The waiting game.

My brother and sister-in-law were asking this weekend about our 'plan' to move out of the city. We are in the waiting stage. We have decided to wait until the school year is almost over to even begin to think seriously about looking. Because we are home schooling Reanna, and it is working out so well with her dance schedule and her mom's work schedule, moving now would throw a wrench in the works. There is also the uncertainty in the housing market. There is the question of what Chris really wants to do to earn a living at that point, as I am fairly sure we aren't savvy enough to be completely self-sustaining right off.

Every now and again... when cops are yelling through the bull horn at some guy three doors down... when our lovely neighbor down the block decides to burn the insulation off some electrical wire on the first night we have our windows open... when some other mysterious smell wafts down from the pool chemical plant up the way... we get a little anxious to be away from it all. But all in all, I believe in destiny, and it all works out nicely in the end if it isn't forced.

I remember the misery of looking for a house to buy. At first, we wanted to buy a house in Antioch, TN, since we were good friends with several people that lived out that way. We looked, and looked, and looked... It got to the point where I was SO sick of looking and finding nothing I really liked, that I told Chris the next house he found that he really liked, I would just go along with. He found one. It had a two car garage, a nice, finished-out basement, a deck with a hot tub, and a fake fireplace in the living room... He wanted to put in an offer and ask for the work benches and the pool table. I laughed, but told him to go ahead.

The night we put the offer in, I panicked. The front yard was a 15-20' slope right down to the front door. The back yard was a steep wooded slope. Where would I put a garden? I didn't even know if the sun would shine through any of the windows in the house. I hated the place.

Thankfully, they turned down our offer, and we turned down their counter-offer. We even turned them down when they offered us our original offer. I was relieved.

We ended up finding another house in Donelson that we both loved. The previous owner had tricked it out with lights that turned on automatically when you opened the closets. There was a passageway from a bedroom over the kitchen and into the attic space above the garage. A light in the garage flashed if you left the light on in the attic. There was a ham radio antenna. There were roses and daffodils and who knows what in the yard. I had only been on the market for three days. We put in an offer, but some one else beat us to the punch. We were disappointed, but we waked away with hope, knowing that there was bound to be another house we could both agree on.

Finally, I talked Chris into looking in East Nashville. He was hesitant. He had history there he wasn't too keen to be reminded of. When we stepped into our house, we knew it was the one. It had that old-person smell, and old lady wallpaper donned the walls. Mouse poison was dumped into muffin tins under the old, red counters, and the water was brown and smelled like sulphur. There was coal still left in the wide-open basement. Out back near the 'creek' was a cement couch and picnic table. I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself.

Chris drove by the next day to take another look, and met our neighbor, Joe. They immediately took to each other. With the realization that, as he was no longer engaged in illegal activities, he no longer needed to be afraid of the cops, Chris agreed that this was the place.

I really believe that we were meant to live here these past five years. Our neighbors are just what we have needed for this time in our lives. Having an 'adoptive Nannie' next door for the kids has been a huge blessing for me. (Remind me later to tell the story of my wedding rings.) And we have benefited and grown from the other relationship we have developed while living here. We were prevented from making a ignorant financial mistake. If we would have bought one of the other houses, we would have been strapped financially.

The idea of looking for a new place seems a bit daunting. I'm not sure how much I need to worry about zoning and soil conditions and what not... Chris and I sometimes have different ideas about housing. He wouldn't mind building from scratch. I love the idea of taking something old and bringing new life to it. I want to make sure that we don't buy too much so that we aren't able to maintain the property, but I want enough to support a massive garden, some chickens, a couple dairy cows, and maybe a pig or some other animals...

I'm not getting over-anxious about it, though. I have this feeling one day, we'll step on a property and know it is the one. And in the mean time, we are content to wait until the time is right, whether that is in the spring or twenty years from now...