In my last post I told you how I flooded the bathroom floor… and felt grateful for breaking the mystery of what is under the house. Now let me share the other half of that scenario; the half where I felt….. welll not so grateful.

Turns out water is the enemy of wood houses…. Well houses in general. It’s not the water… It’s when the water is not neatly contained in the pipes, faucets and tanks where it is meant to be. My very funny brush with flooding the ark seemed only to be a surface issue, until I crawled under the house. That wonderful slippery formless thing called water is able to go everywhere. When I crawled under I was greeted by the waterproof barrier sagging with a full load of liquid like a big zit waiting to be popped. Oh Shit! This began my odyssey of taking down the barrier from half of the underbelly of the house… and ripping out wet insulation.

I don’t know how long it takes wood to dry, I don’t know if water seeped through the tight looking seams of joist to floor boards into the adjoining bay of insulation. In a rainy climate would it dry enough for me to put it all back together? Was this the start of my sweet house rotting from the bottom up? This was above my pay grade. I did what seemed right to do… but that didn’t stop me from waking up at 3 am and googling for hours potential fixes and wondering if my choices were right. 

This was merely one in the hundreds of decisions I will make regarding problems, improvements and maintenance of the tiny house. You know what I wanted… I wanted someone to tell me my choices were right.

Jiminy Crickets – am I going to have to learn this lesson again? The “trust yourself” lesson and the “don’t get paralyzed by if it’s right” lesson. The “you have gathered information now do the best you can with the knowledge” lesson. I’m a teacher for goodness sake – I tell students that ALL THE TIME. Here I am … having to practice my own teaching.

I appreciate that the choices in my life continue to give me opportunities to have a parallel process with my students; that they give me opportunities to come up against my own “stuff” seeing if my reactions have evolved. 

My grade on this one = B+.  I felt the tug of doubt and despair but I didn’t get fully sucked in. I can still stand in the truth of feeling a bit empowered and more knowledgeable while still feeling a little overwhelmed.

That is progress. Real progress.