A “Rustic” Christmas…

Auntie Lee-Lee loves Christmas, the whole Christmas Season.
This is the perfect time to showcase hospitality skills and people-pleasing.
The parties, the baking, the decor, and the lights
If she had her way, it would last at least sixty nights!
But this Christmas, the Christmas of 2023, as you will see,
Pretty much nothing was normal for Auntie Lee-Lee.
No, this Christmas season, just so you know, 
Was nothing short of a giant shit show.
It came with water pipe leaks and commercial-size fans,
Huge dehumidifiers and broken handicap vans.
It came without ornaments, festive twinkly lights, and refrigeration,
It came with barf bags, 102-degree fevers, and oodles of frustration.
This crazy, unpredictable Christmas wasn't the kind you buy from a store,
But the blessings received made it mean so much more.

A week before Thanksgiving

I was running out one morning to go do errands, I jumped in the car and it made a click click kakakaka, plphhhh, sound. Not good. After having the car hauled to our mechanic it was diagnosed as a $1,600 problem. Well, car troubles are to be expected. Not a huge deal.

Three days later, I heard the fridge making sounds like a death rattle. I called our crazy appliance guy from Croatia. He listened to the Fridge, over the phone, no less, and said, “Your fridge is caput, I tell you your fridge is poo-poo when try and fix da ice maker break. I cannot fix. Go buy new one, don’t waste money fixing.” Well, shoot, Christmas was starting to look, lean another $1,300 from the emergency fund. But we would have the fridge before Thanksgiving. Gobble-Gobble!

Two Days to Thanksgiving

*just a note: if you read my last blog about our ridiculous anniversary, you probably think she is making this stuff up; their life is a clown show. I am not, and it is. Plus, people pay to go to the circus, so I like to think of it as my life is a show worth paying for.

Anyways, Our daughter Katie looked down at the hallway floor and said, “Why does the floor have an inch of water standing on it.”

OOOOOONOOOOOOOO. We had been down this road before. We had a leak in our pipes. We knew the drill. Shut of the water, call the Leak detector. I’m an optimist, “Sure we can still have Thanksgiving here!”

A leak detector comes. Surprise Thanksgiving bonus: we have two leaks, one in the cement slab and another in the wall! They want to start demolition the day after Thanksgiving. So, we turn on the water for Thanksgiving and have a great day.

After paying the Leak Detector and plumber $2,000, it was Demolition time. The next day, they come with Jackhammers to rip the floor. Great News! They found our type of flooring; it won’t be so bad. They can “feather in the new flooring” where it is damaged. They put giant fans and dehumidifiers everywhere and told us to check into a Hotel. It will all be over before December 1st * remember this date.

Fun, right? We will check into the Embassy Suites Hotel; they have a free happy hour. The Handicap Suite can’t be too bad?

Well, they booked us into the handicapped room for the HEARING IMPAIRED. Great, we can see a flashing light when someone is at the door. Even if the room was handicap accessible for a wheelchair, the room is crap if you have tons of handicap equipment. Most importantly, some great genius decided to make all the beds in the hotel platform beds, and I cannot roll the Hoyer lift I used to get Dennis into bed. This is a crusade for another day. GRRRRRR. So, we decide to put Dennis on the pull-out. Needless to say, the night was a disaster. Dennis got 2 hours of sleep, and we checked out. We can live through the renovation, right?

Our First Christmas Blessing

On November 30, Dennis and I went to a Christmas show. When we returned, a Poinsettia, a note, and a monetary gift were sitting on our counter, signed by our guardian angel, Helen. If you need an explanation, the blog post was on March 12, 2018.

Well, who saw that coming?

We looked at each other in shock. We hadn’t really complained to anyone about our recent financial challenges; we knew we would be ok. We have been the recipients of acts of grace before, and things always work together for the good. Our motto is, “If we aren’t in the hospital, we are okay.”

How incredibly kind, loving, and thoughtful of our support system to get together and do this for us. If you are reading this and were one of our angels, our merry band of Helens, know you have blessed us and given us peace to keep walking our path. Your love and generosity will go forward and come back to you. Promise.

Then, a few setbacks. One, the floor does not match, and they will have to replace all the floors in the house!!!!! ”feathering in new flooring isn’t really a thing.” Two, our project manager has had his heart broken. His fiancee, with whom he just bought a house last week and who he is supposed to marry in a month, has decided she has had a change of heart, and he has gone off the grid. All our paperwork is mysteriously missing.

Meanwhile, we are at home surrounded by the fans that are so loud we have to text each other when we sit beside each other in bed. When we watch TV, we have the closed captioning on because even with the volume turned way up, we can’t understand what anyone is saying, and we have no flooring in 1/3 of the house. A week goes by with no progress. I have surgery coming up on December 11th to correct the scar left from the removal of my plum tumor last January. (Post from February 11, 2023)

Really though, all these things are just inconveniences, and the regular shenanigans of life in a complicated world. The only true crisis is that my sweet mother is in the hospital in Winnipeg. All I can think of is her sitting in a cold hospital bed. I debate going every day. My brother, who lives there, is shouldering all the responsibility. My sister lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, and heads there for a week. I can’t leave Dennis while we are homeless. I keep praying for guidance when the right time for me to go.

