I opened the door to let Shadow out last night, and I realized . . . it’s gone! For 15 out of the last 24 months, there has been a big, heavy lock box on our front door handle. It would bang against the door every time we opened or closed the door, and whenever I closed the door, I had to stick my hand through to push it out of the way and then attempt to quickly pull it back in without getting my fingers crushed. Otherwise the box got stuck and the door wouldn’t close. SUCH a pain that little thing was. But now….it’s gone!
On Monday we took our house off the market. It’s become apparent that we cannot sell it. I guess that happens when your house drops $200,000 in value. I used to think studying economics was boring, as the economy had no effect on my personal life. Ha! I have learned during the past two years how seriously wrong I was. The economy has affected us hugely in these past couple years, in more ways than one (none of them good).
I have mixed feelings about taking our house off the market. Of course it’s disappointing. I mean we’re basically giving up our dream of building our new house on the land we so excitedly bought in May 2008. For two years I’ve been dreaming about the new house and land . . . from where to put the garden to how to arrange the furniture. For two years I’ve been planning on moving to a new county, and so I’ve been moving us to a more “Frederick-centered” life with doctors, classes, groups, etc. As I go about our daily tasks I’ve been imagining us in the new house and all the little things that will be better there and how “perfect” life will be there. And now all that dreaming, it seems, was for nothing. So I’m disappointed.
And yet, the overwhelming feeling I had as soon as Heath called our realtor on Monday, was RELIEF! I felt like this very large burden I’d been carrying around for two years had been lifted off of me! I feel like I can once again call our current house “home!” I know some of you (Liz, in particular) =) understand what I’m talking about, and some of you won’t. But I’ll do my best to explain. For the past couple years I thought we’d be moving at any time, so everything in life was put on hold. From the time the “stager” attacked and I took down all our family pictures, this hasn’t felt like home. I haven’t wanted to buy anything, decorate anything, plant anything, paint anything, or invest any time, money, or emotional energy in this house. I’ve been detaching from it, as I looked forward to our next home. But that meant that I’ve been emotionally homeless all this time. (Like I said—some of you won’t understand this. You can just smile and nod.) =)
But making this decision has set me free from waiting and let me return to living in the present! There are so many things that have been on hold that I can do now (well, if/when we have money for them). To name just a few . . .
-restart garbage pick up (We cancelled it when they raised their rates, thinking we could handle burning it and/or taking it to the dump for a couple months until we moved. That is anything but fun when it goes on for two years.)
-get a new mailbox (Ours is quite dilapidated and falling over.)
-order address labels
-repaint our bedroom (I’ve hated the color since we first did it, but why change it if we’re moving?)
-accept things from freecycle that would really make life easier but would make moving harder
-tune my piano (didn’t want to do that just before moving)
-arrange things based on function rather than for showings
-plant a garden
-hang up the baby tree swing for Tabitha
-set up the kiddie pool
-clean the house when it fits our schedule rather than because we have a showing
-redecorate and/or remodel according to our needs, rather than for potential buyers
-unpack stuff that’s been in boxes since we first put our house on the market
-arrange stuff conveniently for homeschooling, rather than just living with everything stuffed into various hiding places
-refinance our mortgage
-start projects that require leaving stuff out (not feasible when showings were going on)
-stop worrying about having to update our adoption homestudy if we move
-stop warning my piano students that we might be moving
-follow through with plans for the piano studio that I’ve been holding off on until we move
-GET HIGH-SPEED INTERNET (I’ve been telling myself I can survive just a few more months with dial-up until we move, but some days I’m not even sure that’s true. Since we’re staying here, we will find some way to join the world of high speed in the very near future. Even if I have to launch my own satellite.)
-and, finally, re-hang our family pictures and make this back into our HOME!
So, for these reasons and more I feel like I am once again at home in my house, and I am very relieved. I’ll just need to work on keeping my focus here, and not on regrets and lost dreams. We haven’t been able to sell the land either, so in the back of my mind is the thought that several years from now the housing market will have healed, and we’ll be able to sell and build. But . . . I am choosing not to think about that. Instead I will consider that land to be our very own campsite and apple orchard, and I will focus my time, energy, money, and emotions on this beautiful HOME in Mt. Airy.
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