Coming Home After Our Summer of Water Damage
The kids are back to school and a common question at pick up is, “How was your summer?” Hate to say it, but ours was pretty terrible. In June, we came home from vacation to a leak that caused extensive water damage. 77 days and 6 Airbnbs later, we’re back in the house and I’m back on the podcast. We’re talking unexpected mishaps, dropping balls, and letting the absence of bad things be good enough.
Links mentioned in today’s episode
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book a 1:1 session → An Hour of Answers
say hiiii on Instagram → DM me @kaileenelise
listen to my interview with Luz → Systems That Stick, IRL Connections, and the Messy Middle with Luz Perez Brown
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Listen to Episode 235 of Celebrate Cultivate
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Hello. You are listening to Celebrate Cultivate. I'm your host, coach, and voice in your earbuds, Kaileen Elise Sues. I'm back. Oh my goodness. I am back home in my house, back to the podcast, and I honestly feel a little emotional. I wasn't expecting that at all before I pressed record. Yeah, but now that I'm sitting here, I feel emotional. It was not a planned break at all, and so I think just, like, coming to this space, pressing record, and realizing all that has happened over the last summer, this last few weeks, last few months, it's way more emotional than my mind wants it to be or feels like it should be. But to take you back in case you're like, "What on earth are you talking about, Kaileen?" The last episode of Celebrate Cultivate aired on June 11th. It was a really good one. If you haven't listened to it, highly recommend that you take a step back through time and press play on it. My friend Luz Perez-Brown came to the show, and we talked about creating systems that stick, cultivating in-person connections beyond the internet, and navigating the messy middle as mothers and business owners. It was a really rich conversation, and in my DM correspondence with Luz over this past summer, she has been through a big move and a big change, which she knew was coming. When we talked in the episode, I did not know how similar, in some ways, my summer would turn out. And I remember I recorded that episode at The Commune, which is the co-working space that I, or office space that I sometimes rent here. It's no longer a co-working space, but it used to be. I remember sitting in that room and talking to her and being like, wow, that is, like, such a huge thing that she is doing, moving with two little kids and just, like, all the work, and I, I have not moved up until that point. I had not moved while we'd had children, although I did grow up a lot. Or I moved around a lot as I was growing up, and then also as a young adult, like in my 20s and into my 30s, I had moved around a lot. So moving is one of those things that is a familiar practice of mine, and yet it's something I hadn't done in, in so, so long. We've been in our house for 10 years now, more than 10 years. And so, you know, this is the place that we've lived that whole time. But when the episode aired, it was June 11th, like I said. Two days later, on June 13th, my family came home from our annual Florida beach trip, and when we walked in the door that Saturday, there was water on the floor in kind of this, like, play space area that is behind our living room into the kitchen, and then it flowed, the water flowed all the way to the sliding glass door to get to our backyard It wasn't, like, a huge amount of water, but it wasn't an insignificant amount of water either, and it was coming from this AC air vent in the ceiling. So we, like, came in with all our luggage, and my husband, like, went upstairs to find out what was going on with the AC. And long story short, I mean, this is gonna be the story of the episode , so maybe it'll just be long story long. The AC was leaking, and I'm not, like, a air conditioner expert. I don't even know, like, all the terms, so I'm not even gonna try to, like, say them all to you. But there is a pipe that exits your house or exits a building that drips. It's like a condensation drip line. That had gotten plugged, and so then the condensation couldn't exit the house. And our particular air conditioning unit that had passed inspection 10 years ago when we moved into our house, that had had service on it, you know, several times in the last decade, it had an extra little T valve that was not capped. And so there is, like, an emergency shutoff on air conditioners. When the condensation line gets backed up, it's supposed to, you know, get to a certain point and then shut off so that there isn't any more water exiting your air conditioner. Well, we had, like, an extra little opening that didn't get capped. That fix was a 50 cent piece from Home Depot that, a little tiny cap they just put on top of it, and that literally, like, fixed the problem, fixed the, the leak, so to speak. It wasn't really a leak because it was, like, a hole that was put there intentionally by someone at some point. Anyways, so the air conditioner leaked so much that the water flowed into our garage, into my closet, and from the upstairs, it damaged flooring upstairs, and f- then because it leaked through that vent in the ceiling, it also damaged the floors downstairs. And we have, like, an open concept 10-year-old house, so the floors are continuous. And what the damage caused was