A House for Life

We are on our way to somewhere. We've done corporate far too long, and now it's time to do drifter, rambler, rover. But how? How to cut the ties but not beggar our future? Dive into the mosh pit but keep the blood loss to a minimum?

Before we roam farther than our corporate tethers allow and begin our Shore Dive Kinda Life, we must tie up loose ends. Along the way I've assembled some helpful websites and books and stuff for those who are thinking dreaming along the same lines.

I try to keep my posts on point, because as much as I’d like to laugh with you about the boardwalk pet parade in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware this weekend,

or get your opinion on these shoes I recently bought,

there’s nothing worse than a blogger who lures you in with a creative proposition, only to intrude on you later with football fancrazy opinions or "I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long!" fauxpologies.

I admit, I did take that granita detour -- all of us bloggers wander a little -- but at least I tried to pass it off as something Shore Dive Life-ish.

The hard part about sticking with my theme isn’t that there’s not enough to say—it’s that almost everything we do is somehow linked to creating our next life (and by next life I don’t mean the next life, for any new readers just joining— although I suppose my wine consumption and tendency to run with scissors are probably pushing me in that general direction…).

This weekend we’re staying at our rental house in Rehoboth. On the face of it, this has nothing to do with a Shore Dive Kinda Life. Except that we are trying to sell this house to finance what comes next. And we just reduced the price again – to $990K. Crazy price for a house, I know. Bought back in 2004...the good old days of real estate lunacy. And the new price is $250,000 less than when we started this sad odyssey more than two years ago. At this point, we might have enough for a Starbucks after we pay back the bank.

So, I’m learning about power washers and leaf blowers, rose bush pruning and house painting (and not the easy inside kind). Yesterday, our neighbor weighed in with a few ideas. What he actually said was, “I can say this because I’m gay, but basically you need to gay it up a little.” We said, “We’ve been trying to gay it up!”

He recommended a carpenter in town. The carpenter’s name is John. John stopped by today to talk to Rick. (That’s one of the things I adore about Rehoboth – you never actually make an appointment with the plumber, the carpet cleaner, the pool guy. They just come by. Even on a Sunday.)

So Rick (husband) tells John (carpenter) that our neighbor suggested some spruced-up framing for the big plate glass windows out front. The neighbor says that would really help the windows look less cheap and cause the house to “pop.”

John is a 50-ish guy with a torn t-shirt and disheveled hair. Rick is a 50-ish guy with a scruffy beard and disheveled hair. (He’s a hard sleeper on the weekend.) They stand side by side on the tiny front yard, look at the windows, scratch their disheveled heads and say, “Uh, I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

We're never getting out of here.