I'm back......

I totally didn't plan this, but it appears that my last blog post was April 20, which means that I've been on "vacation" for exactly three months.  In that last post, I told y'all that we had purchased a new home that was under construction.  We've since moved in.....about three weeks ago.....and I feel like I can, once again, breathe!  To say it was a tumultuous building process would be a gross understatement.  We've built from scratch/finished construction on seven homes over the last 25 years, and this was absolutely the worst builder we've experienced.  We take our share of the responsibility for not doing the proper due diligence on his reputation (because since we've moved in, we've discovered we've got plenty of company) but, WOW, it's hard to fathom that a guy of this character is still in business.  At one meeting where we were pressing him about many of the things he promised during the initial meeting, that didn't appear to be getting done and was clear that weren't going to get done, his response was "Hey, I say a lot of things."  So yeah.  There were major integrity issues.

But that's over and we're in and thankfully we know several reputable tradesman that we've dealt with in the past that will come and fix what's not up to par.  Money we shouldn't have to spend, but it's clear he has no interest in honoring his word, so we'll cut our losses and move on.  Which may be what everyone else decides too.....explaining how he's still in business.  Grr.

There were also several lessons learned on the move itself.  The most important being when you know you'll be downsizing by more than half, GET RID OF SHIT.  Get rid of MORE SHIT THAN YOU THINK YOU SHOULD!  When going from seven bedrooms to four, you're not going to need 20 sets of king size sheets.  Sell them BEFORE you move, so you aren't like me and store them for 12 months only to have to move them again and unpack ALL OF THEM one more time.  I thought I had done a good job of purging before we moved out of our last house.  I was wrong.  We had to have the movers come back and take a garage FULL of stuff back to storage.  I'm giving myself three months to get rid of it, then I'm calling a local charity to come pick it up.  Enough.

But we're in, the last of the boxes were cleared out this weekend and we're finally getting into a groove.  There are loads of little projects that need to be addressed, but I'm not sweating it.  I'm going to take my time to find the perfect pieces to fill the blank spaces and enjoy the process.  There's plenty of time.

Besides, Fletcher seems to have found the best spot from which to govern the neighborhood.

I'll be back much more regularly now that things are back to normal.  Promise.