We discussed our dream kitchen, but we weren't entirely sure we would be staying in Texas. A recent re-organization had me certain that my company would be moving us back to the northeast and we didn't want to invest a small fortune in a kitchen remodel that we might not get back. Besides, after having lived with our completely outdated Fairfax kitchen for as long as we did, we tolerated this kitchen a lot longer than an earlier version of me would have.
I kept convincing myself that all of these appliance issues were "first world problems" and so it is, we kicked the remodel can down the road until we just couldn't kick it anymore. Once we learned that my position would likely remain in this area for the remainder of my career, much to the delight of our children who love it here, we turned our focus to the kitchen.
First off, the oven bakes food unevenly. As in, one side of the dish is always more cooked than the other. If you neglect to open the door midway through a baking cycle and rotate whatever it is you're cooking, there's a good chance that muffins on the left will be charred nuggets, while the right will be slightly under-baked. The impact of opening the oven door midway for a cake? Catastrophic. Don't even get me started...
Next up, only four of our six gas burners consistently light. To ignite the other two, we need to use a match. The range hood is a re-circulatory variety that doesn't have a very high vacuum, which isn't ideal when you cook - with high BTUs - all the time. Also, the lights under the hood have been known to suddenly fall out and land with a "Plop!" in to a simmering bolognese.
Two years ago, Charlie invested in two thermometers, one for each side, and our concerns were validated when we observed that the freezer temperature hovered around 40 degrees, while the refrigerator was around 60. We pulled the top panel off, that houses all the equipment - vacuumed the compressor - and the temperature dropped again. When it spiked last year, we called a repairman and several hundred dollars later, he made some adjustments but told us that the life of these refrigerators is only 15 years so we're on borrowed time. That borrowed time ended the week after Thanksgiving this past year. By Christmas - we were storing any food that required refrigeration in the dysfunctional freezer .... and any frozen food was being stored in our outside refrigerator/freezer.
A few weeks later, even the freezer died.
By this point, I was actively talking to architects, contractors, carpenters, and obsessively perusing appliance showrooms ... making a plan for what we were going to do and when and how many hours a week my children will need to work - starting now - if they want to buy a car, attend college, or eat something more than bread and water.
Sorry about your future, kids. Your parents really, really want a SubZero and dual Wolfs.
During that time, the microwave was doing okay. And the dishwasher was chugging along .... until one day, without warning, it just died.
Still, these were all first world problems. For the first two years of our marriage, Charlie and I lived in a 1940's San Diego bungalow that lacked a dishwasher. And for the last trimester of my pregnancy with Henry, our dishwasher was on the fritz.
We could handle this.
But on or about that day that the dishwasher died, was the same day that Charlie and I would be chaperoning a trip to the Houston Museum of Natural History with Henry's 6th grade class.
We had to be up before the dawn that morning and out of the house by 6:30 AM. Early mornings aren't unusual around here, but on that particular morning - our power had gone out. I remember that because I was in the pantry with a head light, pulling out bread to make sandwiches, when I noticed that one of the potatoes which were stored on the same shelf, had been half eaten.
It stopped me in my tracks. Half eaten potato?
Who eats a raw potato Hey Wait A Minute...
RATS!
Literally, figuratively, every sense of the word.
There's a rat in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?
My mind was whirling, how did this suddenly happen?
There was a scowl on my face, my teeth were clenched, my eyes darting back and forth, accessing my mental hard drive and turning the pages of my memory book.
Ah yes.
Over New Year's, I had been overcome with the desire to clean out our entire attic and as I was organizing seasonal boxes, I noticed that Halloween decorations - which had only been put upstairs a few weeks earlier - had been chomped on by vermin. The adorable straw girl and boy and stuffed pumpkins my sister, Janet, sent were all ruined.
Why I'll bet that my cleaning frenzy upstairs had disrupted this rodent and it somehow got downstairs in to the kitchen. Maybe it was carried down in a box, and scurried in the house through the kitchen door which is always left open because my family thinks we live in a barn????
That had to be it.
Within hours, the exterminator was at our house. He completed an inspection, told us that they were likely inside under one of the appliances - and set a ton of traps, both snap and glue. The next morning, Charlie woke up early to check things out, and came running back in to the bedroom exclaiming, "We caught it! We caught it!" He showed me the picture of a fat rat caught on the glue trap, then asked, "So, now what do we do?!"
"I think you mean, what do YOU do?" I corrected him. My advice was to push the trapped rat in to a bag, and then hit it hard with the flat side of a shovel. Charlie disappeared and several minutes later I could hear him outside ewwwing. Not sure that's a word, but that's what I heard, punctuated by several thumps. When he returned, he exclaimed, "Okay that was probably the worst thing I've ever had to do in my entire life. Did you know that rats scream?"
We cleaned the entire kitchen, removed the remaining traps, put everything back on the shelves and moved forward with life thinking the problem was solved.
My mind returned to our kitchen remodel and meeting with professionals to dial in all of the glorious specifics. We'd be moving a door, changing countertops and backsplash, replacing the floor, sink, lighting and hardware, changing several cabinets - and painting.
PRETTY, PRETTY THOUGHTS! 😍
Alas, a few weeks later - another potato was gnawed. Charlie checked the traps in the attic and realized that we had caught one in a snap trap. He threw it away and tried to assure me that the rat in the attic was the same one that had been in the kitchen.
Although I was diligent to make sure food was put away - crazy schedules, four kids, and a fruit basket that sits on our counter revealed that a banana and an apple had been chewed.
NOW THEY WERE ON THE COUNTER.
