Back so soon?

I can't believe it's been over three years since last I posted to this blog. Funny how time slips away, ain't it?

Well, that's pretty much the way things go. I guess I stopped posting when my life took a turn yet again. It's always doing that--turning, that is. I feel dizzy from the spinning sometimes.

Since last I came, my dog has died, I've moved into an apartment instead of a house, I've been sick, and sicker, and better, I've been to France, I've had two novels published and am working on a fourth, lost a couple of good friends, and gained a couple more. My sons have both gotten divorced, and one has moved back in with me. This time it's okay.

Yep--my life is, as it is said in the Chinese Curse business, "interesting." As usual. I ought to be used to it by now, and I suppose I actually am. Miracles are a way of life.

Let me tell you about this latest set of miracles--the ones that got me to my present residence.
I owned a house last time I posted on this blog. A nice little house. A house on a nice little lot. I bought that house in 2000, the Millenium year, with a sizable down payment and a good mortgage, and set about making it the place that would net me a good profit in about five years or so. The market in my area was great--like everyone's market (read: inflated.) But who could have predicted the housing collapse? No one I spoke to, that's for damned sure. My town was a college town. Rents and payments were always going to be higher than everywhere else, because housing would always be at a premium. Our taxes were high. Our services were good. Our houses were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars more than other people's houses in "normal" cities. Yeah.

I'll spare you a lot of the evil details and give you the skeleton. Five years passed, I wasn't ready to sell yet. Too many things had happened: serious illnesses and surgery. Loss of income. Inertia. Children problems. And I had the opportunity to travel; opportunities that come along only once in a life and can't be passed up. So debt climbed, the house stayed and so did I. I refinanced instead. Twice. I knew I was carrying a load of debt, but I thought as long as I can dump the house on the market I'll be okay--the debt wasn't outrageous, not really.

Then, eight years into my ownership, on a crisp, October day, the hammer dropped.

I turned on the furnace.

And--------nothing.

The verdict: broken. The solution: new furnace. That was going to cost me more than I could afford. My dreams of putting my house on the market in the spring were beginning to evaporate faster than a summer rain on a hot cement sidewalk. Instead of buying the entire heating system my HVAC guy recommended, I opted for the quickie fix--much much cheaper, but much less reliable--and decided to go ahead and put the house up for sale now. Let the new owners deal with it. I'd take the loss.

But I was not prepared for the amount of loss I was actually going to be hit with. After an appraisal, I discovered that the house I'd mortgaged for $xxx,xxx was only really worth $xx,xxx. That was a beeeeeeeeg hammer.

My house was appraised at over $50K LESS than it was mortgaged for, and there was absolutely NO hope of fixing that. Furnace notwithstanding. Even with all the updates I could afford (hardly any) it would never--EVER--be worth what the mortgage company had loaned me. The market had shifted and sand was running out of the bottom of the hourglass faster with each passing day.

Desperate, I went to a lawyer. He charged me lots of money to tell me the simple truth: that I had no choice. It was stay there and struggle and go further and further into debt with no way to climb out, or wipe the slate.

I grabbed that eraser, and started wiping.

It's a year and a half later as I write this now. I have no more debt. I have no more credit, either--but I have no debt. I live within my means on my paychecks, and I am living in the first of a series of miracles that brought me back to where I needed to be.

And, it was during those dark and uncertain days at the beginning of the foreclosure/bankruptcy proceedings that I finally gave up trying to engineer things and threw myself on the mercy of the Universe andcalled out to the Cosmos: "Okay--you got me. Now take care of me." I don't know what I thought might happen, but whatever it was, it didn't. Instead, the simple act of NOT trying brought me to a place where I found everything I've ever wanted, and more. The Taoists always told me that's how it worked.

I lost my house: I found a better place to live. One that not only was much larger, much nicer, with straighter walls and a better heating/cooling system, but also a fireplace, a terrace, a lovely gothic porch, four huge bedrooms, a full basement, carpeting, a study with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases, wonderful light, an attached garage/shed and a dishwasher--none of which I had in the house I owned. This place is beyond nice--it's incredible. It's also the rectory of a church. And this church happens to be the church I was baptized in when I was six years old.
If that's not weird enough for you, I don't know why. I found this place by attending a swimming class--water aerobics--at a local gym. Our teacher was a lovely woman, a teeny bit older than me, very lively and witty, and extremely attractive. We hit it off because she was also extremely personable. And in the course of talking about our lives, I mentioned that I was going to be looking for an apartment soon. She told me she knew of one--but I probably wouldn't be interested because it was in a church. That intrigued me (but I actually thought she was probably right.) Yet, the opportunity loomed--and so indeed I said I would look at it. Especially when she told me the price. (less than half of what my mortgage payments were!) It was when I learned the name of the church that I began to feel as if there was another hand in this process--it was the church my mother had chosen for us when I was six--and where I was baptized lo, these many decades ago!

It was literally coming home. The church, when I visited, had not changed one iota. The rectory was amazing--and they let me keep my cats. Of course I signed the lease.

I could hear the Universe giggling behind her hand, as she watched from above--and I swear to you--really--the day I moved in, She said in a quiet, impishly delighted little voice: "Well, hello there--back so soon?"