This past April, we awoke one morning to steady stream of water running in our kitchen.  It took hours to get it to stop, and by then the damage was done.  A water restoration team was called in to salvage what they could and dry out our house.  The water had affected five total rooms in our home, including two bedrooms.  In case you ever wondered, a restoration team coming to your house isn’t necessarily going to “restore” everything…….especially if your insurance company doesn’t feel like paying for it.  About one-third of our hardwood flooring in the kitchen had been ripped up, and our thirty year old, already rotting, particle…

Every lifetime is a journey….each one filled with many ups and downs, twists and turns.  Some of those bends in the road are so severe and  unexpected that you never have a chance to react before careening totally off track.  I call those my “hairpin turns.”  They take your breath away and leave you staring off in utter confusion.  On September 12th, 2017, I hit my worst hairpin turn yet, at least that’s what I thought at the time.  I had no idea how that turn would continue to spiral downward, down the side of a narrow cliff with no guardrails.  I was left clinging to the rocky hillside all…