October 8 | 2am: Brain Flakes, Owls and Parking. Life in the Neighborhood.

by Oct 8, 2022Family, Hurricane Ian

Update 1:40AM sat Oct 8
It feels like life is a blur. Like I don’t really know what day it is until my kids ask!
For those that know us, you know we homeschool now.. and so I’m realizing how grateful I am that we do all year so when something comes up for a week or 2 we don’t stress.. so I guess I have another week before I start stressing.. meanwhile they have all learned how to hit a crow bar to rip up floors.. I’m calling that real life Home Ec! They will thank me when they remodel some day.. or maybe tell their kids about that horrible time they pulled up floors because I wasn’t ready to do our “reg school routines” I’ll take either at this point!
This post is more glimpses into life here…
We have seen so many cool and so many sad things happening in the neighborhood!
We met a new neighbor tonight who is never in the neighborhood (she bought to invest in the property) and is actually here doing work now in it, so it was nice to know who lives in “that house” when we walk by..
Everyday I see trash pickers (that I honestly don’t feel all that bothered by.. if I wasn’t loosing everything there would be items I’d be willing to restore over time from prob everyone’s piles.. I love a good redemptive story for all the things!) and i love when things don’t end up in the landfill that could have a renewed life.. 😂 but I will admit it is unsettling when a neighbor is visibly upset by it and they continue picking.. that’s just heartbreaking..
Neighbors are getting mad at little things and not being able to control their own emotions and feelings. Understandable for sure. I was actually really frustrated for an evening about an interaction I had with my neighbor about parking. I withheld my annoyed feelings but clearly communicated a different solution was needed, that I wasn’t able to meet his request given the disaster and trauma we all are under, and that my priority was keeping my family safe.. I did indeed care about them too but that caring for them didn’t mean I could meet that request! 😂 He disagreed and thought his solution was easy.. I politely declined.. the next day he smiled and waved at me so… I’m gonna go with he had a weird control moment and I hope he decides to respond differently in the future.. but who knows.. (fyi his anger was about public parking and his right to ”own” the road in front of his house.. ) I did not mention it was public parking because.. well I didn’t have too defend anything here .. but he did take my advice and put out orange cones in front of his house so I guess he may have actually heard what I said?!
Emotions are high and people don’t know what to do with them.. it’s complex when you are living them too but aren’t choosing to harm the neighbors also hurting around you.. pray for my neighbors please!
We saw an owl in our tree tonight! That’s the picture! It was super cool to be that close.. and he actually scared me when he flew away I jumped!
Another super fun thing I get to be a part of.. a friend of mine is helping me gather wish lists for the neighborhood families (we have like 7) and she is going to coordinate people replacing books! I’m SO excited about this! We love love books in our house and we really only kept/buy our favs now..when we moved last year we donated a lot so the books we all lost were gems!
Oh and- we finally have cooler weather into evenings so we are hoping to do an outdoor movie night and s’mores! – I did update my Amazon list to include a replacement of our camp fire sticks because those are needed for our fun neighborhood night… we are so grateful someone had already replaced our popcorn maker so we are practically set for this fun thing!! Hopefully happening in the next week.
Thank you thank you! Today was like Christmas to the kids! I didn’t take a single picture but I delighted in all the things!
Somehow we ended up with 3 containers of brain flakes (which are my kids fav.. and when the flood happened they got dispersed throughout the house making it impossible to really save them.. though I did try at one point before deciding that was craziness!) and this afternoon my kids played for hours building creations!
Attached is a pic of one of them..
More soon.. ok one more.. a friend was able to find a floor scraping machine to get all the glue up from the glued down laminate.. I don’t actually know why it was glued to begin with.. 🤷‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️
If you read this far.. you are a rockstar!!

 

0 Comments

Read more posts like this one...

Click on a category or image below:

Family | Hurricane Ian

Video: Happy Thanksgiving from the Fleming Fam!

A Happy Thanksgiving Video from us!

October 13 | 9am

9 am 10/ 13 biggest prayer and needs: That the contractors we called show up! So many neighbors have had no shows and this is just devastating! Really.. it’s hard already to get them to even make an appointment. Our van was totaled and we have one week of a rental...

October 13 | 3am

Day 11 of recovery from Hurricane Ian flooding: THE FLIPPIN' FLOOR SCRAPIN' , FLOORBOARD PRYIN', FOREARM BUSTIN' FUN IS FINISHED! And now... to vacuum and spray bleach solution everywhere and get contractors to come ring up a total for us on the new construction to...

October 10 | 5pm

OCT 10 update 5pm- Day 9 of recovery.. I have a case of the mondays.. but not the normal tired mondays.. like I’m exhausted mondays! We skipped coop- mostly because my heart can’t handle the newness of new friends right now and I knew John wouldn’t be able to take...

October 9 | 1am: Scraping Floors and Eating S’mores

Day 8 of hurricane Ian flood recovery at our house:   We had some amazing friends come and help us tear the majority of our kitchen apart down to the studs and then our buddy even found a floor scraping machine and rented it in Orlando and brought it up to do the...

October 8 | 10pm: Kindness and Casseroles and Crazy Makers

Flood Update sat 10 PM 10/8 recovery day 8 - All I can say is.. The kindness of friends carries me and Jesus enables me to extend that to others! It’s was a crazy day. Can I give a shout out today to the amazing counselors and friends that I’ve had that have sat with...

October 8 | 1pm: The Little Things that Get You

So it’s been a roller coaster.. I have so much to share. Today we didn’t have anyone working on our house.. so MM and I got to bring some neighbors pancakes and just listen! I got to knock on a family’s door and offer to replace some usborne books because a friend...

October 5 | 10pm

Here was a sweet message my friend Krystal Westbrook Minor wrote on my Facebook wall: I just can’t express my gratitude for these kids - so many hands working -  doing such HARD things.   Thankful for the adults coming along side them teaching and encouraging them.  ...

Want to find out how to help?

Subscribe To Our Updates!

Subscribe To Our Updates!

Join our group of awesome people who receive the latest news and updates from us!

You have Successfully signed up for our updates!