Well, as it always does, the dust settled after I got down to SC with the animals. The blurry edges of my life started to come into focus again. Jonathan's dad was still in critical condition in the ICU, which was freaking all of us out. He would make a small improvement and then lapse. The doctors had no answers, it wasn't really up to anyone what happened next. Time would tell if he'd improve, or continue to spiral downward. All we could do was be there as support for Jonathan's mom and pray.
The matter of buying our house was looming in the next week. We had stopped off at the property the day after I arrived down south. It was a grey, gloomy day in late December, with a rawness that only the air in winter can provide. The house had been unoccupied for nearly a decade and it's owner had passed away from a heart attack in late summer. He used the house to store "things" for yard sales. And by "things" I mean anything you can think of, from tools, to curtains, to clothing, etc. The house was full of crap. Useless, dirty, cluttery...crap. The flat roof on the back addition had long since rotted and was falling in, allowing rain to accumulate in puddles on the floors in the kitchen and sunroom. As for the property itself, the acreage was mostly wooded. A slanted red barn that was also full of crap listed on one side of the property. The two car garage was a white cinder block building that was filled with more crap. For some reason someone had decided that painting the pump house yellow, with a red roof was a good idea. It sure was something to see.
"Isn't it awesome?" Jonathan kept saying.
I would muster a feeble grin, raising my eyebrows to show my enthusiasm, but honestly the place was just gross. I liked the house itself, but the amount of work ahead of us before we could actually live there was overwhelming. It had no running water, no electricity, no plumbing, no heat, no a/c, no working anything. And it was filthy dirty. And most of the interior rooms were painted the most putrid shade of green you can imagine, floor and ceiling. And the back roof was caving in. I swear if a house could sigh this place would be sighing big time. I know I was doing plenty of sighing, though I kept it to myself.
The big day of the closing finally arrived right before Christmas. We met our realtor, who had been amazing through this whole process, in the parking lot.
"Y'all ready to buy a house?" she said with a grin.
I let Jonathan answer that question, since at the time I was having trouble showing any positive reaction toward the idea. The lawyer had the papers all ready so it was a matter of a few signatures and we were on our way. It was official. We were now home owners, of a house that we couldn't actually live in. Leave it to us, I said to myself. Go buy a house you can't live in and that needs ten zillion hours of work. Lord, it was going to be a very long, long winter.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment