Whirlwind Day!

Watch this campfire oil painting come to life in 2 minutes (time lapse)

Mellow music, marshmallows on a stick, and dancing flames – a fire can be welcoming and sentimental – childhood memories, family vacations, and warmth on a chilly evening… or, it can be devastating, ravishing, and life altering. Today’s was life altering, but in what looks to be a good way. Instead of a Dumpster fire, it was like a campfire on the last night of summer camp, when everyone sings sentimental songs and wishes they could be with their best buddies forever, but just around the corner summer will end, school will start back up, and the days toward adulthood will fly by.

A dear friend was thinking of me today and texted me. She has a spiritual gift of contacting me right when I’m going through a major life change, and is a calming force. I say “force” because her method of reassurance is helping me see a situation for what it truly is. This isn’t a passive kind of help, it’s the real kind that makes a difference.

Well, after some conversation about how things stand, a few things were meanwhile happening. One thing led to another and there was a flurry of calls, texts and e-mails between me, a realtor, and my husband. It all started when I got fed up with refreshing the rental listings screen yet again and finding nothing new. I wondered if the housing market in general was short on houses. So I checked homes for sale and found quite a few options. I wondered if we were too soon to give up on the possibility that we could buy a home sooner than planned.

I requested information about a house and was surprised to get a quick response. It turned out that this home had no garage, and my husband is a woodworker, so that’s a deal breaker for us. Of course if we truly had no where else to go, we’d do it, but we still have a short while to make something wonderful happen. It seems too early to give up and commit to a house that we don’t want. So, I explained this to the realtor who’d listed that house, and she started asking me what we were looking for.

I told her our situation, how disappointing the rental market is, and how we’d planned to buy next year (because my husband’s new job doesn’t start until June), but we have to vacate this rental by May 31. I said we can’t find a house to rent and we may need to see if we can buy a house earlier than we’d planned.

I’d imagined spending all of next year getting excited about the new house, saving money toward it, and organizing, packing, etc., then happily house hunting for as long as it took to find our perfect house. Because, every move we’ve ever made has been under a fast deadline with few choices and a fair amount of panic. I wanted a fun home buying experience. But, deep down I guess I knew that’s not how we roll.

We went the other direction- instead of less pressure, we’ll do MORE this time around. LOL, well, maybe that’s how the best of me comes out. I thrive under pressure. Even so, I’m happy that my friend got in touch with me today- she was holding me steady when all of this broke loose.

The realtor put my husband in touch with a local lender who got the ball rolling for us. It looks like we will be buying a house!!!! I’ll know more tomorrow, but my fingers are crossed and my prayers are lifted high! After years of this long journey and several detours, we may finally be HOME!!!!! I can hardly keep up with how fast my life is changing. Now it looks like the GOOD kind of change! Isn’t it wonderful how I knew that all along, and was completely calm and cool the whole time? HA HA HA, if you’ve been reading my blog you know better. 🙂

Still, there’s a long way to go from “working toward financing” and being settled into our new home. We haven’t even started looking at houses yet. So, easy now. I’ll see what tomorrow brings (but it’s okay to shout out a WOOT!). 😀 Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Let’s bring ’em on home, keep praying!

I hope all of you are doing well. If you’re also dealing with unexpected changes, stay strong! God bless and keep you. May His face shine upon you and give you peace.


October!

Watch this oil painting “Pumpkins and Mums” come alive in 2 minutes (time lapse)

This is a good one to start October with. Imagine that we’re sitting at that cafe table enjoying warm conversation, a hot mug of tea, coffee, cocoa, or cider, and enjoying the fresh autumn air. What would we talk about?

Perhaps you’d tell me about your day, and I’d tell you about mine. The theme of my day seemed to be about leaving things unfinished. I worked a painting session, but it’s too dark in the house now to finish it or get a good photo of it. It will have to keep until tomorrow. Also keeping until tomorrow is my assembly project: putting my new garden cart together that was delivered today (garden supplies are on sale, by the way, since it’s the end of the summer growing season).

My new cart is a raised planting container on wheels that I plan to grow romaine lettuce in. I got it ready to put together, but it looks a bit beyond my abilities so I’ve left the smaller pieces in an organized pile on the patio for now. Wouldn’t you know, it looks like it might storm tonight and the cardboard box containing the two heavy main pieces will likely get soaked. Oh well, it won’t matter much. I can remove the soggy cardboard later.

I’m taking this lifestyle change of growing my own food very seriously. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years. It pushes me to be outside more, which always lifts my spirits (well, except when I have an encounter with fire ants or some other incident happens). At this point, I expect that our autumn visit at the pumpkin patch has evolved into me telling you my stories of comedic misadventure, and we’ve shared some great full-belly laughs. Maybe you’ve chimed in with something that’s made me laugh until I cried. I hope so!

Imaginary visits with people we’ve never met, but would like to think of as friends who “see” each other every day by dropping by our blog, video, or art space on the Internet, are pleasant to think about. When I paint inviting spaces with empty chairs, I feel wistful to be inside the painting, but not alone. I imagine being with a friend, maybe someone like you!