Rotten to the Core

Carrie's very last HS paper EVER!!

The house in the mountain had a cash offer come in on it. Carrie had done an adult job of prepping for, applying at, auditioning for ,and being accepted into a college performing arts program. She was graduating in June from High School. Two kids in college with dorms and apartments and a business warehoused in Redlands. Gas prices rising and a marriage splitting. Take the offer. Oh, and by the way. They wanted to close in 15 days. So needless to say, end of April was a whirlwind. Ever move 16 years of accummulation? I hadn’t. I had no idea. Not only did we have this house, we had our prior one stashed in the build up underneath the house. And my mom’s and grandma’s personal belongings. And left over business stash like shirts, water, barricades, old skis, and even an ice cream cart. And we had a termite inspection to pass. In the mountains, there are only ground termites, but they look for dry rot. Although the house looked so kept and manicured from the outside…new paint job, freshly installed carpet, etc. the termite report read like a doctor’s report finding cancer. Dry rot had undermined half the garage and a few beams from the deck. There was a LOT of work to do to close a house in a little over 2 weeks. So it was operation HOUSE. Contractors were decking and facing. Others were pouring concrete and painting. And all the while, the hauler man in his beat up dump truck kept coming for a load. I sincerely think we hauled away 5 or 6 full dump truck loads…and our house was clean and orderly. It just had a lot of places to hide excess. Well, I hope it was excess. Because now we are down to a few peices of furniture in a condo and all the kids memorbilia stored in storage for now. I am amazed at what we think we have to live with and what we actually can live without. Wealso can be thankful for the nicety of living on the mountain as we are experiencing our first summer in the heat and smog! Everyone worked so hard. It was hard. In so many ways, I loved my house. But something larger was looming and knawing at me. I was being accused of spending excess amounts of money on travel. I knew I was not. I had pre planned by going out and drumming up additional contracts soley for travel expenses. And we were falling in the red almost every month. I had my savings account protecting our business accounts so the employee checks would be good no matter if our clients checks were not. What was happening? All I knew is we could no longer afford this mountain house. Accusations were flying. We were soon to find out in the wrong direction.