C'est la vie.

True story: I'm the funniest person I know.  Are you kidding me? I'm freaking hilarious!  I crack myself up all, the, time.  I'm one of those people who reads my own texts, and laughs out loud.  Literally.  If I didn't have such stage fright, I'd seriously consider trying out as a stand-up comic.  

Alright, alright; maybe I'm not THE funniest person I know.  But I am pretty funny.  Good thing looks don't count for everything!

See? I can't turn it off.  😅

(And I don't really think I could cut it as a stand-up comic.  I couldn't take the rejection and the heckling.)

My joke for this week is: if you have a house for sale and aren't getting any offers on it, let me know!  My hubby and I will show interest in it, and I guarantee that someone else will show up and make an offer on it.  I mean, it's happened three times to us in the last few months now, so, I think it's more than coincidence at this point.

It's kind of funny.  We get a little bit closer every time.  The first time was at the very beginning of when we were trying to decide if we should look at other places or not.  We finally decided to take that leap and look at a place that we liked, and the day we contacted someone to see if we could look at it, we were told an offer had been accepted on it that day.  This place had been on the market (according to the info on the internet) for a good month or so, I don't remember exactly, but it's not like it had just gone up for sale that week or anything.  We laughed at our timing, chalked it up to "it wasn't meant to be," and moved on.

The second time, we actually made it to the showing, and we liked the place, but weren't struck with the "oh my gosh we HAVE to make an offer right now!" bug that day.  There were things we both liked, there were things he liked that I didn't, and things I liked that he didn't, and things we wanted to change, and we went back and forth about it for a good week or so before we agreed we should make an offer on it.  Then, guess what?  That horrible word, "Pending," showed up on the online listing.  At first I was like -- Oh, good.  Someone is getting a really nice home.  And then I went through a stage of, I really hope it falls through because I WANT THAT HOUSE!!  And now I'm back to, Oh, good. Someone is getting a really nice home, but it's not for us.  

This most recent time, I really thought was going to be It.  This is a place that, actually my friend sent the listing to me a few months ago, but it was out of our price range at that time.  Which was unfortunate because it sounded like an awesome place, and I might just be saying that because it was totally set up for horses 😍.  Nevertheless, it stayed on my radar, and recently the price dropped down enough so that it was actually in our price range.  Then, suddenly, the hubby was interested in it.  (OK, I know he might read this, so I will point out that I'm being slightly overdramatic. I mean, he is the realist in our relationship, so naturally it wouldn't have been on his radar until it met all (or most) of the criteria.)  We looked at it, and naturally The Realist was less impressed than The Horsey Girl was.  In his defense, he knows 59,000x's more about what makes a house a "good" house than I do, and apparently also cares more about layout than I do, which is totally fine.  I don't disagree with the points he makes about how a house is laid out or what makes one better than another at all.  There's a reason he's a construction guru and I'm a nurse.  ANYWAY, given a little time and conversation, we both agreed that it was a nice place, though; on paper, it had what we both wanted in a home, and it was a lot more acreage than what we have now, and we were ready to make that jump.  We just wanted one more in-depth showing to check out things we hadn't looked at the first time, and then assuming that all went well we were going to write up an offer.  We had/have a contingent plan for selling the place where we live now.  It just seemed like it was going to happen.  And then?  About three hours before the scheduled showing, our realtor messaged us that the showing was cancelled because the property had been sold.

Talk about a roller coaster of emotions!!  When I read that, I literally said, "Noooo!" out loud.  Luckily, I was in my office at work and I wasn't that loud, and no one really noticed.  Then, I felt a little heartbroken, even though I promised myself I wouldn't feel heartbroken if it fell through at any point. Then, I felt really guilty for feeling heartbroken -- like I was betraying our current home, or something.  I do like our current home.  The house itself needs some work, that's true.  But I love our land and all of our trees.  I was going to be sad to move to a place with hardly any trees and was already trying to figure out where to start planting more trees and when, if we moved to that other place.  

So, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I'm not saying that we're definitely not going to move now.  We're still looking.  Things change from week to week as far as what's available.  The last few weeks have been a whirlwind because it seemed like there were so many great places available that we had a hard time choosing.  This week, I feel like we've learned a lot, maybe raised our standards a bit, and there aren't as many choices.  But that's okay.  It's always changing.  Maybe we'll find a place, maybe we'll end up staying here.  We'll have this place paid off in a few more years, maybe the cost of building materials will be down by then and we can afford to build the house we really want.  You never know what God has in store for us.

On that note, I should get back to work.  TTFN!

