Old House "Fix~math"

So there we were, this tired old house. Tired me. Her paint peeling, my nerves and sense of 'how life would be' unraveled.

We clicked. We bonded. She seemed resigned. I was resigned (tho to what I didn't know ~ I was simply out of desire to battle my current much loved homes circumstances). It seemed as tho this old house and I had  somehow been destined to help each other out of parallel hard times. If a house and a human can share a feeling at that moment of meeting we did.

An old rundown house is a frightening, fascinating, worrysome, wonderful, horrible very good thing.....

And old rundown house requires 'fix~math' - to fix anything at all simple double the calculated cost and tripple the time expected to complete the repair, lol.  Divide it all by the anxiety involved and multiply it by the pride you feel with each inch of progress you achive together as you gain each  final outcome. Progess made each season, each year. 

Magic and menace, joy and despair, frustration and jubulation. That is the thread that runs thru the tapestry of reweaving an old house. The same thread that runs thru a life-plan that has to be ripped out and restarted.

Clapboard by clapboard, caulk to paint, hope to dream.  She and I have grown to be friends over the years. Sometimes she still pisses me off but far more often she's the best kind of friend ~ always there, giving me whatever it is I need.  I love her. In a different way than I love my first home, the home my husband and I built from the ground up. And I think old house has grown fond of me.
I'll have to ask her......

Step by step she & I undertook the journey of finding our way
SEEKING CENTER again ~ together