homes sweet homes...

So it seems there is a strong probability our home and place have sold. My Sweet Hubby (aka MSH) and I have even found a home that’s sixteen minutes from TLC and family and have put a contract on it. All of this has happened in the past month! If everything falls into place, we could be driving away from Our Country Casa in three to four weeks. I honestly cannot think about this. Talk about this. Or type words, thoughts or feelings about it. Not without getting consumed with grief. Or having BIG tears fall.

When the Sellers of the home we want to buy accepted our contract this past Monday night, it made me think about all of the homes and places I’ve lived in sixty-four years.

Without going in to the endless twists and turns of my life  My (Long…wink wink) Journey up until this very moment, I’d like to share this with Y’all:

I counted them all up and I’ve lived in seven homes*, two college dorms, eight apartments and one barndominium (The barndominium was the one we built when we bought this place and where we lived while building our home. It’s still one of our family’s favourite places to hang out!) I wasn’t surprised. I guess. And yet…I kind of was a bit shocked. Seeing all of these abodes typed out on a piece of paper was interesting. I double-checked it three times.

I can remember a lot of details about most of those places I’ve lived. My memories of our home in El Paso actually begin when I was about three. Some because of pictures I’ve seen, of course. But I can also clearly see that home in my mind’s eye right now. The general floor plan. The big front porch. The backyard. The garage apartment my grandmother—Nana—lived in for a couple of years before my parents’ divorce. It was probably 30 years old when I was three!  Maybe older. So, if it’s still there? It’d be close to or over 100! Yikes.

Of the apartments? Two I lived in as a child/adolescent—while my parents looked for homes. Three were apartments I shared with roommates. Two were apartments I lived in alone. One was an apartment MSH and I lived in literally three weeks only and about a year after we married. (The timing of us buying a home wasn’t working. We had to move out of one house before we’d made a deal on another.)  Four of the said eight apartments were very inexpensive and probably bordered on sketchy/dangerous. They weren’t places I’d want my children or grandchildren to have lived or to live in now. I survived.

Only our home before this one was a place I cared enough about to decorate. Furnish with pieces I loved.  A home to have celebrations and holidays and parties often. I was proud of that home. (We actually still go by to see it every few months. We get sad. Especially TLC. It was the home we brought her home to the day after she was born and where she lived until she was sixteen. She still asks if we're sure we can't buy it back. Uh, no, TLC. We haven't won a lottery yet, Silly Child.)

But this home? The only home MSH and I built together? This land? Our barndominium? I’ve cherished. I’ve adored. I’ve loved with all of my heart. I’m now crying. Sheesh. (HOW WILL I SURVIVE THIS? Seriously...how?)

As this experience proceeds, I’m not sure how much blogging I can do. TLC is in the midst of being Room Mom for Little Leighton’s class. Lots o’ stuff going on there at this busy time of the year.

Please hang in with us! I’m a’thinkin’ we might do some “Blasts from the Past!” (Y’all that have been with us a while know we resort to this tactic during times of extreme stress and/or busy-ness.)

On this somewhat dreay-ish day in North Central Texas and from the office of our home I will have a hard time leaving, I wish each of you a Thursday, Friday and weekend FULL of cozy warmth in a place that gives you sheer and utter JOY!

smooch,

ELC

*Four different times in my life I went back to live at my parents' home in Weatherford, Texas. FOUR times. And each time I'd wished I had another alternative. Just because it was hard to have been on my own and then back under the Rents' Roof. You know? You get it. Again, I survived. Duh.