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Thursday, November 16, 2017

Exhausted For a Reason

On Tuesday I said I'd explain why I was so exhausted during jury duty on today's blog. And if you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know there's a story.

When I was house hunting after moving to Georgia, I picked a house on one of the steepest hills in my subdivision. It's not fair to say I didn't think about it because I did, but I thought about it like a Minnesotan. Basically, I thought: That hill in winter? Oh, wait, this is Georgia, they don't get snow down here like we do at home. This will be fine. I'll stop in my car at the bottom of the hill to get my mail and drive up. No problem.

And I really did love that house. It was the right size, it had the open concept I love, it had a lot of light in the living room, and because of how the house was situated on the hill, in the summer I didn't even know I had neighbors because I couldn't see anyone's home. It was like a private retreat.

Reality set in when I had to take the trash and recycling up and down that steep hill.

The situation got worse when my knees were hurting. A lot. I was fourteen years old the first time I saw a doctor about my knee pain, so this is something I've been dealing with for a long time. Going up the hill was fine. Going down the hill was frequently excruciating. And then my father moved in with me after my mom passed away.

He would go up and down that steep hill every single day to get the mail. I couldn't tell him not to do it because then he'd be trapped inside the house, but I worried all the time that he'd fall. Clearly, we couldn't stay in this house indefinitely. My knees were only going to get worse and my dad was only going to get older. We talked and decided we needed to find a house on a level lot. We started looking and I was constantly checking the realty app on my phone.

We wanted a ranch and most of the houses down in this area are two story. We wanted a certain location because of my commute time and most of the houses were farther out. The few houses that came up in our target area and in the right price range were too small, too beat up, too not right for us.

After about six months of looking and not finding anything, I put money down on a lot. We were going to build a new house. I didn't want to build. It would mean months of having to check on the building, to make sure they were doing good work, to make sure what we wanted was being carried out. It's stressful and not something I wanted to do.

And then a house came up for sale--the exact house we were going to build. After disappointing house after disappointing house, I didn't expect this one to be a winner, but I wanted a look of the floor plan live. I'd only seen it drawn out on paper or on YouTube and it wasn't the same thing. I also prefer modern/contemporary style and this house had oiled bronze hardware everywhere! Oiled bronze faucet, drawer pulls, light fixtures, shower head, you name it. Ugh! It also had vanilla cabinets which wouldn't have been too bad except that they were etched in black which made them look traditional too and worse of all, it had that rope-styled molding at the top. Way too traditional for me.

I warned our Realtor that we only wanted to see the house and measure some of the rooms. We weren't going to buy it. Then we walked into the house.

The first thing our Realtor asked was why didn't we want to buy this house?

It was immaculate and everything was in good condition. As it should be since the house was only about 18 months old. It was perfect for us. The location was perfect. And even more perfect was it alleviated the stress of building. And I could replace the oiled bronze...some day.

We decided to buy the house. We moved three days before I had to report for jury duty. That is why I was so exhausted. We were unpacking way too many boxes.

More about the move and the ordeal that was next week.