The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

There have been lots of goings on at the Harrell home. In the last 24 hours we have taken that incredible List and all the goals and plans we constructed over a year- and figuratively burned them to the ground and danced in the ashes. This is a good thing.

Valli got back from her 6 month stay in Alaska and immediately went to work cleaning, repairing and improving our home. We wanted to sell it around the new year and get into a larger better home with a big yard and room to do all the great stuff we’ve been dreaming of since we got married. We had injected a lot of stress into her life with so many things going on at once. I’ve been doing what I can to help; calling our bank and getting pre-approved for a loan, searching for real estate online, but Valli was doing almost all the work. And with things moving forward so quickly, I really got caught up in buying a new home. We even narrowed down our choices to one place that we both really liked.

Then we got to the task of figuring out how to pay for it all. Valli has retired from the engineering realm for a while. We haven’t finished remodeling our current house yet. We might not be able to even sell our place once it once it’s ready. The home we were thinking of buying will be wonderful (and finished) and huge, but will not leave much room in our budget for unexpected surprises. And as luck would have it- we received an unexpected surprise three days ago.

The transmission on our 1982 Benz 300D tanked. No one in 100 miles wants to touch it, so we will have to buy a new (read= rebuilt. Like we could really find a new one) tranny. Luckily a guy in town bought one a while ago from a company in Arizona. So we won’t have to find one ourselves. We are prepared to deal with things like this. But once we jump into a new house we won’t be. That experience really made me think about some things that Valli has been trying to tell for the last week. Mainly- are we sure we are doing the right thing? Once I really thought about it, the answer was a clear and resounding “NO!”

Enter the paradigm shift. We are still going to get the goals we want. But we decided that the plans we had made was the wrong way for us to get there. So, instead of buying a house with a big yard, we are keeping our house and just buying a yard. You read right. Once the house is finished we are going to start looking at land for sale. No one wants to develop now with the current state of things so it’s just sitting there, depreciating. That will be our big yard for keeping bees, raising pigs, planting a big garden, making bonfires, playing paintball, shooting things, whatever.

Instead of paying of the last of our debt with the money we’d make from selling our home, we are using the down-payment we’ve saved for to do that. Instead of buying a house with a big basement and storage space, we are going to excavate under our own house. Eventually.

And instead of buying a motorcycle we are buying a transmission. It was my idea. Valli wouldn’t ever ask me to give up a motorcycle after all the pathetic behavior and drooling and waiting. But it’s for the best. Since we are not moving 20 miles further from the post, we can easily afford me driving my big awesome truck to and from work until I figure that bike situation. Since we won’t be stretched to the breaking point, we will have plenty of dough at the end of the month for savings, dating, heaven willing my motorcycle fund, and anything else that breaks on the old car.