February
Injuries, Evacuations, and concerning skin growths
What do they say, "Make plans, God laughs?" I must have really provided some serious comedy for him this year.
I originally thought of this blog to be more of a fun update of what was going on until the special day, it is now sort of a "sorry we didn't call any of you or tell you what was going on" but it was like a hailstorm of constant additions to, you know, regular everyday life + wedding planning.
So anything you might have missed unless you are a neighbor, client, or student, who is all we saw for a while, should be in here!
The wedding plans were interrupted by Gavin coming home so injured in his shoulder that he would be out of work (for the next four months).
Just as we were wrapping our heads around that, the mysterious dizziness I was unknowingly reporting in part 1 of this blog (*which I thought was just wedding stress) turned out to be black mold that was growing right next to my head where I sleep at night. We pulled our bed away from the wall one night when I was just so sick I couldn't take it anymore, to find all of it creeping in from an outside leak. Remember all that crazy rain we had from Dec-April?
We left immediately, my poor breathing was so bad and I didn't know it was about to get even worse.
Within half a day we had an offer to stay with some of our favorite friends while their daughter was away from her room, AND teach lessons from their house! (Tettenburns shout out we love you)
So at least one of us could work.
I was starting to wonder how the heck I was going to take all this in AND pay for the wedding, but it was too late to wonder, our entire family had bought plane tickets and the invites were sent out. I hunkered down and thought, maybe at worst Gavin would be out for a week or two.
Oh, those were the days of hopeful nievity, but I suppose it was best we had no idea what was still to come....
I took everyone off my waitlist and started holding triple the classes I normally do, it worked great, I was exhausted, but it was a huge blessing and would work to hold us over for a while.
I looked on the upside, I wouldn't have to worry about not fitting in my dress with all this gratuitous running around right?
Gav started PT, and I started monitoring some weird-looking growth on my neck, fun I thought to myself, a cool decoration to go with my wedding dress.
Lessons at our friend's house went super well and some of the kids made friends with the Tettenburns daughter, some with Mark (dad) over the Rubix cube on the coffee table, and some already knew Kallie from her Speech Therapy business! We partied every night making dinner together, laughing, cooking, playing games, and all kind of shenanigans to pass what we thought would be a short-lived extra-long slumber party.
(insert thunderous voice of god laughing here )
Our Landlord (Hi Jim!) has always been super cool and got on the mold issue right away, he hired Gavin as foreman so he could get the job done correctly and quickly plus he wouldn't have to use his arm too much while he worked as director, engineer, planner and quality control. Gavin assembled his best colleagues and somehow got them off their jobs and onto ours, honestly, I will never know how he managed that with four of the best guys around, another not so small miracle!
For those of you interested in mold and leak issues, it turned out that not only was the retrofitted bedroom window allowing in all kinds of rain and moisture which had wicked through the walls. Some more digging revealed the neighbor's bathroom drain pipe had a hole in the bath drain so it was filling up around our basin and wicking upwards. After a week of demo we realized it was going to be quite a while longer for repairs. 50% of the house was torn down, it kept raining every day, and poor Butters (our Angora rabbit) was stuck in her cage listening to all the noise while Gavin checked on her every day during construction.
I got so sick from all the spores I had breathed in that even after we evacuated I got worse and worse for over a week and couldn't breathe. I even found a fun youtube video called "Yoga for sinus relief"...It was desperate times. PS If you ever suspect mold exposure some of the symptoms are loss of voice, breathing problems, nasal drainage out of the blue, itchy skin, itchy eyes, fatigue, dizziness, and seeing spots, at least for me it was.
This continued on until I remembered that past Aja had been invited to join a friend on a trip to Costa Rica in March and had booked everything. I thought it was terrible timing, then on second thought, well what the heck, a break would be nice and the house can get finished while I am gone, sure ya let's go! So off we went, leaving a cold rainy San Diego, to a 5 day Yoga and Psylicibin Retreat in the Jungle, along with 5 additional days of trekking around the rainforest and hot waterfalls and eventually meeting up with a great friend who lives there (Hi Dave!) check out his amazing music HERE.
It was hard to leave, life-changing, (requires a whole other blog to dive into) and the news at the end was, the house was not done, like at all.
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