Our beginning

Problems in Paradise

I loved being home but with having to clean up from everything that happened while I was gone things were stressful. We had gathered all the animals back up and done most of the preparation to get the garden back together but it was going to be a while before it all was back to what I was use to. Alex would be having his birthday party soon, Brian and Maverick were going to be having their birthdays coming up soon after and I just wasn't in the mood to celebrate anything with the mess. This had to be cleaned as soon as possible. The tree that had gone through the roof had destroyed my private kitchen and everything I had already got ready for Alex's birthday party so I wasn't completely happy that I had to start all over plus figure out how to fix the whole side of my house. It was nice to be able to eat everything that could be saved early and even better that I had so much help to get everything remade. I couldn't believe that the stupid storm had done all of this in just a few days but I was very glad that everyone was safe and even better everyone loved Lola. Marky was even warming up to her, he didn't have much of a choice because she would crawl right up in our bed and cuddle up to him. She loved to show everyone her rock collection, especially Johnie. She was fitting in perfect, plus Kena was sharing her room with her until we could make her her own space. I was drawing up plans for her room and already moving my things out of the way for her since she was getting my spare storage closet.

The night we had gotten home had been an amazing night! We burned a good amount of the tree, enjoying the fire while cooking and eating shishcabos and got a wall of cut up wood built, then we cleaned up a good amount of the mess in my kitchen plus covered the hole with tarps and assessed the damage. To be completely honest, once it was all cleaned up and looked over, the damage wasn't as bad as I had first thought it was. We would have this fixed in no time, just neededbto get the materials while we checked out the rest of town. We started scouting the area and cutting up fallen trees to add to our wall we had already built, I wanted to make sure that the house was protected and the wind wasn't as bad in the yard so we stacked it a couple feet from the fence around the yard. The warehouses that we visited for all my building materials to redue my kitchen, create Lola's room and make the outside of the house look good again ended up being on sale and some of it free because of damaged goods. I was good at fixing things and making them look amazing so we stocked up on everything we could need and got back home.

I had decided to start with Lola's room since I had a kitchen down the stairs and she needed a room of her own to keep her things and have alone time if she wanted any. Since the kitchen was being remodeled anyways, I made a door from the kitchen to her room and turned the door from my room into a smaller entrance similar to Kena's. We built a shelf across the whole wall after I finished her room, which had a dresser for her shells and rocks, a bed kind of like a dog bed but more comfortable which was what Kena had and a large fish tank that covered the wall behind the shelf so she could swim. Both sides of the glass were 2 way mirrors, you could see in the aquarium but not out the other side. You also couldn't see out of the aquarium at all and she loved it! She had started decorating the bottom with rocks and shells she had collected already.

"Do you want to go collect sand and more things to put in your aquarium?" I asked, she shook her head so vigorously that I thought she might vibrate out of the room.

Johnie decided to come with us and of course Kena came also. We wanted to walk but I wasn't sure how legal it was to have a giant river otter so we stuck to the safest way to get the beach, which was by car. Once we got there I laughed a bit at the sight of Lola wearing one of my straw sun hats and prancing her way behind Kena down to the river front waves and the sand on the beach. Kena ran up and down the beach for most of our visit which wasn't hard because the beach was maybe only 200 feet and we were the only ones there. Johnie stayed as close to Lola as he could but he wasn't very trusting of the Mississippi River and I hadn't ever seen him go very far in even though he had learned how to swim a long time ago. Lola went straight into the water a little ways and brought back enough shrimp to feed everyone a plate full if I decided to do so, I was glad I brought a some buckets because she sure wanted to bring them home alive. She gathered a sea weed type grass and clams, then finished off with some sand and at least 20 baby catfish.

When we got back to the house Johnie finally spoke up, "What's she doing, Mom?" he looked confused, excited and extremely interested at the same time. The Giant River Otter had always been one o f Johnie's favorite ideas to have as a pet but I never thought I'd actually be able to make that happen.

