"Mah Boy" Keesh the Wonder Dog

[spdd]

Well here's the kicker. I have asked the contractor for a complete run down of the costs so far. Waited 2 weeks, called many times, asked his employees and still no response. How are you supposed to know what to do next if you don't know what has been spent. The quote changed several times, so I can't even guess.... but... wait for it..... I had to speak to the lawyer today. Seems my building inspector missed major problems.... mould in the basement and lots of it, roof line is bowed but you couldn't tell until I had it re-shingled, wood furnace is no longer made but the handle and lock are missing so now sure if I can get a new door or if it needs to be replaced, and.. the only vent in the dining room has absolutely no duct work to it... just a hole in the floor. Furious doesn't even come close to it and lawyer says I have to go to small claims, but in the meanwhile I will have to sell it as is. Can't go to court if you aren't in the same province.... and with that I am at a complete and total loss for words. Blood pressure with pills is steady at 179-way to high...and can't get medical care until I get back to Ontario..... like I said on my facebook account... hand me the gun, I have the bullet.

[molly muffin]

Omg Judi. This is a horrible experience I can't even begin to imagine you having to go through this.

[spdd]

Wait Sharlene.. it get's better Home inspector as much as admits he did a bad job and has offered his fee back, but that doesn't help me anyway at all, and I had to fire the contractor today, absolutely no respect or consideration for me as a client. They never showed up at all yesterday and I had finally got the plumber and floor guy there. Mega bucks this has cost me and I still cannot move into the house. Going back to Ontario this weekend to do a wedding and a hearing is scheduled for the 16th with the tenant landlord tribunal. I took the landlord to court re the noise issue I had and they had the audacity to phone me today and ask for an adjournment cause their witness (my super) was going away... hello.... I am driving a complete province to appear, just another one of their games. I refused a mutual adjournment however I may still go all the way to Woodstock and they could adjourn it. Then a scare, my old doctor phoned in persona and was concerned as to why I had not seen her, and she was going to re-issue a request for a cat scan.... what?????? I have had another doctor now for almost a year, and what is the cat scan for? Didn't know they had to put in a special request for one and I can't remember why I even needed it... too much going on in my head. Now I hear about your sister.... wish I was closer to give you huge hugs.

[Budsters Mom]

I's so very sorry. I keep reading hoping that things have started to turn in a more positive direction for you.

Kathy

[spdd]

Well I'm journaling this so I can keep track. Everyone said to get your own trades people, so I got a plumber today... not only did he cause a leak that ruined my living room ceiling (the only one that I didn't have to repair and could just paint, but he cut and capped a drainage pipe in the bathroom and pushed so hard he came through the kitchen ceiling...

[molly muffin]

Seriously Judi! There are No words for this. What a bloody mess!

[Budsters Mom]

OMG!!!! It looks like you've hired the three stooges to work on your house!!

There are words fot this mess Sharlene, but they aren't allowed on the forum. We can think them though.

[spdd]

Two reasons why I'm posting today.. one is an update. The plumber who after finishing installing a new kitchen sink and taps-I find all of a sudden I have a lake under my newly finished cupboards. Turns out he re-used an old plastic gasket that was completely worn out and on the other sink a new rubber one that he actually pinched out of shape. Man where do I find these people? Ruined the cupboard.
Now onto the 2nd reason. We all know that loneliness, grief, and mourning are part of our lives when we lose something we cherish, and with the limited grief counselling I got, it really didn't do too much other then get things off my chest. Just last week I was sent this and I sure hope it helps others.......

Another way to say that you are grieving is that a part of you is stuck in a moment in time.

Sometimes the cause of the stuckness isn’t the grief itself, but the fact that you don’t even recognize that you’ve lost something and that you need to grieve.

Grief is a word that is used interchangeably with bereavement, but grief is not exclusively about the physical death of a person.

Grief doesn't fit in a box, either. Some forms of grief take years to work through, other types take a few solid months, some take a single moment of deep acknowledgement.

Everyone grieves differently and for different reasons, but one thing remains constant in the process. It's the one thing no one has ever said about grieving:

“I did it right on time.”

Grieving is marked by a lag, a delay, a freezing, “Wait. What just happened?”

Grieving is also not a linear process.

One moment you feel you’ve fully moved past something, the next moment it’s right back in front of your face.

That’s because grief is insidious, imposing and demands to be felt. Even if you’re able to somehow avoid it all day long, grief comes back to you in your sleep. It’s laying right on your heart as you wake up.

Grief doesn’t say, “I’ve been here long enough, I think it’s time for me to leave.”

