Scribbles and Scrambles - House Story

I’m back from my break. The office has been much uglier when I’ve returned from shorter chunks of time. However, I could really get used to drawing a paycheck and not having to punch a clock.

Sharing the following information may bring the remodeling on my home to a screeching, squealing stop. It seems that’s how it goes. Some people consider it jinxing, I think it’s closer to Murphy’s Law.

Since marriage we’ve lived in homes, two of them, which have required extensive work. Something about price ranges and youthful foolishness comes to mind here, but that’s another post.

Our previous home boasted decades and lots of personality. Dormers, oak floors, cubby holes, all the character you could ever want in a house. And the natural gas meter in the cold Iowa winters, well, flying, speeding, soaring are nice descriptive words for the little “I’m sucking you dry” dance it did. Let’s just say we gave the stupid little wheel a workout. It chugged along like a rabid hamster at three a.m., and we got the gas bills to prove it.
After a decade of living in the huge home, when I’d decorated just like I wanted, and the only thing I lacked was a closet to call my own, we got the itch to move. A place just outside of the city limits came on the market.

That’s not true. It had been on the market for months, we just happened to trip over it.
Five hundred square feet less living space, a boxy ranch with as much personality as a dirty dishrag, it shouldn’t have gotten our attention. The price and the school district were the siren’s song, and we succumbed.

Scrambling to finish up the remodeling on our turn of the century, almost done home, we just dove into the obvious. My closet needed to be finished. As I packed, my husband glued, pounded and created.

One night two days before the move, a muffled voice came from the corner of my bedroom. “Honey!” I followed and found him standing in a pristine walk-in closet. A little light cord dangled in front of his face. “Go get me one of your blouses.” I did. He grabbed the hanger, slapped it on the white closet rod and laughed. “Now you can say you actually got to use it.”