Three years ago we decided to sell our house in a year. The plan was for us to move the summer before
our daughter started sixth grade. We
thought that starting sixth grade at a new school would be less traumatic than starting
seventh grade at a new school.
It was a good plan, as the best ones usually are. Our major hang up was that our basement
wasn’t finished. Not a huge deal, but we
felt strongly that we would get a better price for our thirty year old home in
a slightly rundown neighborhood if the basement was finished, and we did… Three years later.
It took three years to finish our basement and basically
remodel the main floor of our 1979 rambler.
Three years?? Yes, that is the
million dollar question. Well, to be
quite honest, I blame it on reality TV and my husband’s lack of
self-management. Okay, I could have
nagged a little more but who wants to be “that” wife? I certainly didn’t.
Three seems to be the magic number, it took Mark three years
to build a Monster Truck, a truck that he has driven in competition a grand
total of… drumroll please… you guessed it, three times in the five years it’s
been completed. I’m not bitter though.
Reality TV is evil.
Why are there so many people out there willing to air their dirty
laundry, or any type of laundry for that matter, for the whole world to
see? Because they are making money off
of people like my husband, people who love nothing more than to sit back and
listen to some juicy gossip. The worst
has to be those housewives from Orange County.
I’ll be honest; I almost threw the remote at the tv when I heard one of
them say that her kids were driving her nuts since it was the nanny’s day
off. Really??? Welcome to the real world Barbie, most of us
have real jobs, kids, and NO nannies!
Somehow, miraculously we still function.
Then there are those repo shows. I don’t care if you are repossessing
someone’s car, if you pull a gun or put them in a headlock it is still
considered assault. And just so I can
get it off my chest, who decided Alaska was so interesting? There are half a dozen shows about Alaska
(excluding Sarah Palin’s short lived series), gold mining, truck driving,
fishing, air plane deliveries… Even the
state troopers had a show! Needless to
say, Mark thought he needed to watch all of them.
Three years later, when the house was almost finished we met
with a realtor and had the house listed.
It sold, end of story right? Oh
no… Did I forget to mention that I’m married to Chicken Little? The sky was falling for six weeks while we
waited to close. In those six weeks we
still had to paint trim and hang it, fix some doors, help my parents move into
a new home, and get our twelve year old registered for junior high. All of this on top of full time jobs. Yes, yes, I understand that people do this
all the time. You have to understand,
nothing is ever easy in our household.
Never mind that that we were under contract after four days of it being
listed. We had fantastic realtors,
surprisingly they didn’t quit on us, which was good because they were actually
the second ones that we “interviewed”.
Yes, Mark interviewed realtors. I
shouldn’t complain, as he was only looking out for our best interests and I
know he meant well.
In the time it took to close on the sell of our house we looked at numerous existing homes but nothing jumped out at us, either there wasn't enough land or the house needed too much remodeling. We finally decided to build. We found a lot in Willard, and acre and a half to be precise. It was just perfect for us. It was still close to my parents in Farr West and it also happened to be right next door to my aunt and uncle. The amount of land was mostly for Mark, I would have been okay with a little less but marriage is all about compromise right?
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