So here’s something I really wasn’t prepared to go through.
I’ve moved all my life from birth until I bought my home. House to house. Place to place. Never establishing roots. A rather gypsy-ish lifestyle controlled by the government. The homes provided by Uncle Sam had bare furnishings as I recall. 
Functional but not much to look at. Naturally I had dreams and ideas of how I wanted my home to look. I bought my home as a single mother with two small children. (They were just beginning school! I have pictures! I cannot believe how young they were! Where does the time go?!…. Time does pass though leaving memories in its wake. Anyway, back to the home of my dreams….)
I remember not long after we moved in, my son was exploring outside as children will do. I had only worked on the inside by then…repainting the walls over the Christmas break while they were at their father’s house. It was one of those warm winters where he could play outside barefoot. And ever since he could walk and get out a door (which was one year old as I learned the hard way…), he enjoyed being outside. Oh my! He came flying around the side of the house by my bedroom. And screamed, if memory serves me well. He had run into cacti the previous owners had planted. That was unexpected! Needless to say, I spent the rest of the winter and spring seasons ensuring I had every little piece of cactus out of the ground!
That same summer we had a birthday party for him. It wasn’t any big sort of party. I didn’t have a lot of money as a single mother. But there were balloons, cake, ice cream, and a few friends. And children being children, they played outside while we mothers visited. It seemed successful, if low key, and I went to bed that night feeling fairly well pleased with how it went. But not long after, I began smelling something peculiar. Having been raised that it’s not nice to call people after 9:00pm -and- not really knowing what to do, I called a dear friend in New Jersey who was up late at night usually working on projects for his parents anyway. He told me what he thought the problem was and I followed his instructions. I don’t remember now what they were but I trusted him as he was a handy Jack-of-all-trades. I was relieved and went to sleep still satisfied with my day. Until about 3:00am. I got up, awakened by the odor, MUCH stronger now, and stepped into a soaked carpet! Long story short, insurance company was called followed by the fire department…followed by the local hazmat team. Apparently the kerosene tank in the back yard was not as empty as the previous owners thought and neither was the line capped that ran between my son’s and my bedrooms! It seems the boys had managed to turn the valve releasing the kerosene in through the walls. I was a bit unprepared to spend the next week with hazmat cleaning out the spill.
Home ownership is not for the faint of heart but I was determined to have my children grow up where they had the opportunity to make lifelong friends. Something I didn’t have but nor do I regret. It’s just a different lifestyle. I just wasn’t prepared for how different.
In the process of... 