[UPDATE 9-16-09 10:30am: Tea said I could post this picture from her blog. She also added a comment below. When I pressed her she said gift certificates to Sears would help - she's got 9 kids to clothe. Also looking into setting up a pay pal account for her.]Tea N Crumpet's house burned down. Here blog Stress Management was one of the early ones and she writes about living in Wasilla with nine kids. There's not much I can say, but I did want to note it here. You can read about it at the link above and a follow up post from today.
The Red Cross was there along with the Firefighters with vouchers for a hotel. She did save her laptop as she mentions on my post below about mine being in the shop. No one got hurt, but Tea seems to have gulped some smoke retrieving her laptop and purse. (I have it back. The diagnostic on the hardware showed nothing wrong and the problem didn't appear while it was in the shop. I'm just using it now for the first time. My fingers are crossed it's ok.)
Tea, my heart goes out to you and your family. We do want to know how we can help out as you work your way back to some form of normal.
In that small way that virtual community can help, we're thinking of her and hoping for her family's quick return to a good, safe home...
ReplyDeleteI am glad all got out. I, too, hope things can return to somewhat normal, especially for the kids. Thanks for keeping us informed.
ReplyDeleteI hope it is OK that I write a bit here! Steve, do show the picture of my house. You will see the bedroom where my daughters shared a room and it is "ground zero" for the fire. Right next to that is the dining room where I was sitting when the fire started. Seeing my eldest daughter's bed on fire is an image I might not shake for a while-- that even after I shake it it might come back, but I was really sunk when I saw my charred dining room table and the chair I'd just been sitting at (when I went back with a fireman) and hour or two before.
ReplyDeleteA lot goes through my mind. A lot of what-ifs. I finally shut my mind up when I decided that for every negative thought that I had that I would imagine winning the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes!!!! (It was with Ed McMahon a few years ago, very cheesy.)
I started crying last night when I made dinner because I didn't have plastic wrap or Pyrex measuring cups. Aren't we born with those? seriously, I cannot remember a time that I was without those things! And pretty tea cups. One of my friends brought me some white tea from All I Saw Cookware and cookies!
The kids are fantastic. Tonight we are making lemonade, but they can later figure out why Mom made them make it from scratch but making Pilsbury refrigerator cookies to go with it.
I am bouncing through the grief stages. A few days ago I was fixated on a few things that made me angry. Yesterday I was moving forward and happy except for a couple of crying jags, yet today I woke up thinking, 'If I get this-this-and-this-done, my _________ will be saved that were in the boxes in my closet!" I stopped what I was doing and laughed at myself and did something else. Teh restoration people are awesome and what is saved is saved and it doesn't matter what I do here, 10 miles away six days after the event!
There is a poem by Longfellow that carries me through every stressful event and it may be cheesy, but I love it. It's the Psalm of Life. The stanza that keeps running through my head is this: Let us, then, be up and doing, / With a heart for any fate ; /Still achieving, still pursuing, /Learn to labor and to wait!
While I wait for the next year, this is no time to sit down. There are projects and opportunities and this with time will be less important. (But I still won't be lighting candles for anything but religious reasons in my house!)