No. Grief crowds the heart, eats up all your energy and chronically imposes upon your peace. But grief isn't some evil force that's only there to cause pain, grief is escorting up an even deeper feeling, a truth about your life, what you value and what you need. Perhaps how much you wanted something, how deeply you care about someone, how far you've come from where you were.

As Mark Nepo so beautifully puts it, "The pain was necessary to know the truth, but we don't have to keep the pain alive to keep the truth alive."

Still, grief isn’t necessarily a depression. People can be grieving and heartbroken about something and not even know it.

Here are some examples of events that cause grieving:

A break up

The selling of your childhood home

What you always wanted but never got

A person who died

A person who is still alive but is electively absent in your life

The loss of a dream

Divorce

Infertility

Loving someone who is self-destructive

The loss of a pet

The end of a friendship

Job loss or the end of a career

The typical route for grieving begins with denial, and that’s actually a good thing.

Ultimately, your defense mechanisms are there to protect you. Denial kicks in when it would otherwise be too overwhelming to feel it all at once. Ideally, denial slowly fades away and the grief is felt. (Ideally.)

More typically, you swallow your grief.

It comes up in small spurts when you’re not paying attention, then you numb yourself to it somehow, then it jumps up more forcefully, then you numb yourself more heavily.

That is the path of staying stuck in grief. The path loops. People lose themselves on that path.

Is there a better path?

The answer is yes. But you don’t have to walk it unless you choose to.

Some losses are so exquisitely painful, in a way that no one else could ever fully understand, that no one would fault you for staying in the loop.

If you do choose to get out of the disorienting, dizzying loop of grief, here are 4 ways to begin:

1. UNDERSTAND - That your heart is broken, even if it’s not visible to others.

Keep in mind that there's no ‘right way’ to grieve and that grieving is not a linear process.

Just because its been 6 months, 4 years, 15 years, whatever – none of that means anything to your grief. The clock starts when you begin to recognize your grief. In other words, when you genuinely begin to address what happened (or perhaps what never happened).

2. RECOGNIZE - Before you can grieve, you have to recognize that you need to grieve.

Something happened, or didn’t happen, that burdened you.

Ironically, when you’re burdened, something is given to you and taken away from you at the same time. What do you feel was taken from you? What do you feel you are burdened with? The answers to those questions help you recognize what you need to grieve.

3. TOUCH - You have to touch the loss (as well as all the anger, sadness, bitterness, resilience, compassion and any other feelings you encountered during your loss).

You're in touch with your grief when you make space for the feelings your loss brought into your life. It may feel counter-intuitive to go back to the feelings that you want so desperately to let go of, but there's simply no way to move through grief without making contact with it, without fully touching it, without fully feeling it.

You have to pick it up, hold it, feel the weight of it in your hands, on your heart and within your life. You have to feel the whole loss. Grief demands to be felt with an insistence that needs no sleep. You either allow yourself to encounter the feelings or you remain encased in a shell of yourself under a misguided sense of self-protection.

4. MOVE - The feeling of grief can linger for so long that you almost befriend the grief.

The grief becomes oddly soothing in its familiarity and its predictability. Dealing with the grief means letting go of this familiarity and moving towards something less predictable and less familiar, which is scary.

Still, if you want to genuinely address the grief, you have to continue to move through the peripheral, familiar parts of your grief and go right into the epicenter of your grief. As the classic hero's journey goes, you have to get inside the belly of the whale. There (and only there) you will find the door to the unpredictable pieces of life that are patiently waiting for you on the other side of your pain.

So....

Understand your heart is broken.

Recognize why it’s broken.

Touch the grief.

Move towards the epicenter of your grief, as it's the only path to other side of your pain.

Please remember, the grief you're experiencing is yours, and you can carry it with you for as long as you like. Let go of it only when you feel ready-enough, and if you never feel ready, that’s okay. If you do feel ready to move through it you can recruit professional support. Navigating through grief is unpredictable, dangerous terrain. You don’t have to do it alone.

[Joan2517]

This is good, Judi...so many of my feelings in there.

[labblab]

Sheesh Judi, I'm so sorry for your never-ending home repair headaches! It truly is enough to drive you nuts...

But thank you so much for the helpful info about grief and grieving. I've taken the liberty of copying that part of your post and adding it to our "Where to find Help when you're Hurting" thread.

http://www.k9cushings.com/forum/showthread.php?t=171

It is absolutely true that everybody's path reflects their own unique needs and footsteps. But I do believe it helps to know that others have been able to successfully navigate the journey, no matter how painful and no matter how much time it takes.

Sending my best wishes to you today and always!