We have had a dream

It all started innocently enough. Megan and I were out for a relaxing Sunday drive when we turned down a quaint street lined with historical homes in New Albany. Megan commented on the beauty of one of the homes as I noticed it was for sale. "We should go look at it," I said. "Just for fun."

A few days later, a retired school teacher was giving us the grand tour of her 1930 tutor-style house. She should have been a realtor. We left believing we had to have it. Of course, that meant we had to sale our home.

"We can do this," we convinced ourselves as we were writing out our to-do list to get our house ready for the market. I jotted down "clean up the basement" believing it would be just one of the many small tasks I had to do in pursuit of our dream. On a Saturday morning, I jumped out of bed and began filling boxes. I carried up about a dozen and took them to Goodwill. Then I finished painting the dark brown paneling, a project that I'd started weeks before Lincoln was born. I also dismantled an old ping pong table and drug it up the steps.

By now, days had gone by and I was itching to cross off that first item on the to-do list. In the meantime, the house of our dreams could have been sold to someone else. We had to keep moving. Megan and I tackled the bathroom that connects to our bedroom. "Strip the ugly wallpaper" sounds easy enough when you're reading the words on a list. But it is not easy. I was thankful to go to my day job while Megan began drenching the paper with chemicals. I was also thankful that I wasn't around for her discovery of a second layer of even more hideous wallpaper, a green and gold floral print.

The trials kept coming but we didn't give up hope. We scraped, sanded, puttied and painted, sometimes until 2 a.m. At times, Megan told me that I was getting "a wild look in my eyes." She may have been right. I do recall one late night when Megan suggested we stop. "This can wait until tomorrow," she reasoned. "Wait until tomorrow!" I snapped. "There may not be a tomorrow for our dreams!"

Yeah, I was getting a little obsessed. I admit that now, but luckily sanity returned after a visit from our plumber. Another item on our to-do list was to get a pipe checked out. It drips in the basement when we use the shower in our bathroom. For that reason, we always use the other shower. The plumber informed us that to fix the problem all of the tile on the shower floor would have to be ripped up and a board underneath would have to be replaced. In other words, it was going to be a monstrous and costly job. He said I could save on the expense by ripping the tile out myself with a crowbar. I wanted to scream: "Do you not realize that my back already feels like it's broken in half. Can you not see that God didn't design me for manual labor?"

Needless to say, the news was the straw that broke my will to sale our house. It's just way too much work. Staying right here is now our dream.


On the plus side, our once cluttered basement is now cleaned up and painted.