Changes

It's been a good long while since I've written anything here. But it's for a good reason, I promise. I've been busy, very busy, making phone calls and planning out a budgets and...

Very soon my husband and I will be the proud owners of our very own house. It's a three bedroom, 11/2 bath with a fenced in yard. It's in a decent, working class development further from the center of the City of High Point, where we live now. Last Saturday we drove through the neighborhood at 2am to see what if any activity there was. (Yes we're anal. But we've been burned before so we can't help it.) The majority of the windows were dark, and the few people who were awake weren't partying it up or wreaking havoc. Score.

However, on a scale of 1 to 10, our collective anxiety level is an 11. There are a lot of details that need to be worked out, and our savings will be virtually depleted, but if everything goes as planned we'll have the paperwork signed and be ready to move in sometime toward the end of May.

I'm trying to enjoy this process, after all I do get to decorate an entire house and plant an herb/tomato garden like I've been wanting to, but it's a hard thing to do for someone who fears change as much as I do. Intellectually I know that renting long term won't bring us to our financial goal of being debt free. We've happened upon the deal of a lifetime. The older gentleman we are purchasing the house from has been using it as a rental property. At 70 he's still pretty spry and active, but he told us he feels like it's time to let a few things go. He'll be acting as bank in this deal, accepting payment for the house in installments. We'll be doing the majority of the repair/updates it needs ourselves to shave a little money off of the asking price. Most of the work is cosmetic, painting and perhaps replacing the carpet.  I'm determined to make the most of everything that's already in the house.

As soon as the papers are signed, the house will be in our names, but if we default the house goes back to him. It's a win win scenario. But the nail-biting-worry-wart part of me asks constantly if we're getting in too far over our heads.

(Really, hubs has done the math a thousand times over and, barring any major disasters, by the time we have this house paid off we will be almost debt free. But I still can't help the worrying)

In the last couple of weeks we've had a lot of in depth conversations about where we see ourselves in the future.
It's a good feeling to know that we are still on the same page and we still want the same things. Sometimes it's too easy to get wrapped up in the day to stuff and forget about what attracted us to each other and why we got married in the first place. I am grateful that despite all of the ups and downs and big changes we are still able to take stock of everything and definitively say, "I'm happy and I'm looking forward to spending the rest of my life with you."

Life is changing day by day, say a little prayer for me that I can keep on rolling with them and enjoy the journey.