"I'm pretty sure she's making the aquarium into her swimming hole, which so far it looks amazing!" she had arranged the grass like stuff in the corners of the aquarium and right in the center, with sand all over the place and set the shrimp and catfish loose before setting the rocks and clams up where she wanted them. Every time she decided her placement was perfect she did a gleeful little swim dance and then came back out to get more things to add.

"Yeah.... I think you're right. She looks like she's really happy, good job Mom!" he smiled brightly at me, gave me a hug and then clapped his hands.

I gave a little curtsy, "I'm not sure what I did but thanks." We both giggled.

"You made her so happy! You didn't even seem to care about fixing your kitchen. We thought you would be observing over getting it done but you wanted to remodel and down size your bedroom for Lola first."

"Ohh, don't act like this is the end of remodeling..." I smirked and tilted my left eye brow, "this is only part of today's project, next the outside of the house gets fixed and then tomorrow I'll be working on the kitchen all day. Don't doubt my obsession...." I said extremely calmly and then laughed. I laughed even harder when I noticed Lola dancing in the mirror pretending that a shrimp was her dance partner and when Johnie turned around I thought he'd die laughing as he fell to the floor laughing.

All of my projects went by quite fast and as the objective changed the help did also.

Johnathan had helped with Lola's adventure because he was playful and absolutely loved every moment he could get watching her do pretty much every little thing her heart desired. After completing her room though he was fixated on watching her play in her new habit, plus when she wanted help with anything he was right there for her.

Brian helped me with my kitchen, he was extremely interested in how I was going to fix the hole in the wall. We started off rebuilding the foundation of the wall and then filling it in, I wanted to remember where the tree had fallen so I chose to use brown for the outside of the house, which looked great with the grayish blue and I got to put a bay window in plus a huge granite table that we connected to the window. The floor was mainly gray tile and I decided to do blue tile for what needed replaced.

I loved that he had grown his hair out and was using the shampoo I got him because it was curly and soft with a gorgeous shine to it. His hair had been so dark brown it was almost black his whole childhood but it had been changing to auburn like mine the last couple years. He wasn't exactly thin and by no means had any fat on his body anywhere, had brown eyes and was almost 7 feet tall so he made reaching high spots pretty easy for me.

"Mom, I'm not sure how to act around Cheyanne now that she's here. I love spending time with Maverick and her but I'm with Raven and I feel like it hurts Raven that I'm spending so much more time with them lately." he sounded a bit worried.

"Do you love Cheyanne and Maverick? " I coached.

"Well, yes of course I do."

"Does Raven love you?"

"Yes."

"Well.... if she truly loves you and wants you to be happy than she'll let you be a part of Mavericks life. At the moment, Cheyanne needs to be able to see how you are with her son if she's going to trust you out of her sight with him. Raven knew about Maverick from the start so she either needs to be your support or let you go, if you plan to continue getting to know Maverick as your son. If you don't then you'll have to let Cheyanne know and never try to be his Dad again."

"I don't want to hurt any of them but yes, Raven knew everything from the get go and she wouldn't want me to walk away from Maverick. I didn't think about it that way."

"I know that all of you have had your own hard moments and understand that if you bond with him you'll hurt him if you leave or change the way you love him but Cheyanne has the toughest job of all making sure that she doesn't allow anyone to bond with him that could potentially hurt him in any way. That includes you and Raven.... if she plans to be in your life permanently than she will also be in his and you need to make sure any children that you have later in life are treated the same as Maverick."

"That actually makes a great deal of sense, I don't want Maverick being hurt like all of us have been. I want to protect him from being hurt." I got a back cracking bear hug and a kiss on my cheek. "I love you Mom, your kitchen looks better than it did before all of this happened."

"Thank you for all your help. I love you too, I hope everything always works out in your favor throughout life."

We prepared for our dinner and my speech of news to come, then made our way to the kitchen downstairs.