enough of an issue where we needed drywall repairs in the garage, in- Like the upstairs and the downstairs, in my closet, and all new flooring. They had to paint the whole house. So on June 13th, we came home to what we had no idea at the time was like a pretty big home disaster, but none of our furniture got damaged, and none of our belongings, none of my clothes. Like, the only things that got damaged were the, the house, the floor, and the walls. And we came home on Saturday, but on Friday our housekeepers were at the house, our nanny was at the house to get things set up for us to come home to. My in-laws were at the house. So there were like tons of people in the house on Friday, and there was no water anywhere. There wasn't supposed to be. And then on Saturday we came home to the water. So I think in, in all in all, like the arrival to it and the timing, that all probably worked in our favor quite a lot. But it certainly was the beginning of a summer that we did not plan. And in total, we were out of our house for 77 days for the flooring to get torn up, for them to dry out the whole house, for them to install new flooring, paint the house, put in new trim. Like, it was a very extensive renovation project that we did not anticipate or plan at all. And for those of you who have been with me for a long time, you might remember that in 2021, when I was pregnant with Neil, we started working with an interior designer. And then in '22, that summer, we left the house and had it painted, and we did, like, quite a bit of work on the design of the interior. The only thing we didn't do then were the floors. So I am happy that we didn't do the floors then, 'cause I think I would've been even more upset if we had to replace floors that we had just put in four years ago. That would've been really upsetting. And insurance, of course, covered a lot of the expenses of this whole house drama, but it didn't cover everything. As it turned out, we had to pack and unpack so many times. We ended up staying at several different Airbnbs because we couldn't find one continuous Airbnb to stay in for the whole summer. The Austin housing market is a little bit wacky, and I think it is probably true of a lot of different places. But where we live in particular, there isn't a lot of vacation rental homes that have enough space for our three kids. And so we went from the Florida trip to an Airbnb that we had to, like, move into quite quickly. Like, when we arrived, it was very evident that we couldn't stay here in the house with all the fans and dehumidifiers that they needed to put in to, like, help make sure no mold developed or anything bad from the water And so we had to leave for that. We went to that Airbnb, and then we came back to our house for a few days actually once it was determined that they were gonna have to demo the floor. So we came home, got our bearings, like the fans and the dehumidifiers were still running, but it was like we just had to kind of come back h- to home base to gather our stuff basically, and to negotiate with insurance and all of that. So we were here for a few days, then we moved into a different Airbnb. This was temporary for sure, because they had another booking f- over the Fourth of July weekend, and we actually had a trip planned to be somewhere for Fourth of July. So in that time, we had to put anything that we thought we might need for however long we would be out of the house, we had to put that into a short-term U-Haul storage unit. Then the rest of our belongings, all of our furniture, everything on the walls, literally anything in the house that wasn't in the kitchens or the bathrooms, 'cause those weren't g- going to be demoed, all of that went into a long-term storage facility that was packed for us. So they came in, they packed everything up, and took it all away. I also desperately, like at 2:00 AM, was emailing places to find out, like, how do I get my wine collection to a safe place? Because we had 100 bottles of wine stored in our pantry. It was like very c- nice looking storage. But like we've been going to Napa for years and years, and we have this wine collection, and now they were going to demo the house, turn the air conditioner off for weeks and weeks. Like, that is not a good place for a wine collection to be stored. So ended up finding a place here in Austin. They sent a guy over. He had all the boxes. He loaded it up and took it away to their climate-controlled wine storage facility. So that was like one of those things where every time I turned around and had like a little crisis, there's experts and people available to help with all of these things. It's just a matter of like needing them and knowing that, to fi- how to find them and all of that. So then once we got all packed up, we went to this Airbnb, and then everything else went into this U-Haul. So there was a, a point in time where all of our belongings were either in suitcases in this U-Haul storage facility or in the long-term storage facility. We didn't actually have like a house, a home base to put things in. Then we went to North Carolina for our... We usually go there in the summer. My dad has a lake house there. Then we came back and moved into one Airbnb for like quite a few weeks, and then we had to move to another Airbnb because that family needed their house before school started. My kids started school while we were at the last Airbnb, and finally we made it back to our house, moved in 77 days out of