quote

my quote of the moment: "if you can attain repose and calm, believe that you have seized happiness." ~julie-jeanne-eleonore de lespinasse

October 25, 2011

home for the holidays

there is so much i want to talk about. like visiting all the inlaws over the weekend because my sister-in-law finallly got married. or all the crazy fun halloween plans that we have for this week. or how amazingly grown my fishie seems. or maybe about some of my worries for my dear bumble.

but no, instead i'll talk about what is forefront in my mind at the moment, how i just want a house of my own again. and about how i don't think i'll have one in time for christmas. and how that thought is like daggers in my heart.

a bit of backstory is probably necessary for those that don't know me in real life: at the beginning of september, tropical storm lee parked his lazy butt right over central pa, which is where i happen to reside. there was much craziness and flooding, we were forced to evacuate, and it was a week before the waters went down enough to assess the damages and figure out exactly what it all meant for us. the flooding damaged my house so that we had to move out until we fixed everything. after talking with my husband, we decided that the house we had wasn't really worth fixing, that it would be better to try and sell it as-is and find a new place to live. this wasn't a decision we made lightly, but we were outgrowing the house, and though the flooding from the tropical storm was as high as i've ever seen the waters get, it wasn't the first time we had to leave because the roads to my place were underwater. all in all, we decided it would be best for us and our children to find a better, safer home.

the selling of the old house is a saga (and a post) all it's own, but this post is about trying to get a mortgage. about how my husband and i made some terribly bad decisions, about how we didn't understand how all our bad choices would really affect our credit for years to come. so getting a mortgage wasn't as straight forward as we thought it would be. i know now how silly and naive our outlook was. i'm beginning to understand now how long the financing process is. how we'll be lucky to be in our own house in six months.

the wait and frustration is just getting to be too much some days. filling out forms, making phone calls, getting all the required information together, at least all of that gives me something to do. it's the waiting that's the worst. right now i have to wait until november 8th before we check to see what else they need, what more forms there will be, what other hoops we need to jump through.

what this all really means is that we probably won't have a home of our own for the holidays. my moms are wonderful, letting us live with them until we get our situation all sorted out, but they have their own traditions and we have our own. and it just won't be the same staying at somebody else's house. it won't be our tree, with our ornaments. i'm not even sure which box has the kids' stockings in it, where "twas the night before christmas" got packed, where the plate for cookies for santa is.

every year i feel like i let my kids down around the holidays. there is so much i want to do for them, want to get for them. there is always a long list of things that don't get done. but this year i already know it will be so much worse. because all i want to get my kids for christmas is a home of our own, so they can have their own place. so i can unpack all of their toys and games and crafts. so that we don't feel like guests staying somewhere, but are actually living somewhere. and i already know that i am going to fail.

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