Potty mouth…

Maybe the potty mouth came with the potty training but I swear, I rarely cursed when the kids were little!

When we were building our second house…everything went wrong from foundation to chimney. There were constant delays and we ended up closing months past when we should have.

One particular day, as I stepped into the front hall for my weekly catch-up with the Project Manager…I discovered six contractors sitting on upside down buckets, in the middle of what would one day be my living room. They were discussing the latest issue…that would cause another. major. delay.

I was frustrated. Beyond. Exasperated. Panicky. Tired. Near breakdown and out of control.

Three steps into the front door with the scene and conversation before me and all I could do was blurt out “FUCK!”

Immediately, six men stood and buckets flew. The meeting was adjourned as everyone quickly got to work and the Project Manager, Jim, tried his best to explain the new issue while all I could think of was what it meant for me. Another few weeks with three children…8, 2 and six months old…a husband who worked away from home four nights a week… me…alone with my children…in a cramped hotel room.

It was not my finest moment.

It had me in tears and running to the basement where all of my worldly possessions had been stored when our house closed, and they’d moved us into that awful hotel.

I climbed under the kitchen table stacked high with boxes…and cried.

At some point, my real estate agent, Stacy Wentzell, appeared. Knowing my husband was away and not knowing who else to call…Jim called our realtor.

Stacy crawled under the table with me where we chatted about the delays and tried to make sense of it all. He helped me pull myself together while we decided what our next step would be…wondering what new “added feature” the company would offer us to ease all of the trouble we’d been through.

For me…all the extras really didn’t matter…I just wanted to move in. To be in a place where hotel staff weren’t warming my daughter’s bottle in the middle of the night. Where I wasn’t doing laundry in a sink. Where my kids had room to play besides the two feet of carpet in the center of the two Queen beds. Where we could unpack our belongings and spread out our things. Where my daughter could start grade three from her brand new house…rather than Suite 156…where we happened to reside.

Eventually, things came together. After they’d upgraded the baseboards, did extra woodwork in the closets and doubled the size of the front and back decks…I dropped in one day as we were heading into the final stretch. The tiles in the front entrance were being installed and I stepped around the fellows as they worked so I could do a bit of a walkabout through the house…enjoying the new light fixtures, the hardwood, the beautiful yellow cabinets with the “irish clovers” cut into the wood and the fabulous jacuzzi in the bathroom upstairs.

Jim, our contractor, called me back to the entrance to show me one more “added feature.”

There, on the subfloor…awaiting the tiles to cover it up…the letters F-U-C-K spelled out in hundreds of staples.

With a smile on his face, Jim apologized for everything that had gone wrong and all I had been through. He said I had two options…to make him pull every staple out as punishment for what they’d put me through…or to leave it as my “special spot”…to stand on, whenever I was having a bad day.

Jim claimed he’d never seen six men move so fast in his entire life the day that I lost it.

The floor was tiled, the house was completed…and we moved in.

I often stood on my special spot when frustration got the best of me and I just needed a moment to think.

Including the multiple hours I spent potty training two of my kids while we lived there!

Laura O’Rourke, a friend and fellow local blogger at Mommy Miracles, is in the process of purchasing her new home. I know how crazy busy and stressed she is at this very moment and wish her every bit of happiness as she turns her house into her home. Laura has a number of guest bloggers writing for her this month while she’s busy with the move (including a post from me on August 1st). Check out her blog and join me in wishing her much happiness…with the least amount of potty-mouth she can muster…on this fantastic journey!