our house in total. And in all of the balls that I could drop, like all of the things I had going on, the podcast was a very easy one for me to let go of because it's not because I don't love the podcast, it's just that I've let go of the podcast before, and I've come back to it. And so I knew that like every- it was... At first I was gonna try to hold onto it. I, I wanted to like share with you in real time what was happening, and I felt so often it was like, gosh, this is like really good content. But then I was like, I don't have the time or the space or the capacity to sit down with my mic. I mean, the, the kids- summer's already chaotic. The schedule of summer is already quite busy, and it just like, it, it just felt like why am I even pretending or tr- like tricking myself into believing that the podcast is like a good thing to do? Like I just need to let it go. And so I did, and I had to trust that I could come back to it again. And coming back to it, like sitting here, I think one of the, again, like one of the reasons why I'm emotional is because I don't wanna just like come back to things in the exact same way as they were. This summer has been like a very unexpected shift for so many reasons, and there, there isn't a lot of times in life where things happen to you that cause so much change. Like, a lot of times change happens because of choices you make and things that you do, and, you know, sometimes those choices are good, and sometimes those choices are things you wouldn't choose again. But a- it's, it's rare, I mean, it does absolutely happen, but it's rare in life when things happen to you that cause such a huge shift. And I guess in my, like, overall life experience, the things that have happened to me have made a big impact, and part of that is because of the way that you choose to respond to those circumstances, if that makes sense. And so I have felt this, like, very strong sense that when I come back home or I come back to the podcast or I come back to whatever, like getting back into working out, like, I don't necessarily want it to be exactly the way that it was before. And my comfort zone with this podcast specifically has been scripting it out almost word for word every episode. I think I heard somebody at some point admit to doing that, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh," like, "that's how I do it too," you know? And I just like knowing what I'm gonna say, and I think writing has always been the way that words make most sense to me in my mind. But I want to flow more on this show now, and I want to share a bit more from my heart and from my intuition and trust myself and trust you, the listener, that this is a worthwhile use of our time together. And when I think about, like, what is the point of this podcast, like why do we call it Celebrate Cultivate, and why have I kept it going for 235 episodes, I think the point is to celebrate the good in life and cultivate more of what we want. And it isn't always about, like, the confetti and balloon celebration. It's not always the champagne and caviar celebration. Sometimes it's recognizing in the moment the way the leaves dance in the tree and the way, like, your, the laughter of your children, like, stops you in your tracks. You know, there's so much in life to celebrate And when we consciously cultivate more of what we want, when we're deliberate in our choices, life becomes so much richer, so much more meaningful, so much more enjoyable. And so I wanna share about my everyday life. I wanna share about the work that I do and about my experiences with you, this community, in a way that makes us all, like, a little bit happier, a little bit more fulfilled, a little bit more satisfied in our life. And, you know, what is the point of each episode? I think each episode just furthers that conversation, adds, like, a little piece to the puzzle, and hopefully this is an enjoyable place for your ears to land on a walk or on your drive or while you're doing the dishes or folding the laundry. I mean, those are the places when I listen to podcasts. And when a podcast I love goes on pause or stops airing, you know, it's like a little bit of a hole in my routine, but then it gets filled with something else. And so I hope that, like, if you have filled the hole and now you are back here listening, I hope that the, whatever I'm here and offering is, like, something that enhances your life in some way. And if there is anything specific that you're looking for me that you're like, "Ugh, Kaileen, I loved it when you did X," or, "I'd want you to do more of Y," well, it... we are a small community. I am very accessible. Like, just come over to Instagram and send me a message. I'm @kaileenelyse, and we can chat, and I can hopefully fold that in for you. So yeah, this episode is really just coming home to you, coming home to the podcast, coming home to the microphone and my computer and, and sitting here while my nanny runs out and picks up our youngest from school, and before I have to leave to go pick our oldest up from school. But was it a good summer? No. Not really. And that's okay. I think I overheard one of my friend's husbands ask my husband, like, "Hey, did you have a good summer?" And he was like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Wait, wait a second. It was not a good summer." But a lot of good things did happen. So we made it back into our house before autumn. That's amazing. The new floors are gorgeous. I