Jen’s mom said it best when she said, ‘They’ve got a whole army of people over there coming and going to do stuff for them.’ She was talking to her friend and neighbor and telling her about the time when she lived with us for a while a few years ago, and people were always coming over to do: repairs, housekeeping, home improvement projects (major and minor) and just about anything else required to make our household run smoothly and for our home to be comfortable. She wasn’t wrong about that either. We have relied on the help and expertise of a lot of people to keep this ship afloat in the last 18+ years.

Early on after my stroke, it kinda killed me to pay other people to do what I knew how to do myself (or at least be willing to try to do myself) if only I was able-bodied. Jen pointed out to me at the time, and several times since, that we spend approximately $0 on things like travel and going out to eat. I said, ‘I know, I know. You’re right. <sigh>. Again. ‘ She was right though. The only times we spent any substantial amounts of money away from the house were when we went to see the occasional movie, concert or other live event. The reason for this is because it just involves sitting still in a dark room, being totally quiet and watching a screen or stage for a couple hours. She’s pretty good at that but I’m considerably better – doing that kinda stuff lives in my wheelhouse. I’d say that she deserves a solid “B+” for “Effort”, though. A few of her points where deducted, however, when she nodded off 10 minutes into the movie “Interstellar” a few years ago. I will say that in her defense; half of the audience was sound asleep by the end of that blockbuster.

In addition to being a little irked about spending money on stuff that I kinda knew how to do, our “To-Do List” kept on growing and growing. It didn’t care that I had had a stroke and was knocked out of commission, or that Jen was already juggling 6 tennis balls and trying to balance 5 spinning plates on sticks while simultaneously keeping us both alive and relatively healthy. Long story short I relented, and we began seeking professional help.

A few (but not all) of the people that became members of “Team Biggs” over the years (in no particular order):

Mark
After we had been home from the hospital for a good long while back in 2008 and having not had a proper hot shower since the morning of my stroke, I was feeling awfully funky and was heavily marinated in “ripeness”. Bed baths, or sponge baths, work okay in a pinch but they don’t hold a candle to the real thing. So, I came up with a brilliant plan, my idea was truly a stroke of genius, that idea was called the “Bucket Bath”. Here’s how it would work: Jen would wheel me out onto the deck, with me in my gym shorts/swimming trunks. This plan would only work in the seasonably warm summer months (I had yet to work through the details of what I would do for the remaining 75% of the year). She would then hoist me up in our Hoyer lift in a mesh sling (that we didn’t have yet) and roll my wheelchair out of the way. After that, she would give me a shower/bath with a bucket of warm water and soap. Kinda like how they wash elephants and other large mammals at the zoo. I was excited, I couldn’t wait to tell Jen about it. After laying out the details for her and asking, ‘Don’t you love it?’, she replied with something like, ‘Um, not only “no”, but “HELL NO!!”. Why don’t we get our bathroom remodeled so you can actually use it?’ She had to twist my arm a little, but it didn’t take much convincing.

We did our due diligence and got several bids. Enter Mark Molitor Construction. We got his name from an Occupational Therapist I was working with at the time. His wasn’t the cheapest bid but we ended up going with Mark because he was a really nice guy and we felt we would be most comfortable working with him on this project. Long story short (again), he did a fantastic job with the bathroom, and we loved it – still do, in fact.

Over the years we’ve become good friends with him. I bet he’s been over to our house over a hundred times, doing all types of repairs, DIY projects, etc. that are outside of my knowledge base and above Jen’s pay grade.

Ann
We met Ann a few years ago. She replaced our existing cleaning lady who was retiring (we really liked her too). She loves her work, she’s been doing it her whole life, and she puts a lot of pride in it. It shows too, when she finishes up every other Thursday our house is absolutely spotless. We’re gonna be bumming whenever she retires because it’ll be impossible to replace her. We’ve been hearing rumblings coming from her lately about the “R-word”, so we need to brace ourselves for when she decides to actually retires. In addition to loving her job and being very good at it, she’s hilarious. She frequently has us both laughing out loud. We’ve also grown very close to her, much like we have with Mark.

Kurtis
He and his wife, Brittany, run a business called Affordable Window Cleaning. As their name implies, they’re in the window cleaning business, and (you guessed it) – it’s affordable. They also do a really good job. When they finish up doing our windows, it’s hard to tell that we even have windows. OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the point. They’re also very personable and hardworking, you can’t help but root for them and for their business to be super successful. That’s not to say it already isn’t successful, it surely is, but still. They were out here the other day, and he was telling us about how he wants to join the Navy sometime. I have nothing but respect and admiration for young people that want to go into the military, but secretly (and selfishly), I hope he changes his mind about that because we want them to continue doing our windows for the foreseeable future!

A lot of people have helped to improve our lives and have done stuff for us around here, over the years. They include: my brothers Dave and Paul, my three sisters Julie, Jan and Ellen (I could write a whole blog post about my siblings), Jen’s mom, her aunt, my parents, Greg, Brian, Susan Loos, Richard, what’s-his-name the roofing guy who looks like Walter White, Tom the sod guy, Dr. Zazulia,… and many others. Did I just win an Oscar or something? This is starting to feel like an acceptance speech. If I said something about everyone who has helped us, been part of our lives along the way and mean something to us, this blog post would be 15 pages long.

Speaking of being long-winded, I’m gonna go ahead and start wrapping this up now. Four reasons: A) It’s getting kinda long and I’m a little sick of typing. B) My (self-imposed) “go to press” deadline is just sitting there impatiently, and staring at me. C) I wanna get back to watching Black Window on Netflix. D) It’s time for the “Show ‘n Tell” segment of our program.:

It would be a totally ridiculous thing for me to say that my stroke was a stroke of luck for me. That would be a completely disingenuous thing to think, much less say, and people would rightfully call ‘BS’ on me if I did. But the truth is, we never would have even met a lot of these people or hatched these friendships if that hadn’t happened. I guess there is something to the saying “every dark cloud has a silver lining”.


Es braucht ein Dorf,

– Jim