I opened I realized the problem. I had a gas leak and the beeping was coming from my carbon monoxide detector. The smell of gas put me immediately in a panic. My flood made me realize that I am not good in an emergency situation and once again I found myself running around in circles. I called my sister to ask her what I should do and her husband suggested I call the gas company and offered to come over to shut off the gas. I called Questar to report the leak and found myself talking to an extremely unhelpful man I will name Dick. I wanted to know if I should get out of the house, if I should try to turn the gas off, if I needed to get my dog and hamster out...Dick was telling me not to light any matches. I may not be great in an emergency but I DO know that if you smell gas, it's not the time to start any fires. In the meantime, my brother-in-law Matt and my brother Craig had shown up and managed to shut off the gas. I decided to evacuate my pets, Delila and Nugget, and to open doors and windows to let the gas out...only the windows won't open because the flood has caused the windows to swell. So I took my dog and my hamster to my mom's house and returned home to wait for someone from Questar to come. After an hour of waiting in my cold and toxic house, the dude from Questar finally shows up. I was going to get ornery with him for taking so long but he turned out to be a nice guy and since I needed his help I thought it might be wise to stay on his good side. After doing whatever it is he needed to do, he gave me the bad news. He told me I didn't have a gas leak. What I had was 18 high-powered fans keeping the carbon monoxide and gas fumes in the house. He also told me that both of my furnaces had serious problems. One of them had water damage from the flood and the other one had plugged chambers, whatever that means. Apparently, plugged chambers are much worse than water damage. He told me that I was lucky that I had a carbon monoxide detector, I was lucky that the my basement furnace wasn't on, and I was lucky that my hot-water heaters had been off. How did my hot-water heaters get turned off, you ask? I have no idea. I only know that after the flood I had no hot water and instead of calling someone about that I had been heating water on my stove so I could take a tepid bath. So, it's Saturday night and I have no heat. What's slightly worse is I have NO money. So I call my brother Keith, who is a builder and I think might have some knowledge to impart, and may even be able to help me out with this furnace situation. Keith tells me I need to call someone that fixes furnaces. When I point out that I haven't got a cent to my name, he helpfully tells me that I don't have a choice and asks me if I am planning on moving in to a homeless shelter. I'm not sure what this comment means, but it does remind me why I never call Keith when I need any sort of assistance. I assume that Keith has called my brother Craig, who calls me to see what he can do to help. He offers to call his Furnace Guy to see if he can get him to come to my house right away and I realize that I really don't have a choice. I have to have heat in my house, whether I have the money to pay for the furnace to be fixed or not. So I have Craig call his Furnace Guy, who, it turns out, either can't or won't come to my house on a Saturday night, He will, however come on a Sunday morning. So I have a house with no heat, the doors have been open for hours, and it is the middle of winter in Utah. Sweet. I decide that the best course of action is to get my heating pad and all of my blankets and hole up in my bedroom with my dog. I decide that my freezing house is no place for a hamster and I leave him with my mom overnight. Happily, Carter and Adam are with their dad, where for once I am sure they are better off than they would be if they were with me. Having no heat gives me a perfect excuse for staying in bed for the night. Delila and I get under the covers and pig out...I eat when I'm stressed out, ok? At 9:30 on a Saturday night, I turn off the t.v and the lights and go to sleep, using the harrowing events of that day and the days before as an excuse to be lazy...though when have I ever needed an excuse?
So Sunday morning comes and with it, Craig's Furnace Guy. He shows up bright and early, making me feel justified in my super-early bedtime. He goes to work, leaving me to speculate on what Furnace Guy charges for coming out on a Sunday morning. After a couple of hours, Furnace Guy emerges from the basement to give me the bad news. My furnace with the plugged chambers will have to be replaced. Apparently furnaces cost around $2,000, when you figure in labor and what-not. The what-not, by the way, is the pvc piping that will have to be put in for the energy-efficient furnace. Luckily, Furnace Guy takes credit cards, and though I have no money, I still have tons of credit cards.