We both had our own houses that we bought after our divorces
in the towns that we lived in and wanted to stay in our areas because our
children were still in school. That was seven or so years ago.
My “I’m going through a divorce house” at first felt a
little like a prison (truthfully, a lot like a prison.) that I had been ostracized
to when I first divorced. It turns out it wasn’t so much the house that made me
feel that way but instead it was the depression that I felt with the breakup of
my marriage. I softened the depression with a little wine. OK, maybe not always
a little. I became a connoisseur of 10 dollar bottles of wines and sometimes
splurged on the twelve dollar bottles. Along the way I had bought some wine
glasses to make up for the ones left behind and the coffee mug I was using and found that after one glass, I would have another
and when that one was gone I would eye the bottle and figure it was only a half
a glass more so what the heck, I would finish the bottle. I came to appreciate
my wine glass purchase.
But I digress; this is about building a home. Not drinking
wine. No wait, yup building a home and drinking wine (or beer or whatever) goes
hand in hand. You do one, you’ll need the other.
So back to digressing. I came to love the house that I lived
in. I made it mine. It was my bachelor pad with lousy hand me down furniture or
better yet, furniture my Ex didn’t want and neither did the Salvation Army. My
bed was a mattress on a frame and nothing more than cheap mini blinds were on the
windows until a passing through girlfriend put up curtains in the living room.
It had an above ground pool that after cutting the grass in my large yard with
a push mower I would cool off in thinking “life is good”. I turned a negative
into a positive. I worked hard to make it my home with lots of improvements
which I may write about later. It was cathartic and a good way to distract me
from life’s woes. Along with the wine.
So long after Abby and I met and became engaged, I started
to look for a house in the town she was living in. My children were now grown
and out of school and out on their own (more or less. Less if they needed
money.). And so were hers. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to live in her
very cool bungalow; I wanted something that she and I could start together. So
here we are.
After sporadically looking and knowing that the market was
horrible for selling (I’ll be whining forever about the beating I took when I
sold my former house) we started to look more serioulsy. We went through a
number of homes until we found this one. I wasn’t really interested in it but
Abby was (and she’ll tell you it was me not her.).
It was built in the early thirties and the current owners
had lived in it for over fifty years. And it needed work. A lot of work. So much
so that I commented to the selling realtor that I appreciated how the current
owners kept it in era of the Eisenhower Administration. I’m not sure that she
found that funny.
We bought it anyways.
That was a year and a half ago. How time flies when you’re
having fun.
