It had been a little over two weeks since all the water damage.  The house was dry (and it didn’t smell funny).  Nothing was growing inside the walls.  A new ceiling has been put on in the kitchen and many of the wall holes have been patched.

I told Carole, putting everything back together would be just like a PCS (permanent change of station).  We had done lots of them and they were no fun, but we got through them.  I wanted to compare it with something she was familiar with.  After a week, she would stare at me and say, “PCS?”  It has been much worse.  Everyday, very early, workers, noise and dust.  Steve’s crew (Donovan and James) have been superb, but its hard to find anything normal when you are dealing with workers, noise and dust.

Last Tuesday, a second crew showed up to rip up the hardwood floor in the kitchen and put down a new one.  I had a 7:30 tee time.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.   I don’t know if it was guilt, but I couldn’t hit the ball worth a damn.  On the 8th hole, I called Carole to make sure things were moving along.  She told me that the house was full of dust and she was having trouble breathing.  This was very inconsiderate of her, because her comments were impacting on my golf game.

I’m just kidding about her comments being inconsiderate.  She has a breathing problem and this was just too much.  I made my excuses to the rest of the players and headed home.  I found more workers, more noise and more dust.  There was a big pile of ripped out hardwood floor in the driveway and the kitchen was a disaster.

I saw a worker coming in the front door and I thought I would kid with him.  Knowing full well they weren’t, I said, “You done yet?”  He pointed at his chest and said, “Jorge, you?”  I decided that “you,” pretty well exhausted his understanding of the English language and pointed at my chest and said, “Jack.”  Then, we smiled and went about our business.  Maybe one of the other workers was named “Doneyet.”

Before the day was over, the new hardwood floor was in place.  We are going to try to be somewhere else when they sand, stain and seal.  I don’t mean a golf course.  I mean out of town.  Perhaps an out-of-town golf course.

We had a wall paper border around the kitchen wall right at the top.  I suspect you know that the border would be right at the top, but just in case.  When the ceiling came out, so did the border.  So, on our own dime, we decided to put up some crown molding.  It was on the floor for a few days before it was put up.  Our eleven-month-old puppy, Nikki, thought it had an interesting taste.  By the time Carole figured out the noise (from all the other noises), a couple of the boards were an inch or so shorter.  As the fan blades for the kitchen ceiling fan were also on the floor, I’m glad her taste ran to crown molding.  I’m glad she couldn’t get to the seasoning.

The idea that adversity makes you stronger is a bunch of crap.  I feel wiped out.

Carole and I have now been married 49 years.  I tried, but I couldn’t find a happy 49th wedding anniversary card.  Wait till next year.  But, each month for the entire marriage, we have prepared a budget.

The first thing we did was purchase a very nice, substantial ledger book.  This adds significance and formality to the drill.  Picking up that formidable book and carrying it to the kitchen table was part of the ritual.  That’s important when you don’t have any money.  A budget is most important when you are managing very little money.

I don’t know anything about accounting.  I took beginners accounting in college and learned to line everything up neatly, but that was about it.  The only thing I know for sure is that debits go in one direction and credits go in the other.  But, I don’t know which is which.  I review my daily activities at Wachovia Securities on line.  Some numbers are in red and some are in black.  Then, some numbers appear twice, both in red and black.  I don’t have a clue.  I haven’t tried too hard, because I can tell that the bottom line is where it should be.

We started off married life with me going to law school.  Carole worked as a secretary, first for the University and then with the law firm of Smith and Lewis in Columbia, Missouri.  I vaguely remember that she cleared somewhere around $180 a month and my dad sent us $50.  So we budgeted $230 a month.

Almost everything in the budget was a necessity – no hair and nails or golf account.  We budgeted for rent, groceries, utilities, the car, household expenses, insurance and $3.50 for each of us for clothing.  After three months, we would have over $10!

For the first few months, I tried to make things add up, but it was too hard.  So, we just went through the process of writing down what we were spending.  Then, we would look and see if we were spending more than we were making.  It’s not very sexy, but I recommend it to anyone trying to live within their means.

