Deanne Schildroth dot com

Ah, but I started this blog with the best of intentions. Blog every day! Well, once a week! Okay, maybe once a month?

And here we are in December 2024.

The thing is, it’s not my fault! No really, hear me out.

Shortly after I made that last post, I got an inkling that maybe I wanted to buy a house. I looked at my finances and made an appointment with my mortgage specialist at my credit union.

In the meantime, I obsessed over houses on a realty app. I had an idea that every house I looked at, I would write a short story about. I’d collect them all together in a book of short stories and somehow, publish it.

No, wait! I’d include the short stories but also tell the story of a single woman in the 2020s, when everything is criminally expensive, who buys a house all by herself.

Then my appointment at the credit union came up and everything moved fast. Possibly too fast, looking back on it. Not in a bad way, but for a person who has to overthink everything and sit with every decision and suffers from decision fatigue quite easily, it felt very fast.

I met with my mortgage specialist in February just to see if I could even afford it. I got preapproved for the budget I set for myself and called the realtor that had been suggested to me.

No, it’s 2024, I texted that realtor.

I texted her on March 1.

There was one house we looked at that I was OB-sessed with. I needed that house. It was in my budget, in the neighbourhood I wanted, with many design details I liked. We needed to look at it.

Well, we got there and it was not what the listing made it out to be. It would have needed a LOT of work and money. More than I, a first time home buyer with not a lot of handy-person skills, wanted to spend.

We looked a few others, but they weren’t right. Then, a little house on a quiet crescent in my first-choice neighbourhood came up. My realtor said we might as well go look since we’re already out and about.

It was cheap. As in, inexpensive.

Maybe it was haunted? Maybe a murder had occurred? Why the hell was it so cheap? In this economy??

After looking for about 5 minutes, I just started crying. I literally had a gut feeling and I just knew. I made an offer on March 7, and closed on March 15. I got the keys March 21!

See? Fast!

Then came renos and contractors and plumbers and DIY jobs and…

So much happened so fast, while still working a full time job and taking dance classes and other regular-life stuff, that some things just fell off. I went to the dentist for my semi-annual checkup in September and the hygienist commented on how I have a bit more plaque than usual. I told her about my house adventure and how “I just haven’t kept up with self care, I’ve been so busy”.

And it’s true. I used to go for a walk every day after work, but that just didn’t happen for the majority of the year. I wasn’t drinking as much water or flossing my teeth as often or going to bed early. Not even because every waking moment has been filled with renos. I got so burned out from going to hard in the spring, that I just wanted to stare off into the middle distance for a while.

There are still walls that need painting, floors that need refinishing, pictures to be hung. That’ll come. But I’m ready to get back to the things that make me, me.

I found an interesting list of writing prompts I want to try out (sometimes lists like that are so dull! But this one has promise). I’d like to post some writing from that.

And the book about the woman who buys a house all on her own, and the little stories of all the houses she looked at along the way? Maybe it’s in there somewhere too.