The husband took the kids to a party for one of their little buddies tonight, so I have no one to listen to my Scary Tales of Real Estate. Oh, wait... I have the whole internet! Okay, this one is about our house that we live in now...

It was what we call a 'cosmetic fixer-upper'. It had a new roof, was structurally sound and really didn't need much in the way of actual repairs. Except it was FILTHY. It stunk so bad that I had to cover my mouth and nose just to come in and check the place out. Ditto the building and pest inspectors. The poor lady who lived here before us worked ungodly hours just to pay the mortgage and she left two big dogs alone in the house all day while she was gone. And yes... they had to potty somewhere. They were partial to the wall-to-wall carpet. That may sound like 'replace the carpet and no big deal', but it's not that easy. Homes here are built on the concrete slabs of the foundations with no sub-floor. So we have slab and then the flooring material with nothing in-between. The dog urine had penetrated the carpet, the padding and the concrete slab -- the actual foundation of the house. It had penetrated the vinyl flooring in the kitchen and screen porch as well. Every inch of floor (but for the ceramic tiles in the bathrooms) had to be taken up and replaced. And *I* was not about to touch the germ infested nastiness of the existing carpet with my own hands and I forbade my husband to touch it as well. We purchased new flooring and told the shop owner that we needed to schedule the removal of the old materials and the installation of the new materials several days apart so we would have time to disinfect the concrete and seal it before the new materials were installed. No biggie, right? Let someone haul away the urine soaked materials and we would have no problem with the rest. We just mop the place and seal the concrete.

We also needed to have every wall and ceiling surface sealed and repainted due to the penetration of the horrible odors. We had to have the duct work cleaned, the befouled central air conditioner replaced and we needed to scrub every door, counter, shelf and cupboard to disinfect the place before it was fit to live in. It was a nightmare of hard work and brutal scheduling and the very last step was the installation of the flooring. When I saw the place again after the old flooring had been removed, I realized for the first time just how disgusting things really were and how much work it was going to take to right things. I knew it was going to take several soakings and vigorous scrubbings of the concrete before we could seal it. I also knew it would take some time to dry the concrete properly before sealing it. Hit with this ugly, germy and stinky reality, I started bawling and couldn't stop. The schedule I had created was too rapid-fire and needed to be changed ('cause the hub and I are only human and I had to face that). I saw then that there was no way the hub and I could do our own personal portion of the work in time, and the budget did not allow for that part to be hired out.

I ended up going to the flooring merchant in tears to explain that I had jobs scheduled and needed to push back the installation dates because of how bad things were in the house and because I had underestimated the work (and horror) involved. The clerk was so understanding. I told her how I had just needed a safer neighborhood for my kids and the only way to afford that was to take the dirtiest, filthiest and smallest house I could find in the very best neighborhood we could afford. She asked which neighborhood and I told her. She said that our new neighborhood was very nice and she was sure we'd be happy there once we got everything straightened out. Then, to make me feel better, she shared that there was another house in that neighborhood that she was SURE was much filthier than the one we had purchased. She confessed that the brave man who went in there earlier that day to take up the carpet had vomited from the stench and had ended up having to leave because the padding had actually rotted away in some areas and was nothing but a putrid pile of the foulest smelling mush in all of creation. She said it took her quite a few phone calls to find another worker willing to go to that job and finish up. I asked her, "Is that house on So-And-So Street?" She answered in the affirmative and seemed surprised that I knew that. I asked her, "Is it house number So-And-So?" Of course it was and the naive young clerk was shocked by my apparent psychic abilities. And then (I was exhausted and anxiety-riddled) I started crying even harder and wailed, "That's my new house!" She looked shocked and horrified when she patted my hand. "I'm so sorry," she said.

Needless to say, we got it done and moved in and here we are with no trace of the former nastiness. We did what we had to do. But DAMN, ya know? We just needed our kids to be safe. We grabbed on to everything at our disposal to get them out of the old neighborhood where crime was taking over and then we stressed and worked our asses off to make it happen. Looking back, I don't know how we worked that hard and dealt with so much upheaval with so many small children, but we did. My panic problems were really, really bad back then and unbeknownst to me, I was a few short months away from a meeting with my memory (but I see the evidence in hindsight, which is always 2020). And still... here we are. Somehow we did it.