Truth be told

 

I love this song! I first heard it the last time I was... well, I'm not sure how to best word this; I wanted to say "in a depressive funk" but that doesn't sound quite right.  "Having a flare-up of my depression" is clinically more accurate, I suppose, and also helps support the fact that depression is an actual disease and not just a state of mind.  "Crashing and burning" would be another accurate description, but that's just me trying to make light of what was a very NOT enlightened period of time.  

You get the point. It was not too many months ago, either.  I heard this song and I wanted to cry. I couldn't, because I was emotionally numb, but I wanted to.  It spoke to me.  

I say I'm fine, yeah I'm fine, oh I'm fine, yes I'm fine,

But I'm not; I'm broken.

And when it's out of control, I say it's under control,

But it's not; and you know it.

I don't know why it's so hard to admit it.

Being honest is the only way to fix it.

There's no failure, no fall, there's no sin you don't already know,

So let the truth be told.

Because, I know, right?!?  That's it, right there. That's how I feel when I'm crashing and burning having a flare-up of my depression.  Why is it so hard to admit that things aren't fine? Why do I feel like my worries and fears aren't worth mentioning?  I would never, ever, ever tell anyone that their concerns weren't valid, so why do I try not to make a big deal out of what lies on my own heart?

Lie number one: you're supposed to have it all together.

I know. I'm an adult now.  I've been one for a while.  I've been married forever (over half my life), I've got an adult child, life is supposed to be my bitch right now.  Right?  

Why'd it get so quiet??

Here, watch a video.

Really, and I do mean this sincerely, I am fine right now.  I've been wanting to share this song for a while.  Mental-health-wise, things are going great!  What a difference medication compliance makes!  Do as I say and not as I do, kids.  😷  Although, the other morning I had a random near-panic-attack and I'm still not sure why.  

I've always had stage fright. Ever since as long as I can remember, even way back in kindergarten, I've been super nervous being up on stage in front of an audience.  Or in front of a class, alone or in a small group.  I would be literally sick and kind of zone out when I had to give reports in school.  Just hearing the words "oral report" would make my stomach drop to the ground.  I don't know how I ever managed to sing duets at choir concerts in high school, or even sing in the choir at all for that matter.  It didn't get much better when I got older and supposedly more confident in myself, either.  When I was barely 18-19ish (or maybe even 17ish, I don't remember anymore), part of my job was training new cashiers at Wards.  I would have classes of like a dozen people and I have to talk to them alllllll night. I don't know how I did that.  

Anyway, in an effort to break out of my comfort zone and get over my stage fright, I decided to start volunteering to lector at church.  I was nervous at first, and was feeling all the usual anxiety and zoning out and everything, but I was also learning how to get over that, and making myself calm down and it was getting easier and I was feeling much more at ease and not afraid of reading in front of groups of people again, when the pandemic hit and we stopped doing in-person church services for a while.  

Well, we started doing in-person church services again recently.  (In the meantime, we'd been doing drive-up church, but that's a different topic!)  And a few weeks ago, started taking volunteers for lectoring again, so I signed up right away.  Last week was my turn again.  It wasn't even my first time this summer doing it.  I don't know what it was exactly, but once I got up there, I suddenly couldn't catch my breath.  There weren't any difficult words in the Scripture I was reading, it wasn't even a long passage, but I felt like I couldn't catch my breath and it was all I could do to keep standing upright and I was sure everyone could hear my voice wavering and cracking.  As soon as I was done, I sat back down and broke out into a sweat. I looked at my pulse on my FitBit and it was about 120.  Which is waaaaay too high!  It was weird.  

Anyway. Welcome to my life.  I better get back to work now.  TTYL!

Be vewy, vewy quiet! I'm hunting...

 

Betcha thought I was gonna say "wabbits", eh?  😊

For one thing -- ew.  My issue with hunting wabbits is dealing with the dead animal afterward.  I don't like dealing with dead animals.  It took me years to be able to handle raw chicken from the grocery store, and it still makes me queasy (sometime I'll tell you about our adventures in raising and butchering our own chickens...).  It's not that I couldn't shoot it -- I'm a crack shot and although I do consider myself an animal lover, I don't find wabbits (or rabbits) particulary endearing. I don't hate them and want them all to die, but out here, they're just kind of...idk...there.  I don't think they're that cute.  If I had a garden, they'd be in it, trying to destroy it, which would annoy me.  My cats like to catch and eat rabbits, and will leave parts of them around for me every now and then (thanks, guys).  We used to have a dog that loved finding rabbit nests, and then playing with the baby bunnies.  And by "playing" I don't mean the cute little Disneyesque image of happy little animals frolicking together in furry woodland creature harmony, I mean Magnum would stick his snout into those nests and flush out the baby bunnies, and then pick them up in the air and toss them around like toys.  Did you know baby bunnies can scream?  I didn't, until Magnum found his first nest of baby bunnies.   Man oh man.