Of course, we didn’t have credit cards, so if you didn’t have it, you couldn’t spend it.  I guess life was simpler.  No tickee, no laundry – no money, no spendee.  Our budgetary key was to find at the end of the month as much money in our check book as we had in our budget accounts.

There was no perfection in our system.  I will leave the accounting perfection to the DC Tax Department.  They kept superb books, while they were stealing $50 million!  They  just paid out tax refunds to themselves and to bogus companies they had created.  Fifty million.  That’s a lot of designer purses.  The patients were running the asylum.

In my system, I would move a lot of money among the accounts.  If we took a vacation and exhausted our vacation account, I would take money out of  “car and gas” and “entertainment.”  That’s not much of a stretch, especially if we drove.  But, I also might take money out of the “linen” account.  Why?  Because there was too much money in the linen account.  So sue me.  There is no auditor to keep me honest and Bed, Bath and Beyond will never know.

In the early years, I would run an account in the red for a few months.  But, in some accounts, the red number would just keep getting larger.  We would them have an executive meeting (Carole and me) at the kitchen table and decide to put $10 more in the particular account.  “The ayes have it.”  Then, we would write off the red number and start over.  I think my budget process is more an art form than a science, particularly that portion of the process where I manipulate the numbers.

There is a fine line between being cheap and being frugal.  For most of the early years, we straddled the line.  By doing so, now if we want to, we can go crazy (but of course, we don’t).

It was Saturday morning and I had half a blog written on the exciting subject of keeping a household budget.  It’s kind of neat the sly ways I can manipulate the family budget.  After all, it is our money, so who is going to complain?

We ran out to the commissary, and the house and garden to pick up some roses.  It was a typical Saturday morning.  When we got home, Carole went in the house and I opened the trunk to get the groceries.  We have eleven recessed lights in the kitchen area (don’t tell Mr. Monk), and the first thing Carole saw was water pouring from all of the light fixtures.  It was the morning from Hell.

She screamed.  I thought someone had died and raced into the house.  Then I raced downstairs and shut the water off.  After the water was turned off, it just kept coming.  I went upstairs to locate the problem.  In the master bathroom, I found the toilet tank hose just hanging there.  It turns out that the hose had a sophisticated shut-off device in the line and it ruptured.  The irony and humor are there, but it’s hard to appreciate while standing in two inches of water.  This definitely got me out of my promise to vacuum the downstairs drapes.

We had water on three levels of the house.  We immediately called Steve Norwood, our contractor and friend.  He told us to call the insurance company and then he came right over.  The emergency insurance agent told us to find a water extractor and gave me a list of names for our area.  Unfortunately, the Northern Virginia area had had tremendous storms the week before and no one was available.  Can you imagine sleeping in a house full of water?  Neither could I.  I can’t even stand to watch one of those stupid music videos where it is raining inside the house.  After about three hours, Steve located someone who could come out.  Then, there was an accident on the Wilson Bridge, so it took him forever to get to our house.  I was feeling like Joe Bfstplk, the Li’l Abner character who always had a black cloud over his head and bad luck followed him.

When I was a kid in East St. Louis, our basement was lower that the street sewers.  So when it rained hard enough for the street to flood (which was often), we had to race down stairs and screw a plug into the basement drain hole.  If we were late, water would be gushing into the basement.  With that experience indelibly etched in my skull, I have never purchased a house what wasn’t up quite high.  “I understand that the bathroom is in the back yard, but I want to know how high are we above the century’s worst flood level.”

The next day, Brian Jennings, our water extractor, came out with his sophisticated moisture detector and before we knew it, we had holes in the ceiling and walls.  The holes were like rabbits; they just kept multiplying.  By Thursday, we were in great shape on the floors and rugs, but we hadn’t turned the corner on the walls.  Off came the baseboards and Carole’s good humor.

Now, a week after it happened, I can still hear the professional grade dehumidifiers and super charged blowers grinding away on the first floor.  I’m hiding in my second floor study.  The minute I put down my pen and appear on the first floor, I will be pressed into service returning things to their original spots.

I have now been assured that we have turned the corner.  The house is definitely drying and nothing nasty seems to be growing inside the walls.  All we need to do is replace the ceiling and the hardwood floors.  That won’t cause any dust, will it?