Four Years Later ...

OK, so it has been a little while since I last posted. Funny now to look back over my last few posts, which add up to a snapshot of a period in my life that was uncertain, scary and dark. I didn't know it at the time, but that last post about the garden was me at a threshold. After that, my world turned upside down. We halted all renovations on the house. My mom had been sick, and a year-and-a-half later she died of a lung condition that was never properly identified. I slid into a deep funk, accompanied by a long period of strenuous soul-searching. I kept trying to spin my situation -- our situation -- as temporary, like the dip in the economy. It would get better. But years go on, and it gets really hard to see what you're living as temporary.

But a couple weird things happened. For one, we survived. While my career fortunes waned, my husband's ascended, and we ended up scraping by with change to spare. We never lost the house or anything else. And all that soul-searching I did? It changed me. It gave me a better understanding of myself than ever before. After 20 years as a desk jockey, I realized I'd hated every job I'd ever had and found a new appreciation for the life I was leading outside of my career. I had little kids and a sick mom and I was there for all of them at a time when they needed me. I reshaped how I lived -- Like, instead of waking up in the morning and saying "What do I have to do to get by?" I said, "This is your ideal world. You have no limitations. What are you going to do today?" And then I did them. And this attitude brought me to do some crazy, interesting, fun, weird, sometimes embarrassing stuff. But that's for a different blog post on a different blog. This is a renovation blog.

So the key thing that happened that is pertinent to our house project is that I started working again. Yes, this was the undoing of a lot of the self-discovery I'd just been through -- but again, different blog. Working again meant moving forward again with the house project.

Or you'd think it would -- but it's been a year-and-a-half since I went back to work and the number of renovations we've done amounts to zero. But that's OK, right? It takes a while to build up resources, to get plans together, to hire people, to get bids, to pick materials, to make decisions and to GO!

So here I am at another threshold (I hope). And if the months to come bring all the changes to this house that I am hoping for, I will be sure to document them here, for your consumption. Feels good to be back!