The exterminator came back and traps were again set up everywhere.
One afternoon I was working from home when I heard Elizabeth come RUNNING down the hall and jump in to my arms, because she swore she saw beady eyes looking out at her from beneath the refrigerator.
Instead of using a shotgun, Charlie - armed with a Nerf gun, hammer and duct tape, inspected all the areas a rat might be nesting. He also sealed all of the exterior access points, and did some work to our eaves. After we caught another one in the attic, we all felt confident that the water was indeed safe to go back in.
Meanwhile, the trigger has been pulled to start the kitchen remodel - the refrigerator - now two months dead was leaking water across the floor, through the wall and in to the garage, and the dishwasher needed to go, STAT.
We pulled out the dishwasher and wine refrigerator and after seeing all the scat and chewed plastic, determined that is where the rats had been situated - and because they chewed out the pump, had been entirely responsible for the demise of the dishwasher.
RATS!!!
We had to break out part of the tile floor to remove the built in refrigerator and were aghast at the mold and grossness all behind the wall.
The weekend of February 24th we met with contractors who would start the following week. We went over the final plans with them, and were told it would take approximately four to five weeks to complete. I'd be flying to New York for a business trip the week of March 2nd, so Charlie would be home with the kids while the demolition began. The following week, March 9th, was our Spring Break, and our contractors would have access to the house, while we went skiing. That would only leave us two to three weeks of no kitchen, and we could easily handle that.
We camped for four weeks straight and love to cook outside. No worries.
Ah, but then.
Over the weekend of February 29th, my sister and mom group chat was lighting up with foreshadowing of fallout from the coronavirus. Because of my auto-immune issues (hello Lupus and Sjogren's), my retired nurse mother was strongly discouraging me from flying to New York for my business trip the next week. My sister, Marylou, a retired pharmacist who has had her finger on the pulse of the virus since January - was telling me to get to the store and buy medication: fever reducer, cough medicine, thermometer and pulse oximeter, as soon as possible.
Oh and while I'm at the store, get enough nonperishable food to last several weeks, if not months. This thing has already hit the United States, currently asymptomatic people have it and are transmitting it to the multitudes and within the next few weeks it is going to be explosive.
By Saturday evening, February 29th, I was convinced. I called and canceled my trip to NYC and feeling a bit like a scaredy cat, let my colleagues know that I would be dialing in to the meetings. On Monday, March 2nd, Charlie and I met with our contractor and paid him the down deposit to start the remodel the next day ... on March 3rd. But that afternoon, as I stood in the rubble of our partially demolished kitchen, a little voice whispered in my ear, "Stop." That little voice was followed by a larger booming voice that whispered, "You need a kitchen sink. You need a countertop. You need an oven and a stove, even if they don't work very well. But most importantly, you need to save your money in the bank."
Charlie was supposed to fly to California the week of March 23rd for a business trip, but if the virus was going to spread in the manner my sisters were predicting ... there was a good chance that trip would be canceled. So too, our spring break plans would need to be canceled. And I started to suspect that maybe school would be canceled, the week after spring break.
Hmmm.
Maybe I should use that time to prepare?
And so it is, four hours after we paid our contractor a down payment to start the remodel the next day, and much to Charlie's dismay - we called him to tell him the entire thing was on hold. We also called off the plumber, electrician, and appliance order and canceled our spring break plans.
After our Scout meeting that Monday night, Charlie and I dropped the kids off at home, and we went back to the grocery store where at 9:30 PM, we filled two grocery carts to the brim with nonperishable foods, paper products, and medicine. As we were checking out, I was grateful to be in my Scout uniform, because it truly looked like we were preparing for a camping trip for 100 scouts .... versus feeling like Chicken Little preparing for the sky to fall.
Over the course of the next two weeks, we continued to drop in to the store and pick up random supplies. More canned goods. Pasta. Rice. Flour. Not hoarding ... but preparing. Because a Scout is prepared. Especially this one.
Charlie had been giving me a very hard time when I suggested we buy powdered milk and was telling me, "JEN. Seriously, look at all of this food that we've got! What do you think will happen? Shelter in place? No one can go out at all?" Crazy Lady!
YES. That's exactly what I think will happen, or should happen. People need to stay inside and completely STOP going out for at least several weeks until we can get a line of sight on this and the numbers come down.
YES. I do think everyone should stay inside until we at minimum, have an anti-viral that is capable of reducing the severity of the symptoms and we can give our front lines, the medical professionals that are putting their own lives at risk, an opportunity to treat the existing cases, without being completely overwhelmed with more cases that could have been avoided if people just ISOLATED.
All told, we've spent more on groceries in the past three weeks, than what we would typically spend in three months. But considering we've got four kids with insatiable appetites, that apparently ramp up when they're stressed and bored, I wouldn't be surprised if our supplies really on last us three days. I've started rationing ... everyone only gets six sheets of toilet paper per day. I'm partially kidding, although have truly told them that if we run out of TP, we may need to resort to bandanas or leaves. Like when we're camping.
The good news in all of this? We haven't seen any evidence of rats for at least a month.
The other good news? Even though our kitchen is partially demolished, we still have a countertop - sink - partially functioning oven, microwave, cooktop, refrigerator and freezer in our garage .... and for the most part, truly enjoy each other's company.
During times like these, it's important to count your blessings.
And while it's taken three weeks, Charlie now agrees with me and is willing, although not necessarily content, to shelter in place. In return, I've agreed to share with him my stockpile of refried beans and mandarin oranges.
See, that's love. 💝
