The Game Changer: Part 2 of a 6 part series

 

“Amityville Horror”

(if you've just joined us,  here's part 1 to start you off)... http://freddiesmom50x50.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-game-changer-part-1-of-6-part-series.html

The first step was to look at all the unfinished projects and repairs, and figure out where to start. Like the loose granite tile at the edge of our kitchen counter, being wedged in place with packaging tape.  We have 100 things like that, unfinished or stuck together with gum, just to get us through the Era Of Little Kids, even though we are now in the Era Of The Bigger Kids.

Then, we also had to simultaneously declutter.  Now, I like my stuff and it all has a home.  But I have too much still.  I declutter often and have been using the test of:

#1) Do I like it? 

#2) Do I use it?

If something passed both tests, it lives here.  I thought I had been doing a pretty good job.  But I found when I applied the third criteria of:

#3) But would I MOVE it to the new house?

Suddenly, not everything passed the test. And as my friend mentioned, when you throw in the last, little known criteria of:

#4) Would I want my kids to deal with this if I died?  or worse yet, DISCOVER IT?

-----Well, watch the pile of keepers deflate like a weak soufflé.  

So we made a plan to declutter and fix a little bit every day, a few things here and there, while still having our frolicking summer like fluffy lambs scampering in the field.

We informed our house we were going to mess with it and as if by saying it out loud, a war started.  Thus entered Turmoil, Pain, and Downward Spiral; the likes of which I have never seen before.

The first thing that unraveled, was our clothes dryer.  It was a little slow, limping along but still working.  We were in good spirits and so when my husband would throw the towels in, I’d say,

“How long did you set the timer for?”

and he’d say,

“I set it to ‘Wednesday.’ ”

This was funny, because it was only Saturday.  Four days to dry towels!  Freaking hilarious.  We were at the top of our game, summer was running smoothly, and hey, a dryer problem is easy.  Laundromats or a clothesline…we had our options.  We rolled our eyes and laughed like game show hosts at the pretend trauma, all the while knowing how blessed we were to have a life where our biggest complaint was about a dryer.  We were fresh horses and I was in a good mood because I was going to get my dream house soon.

But 24 hours later, the dam broke. Within a ten day period, the following things malfunctioned or died in unexplainable and mysterious ways:

• Flies, Amityville Horror Swarms of them, suddenly appeared in our garage, drunken and lazy, hanging out on the lights.  I’d kill twenty who didn’t even try to save their lives.  Then another battalion would enter from the portal of Hell somewhere beneath my dryer.
• Our airline tickets were rearranged by the airlines, with all the wrong times.
• The microwave, calculator, my cell phone and the house phone all stopped working and then mysteriously worked again.
• My plum bread (5 stars on Epicurous.com!!) flipped me off and went concave on me in the oven, like a woman’s breasts in her 80’s. 
• Our one credit card account closed out of the blue.  For no real reason.  The branch manager still doesn’t know why.
• My blog password stopped working.
• Our lawn mower had a coronary.
• But not before vomiting all its gasoline onto the concrete of our new patio. 
• Vacation pictures were corrupted after uploading perfectly.
• Our Subaru broke twice…during its three weeks IN the repair shop.
• My camera stopped uploading to the computer,
• Then the battery died and the charger had gum all over it.
• Raccoons decided to live in our trash cans on Mondays and Wednesdays at midnight.  And all the other nights.
• Our other email address stopped working.
• The coffee maker I won on eBay was suddenly recalled, despite hours of research saying it’s the rock star of coffee makers.  I don’t ask for much…I only wanted a better coffee maker for brewing Thunderbolt Turbo-Roast.  So I could work harder than I already do, says she, sarcastically.

Let’s just say if you drew a Feng Shui bagua over our house, we would be located at the left corner of the Doomsday Triangle.

But, as always, we turn to Lily Tomlin for encouragement:  “Things will get a lot worse before they get worse.”

And they did!

• A rash suddenly appeared on the back of both my legs.  Badly, like werewolf welts or tunneling beetles.
• Our last remaining email crashed….HARD.
• The wiring shorted out in our garage, and we had to hire an emergency electrician to rewire it immediately, or else we’d burn in our beds.
• Our mandated internet upgrade caused it to be down for 80 hours.  I’d like to give a shout out to AT&T for that one.
• Our ‘low tire’ light came on in my van, showing the driver side tire was low on air.  Trust me, this is NOT the news a woman wants to hear in the middle of her weight loss journey.
• Our cat bit me.  Her rabies booster was a few months overdue, so she and I had to be quarantined at the Big House for five days.  I’m just kidding about me, although seclusion in a rabies unit may have given me some well needed “Me” time.

In the midst of this crisis, I threw a birthday party for my eight-year-old.  Because we are involved parents just like the evil experts tell us we need to be, we have many baskets and piles of all the volunteer tasks and home projects and activities we have taken on.  So, on Party Friday, we spent Black Thursday removing evidence of having a life.  We moved baskets and piles and containers from everywhere in our house, and stacked them on our bed, so as to free up social areas in the other rooms.  On that day, our house felt especially cramped. My elbows hit everything as I went back and forth.  My pant loop caught on drawer handles and I started hating, despising, wishing my own home dead. 

