When it rains, it pours!

From March 5 to today things in the Gardner house have been tough. So many bad things have happened that it has ALMOST become laughable. See below for details:

The Kidney Stone: March 5 I am rushed to the hospital with a terrible pain in my side/back/stomach. In the ambulance I am prepped for surgery because they were fearful of a embolism, burst appendix, or ruptured pregnancy. After 13 hours a kidney stone (that measured almost 1 centimeter was found). As kidney stone removal is not emergency surgery at Fairfax Inova hospital, I am sent home to wait TWO WEEKS before having my surgery. Then I had to have a stint put in for 10 days which was almost as painful as the stone, with the added bonus of kidney and bladder spasms. Last Tuesday I had the stint removed which put me back in pain for about 48 hours and increased the kidney spasms. Now we are going through the analysis process of finding out why this happened to me, which includes testing the stone and me having to ship 24 hours of urine samples to a lab (maybe I should feel worse for the person who has to open that package!).

Our house: About 4 months after we bought our house we noticed that our basement was leaking. Upon looking further into the problem, we found mold in the walls, and ended up needing to gut half the basement, have it water-proofed, a second sump pump put in and then all new drywall put in (all after we had already put new carpets in... that were then damaged). Since putting the sump pump in we have noticed that it kicks on and releases a substantial amount of water almost every 20 minutes (or more). This flooded our sidewalks and caused bad ice all winter (which our neighbors complained about to the home owners association). Since getting a letter from the HOA we started looking into why we have so much water (also because we were starting to notice cracks in our walls and were afraid that our house was settling). When the structural engineer came to look at the house he said that he thought the water was eroding the ground under our house and that we had 2 foundation cracks. Then he saw the water pumping out of the sump pump and said that we should have the water company come out and check to make sure we didn't have any leaking pipes. The next day the water company came out and said that our pipes were completely fine, but wanted to check our neighbor's pipes because they went through our yard (he thought the sump pump was shooting out tap water too). He tested the neighbors, and found that they had a leak and because their pipe runs along our yard and we are lower than them he believed that the water issues were the fault of the neighbor's pipe. They informed the neighbor that they needed to fix the problem within 14 days or their water would be turned off, and that any damage done to our house from this point forward would be their responsibility. Presently, our neighbor is refusing to do anything about the problem and has come over to yell at us on a couple occasions for "blaming him" and "lying to the water company" (clearly he is a very rational man). Mean while we find more cracks in our drywall on a regular basis and the sump pump runs constantly. This Friday will mark the 14 day point, so we will see what happens when the water gets shut off.

Stolen Identity: Brett and I hardly ever spend a lot of money. The exception is our once a month Costco runs, and the occasional shopping spree when Peter's pants are all high waters (or in this case, when we realize that I have been pregnant for the past 2 summers and the last summer that I was in "regular" clothes I wore a size 2; which I have come to accept will never happen again). Anyway, two weeks ago we had a day of shopping. Costco, Old Navy, and a consignment sale and a few hundred dollars were gone! That night I get a auto-mated call from the bank about fraudulent spending on my account and think, "No, I just FINALLY spent money" and almost hung up the phone because I was trying to feed Peter dinner. But then I heard, "Is the charge of $260 at Liquor Depot in Miami FL a valid charge?" NO!!! So I get myself transferred to the fraud department and learn that someone has made a new card with my card number (we still had all of our cards in our possession) and was buying up all the booze and McDonalds in Miami (a very classy criminal). We were told to go through our statements and file a police report. The only problem there - the Miami police will not take a statement over the phone and the Virginia police will not take a statement about activity in Florida! So, needless to say this is still a work in progress.

Additionally, we leading a small group on Wednesdays, have a house to keep up with, jobs, church activities, family obligations, and oh yeah... TWO BABIES! Needless to say we are a little overwhelmed, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right?

Lets hope!