Please Excuse Brooke From Blogging; She Had A Bit Of A Year

Hey, y'all -

You know how "Game of Thrones" makes its audience wait a year between seasons because it's so difficult to produce and they want to heighten anticipation as much as possible? That's exactly what I did with this blog! (Except not really on purpose and more because I kept running out of time, and I don't really have much of an audience, and maybe I should add some CGI dragons).

So here's what happened next, after Halloween 2017, which is when I think I left off. What a cliffhanger! Ahem.

Even though we lived in a perfectly lovely house that we had more or less just remodeled, I'd been keeping my eye out for something bigger. The house we were living in was 1200 sq ft with one bathroom, and while that was fine for the time being, I knew the kids would someday become teenagers (ugh) and need to spread out a little. Besides, I'll be damned if I'm going to wait in line to tinkle in my own house. I happened to see a listing for this strange little number in the middle of town and went to check it out. Y'all, it was turquoise. It had a basement apartment designed to resemble a log cabin. It was built in 1938, but then somebody had the idea to triple the size of it out the back end in 1968. From the front, it looks like a small cottage, and from the side, it looks like a never-ending sister-wife compound. Ugly carpet? Check! Wood paneling on the walls with no insulation, so if someone dropped a match, the whole place would go up like a firecracker? Check! BUT - It was exactly TWICE the size of the house we were living in, and cost the same... Probably because there was no kitchen. I mean, there was a room with a linoleum floor and holes where a sink could go, but nothing fancy like counters or appliances.

I walked through it a few times, and shot some video that I sent to Thor in Afghanistan. "What do you think?" I asked. "If you like it, let's get it," he said. Your dad's not one to get hung up on pesky details like missing kitchens or wonky floor plans.  I guess when you're living in a war zone in the Middle East, you don't get as bogged down by things like questionable electric panels.

We put in an offer and blah blah real estate mumbo jumbo, it was accepted and we were under contract.

Then, I set about selling our existing house by owner. I feel like a huge chunk of a successful real estate listing is marketing, and that's something I know a little about. So I took some pictures, made a flyer, put up a sign, launched a website and got the house its own Facebook account. It sold in 48 hours.

So with your dad still out of the country, we bought and sold a house. I know it sounds insane, but honestly, it was one of the best things we could have done, and here's why:

When your dad was deployed, he couldn't tell me much - if anything - about his day to day, but I knew it was awful. It was hard for me to talk to him in a way that would make him feel better about his mission because I didn't really understand it, and outside of shipping him almost-daily care packages, there wasn't much I could do to improve his situation.  That makes for some frustrating phone calls. But all of a sudden, with the new house, we had something positive to talk about; we could make plans for the near future and talk about how we were going to improve our new home. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it was a great mental health break for your dad to be able to go from drone warfare to "Which flooring do you like better?" and "Where should we move that breaker box?"

I guess I'm suggesting that purchasing a big old house that you'll be working on for years can make an excellent - though expensive - conversation starter! Try it!

Love,
Mom