A really BAD decision

We made an offer on one house but they wouldn't move out for six months so that didn't work. When we saw the house we ended up buying, Elliott hated it. I should have listened to him. The bones we good, it had a huge yard, the master was on the main, good closets, and it had a cedar roof. That's what I saw. What Elliott saw:

~ one ac unit for three levels
~ wallpaper from the 70's and 80's on every single drywalled surface
~ orange shag carpet upstairs
~ bathrooms (there were 3 1/2) original to the 1966 building date, and not in a cute retro way
~ 1 1/2 acres of yard with not a blade of grass and bushes uncut for years
~ kitchen with original avocado green appliances, one light fixture for the whole kitchen, a completely   unworkable floor plan, no counter space, and CARPET ON THE FLOOR. WALL TO WALL.

I thought it reminded me of a little country cottage that we could renovate. We ended up buying it. We paid WAY too much for it--our real estate agent was also selling the sellers a home so we got screwed. Our inspector ended up being awful--he was a structural engineer and missed the many plumbing problems. The attic was covered in roach droppings so I made the sellers get the house exterminated. I also asked that they clean out the attic before they moved out.

To be continued:

The things that can happen when you don't feel good enough

In 2004 Elliott and I prayerfully decided that we were living beyond our means. We thought that the smart and godly thing to was sell our house and move to a smaller, less expensive one. "A big house doesn't make you happy", we said.

We had moved to that house in 1999 from Jacksonville. The kids were 8,6, and 2. It was a big house in a really nice subdivision. Half of the the families sent their kids to private school. Everyone took fabulous vacations, had maids, and had yard men. They went out to eat weekly. Elliott had just gotten some money from his grandmother so we used it as a down payment. While we could afford the house (barely), we didn't think about the lifestyle. You can only say "we can't afford it" so many times. I felt like such a fraud. Lewis Grizzard once was sent to Sea Island and he remarked "they don't know there's a taxpayer in their midst". That's how I felt. I didn't feel as though I really belonged, and that everyone was judging us because we couldn't keep up with the Jones.

It wasn't all bad. I had made two very good friends whom I loved dearly. They knew our financial situation, but of course not the extent of it. I remember being so embarrassed about our "poverty" that I look back now and cringe.

We put our house on the market and it sold in three weeks for the full asking price. But we didn't have anywhere to go. So....we panicked.

Things Fall Apart

Why am I doing this?

I have always wanted to write. I had hoped that I was good at it but in my years I have figured out it's harder than it looks. So I gave up. So this year, 2013, I decided that I didn't have to be published. No one had to read this. I could just do it because I wanted to do it. It is yet to be seen if I will keep up with it.

This is the true story of a woman whose life completely fell apart. I want to put it all down because every year past means the details have faded. I want to put it down to show you can make it through devastation and come out on the other side better than before. People can change if they want to badly enough.

When my life started falling apart I felt like I was in the middle of a cyclone spinning and spinning. I remembered this poem (thank you, English major!): 

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

Literature Network » William Butler Yeats » The Second Coming

It's called The Second Coming by Yeats. It was written after WWI, when the world did seem to be ending. I, too, felt "far from center", hence the name of my blog.