To add to the downward spiral, we had several family visits and a few social encounters during that time. Suddenly it hit me squarely between the eyes….all these people are keeping in touch with each other; their photos show strong and deep relationships, but I am on the fringe, because I am so busy.  Busy doing what?  Normal stuff, busy with the lives of my family but with the added nonsense of retracing steps, moving and re-moving project piles, holding onto the old way of doing things, not evolving…I see how it has taken its toll.  It has affected the time I spend with those I love.  

In the meantime, Primrose Lane was still hovering in escrow and hadn’t fallen into my hands yet.  I still kept the dream alive.  

I know there is a fine line between faith and delusion.  My husband agreed, and said, “Yes, and you’ve crossed it. Quite nicely.”  He noticed as I seared my vision through the time/space continuum, through my bank account and then figuratively lifted my leg on the house, carved my initials in it and branded my name on its backside.  Maybe I just misunderstood the concept, but I call that Visualization.  If it’s called Hallucination or Stalking, then so be it.  It’s the only way I know how to claim a dream.

At last, every single thing in our house broke, except for my spirit and my heart.  I kept in mind that our family was healthy and we had a home and a job, blah blah blah, but after ten solid days of cataclysmic breakage and feeling generally screwed by the universe prank machine, I thought we had hit the worst.

Then I heard the news that escrow closed and I lost Primrose Lane for the fourth time. 

My spirit and heart, already living on a thin thread, finally broke.

And this is where I imploded, just like my house. This is where I hit the all-time lowest of low.  Normally I am good at keeping things in perspective, but not the case at that moment. 

I needed to find where glow sticks go when they are spent, and then throw myself on the big pile of snuffed out light.  

(click for Part 3 of 6: http://freddiesmom50x50.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-game-changer-part-3-of-6-part-series.html   ) 

The Game Changer: Part 1 of a 6 part series

“House of Mirrors”

The reason I haven’t written since July 10^th, is that I found myself on a detour for the last five weeks.  The interesting thing I have found about this weight loss year, is that my journey is already proving to be remarkable and not very typical.  And I thought I had gotten lost, REALLY LOST.  

But as in all ‘scenic routes,’ you haven’t really gone astray.  You eventually end up back on the road with more wisdom and clarity.  And you think, shit! That was bumpy and my kidneys hurt, but I saw some cool stuff like irate bears and a chainsaw shack where it is always 2 am.  That doesn’t even make sense but trust me, I’ve listed my symbolic fears.

So much has happened in the last five weeks, that I fear I must put it in a six part series so as not to frighten you all at once.  That way, you can read it like a little chapter book when you feel like a visit with me.  Are you ready for a crazy ride through Sheri’s Brain?

It was a dark and stormy night and it all started with a house…

CUT!!!!   Why write about a house in a weight loss blog?  You’ll soon see why I think they are absolutely related.

There’s this home in our town.  We met in 2009.  I was starting a new email account and had to make up a name.  I used Primrose Lane, because Wart Hollow was taken.  The very next night, I was stumbling upon a real estate site and saw a home for sale in our town on.....yes.......Primrose Lane.  (I am serious.  This really did happen.  The purest psychic moment I've ever had.) This house did not hit me lightly.  I felt like I had been set on fire when I saw it.  It made me break out in a sweat because it was so perfect.  We saw it in person and I almost wet myself because it was like someone had crawled in my head and built my heart out of wood and slate.  I could picture all my family and friend dreams happening in that house, how our life would be so improved by the memories this house could make.  The nurturing it could offer to my soul and to the souls of those I loved.   A place where I could churn butter and perhaps make a car from scratch.

I love my current home.  It is our first and only home, a small cottage where my babies were brought home.  I could not leave this home for any home in the world because my soul is rooted here and I am fully committed to it.  But that was before Primrose Lane, the house that could make me forget my vows. 

We made an offer and the gods laughed because we were so outclassed.  Plus there was no way in hell our house was in a condition to sell.  We needed six months’ notice and a hospital lift team just to fix all the little things we were used to living with, all the normal kid clutter, all the projects we had put on hold as parents do during the Era of Raising Little Ones.  Imagine us, cottage dwellers, thinking we could play in the big leagues. 

We got smacked aside by a high roller whose offer was accepted, and my husband and friends were deflated for me.  But NOT ME.  It wasn’t over.  I wasn’t giving up hope until I saw a U-Haul in front of that house.  For three months, I dreamed about that house and wouldn’t let go.  I captured the photos on my computer so I could have a small piece of it to soothe my greedy little heart. (Gawd…why didn’t I invent Pinterest?)….

Then, it fell out of escrow, up for grabs again like a jilted girlfriend on Match.com.  And you all thought I was crazy. 

We offered again, but were smacked aside even harder.   

Escrow slammed shut.

U-Haul appeared. 

Heart broke.  

