So, I bought a house in October. I also sold my original house and married the man that calms my soul. It all converged within seven days of each other and September was like a cleansing of all the lives that came before.
I really should start at the car accident, but that's a longer story. (TLDR; at the beginning of summer, I caused an accident and had to take on a new car payment. The benefit: a newer, safer car to drive around in at minimal expense. I'm thankful I can afford it and no one was hurt.)
Looking for a new house had been an idea for us for a long time. If you've been following the housing market, you understand that post pandemic real estate is on fire and with my list of wants and needs, my options were very non-existent. I also decided to throw a wedding and finally get hitched to my fiancé after being engaged for like nine years. I settled on this wedding date back in December '22 and this is the proof that I know the universe has a sense of humor. I ran my numbers for a new mortgage with my loan officer in the spring of this year and got the green light we needed to start looking. I perused the real estate listings in my school district for months, every evening, imagining the size of the rooms, was three bedrooms enough; could this garage be converted to an office? Nothing was just right. My realtor created a list of our needs, and literally three houses were available and in such disrepair, it didn't make sense for us.
A few weeks go by and she sends one lonely listing, and the cutouts and glass block windows gave us both visions of the 80s and 90s and another fixer upper situation, just with more space. We declined to even go see it and I know she thought we weren't serious.
Until one evening at the end of AUGUST, probably too late to bother my friend with work stuff, I found a renovated farmhouse, for lack of a better description. This oversized blue grey monster sits higher than any other house on the street and is surrounded by trees. I fell in love as soon as we drove up the wrap around driveway. I had lived in a tiny three bedroom ranch for 14 years with four kids who were all too big to be comfortable sharing bedrooms and entertaining friends.
The walkthrough of the new house had some issues, mostly with uneven flooring, we decided we could handle it and made an offer. It was accepted with the close date set for October 10th. That gave us a month to sell my house and move in before we got married. We upped the stakes and quietly decided to host the wedding in our new home and as soon as we had a close date on our house, we'd notify our guest list. That turned into a drawn out nightmare where the buyers lost their funding, got quickly requalified by my lenders and then renegotiated their purchase price and closing costs. I cried because of anger and like the rational man he is, Dustin said, "what really is 5-10k when we have the rest of our lives in OUR house? How long does it take you to make 5k?"
He had a good point, so we took the offer and crossed our fingers nothing delayed us in closing. On October 6th, we sat in the title office, signed paperwork on one chapter of my life and opened a new chapter with Dustin's name on it. In the days and weeks following, we went through a storm of self doubt that probably could have broke newer homeowners. I know I gave my Mom a few more grey hairs, but manifesting the life you want sometimes comes with emotional turmoil and financial stress. Nothing in life worth having comes cheap or free.
The sewer line backed up a week before my wedding.
We had family traveling from a few hours away and everyone knew the party had been moved from its original location and it felt like a disaster. Moving in week was filled with plumbing work, haircuts, furniture shopping, truck borrowing and heavy lifting and to add to the stress of it all, planning the food, flowers and cake for the wedding. I've never seen Dustin work as hard to make something this beautiful before.
Some days after the wedding, he was sitting in the living room and made a comment that he's been here before. Like he had a dream of this moment but didn't know what it was then but it felt like he was supposed to be here, now. With all the issues that come with a hundred and twenty three year old house, I can't imagine going through it without him by my side. I shook my fist at the universe, after the anxiety subsided, and thought to myself, Nice try, I'll take care of this house too.