am having a hard time embracing the new floors, and I was chatting with Luz actually about this, 'cause she's worked a lot with interior designers, and I think she knows me at this point. We've talked a lot. And she was like, "The, the floors might represent, like, this really yucky thing that happened to you this summer, and you might subconsciously not like the floors because every time you look at them or notice them, it makes you think about this past summer, and that wasn't your favorite moment of life." So I feel like she's right on the money with that, for sure. And the second she said it, I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's probably true." But they are pretty. The floors are really pretty. They're definitely an upgrade from what we had before. The new paint feels fresh. It's the exact same color that we had the house painted in '22, so it just is like a, a fresh feeling. We got our front door refinished. We literally just got our windows washed today. So, like, all of these little, like, this big shift in the house kind of, like, kicked off all these little things that we've been meaning to do or wanting to do. So that's nice. It's also made space for change in interior, of the inside of the house. Like, we don't have little babies anymore, and so when we were getting ready to move back in, I knew right away that I wanted to get rid of our IKEA kitchen, like our little toy IKEA kitchen that we've had since Owen turned one. He's 10 now. Nobody plays with that kitchen. And we don't have a ton of extra, like, open space in the house, so, like, that was an easy thing to, to give away and move on from. We also had this little gray table that's definitely, like, perfect for toddlers. It was where the kids did snacks and dry erase books and all of their crafts and art and stuff, and it's right off of the kitchen island. And we would still use it if it was in the house right now, but I also knew that we don't need, like, a toddler table anymore. We've got a five, almost five-year-old. By the time this episode airs, my youngest will be five, and my oldest is 10. So it's like we don't need that toddler stuff anymore. In fact, my oldest needs adult-sized hangers in his closet. So I switched all those out. I took a ton of our board books, our baby books out for donation. I've revamped my shoe storage in my closet and reorganized my personal book collection to create, like, a whole pocket, a whole area where these are all books that I know I want to read, and I want to prioritize reading them before I buy more books at the bookstore. So, like, all of these small things have been happening over the summer and because of this, like, shift in our house and in our life. All three kids have- Back to school. They're at different schools, so I'm in the car a lot more. I'm learning how to make that a vibe. So if you have any tips on being a mom of older kids who's always driving places, I'm more than happy to receive your advice, and this is on top of, like, us having a lot of help. You know, my, my in-laws live here. We have our full-time nanny still. We... I mean, it's like we have a village, and still there's so much admin and car time and change and all of that. My daughter, she joined the swim team, so she's, like, officially on the swim team and has practice just twice a week, and I also started to swim again this summer in earnest. So I've been going every Friday, lap swimming for, like, a half an hour. For those of you who know anything about swimming, I'm just doing, like- I don't know, 2,000 yards usually, maybe a little bit more. I'm looking into checking out some masters practices. Masters is like a adult swimming league, and I think I might do it. Like, I'm really, really enjoying being back in the pool again, and it has totally changed the way I look at, like, what I want exercise to give me and what I want nutrition to give me, and it's still, like, very early days. But I feel like this has unlocked or reawakened something in me that has been dormant for, like, two decades because I used to be a competitive swimmer. That was, like, a huge part of my entire identity, and it was this summer through, like, the most stressful thing that we've been through as a family or one of the most stressful things. Again, like, it wasn't a... I feel so weird talking about the summer being, like, so stressful because it wasn't an actual crisis. It wasn't a health issue. It wasn't a death in the family. Like, there are so many worse things that can happen. It was just a huge, huge disruption and a huge inconvenience, and it was a lot of manual labor moving from one place to another with three little kids over and over and over again. So some of the good things that happened in the summer were actually the absence of, like, bad things. Like, I maintained my weight m- despite the stress. So, like, I didn't gain weight even though I was, like, so stressed and not working out the way that I normally would. Did I lose muscle? Probably, but I feel, like, quite pleased with the fact that I'm coming back to working out having maintained my ground. And similarly, my business did not come to a screeching halt even though I stopped sharing on Instagram so much and I stopped publishing the podcast. I still have this incredible group of women in my community who are working with me inside A Year of You, and that we kept going. And it was every time I sat down to do my actual work with them, it felt so reviving to