The Mrs: I suppose the time has come to bring up the barfing (see what I did there?)

Where were we?

Oh, right. The leak. Well, look. We called our insurance company on Tuesday, March 11th - the same day we had our dear Sarah over for dinner, which she ended up mostly preparing because I was busy showing the insurance guy around. I'm a great hostess like that, which means when I say "you have an open invitation to our house", you should hear "because someone needs to cook around here."

A week later, our house looked like this:

"Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us"

Second verse, same as the first

As the recovery contractor's team was wheeling in their giant de-humidifiers, pulling down drywall, and discovering knob-and-tube wiring (heh, heh) cleverly hidden* in every wall of the house, as the electricians moved in and started cutting holes in the drywall of any of the rooms the recovery team hadn't touched, as my kitchen became useless (owing to the orange tarp bisecting the room right at the stove), and as all of the power except the feed to one or two outlets was turned off (for the next six weeks), my children started barfing.

And lest you shy delicately away from imagining just what it was like, I will re-enact it faithfully for you:

Sandi: No, don't--

Oscar: BLEARGHALLOVERTHEFLOOR!

[whole family moves to a hotel room]

This hotel room, singular

Norah: I feel sic--BLEARGHALLOVERTHECARPETATMIDNIGHT!

Lucy: BLEARGHJUSTBLEARGHBECAUSEHOWMUCHWORSECOULDITGET?!

So innocent. So full of barf.

The coolest thing about the hotel room was that the tv was on a swivel, so Seth and I could "put the kids to bed" and still have some time to ourselves. The worst thing about the room was that it was all one room, so while Seth and I were "having some time to ourselves" (read: watching ~~International House Hunters~~ Modern Family), Lucy was doing this:

In case you can't tell from this well-lit and expertly-focused photograph, this is my darling cherub peeking around the tv for the seven-hundred-and-thirty-ninth time after being put back to bed for the seven-hundred-and-thirty-eighth time.

We lived in that hotel room for a week; a week that should have been longer but wasn't because insurance companies are The Worst.