Big Moves

I like to make big changes all at once. Just so I can see how stressed out and frazzled one human can become. How much hair will fall out? How many ulcers will be created? That’s why I decided to buy a house in the year of 2020, in the midst of pandemic teaching, while getting Covid, and planning Christmas. I find this really works out well to purge all the stress at once.

When I got married I bought a house on the Pond road. An old farm house. We bought it because my Dad said it was on sale and it reminded me of Anne of Green Gables with the barn attached. I didn’t think about how I was allergic to animals and the barn would be used to store other people’s shit. OR that the well pump would go, or the basement literally looked like a scene out of Texas Chainsaw massacre. When we went to get a loan from the bank, we didn’t even know what we were doing. Just babes in that room. We moved in and it cost 1,700 a month. I made 700 dollars every two weeks my first year teaching. Then I got pregnant and had a baby at 26 weeks. A 350,000 baby from Maine Med. So yeah, you could say I really try to push the envelope when it comes to big moments. As time went on, we decided we couldn’t afford the home we lived in. It sat on the market for a year. We learned it needed a new roof and a new septic. Of. freaking. course. I have more stories about the Pond Road house, but we made it out. Into a nice rental house right next to my Dad’s house.

Ahhh safety. 800 dollars a month, this is more like it. In time, we pieced our crappy finances back to a better place. Not an ideal place, but a better place. When I learned my cousin was going to sell his house on Terri Lane. I Jumped at the thought. A private road, with 14 daycares, a finished basement. I mean I’m all in. It turned out this experience with getting a loan was a little different from the first time. This time the bank was asking questions and the gentleman we dealt with to help us secure the loan, is one of the only true enemies I have ever made in my life, besides terrorists and automated phone calls. This gentleman, let’s call him Gerald, was a wonderfully nice human being, but he would say things like,

“why do you have a deposit of $300 on July 2nd?”

“I don’t know Gerald, I probably spent that much at Target and my husband had to bail me out.”

“Can you put that in writing that your husband had to bail you out?”

“No self respecting woman in this century would ever put that in writing.”

Silence

“I will say I sold a piece of furniture on Kennebec Swap and Sell.”

My conversations with Gerald would become more heated and more intense the closer that we got to the closing of the loan. It became apparent that my impatience and his lack of motivation were not a good margarita mix. By the time he told me that he couldn’t see a copy of my tax file for the fourth time, I informed him that I would meet him at the IRS building and we weren’t leaving until we physically had the file in hand. I added that I didn’t care if he sweat through his t-shirt, but that I never wanted to see him again and I’m sure he didn’t want to see me. It goes without saying that as soon as the paperwork was signed, Gerald asked to speak with my husband privately and I”m pretty sure he asked if Joe felt safe at home. “No”, I mouthed from two cars over, winking at him.

And so this is why dear readers, I have avoided ever wanting to move again. Because I crave routine, I crave saving money, I crave never seeing Gerald again if I can help it. But then, that house. THE HOUSE. I wrote about it on another blog. The house with the staircase and the kitchen. Once I walked in, I just fell in love. Of course we were outbid, but when it fell through, guess who was next in line, walking in their new LL Been Boots, just ready to trudge up those steps, and sip coffee on that porch.

Although everything inside me still screams safety, still wreaks of a risk analyst, I just have to take that leap. I’m ready for a new adventure. And since my husband says we can’t have a new baby, and my current job is only flashing Titanic signs that read HOLD THE F ON. This is the leap I want to take. We might need a few cans of paint, some help from a roofing company, some friendly neighbors, or maybe all of the above, but tomorrow I am just so jazzed up to let you know we sign the papers on our next adventure. If you see me Monday morning, standing outside of it, right on the street, in my sweatpants and an old coffee mug. If I am whispering Aint it a beaut Clark? Just ignore. Just walk by and say isn’t that woman crazy as hell to buy that home.

It is true that I am a little crazy. But wasn’t it either Michael Scott or Michael Jordan who said “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

So this is me taking my shot. Feet fail me not. Wish me luck on this new venture and if nothing else, it will create beautiful fodder for writing.