me and was like, "Oh, yes, I am meant to do this. I'm happy I'm doing this." Like, this work that I'm doing, it, it can fit into even this very chaotic and not ideal setup of my summer, and I'm still happy to be here. So that was, like, very, very good. And In that, I also did realize that I probably want some support in my business with updating some of those internal systems that we talked about when Luz was on the show. I probably do maybe want some help with social media, and I'm not using AI at all really. And I say at all really because I feel like now even when you Google something, you are using AI. So to the extent that I can avoid AI, I am in my business. Like, I've shared this on the show and I've shared it with some of you personally, but I've had a pretty strong draw towards the analog side of things. So you can pretty much bet that, like, if you're reading something from me, if it's written in the last year or so... I mean, there was a point where I was dabbling in it and trying to, like, find my way with ChatGPT, and I, I came to the conclusion that my way is not. And I, I'm open to changing that, but, like, I really want to prioritize the things I love most, which is coaching and creating and being in community with you, and I need to take some time and space to make that a priority. When I come back to this work, when I'm here on the show, like when I'm with you in session, like I want this to be a cadence that works, that fits my life, not, like, that I'm always feeling behind and I'm always chasing my tail. I wanna arrive here ready for a conversation and arrive to your sessions ready to help you connect to your intuition. And so that's like a really core goal of mine that has always been there, but this whole shuffle and situation through the summer really clarified that in me. And so I did reach out to somebody who I may still end up working with to help me with social media and very quickly realized, like, I have no lag time between when I create something and when it exists publicly, when I publish it. So, like, how would somebody help me with that? I need to have more space between so that I could, like, share something with somebody. They could make it nicer. They could make the graphics, and then I could share it on Instagram. And so I think right now I'm just realizing that the season of life I'm in, the season of life I've just come through, it is okay for me to move at a pace that creates space. And so I'm recording this farther in advance than I normally would in publishing the show because I need more space. And one of the other things I think I've- I've come to realize, again, like, the show, the... Not the show, but my work and my business overall didn't come to a screeching halt in part because of A Year of You, and A Year of You has been going on for several years now. I have eight women in the group. Two just signed on for a second year. There's a few in there that I have worked with for several years, and in the next few weeks, I'm gonna cross a threshold of having completed 300 private sessions with clients, most of whom have been in A Year of You, but there's been a lot of you that I've worked with just one-off here and there. And so I just wanna say, like, a huge thank you to all of you. Like, 300 sessions, like, that is not nothing. That is a significant amount of time from you and obviously from me, and I think what that means to me is that the- there is a need and there is a desire within us in this community to connect to intuition, to slow down, to breathe, to listen and see what is inside of us, and it is so much easier to do that when there is someone sitting next to you doing it with you. Like- For example, the swimming stuff. Like I, I go and I have the lane for an hour and I can just go swim laps, but it's kind of boring and it's kind of hard unless there's somebody else in the pool swimming next to me. And the reason why I'm looking for a team and a coach is because it would be way nicer if I just got there and they told me what to do next. You know? Like I'm already having to tell myself what to do next at home most of the time, and in my business. And so to, to have that space for somebody to tell me what to do, like that is something that, that you also get when you have a session with me. So, okay, I think I just heard my youngest get home from preschool, and I gotta wrap this up, 'cause like I said, I do have to go to pick up. I am going to like highlight the things, the notes that I had that I wanted to share with you for the rest of this episode. I'm gonna carry them forward into the next episode. So we'll wrap it up here. I just wanna thank you again so much for listening. Come say hi to me on Instagram. I'm @kaileenelise. You can tell me how amazing or terrible or mediocre your summer was. I'd love to hear it. And if you wanna work together, I have a few openings for private sessions in October. The doors are also open to join A Year of You. If you have been wanting to find a way to stop overthinking, start trusting yourself, and truly like show up as who you are in every season and in every room, then this program is for you. You can click the link in the show notes to learn more or just visit kaileenelise.com. That's K-A-I-L-E-E-N-E-L-I-S-E .com. I'll be back next week with a new episode all about how I'm reclaiming my dreams after this past season of major instability. I'll talk to you then.
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