An Apology

I apologize for not posting for a while. I took a little break, for several reasons.

First, we had a basement flood last April–April 20, 2020 to be exact. A combination of a rupture in the water main into the house and a sump pump failure gave us an artesian well in the storage/ workroom. Needless to say, there was considerable damage to the entire basement, an area of about 1900 square feet (about 190 square meters for those of you using the metric system). Fortunately, we had a sump pump rider on our homeowner’s insurance that covered most of the costs. I urge all of you to make sure you have this type of coverage if you have a sump pump in the home.

Meanwhile, note the date: April 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Restrictions, social distancing etc., hampered the ability of workers to be able to get the job done quickly, partly because COVID-19 affected the production of needed materials due to those restrictions. They also made it more difficult for the two of us to visit stores to determine what we wanted installed in the reconstructed basement. We are still not completely done. And still having to make some of those decisions.

I was still writing the blogs pretty much up to the end of summer but then two more things happened.

Colorado experienced the worst wildfire season in living memory this year. Three major fires burned over 580,000 acres in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, and the air was unsafe to breathe for several weeks. Spectacular sunsets were the upside but many people had to be evacuated and a number lost their homes. Unfortunately, there were fatalities as well. 

The mandatory evacuations came within three miles of our house and we were among many who packed up important papers and a week’s worth of clothing, as well as valuables, in case the high, hot, dry winds moved the fires closer to us. We had, as a scary example, a fire on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park that grew from 30,000 acres to over 120,000 acres in a single day. We, and most of our neighbors, knew that we may not get much warning so we prepared.

In the middle of all this, we were having a bedroom/bathroom suite in our home remodeled to make it better suited for our plans to age-in-place as we get older. My wife, a physical therapist by career, wanted us to have a fully handicapped-accessible place, having taken care of her mother, who lived with us in her last years of life, and seeing what was needed. (We aren’t masochistic; we had contracted for this work to begin in early April but it, too, was delayed by COVID-19 as well as our flood.)

I found myself spending less time writing and more time preparing and dealing with the work being done in the house.

Then, in late October, our first grandchild, a granddaughter, was born. That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Yes, it definitely is, but for one important detail: our daughter and her husband live in Copenhagen, Denmark. Denmark, like the rest of Europe, will not let US residents visit because the COVID-19 pandemic is out of control here, so we do not know when we will see or, perhaps more importantly, hold and get to know, our granddaughter. 

This confluence of multiple situations gave us a lot of experience applying the principles of Solution-Building™ as we dealt with them. And, as you can imagine, there were many decisions that had to be made – and are still being made. 

We have been using most of those principles all our married life, whether about mundane things like what to have for dinner or important issues like moving jobs or houses as our careers and family began to grow. As a result, we work out disagreements, when they occur, by mutually examining the options and making a choice we both agree to be optimal. 

What kinds of decisions? In terms of the basement flood, they included decisions as to what furniture would be replaced or simply discarded. If replaced, we had to decide the issue of with what? In some cases, we decided to have high-quality furniture rehabbed rather than disposed of or replaced. We had to choose carpet and paint, as well as evaluate damaged possessions and determine values for insurance. 

For the bedroom suite remodel we had to basically agree on a design and choose many of the fixtures as well as tiles for the walk-in shower and floor. Lots of little details that had to fit together in the final product.

For the possible evacuation–which thankfully did not happen–we had to decide what was important enough to fit into the two cars we own. We quickly agreed what was most important and got it all ready to leave on a few minute’s notice.  One benefit was that we now have a better understanding of what’s important to us, as well as critical, and, as we look around the house, what we would not miss if it were out of our lives. 

As for the granddaughter? A somewhat different situation in that we have little control over how and when that can be resolved. But we have made some important decisions related to it, such as getting vaccinated as soon as we can, planning to make an extended visit to Denmark–again, when we can–and staying in close contact with our Danish family, including our son-in-law’s parents, as our granddaughter grows and changes. 

The point of all this is that even though the principles of Solution-Building were developed by us with a business setting in mind, they can, and perhaps should, be applied in other areas of our lives. Perhaps all areas. 

Things are calming down now (at least for us) so I hope to get back to the discussions of the principles of Solution-Building very soon.