Wednesday, January 13, 2010

How I Got Here

When my husband and I first got married, I saw his "country home" as
nothing more than a dump left over from a previous relationship. I
wanted to see it gone. On my first visit, we we were not yet married,
and I saw a huge mess. The house had been used as a storage facility
for four years. At the time, I had no idea how bad it actually was, but
what stood out to me the most was the fact that the guys were keeping
a tractor in the kitchen/dining room.

My husband talked me into having a barbecue/sleepover. When I saw
my first Huntsman spider, I promptly got drunk. I am not exaggerating
when I say it was the size of my hand, and I already had a major
phobia of spiders. I was astonished that no one at the party
wanted to kill it, as they are considered good spiders down here
in Australia.

Fast forward three years. We were living in Melton, and it was hell. We
lived in one of the center units of a six unit square. A sidewalk divided
the units in half, so we had neighbors on either side of paper thin walls.
On one side, we got to listen to the misadventures of a single father
and his sons. On the other side, we got to listen to the constant
fighting of a couple of alcoholics. Across from us, we got treated
to the soap opera of a young couple addicted to drama and
marijuana. I had never experienced anything like it. Cops being
called was a regular occasion. I watched my husband break up
one knife fight and heard about others. The worst part was how
often we were awakened in the middle of the night by loud music
that didn't get started until around 2:00 or 3:00AM. I spent many
a night stressing about whether my husband would finally snap
and give them all the beatings they deserved.

Husband ended up leaving his place of employment, and we realized
there was nothing keeping us there any longer. We discussed it,
at length, and came to the conclusion that the Flowerdale home
would never get finished as long as we lived an hour and a half
away from it. Thus, on my third anniversary, I found myself packing
boxes to move from one dump to another. What kept my spirits
up was the knowledge that we owned half of the dump we were
moving to, and we had the power to make it into something other
than a dump. Plus, it was located in the country which I will
always prefer to the city. And the neighbor situation would be a huge
improvement.

Our plan was simple - take the two weeks from before Christmas to
after New Year's, plaster the three bedrooms, paint them, level the
floors with cement, put laminate flooring down, finish the plaster in
the hallway and the toilet, fix the tub, build up a floor in the bathroom
and tile the toilet, hallway and bathroom. I thought it would be
impossible, but the engineers insisted if we worked hard enough,
it could be done. And after all, they do stuff like this on The
Learning Channel all the time. Well, we learned alright...

3 comments:

  1. When you do upload photos, please post a pic of the tractor in the living room! LOL!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pfft. The knife was only eight inches long.
    Thats not a knife.

    ReplyDelete