But that's not where I wanted to go with this post.  I've been hunting, alright.  Not wabbits, and not hunting high and low (ha! or should I say, a-ha!).  We have been somewhat half-heartedly house hunting.

How difficult is it to hunt a house? They can't hide very well, they're easy to sneak up on, and they're easy to hit.  Haven't you ever heard the saying about not being able to hit the broad side of a barn? I guess that's a little different, but the concept is similar. 

It's odd, though, because for the first time in our lives, we're in the very odd position of looking at houses when we don't need to move.  Truth be told, I have wanted to write about this for a while, to figure some of these thoughts out, but just haven't felt up to it yet.  (Because the main reason I write is not for your entertainment, believe it or not, but for my own sanity! In which case, I've got a LOT of catching up to do, ba-ha-ha-haaaa).  I suppose one could argue that we technically have never "needed" to move, but one would just be stalling for time by doing so at this point.  Like one is now, by rambling on and picking nits and using all sorts of extraneous filler words and such like that.

The thing is, we do like where we live now. We like the area, we're pretty content with the location of our little plot of land, the way it's set up, our commute times to places like work and church and places of convenience and entertainment, and of course family and friends, and the overall feeling of relative privacy and seclusion we have (except that we live on a 2-lane highway).  The house needs updating, which we knew when we bought it 17 years ago. We had always planned on either fixing up/adding on to the existing house, or building a new house here.  We just keep putting it off and putting it off for various reasons I don't need to list here.  

Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but in the last year or so, the cost of building materials has skyrocketed.  It's insane.  We basically came to the conclusion that it would cost about the same amount of money to buy a new place as it would to build a new house.  So we half-heartedly started looking to see what was out there -- you know, for shits and giggles.  Of course, it's a seller's market right now, which is not the greatest time to be looking to buy a house, but on the flip side, it's a great time to be trying to sell a house.  The ol' conundrum of, if we could get xyz for our house, we'd have xyz more to put toward an even better house!  

I've always enjoyed house hunting.  Which is strange, because I'm not a fan of shopping in general.  Maybe it's because I lived in the same house for 19 years when I was growing up and always craved moving to a different place.  Maybe it's the whole idea of "packing up and starting over" at a certain point.  Whatever the appeal, I don't mind keeping on top of sales ads, hoping to find that perfect deal.  

Which...we have not found yet.  It's been a very interesting search, though.  Every other time we've been looking to buy a house, we've looked for fixer-uppers.  It's hard for me to get out of that mindset, because this time, that's not what we want.  This time, we want a place that's already fixed up.  We want to save ourselves all that time and work, if possible.  I'm not considering things like painting the walls as "fixing up" because that's decorating; I mean things like building the fricking walls.  (And yes, we have looked at places that needed walls built. In the bathroom.  You could've at least shown that picture in the ad...)  

I'm getting a lot better at deciphering real estate ads.  Allow me to share some things I've learned recently, that anyone who is looking for a home OR marketing one for sale might want to keep in mind:

• You have to look for what is NOT pictured.  If the ad says it's a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house, make sure all of those are accounted for in the photos.  
• And if there are no photos of the inside of the house whatsoever, be wary.  
• If the description in the ad talks more about how nice the land and the outbuildings are, be wary.  
• It probably goes without saying that staged pictures make a place look much, much better than un-staged pictures do.  (Yes, we all know that homes are lived-in, but we don't really want to see your pile of mail and miscellaneous papers on the table when looking at pictures of places we're considering spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on!)  
• Oh, another thing, the photos should focus more on the house's features and less on the cute decorations inside.  I don't care if you got wine from Vino in the Valley and set it up on a cute little bistro table on the back deck with a pair of wine glasses on a cute white tablecloth, I want to see how big that back deck really is in that photo!  
• Have at least one other person look at the photos. They will catch things you miss.  (Like carpeted walls...true story. I sent an ad to my hubby just this morning, of a place I've looked at online at least six times, and his reaction was "is that a carpeted wall?".  I totally missed it. Six times.)
• There is no such thing as smell-o-vision, but if you think you can smell a photo, you probably can.

That's all I've got for now.  All that being said, I do want to reiterate what I said above about the fact that we do like where we live and would love to stay in this area.  And as we keep reminding each other, when one or the other of us gets our hopes up about the potential of a certain property and then we go tour it and it turns out to not have lived up to our expectations, "There's absolutely nothing wrong with staying right here!"  Moving is a pain in the ass, especially when you have not just a house worth of stuff to move, but also two horses and no horse trailer, several cars (most of which are running and driveable), and two barns worth of stuff, too.  Moving would be as much work as building a damn new house.  But I want central air. LOLOLOL

Later, gators.