My Name is Kris and I Blah-g

It’s been a dry couple of weeks. I mean this in the literal sense and figurative sense. Literally, it’s been hot and dry. Compared to June which was one of the wettest I can remember, July is shaping up to be really hot. This week we’ve seen temps in the 100s and dare I say it, I am missing my cool weather of June. There’s just no pleasing people, including me. July has also been dry in that I just cannot figure out what to blog about. I’ve just had nothing to say. Maybe I am just in the throws of the lazy days of Summer. Michaela is home now and in the middle of juggling a couple projects I have here and her needs, I just don’t have time. Nah. That’s not it. I have plenty of time. Lots of it. Simply, I have nothing to say. However, new developments have come up this week that merit a blog posting.Per my previous posts, the sale of my home fell through about 3 weeks ago. It was the day of closing and the buyers backed out at the very last minute. By then I had turned off all of my utilities. I had gotten new checks from my bank with my current address and spent quite a bit of money on a rental truck to haul out the last of my possessions. I did the latter during one of the many rain storms we had in June and ended up having to throw away a lot of good and useful stuff in order to meet the deadlines of our closing agreement. So when these people backed out, I was understandably upset on a variety of fronts. The biggest issue was not being free of the last big reminder of my former life. I have such differing emotions about my house. One one level, I wasn’t too sad about keeping it. It was the last place I saw my husband alive. And oddly, I am comforted when I am in it. However, when I am not near it day in and day out, the last thing I want to do is travel over there to do any kind of work in it. I don’t want to mow the lawn. I just don’t want to stand near it and remember all those memories – like the day that he and I, as homebuyers visited it with no expectations but once we stood within its walls, came to the realization that we had found our home. It is a GOOD house. A cozy house. A warm house. Each time I go there I sadly think why nobody else can see in it what we saw in it 5 years ago. When I left the house last month I said goodbye. I had no intention of going back. I was done with it. I was eager to start new. I wanted it and all that it meant to me to be a fond memory and not some symbol of all that I had lost. So, I didn’t want to return when the sale fell through. Consequently, the yard is now in disarray and miraculously, a new couple this week made an offer to buy it.After a day or so of negotiating, we have agreed on the sale price and conditions. As a measure of good faith, I will make sure the lawn gets mowed. I have hemmed and hawed for days about whether or not I would be the one to go over there to mow it. It means packing up my mower in Dad’s van and enduring the triple digit temps to get the place presentable. I’m a stubborn person. Despite not being free of the home this past month as I had hoped I would be, I am forcing the issue. I am not going back. So, I have opted to hire out the task of cleaning up the yard. $100 for 3 weeks of lawn mowing is a small price to pay if it means that I can keep on my path to Independence. Yeah, it’s that important to me.Some call it moving on. But moving on doesn’t sound right to me. I feel that moving on implies forgetting the past and I won’t do that. I can’t forget what was because what was shaped me into who I am now. I am asked sometimes how I am moving on and I tell folks that “I’m not moving on…I am just learning to live with it.”