Into the Fire

Have you ever heard the old adage “Out of the frying pan, into the fire”? Well that’s sort of what I mean, but also I want to quickly remind everyone that not only are we in Leo season (and I’m a Leo!), we are coming up on the 8:8 Lion’s Gate. This is the time of year that we line up with Sirius and that’s important somehow but I can’t remember enough to tell you right now. The Egyptians knew it and so did other ancient cultures, so maybe go look it up. But if anyone is interested, I’ll be happy to do an entire article on that when I’m not quite so scatterbrained.

Many of you who know me well know that we moved 3 years ago last May. We stayed in the same neighborhood, but we had to get out of the home we were in because it was just so painful for us. We otherwise loved our home in the Coventry part of McMullen Cove. We also loved living in McMullen Cove and even though that, and driving past the school, was painful most of the time, it was comfortable for us because the people were so kind. So we found an in-progress house with a builder we thought did a good job. We got outside of our comfort zone and got a much smaller home (by half), and chose different styles of everything than we had chosen ever before. The downsize meant that I had to get rid of half of our stuff, and that included Erin’s toys and a lot of other things. It was a painful but much needed change. I also started a new job with a new company (after 14 years with another one) a few days after we moved.

Well, we got into this house and shit started breaking down nearly immediately. I could bore you with all of that, but I’ll cut to the chase on the big thing. We smelled what I have always called mildew, under our kitchen sink, very early on. We complained about it multiple times, and they kept coming and doing a whole lot of nothing but one thing they did do was drill holes under my sink island. It helped…some…

Fast forward 3 years later, and Shaun and I both had developed tons of health problems. Now keep in mind, we eat really clean, and had begun to eat cleaner since last December when we started seeing our homeopathic practitioner (Sharon Parrish – love her!). We both get regular – sometimes weekly – chiropractic care. We both see other alternative practitioners and in Shaun’s case, he also goes to the medical doctor when something arises. Since living here I’ve had half of my thyroid removed and two joint surgeries (shoulder and knee). I’ve sprained my ankle (weak joint) as well, and after many migraine-reduced or free years I started getting them multiple times a week. Neither of us have drank much alcohol over the past 2 years because we could not withstand the hangovers.

Honestly, we thought that the stress of grieving was finally just killing us. You know, not just Erin but nearly everyone we have ever loved except a couple of folks are all dead. But ok, mostly Erin. We were in pain and in misery a shit ton of the time.

A few months ago our chiropractor was working on Shaun and long story short told him to get the house tested for mold. And we did within a week, and guess what? We had problem levels of a problem mold, Aspergillus. I don’t know what specific kind of Aspergillus it was but guess what? It was right where we told the shitty builder that it was. I felt vindicated, and we bought some air filters and guess what? We immediately started feeling better – normal.

We had a real ordeal having it cleaned, and the insurance would not pay for any of it because it wasn’t related to a leak but to the builder not sealing or putting a barrier down or something. Before you ask, yes we looked into suing the builder but guess what? There is a 2 year statute of limitations and also, there was a whole lot of other hassle so it was easier for us to pay for our mistake of not forcing their hand in the warranty year and just move on. Lessons learned.

One more lesson learned – the local general contractor who removed our island and put it back was evasive about a quote. But they were so nice! Well, my advice to you is to get the quote and who cares if they are nice. Business is business. They charged us $1100 for what was probably a $500 job. We never got a quote, just a bill. Sigh.

Houses in our neighborhood are selling like hotcakes, and since we have had so many problems in this house, we decided it was time to go. We have fixed them all, but the energy and us are just not a match. And it’s a tad smaller than what we need. We tried to go back to 35801 (locals know where that is) but existing houses in our size range were $650K if they needed remodeling! And with no remodel, they were more like $780K+. So here we are now, building our 3rd home in McMullen Cove and yes, for less than $650K. And we sold our house without putting it on the market. Someone who needed it bought it, and they didn’t have to go through a bidding war. We could have gotten more money, but instead we got a win-win and helped someone out. Yay for us!

But wait! There’s more! We can’t move into our new home until next year because it isn’t nearly ready yet. So we are making a huge leap and moving into Belk Hudson Lofts on 9/7. I’m scared to death but excited at the same time! What if it’s loud? What if I start going to bars all the time? (I have no time or energy to be drunk that much. Or to drink that much.) What if I love downtown and don’t want to leave? What if I hate the AT&T internet that I have to switch to? What if my stuff in storage deteriorates? (It’s climate controlled though!) What if the apartment is too small? What if IF? LOL!

This is a huge transitional time for both of us and one thing that has stood out is that NOTHING that we selected so to speak is what we got. But I am sure that we got what we needed. We really wanted to live at the Avenue, but ended up at Belk. I really wanted to keep Google Fiber, but ended up with AT&T. We really wanted to live in 35801 but ended up a mile further into the Cove than we are now. These are small things, really not important on the surface, but they add to the magnitude of the change that my body is processing on a mental and emotional level. I might add that we have been picking out lighting and I found out that I’m tired of the Traditional style and guess what my style choices are categorized as? If you said Transitional, you were right! I didn’t even know that was a thing until this week!

I will leave you with the wise words of the Rolling Stones. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need. <3