Indie Spotlight Teaser and Life Update

Hi everyone!

I have a different type of post for you today.

I have a single photo teaser of tomorrow's review of an up and coming indie brand. I finally lifted my no-buy and have many new Etsy goodies to share with you all.

The polish will remain a secret for today, so make sure you're following me on Facebook, Twitter, and Bloglovin' so you don't miss out!

If you follow me on Instagram, you may already have a clue. :)

But why a teaser? 

As many of you know, it's been an extremely rough couple of weeks. First there was the terrible dog fight that inspired the nail art look below.

You can read the full post of how I created my furbaby inspired mani and more details of the incident here.

Then on Tuesday, just as Odie began to recover...this happened.

Yes, that is a tree and what used to be my front porch...and my roof.

This is in no relation to the recent tornadoes. I live in Georgia and the weather was perfectly clear. 

My boyfriend, other roommate and I were aware of the dead trees scaling over our house, but our landlord neglected to act on our warnings.

The wind wasn't even blowing. 

My boyfriend and I were actually standing outside when he started to hear and see the tree fall. I was talking to him, not realizing what was happening.
He grabbed my arm and drug me inside to the far end of the house as the breaking and crashing sounds followed behind us.
We just held each other for a moment hoping it wouldn't reach us, and then the sound stopped.

After confirming it was over, we realized we left poor crippled Odie behind.
We raced out of the guest room to find him safe and to see the living room and kitchen still in tact.
Our bedroom was what we were afraid of, knowing it would be the first thing the tree would hit.
Worse, my poor cats were locked inside.

The cats naturally panic at any large sound, and safely retreated under our sleigh bed.
It took me 15 minutes to fish them out from under there to get them in their carrier.

The bedroom scene was much better than we expected.
The side wall is cracked from end to end, which has worsened since and the entire wall is now bowed in.
The window shattered, but remained in tact due to an AC unit.
(Yeah, landlord never fixed our central air either.)

Overall the damage could have been much worse.

It's true everything on the wall fell and broke, and a cup of coffee sitting on my desk spilled over everything.

But by some miracle, out of the 500 bottles of nail polish I had displayed on shelves on the outer wall, only one Julep polish parished in the chaos. Although the spill did take out a few articles of clothing located in the hamper it fell in.

I was amazed.
On the desk was also my laptop, tablet, and my DSLR camera... but out of all the things that fell on them, the only thing destroyed was my computer mouse.

So what happened outside?

We opened the door, only to discover there was nowhere to go.

Turns out, the tree hit and stripped the roof and rolled to the ground, crushing our front porch into two pieces.

Everything was destroyed at the front end of the house.
Our ceilings remained in tact, but the roof was gone.

  

Yup, that's a cast-iron outdoor heater that was passed down to my boyfriend...now broken in two.
Look at how the deck is angled. It literally snapped in half.

So where are we at now?

Three days later the house has revealed a bit more damage, as other walls have begun to crack.
Insurance adjusters have not finalized whether or not this will be covered.
If they confirm it was caused my landlord's maintenance neglect, we're SOL.

It was a close call for us, and a wake up call to my landlord...hopefully.
We can only hope he has realized things have gone too far.
Our house is not safe.
There are more dead trees ready to fall, the wooden siding is rotting and the foundation is crumbling from moisture from his refusal to put gutters on the house.
We have no central heating/air, no smoke alarms, and half of our doors are broken.
One more storm and this house can be destroyed.

We have been easy on him because he's an old man, and the father of an old friend.
But had we not run for lives, someone could have been seriously injured, or killed.



In the end we are all grateful the house is still standing and we are too.
The situation is not great, and we are exhausted and overwhelmed.

You have all been amazing and patient, and I love you all.
I have received so many good thoughts and well wishes in the past few days and I can't begin to tell you how much it means to me.

The Manicured Amateur will continue as normal.

There's not much more I can do for the house at this point but wait, and try to keep positive.
And one way I do that is sharing my nail polish adventures with all of you.
No matter how bad things get, I'm reaching up my happy polished hands in prayer that things will work out.

I have so many exciting new brands and goodies to share with you,

and to kick things off, starting tomorrow I will begin another indie spotlight weekend featuring a couple of up-and-coming brands I've already received from my recent Etsy haul. 

There's much more on the way, and I hope you'll stick around.

From my heart to yours, thank you for reading and all of your support!

-Melody