The Cottage

Once the deal was struck, the money borrowed, the house ours there was the ordeal of the WAIT.  Due to the building of the new home we would not be able to move into Blessings House for a year.  Rather than wait we immediately put ours up for sale and began the hunt for a rental.  Honey Pie had in mind an apt or efficiency long term hotel suite.  I had in mind new furniture for Blessings.  So I hunted around and found, drum roll please, The Cottage.


I decided to call it The Cottage because The Scary House, as my children had started referring to it, just did not have a grateful ring.  They called it that because of the narrow dark stairway and hallway that was the things horror stories are made of.  Lets just say that I am a picture freak, I take photos of EVERYTHING.  I took no images of that house.  Nary a one.  It was not a conscious decision, but looking back it speaks volumes to me of my emotional state.


The Cottage was a hundred year old house with original.... everything.  Almost.  It was in an older section of town (read scary) had tons of issues BUT was only $600 per month. Yes indeedy $600.  That plus the fact that it sat next door to my children's great uncle & aunt brought it up considerably in the desirability department.  Honey Pie was unsure, but willing.  It had only a single window unit for a/c.  I will leave it up to your imagination how thrilled he was about that.  I purchased two small ones from Sams club for the bedrooms and reminded myself that millions of people live without air.  It was a small price to pay for saving up some curtain money.  Those curtains were certainly worked out with sweat equity of a new sort, as the kitchen was like an oven.


I scraped off 8 layers of wall paper in the dining room only to discover, to my everlasting horror, that there was NOTHING underneath.  Nothing but the frame boards.  AGGG!  So I applied 300, yes mam, three hundred pounds of drywall compound to those boards.  With my hands.  It ended up looking like the inside of the Olive Garden, but with the artistic addition of my fingerprints.


I painted the entire kitchen white.  Countertops, fridge, cabinets the works.  I quickly ran out of energy and extra dollars and since we were only going to be there for 12 months I killed the 'do more' bug with one swift swat of my plastered/paint covered hand. I will draw the curtain of gratitude over the rest of the house.  Suffice to say that the low rent made it far more appealing to me than it did to any of my friends who came over.  All three of my kiddos shared a room and that was a fun thing for them.  Many a night they lay awake listening to story tapes, giggling and whispering together.  And they adored Aunt P & Uncle W next door.  They spent hours over there, playing with the dog, playing in the yard, being petted and pampered.


There were unexpected things that arose during our stay in The Cottage.  Looking back I am not sure that living there was the best thing for us. I had some seizures, James had separation anxiety from the move/relocation, Reagan developed IBS and Lincoln suffered terrible breathing troubles. I wonder if there were mold issues in the house which brought on some of the emotional/physical trauma we endured.  But I cannot say for sure.  Knowing what I know now, I would not do it again.  Just in case.


One of the many lessons I learned from the 12 months we lived there was that your surroundings DO affect your emotions.  The effect can be positive or negative.  The darkness, the narrow stairway, the dungeon basement laundry and the neighborhood were energy suckers.  I learned, and learned quick, that saving money is NOT always worth the sacrifice.  Sometimes spending more is the wiser choice.  That whole location location location thing is a truism.

Another lesson is that hope is a powerful thing.  The bright dream of Blessings House was keep me looking forward, to keep me on track, to keep my focus on the future.  No matter where you find yourself, you CAN look forward to the future.  I may be HERE, but I am not HERE to stay!