Came across this photo when reviewing pics to send to insurance; I admit that in the original photo, the ‘ha’ in ‘happy’ was covered up by something, so I did a quick and crappy editing job to put those letters back in.

Sitting here waiting on an insurance rep to show up and go over the damages from the roof leak to our home. I walked around and took pictures a few days ago – very low-quality so I can email them, of course, but here’s just a few I can share:

In many places, our carpet was also damaged from these leaks, and a distinct moldy smell has taken over our home. I have a 2 PM appointment to see a doctor because it appears I’ve contracted pink eye in my left eye; this could be due to the mold, but I can’t be sure about that. The areas around our brick chimney are also water-stained, and the brick is still wet on both sides, but since I took such low-res photos for emailing those shots aren’t even clear enough to upload, really.

The worst part of our damage, though, is our shower:

 Also a crappy photo, but I think you get the idea. Yuk. 

It looks like water is just sitting up there above the ceiling, waiting to crash down on us, and gunk is dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls. I’m embarrassed to admit that although we have three bathrooms in this house, this is the only shower that’s currently working. In general, my husband and I pride ourselves on stubbornly refusing to pay to get things fixed unless absolutely necessary, and with just the two of us in this house we never saw the need to repair our other two showers when they needed it. We never used them, so we basically forgot about them – and one now houses two litter boxes anyway. But now that one is basically unusable, we’re feeling the effects of our laziness and ridiculous house-frugality.

So, our house didn’t flood, although I know people who lost everything, and Houston will slowly begin the work of rebuilding and digging out of this mess. We’ve given money to the fund Mayor Turner set up for the city, and I am offering a month of free tutoring to everyone affected by the floods. There are a lot of people going around house to house and offering to rip up carpet and bust out sheetrock for families who took on water, but I am not useful at such things and so am waiting for the water surrounding us to finally go down so I can get out of the neighborhood and take donations to shelters. For the moment, we are still locked in, but I’m hoping to be able to leave the area by Tuesday (the doctor I am going to visit is within our levee so I can make it there and back, but I’m going to have to go by a circuitous route).

The insurance rep was supposed to be here between 10 and 10:30, and it’s now 11:20 with no sight nor sound of the guy. Typical. This is probably going to be a big chunk of our lives for the next few months while we deal with insurance and contractors and the fact that everyone else in the city is doing the same thing. If the mold gets too bad, we may have to move out temporarily, but I’m hoping that doesn’t happen. The wait out the storm period has passed, and the wait and see what happens next has begun.

Here’s hoping that horrible Irma stays away from the U.S., but it ain’t looking good. Stay vigilant, East Coast. I hope you are spared.