I had a pity party but reluctantly took the lesson:  Maybe Primrose Lane showed up to teach me about contentment and making happiness where you were.  On the ugly days, my inner voice heard the lesson: Don’t dare to dream.  You didn’t deserve THAT house.   Aim lower next time.

That voice sucked.

But I wrote a love letter to the owners, telling them ‘I was happy for them.  If they ever decided to move because of (I threw in the good karma of: a promotion or winning the lottery, and kept out the word foreclosure), please give me a call and see if we are still interested.’

As if!  As if I’d lose interest!!!!! 

Sometimes I’d drive by with a friend or my mom (once a year does not define me as a creeper) and I’d say "That’s the house that will be mine someday, but someone has it right now.”  How very adult and magnaminous, magmanimos, magn&^%$u,   big of me.

And then, last year, the phone call came.  The owner was ready to sell and just happened to have my sweet little love letter, and would I be interested in buying?  Oh, if only this was a bike sale on Craig’s list.  The deal would have been completed in two hours.  My heart stopped.  Even my house spiders paused in mid-kill.  I looked around at my home which usually has its mental breakdown around June of each year (again, still in the Era of Kids), and thought DAMN!!!!  We’re less ready than last time.  But before we could even pull the trigger, the owner whom I liked very much, called back to say never mind because it wasn’t a good time to sell.  I was now salivating at the raw steak that had just been pulled out of my pit bull jaws, but relieved I didn’t have to eat it yet. 

Then, six weeks ago, Primrose Lane struck. Again.  For the fourth time in three years.  What do YOU make of this?  

My dear friend sent me the link, announcing it was on the market again.  I raged with exasperation at that house as I said to it,  I’ve moved on, happily making the best my life, LOVING my life, and then you show up at my door like an old boyfriend, over and over, in a nice shirt and smelling like tobacco and honey, with LOTS of flowers just to get me all twitter-pated again.  Don’t expect me to jump each time you announce you’re on the market because there’s no way that I will----

What?  7:00?  I’ll be there.

I thought it was time to tell my husband that I was drinking the Kool-Aid again.  We did the math and by some voodoo fluke in the middle of the worst housing slump, THIS time, we could make it work. Barely.  There would be sacrifices.  I’d have to start taking in laundry, or ironing, or cows, and so it was up to me to decide how badly I wanted it. 

On our way to the Open House, I told my husband, “You know, this is stupid and a waste of everyone’s time.  Why are we even going?”  He said something like, “Because you need to play it through till the end.”  This is why I love him.  He joined my team even as we headed for the cliff.  He signed up and was going down in flames with me. 

As we crossed the threshold, we both looked at each other and it still felt really, really, really good.  Even better this time around.  I petted the granite counter in the kitchen. It was like visiting an old friend.  When we went upstairs to the master bedroom, I broke down and cried into his chest.  Not because of the room's beauty, but because of the five feet of clearance on each side of the bed, so my husband and I wouldn’t have to do our ‘sideways-walk-down-a-row-of-occupied-theater-seats’ anymore.  I could see beneath it and there was nothing but open space. They didn’t have my own shame of dealing with the constant underbed cave where shoes and paperclips and creepy dust trolls go to die.  I saw a potential buyer measuring the window and I said, “Hey, he’s measuring MY window.”  He may have looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, but my return gaze said, “No, seriously.  Get away from my window.”  

“My window”…I said it so matter-of-factly.  It never once occurred to me I might be delusional.

I walked every room, lingered in each nook and pictured where I would churn butter and knit sweaters from my kids’ baby hair.  I also left a little note when I was there, to tell the owner I was sorry to have missed her.  As my mom said, I left my scent all over that house, to frighten the other lions away.   

We made the offer, but so did three other people.  Apparently, someone loved it $70,000 more than us.   I tried to find $70,000 in the couch and only found popcorn there. 

But you see, this is where I shine.  I keep the Torch of Hope lit when others move on to the next village.  This only serves to amp me, to tinge the air with the smoke of competition.  It’s on, baby.  I’ve been down this road, but we are going to do it differently.  We are going to be ready to catch that house when it falls out of escrow. 

I vowed that each of our thoughts and behavior had to look, act and SMELL like we were getting that house.  We were going to get our house ready to sell by doing everything to it to make it absolutely clean, decluttered, repaired and well-staged, so as to leave no doubt to the universe what my wishes were.  This thing will end with me knowing I’ve done everything I can.  Each of our actions had to tip the universe in our favor as we campaigned our guts out. 

As an afterthought, I also threw in the prayer of ‘Give me what I need and not what I want.’ Apparently, it carried more weight than I realized, as I was about to find out later.

There were so many hurdles to cross, but I took them one at a time because I hadn’t been disqualified from the race.  My friends were pulling for me and told me to ‘Just Ask The Universe For The House.’   

Just ask? 

So, I littered the universe with my wish, and started to get our house ready to put on the market.

(Click here for Part 2 of 6:)  http://freddiesmom50x50.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-game-changer-part-2-of-6-part-series.html