A lot of dithering goes on for the next two weeks while they try to play catch up while Mr. Lovelorn is still MIA. They Finally say, “Yes! we are coming to do your floors, but you must be out on the 12th.” The day after, I have surgery. And we cannot go back to the Hotel.

Our Second Christmas Blessing

We have a lovely friend whose husband passed away a year and a half ago from a horrible disease called MSA. She lives in a large house, and her basement is handicap accessible as her husband has been in a wheelchair for the last few years of his disease. When Rhonda heard we would be homeless, she said, “Please stay with me.” I could hear in her voice that she meant it; she wanted to bless us with the shelter and convenience of her beautiful home. We were so relieved!

I went in, had my minor surgery done, and we packed up the next day and moved to Rhonda’s. We were sitting in the basement talking and laughing when I was suddenly overcome by the urge to rid the contents of my stomach, and not to be too graphic, the poison in my body was looking for all available exits. I don’t really remember much of the next three days. It was your basic flu buffet: fever, vomiting, coughing, chills, sweating, aches and pains.

My friend and the caregiver who helps me with Dennis, jumped into action like nurses from heaven. If I had to have the flu, this was the best place I could have had it. As a caregiver, one of the hardest things is when you are sick. You get sick harder, it takes longer to recover, and it affects the health of the person you care for.

However, during those nights, they should have taken my phone. On the third day, I realized that when I had a fever of 102 on the second day, I had been booking and canceling flights to Winnipeg. Like, for two days from then. I booked a total of seven flights and canceled six. Yes, I was left with one flight coming home from Winnipeg; not too sure how I thought I was getting there. Good gracious. Thankfully, you get 24 hours to cancel.

So, basically, I showed up on my friend’s doorstep with a quadriplegic and then proceeded to get violently ill. At one point, I lay there semi-comatose, and she was spraying lysol around me and repeating, “Lord bless the woman that lays in this bed.” This woman is a special blessing to all who know her.

These two things are equally valid. Getting the flu was horrible, and I wish I could have avoided it. Getting the flu and having my friend and our caregiver take care of me gave me a boost. When you are a caregiver 24/7, receiving an infusion of being cared for feels like getting an injection of steroids. It reminded me of when I was little, and my mom cared for me. My mom is an excellent nurse and RN, and she is a credit to her profession. Couple that with being a really good mom; being sick at my house was not all bad. It invigorated and weirdly helped me feel connected to my mom, who was so far away. My heart felt like someone had wrapped it in velvet and hugged it.

We finally returned to our house on December 20th, and the last contractor left on December 24th at 2 pm. Christmas Eve, we were cozy in our beds; we had a floor, a fridge, and a van that worked.

Our Final Christmas Blessing

My dear readers, Dibbuns, we have discussed several times that my love language is words of affirmation. Give me a choice of a love letter or diamonds, and the choice is easy: keep your overpriced sparkly rocks. Well, out of the blue, Dennis and I got the most beautiful encouraging text from a guy who was originally an employee of Dennis’s. I almost thought he might have mistakenly sent it to us because he said we inspired him. How? I had to think. Our motto has always been Don’t give up and do what you can to spread love. I guess he has seen that in our actions and words, so with humility, I will receive that huge compliment.

Dennis talks about when he met Tim and he was a skinny young single guy. He is now in his fifties, he is a handsome man of substance and faith. He is also one of my go to guys, if I need something moved or done, or just anything, I know if I call him it’s done. That he took the time to send us that text meant the world to us. I have put in my treasure box, it’s a box full of letters, texts,and emails of love and encouragement. The lid says, open and read when you feel like a dud.

So there you have it, chickens. This year we celebrated the birth of Jesus in the most un-sparkly, not glitzy, not celebratory Christmas time we have ever had. Yet.. we have never felt the spirit of the season more.

So,

Auntie Lee-Lee, with her size ten feet in the wet Georgia clay,
Stood, puzzling and puzzling, she didn’t know what to say.

It came without gingerbread, cocktails, and handwritten tags,
It came without fancy green velvet dresses but with icky barf bags.
Then Auntie Lee-Lee thought of something she hadn’t before
“Maybe Christmas, she thought, doesn’t come from my plans
Maybe Christmas… perhaps.. is, in fact, out of my hands.”

*Now, of course, I will be right back to being my old frolicking, festive, fool next Christmas… unless of course other plans are in the works.

Happy New Year, my dear Dibbuns. Don’t hold onto your plans too tightly; the message is often woven into the mess.

Love Auntie Lee-Lee