Note: Due to the flooding you’re about to read about, we weren’t able to record our Monday podcast. It’ll come tomorrow, and we thank you for your patience.
To be perfectly transparent, this post was written weeks ago, before quarantine started, and I turned it into a draft to post after quarantine was over, because it felt inappropriate for the time. But yesterday, something shitty happened.
I was fast asleep, dreaming the weirdest dream. (Side note, is it just me or are dreams just super weird these days? Everyone I know has been having crazy dreams. This particular one featured me, Dan and Buckles on vacation in Costa Rica, and a volcano exploded and little bubbles of lava were, well, bubbling up underground and Buckles wouldn’t come back to me so he was getting lava all over his paws and for whatever reason, he wasn’t immediately hurt by the lava but he just wouldn’t listen and it was getting more and more dangerous the longer I stayed out calling for him… anyway, I digress). I was fast asleep and it was about 8 o’clock in the morning. Normally, we are up way earlier but this past week was rough for us and we’d really wanted to have a lazy morning in bed, maybe read, and ease into an easy Sunday.
“Shit!” Dan yelled from the other end of our condo.
I bolted up, immediately fearing the worst, that Buckles was hurt. “What?!” I yelled back.
Between a number of expletives, Dan let me know that there was water pouring from the ceiling in our guest room. The one we had renovated last year. The one that we then turned into a merchandise room that housed over 900 cardboard boxes, hundreds of Namaslay® branded tank tops, sweatshirts, joggers, and tees, and hundreds of Mantra Box® items.
I flew out of bed, and my heart sank. The ceiling looked like it was about to cave in. The floor was soaked, the back wall was sticky with wetness. Dan flew into action and ran upstairs to the neighbors above us. The funny thing is (let me rephrase: the “funny” thing is) not even a year ago, the upstairs unit’s water heater burst and we had to redo our guest bathroom because of the damage it had caused. It didn’t seem real that it was happening again.
While he tried to figure out what was going on upstairs, I got to work taking pictures and video for insurance. I was relieved to see that not all of the Mantra Boxes® were destroyed, and while some of the branded merchandise was wet, not all of it was damaged. I quickly got to work moving everything into the dining room and sorted through what we could keep and what was damaged. Then, I updated the back end of our website to reflect the newly updated inventory. I went back into that area of the condo and realized it wasn’t even the guest room, but also the bathroom and adjacent closet
Dan returned saying it wasn’t the floor above us like last time, it was the condo two floors up. For months we’ve been saying we want to move, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
We spent yesterday cleaning out the entire room, which inspired us to keep the purging process going through the entire house. We got rid of so much stuff we no longer use, and then sat down and had an honest conversation about what we want. The time was come, we need to resume the house hunt.
Below is the original blog post I’d written, before quarantine started.
When we first started talking about buying a house, Dan created this whole three year plan, at which point his student loans would be paid off and he would have had a whole year to put x amount into savings. We were good with that plan, and proceeded to go on vacation.
As has been well documented, switching up my morning routine has been a game-changer. Seriously, my life has changed since getting up earlier, stretching, and easing into the day. Despite what you might’ve thought, we continued the early morning wake up and stretch routine even on vacation, and the whole experience was complemented by being waterfront, and having the most beautiful view first thing in the morning.
Fast forward to the morning after we got home. It was our first day back to our respective jobs and we were just not feeling it. Not so much the work aspect, but first thing in the morning, we found ourselves listening to our neighbors argue and our view was a tarp over an empty unit’s balcony. He said to me, “I don’t think I can do this much longer.” He went on to explain that starting his morning with a good view calmed him down and set the tone for the day.
I urged him to consider making an appointment so we could just look at one house. I figured with the law of attraction in our favor, if we just started seeing some places, got the inspiration going, it might shift our mindset into what was coming according to the three year plan. So we made an appointment to go see a house.
It was fun! I mean, it wasn’t the house for us for a few reasons, but it was really exciting! All of the sudden we thought, ‘Maybe our plan can change.’ We did some math, and it seems like we’ll be able to nix the three year plan and get a house this year if the right one comes along.
So now that it’s on the horizon, we’re looking everyday on Zillow, trying to find the right one for us. Here’s what we are hoping for:
View: I never in a million years thought a damn view would be something that’s important to me, but here we are. We don’t really care what the view is - could be a lake, the woods, a yard - we’re just hoping to escape looking directly into our neighbor’s place like we are now.
Yard: I’d like a yard for the dog, and to start a little garden.
Natural Light: We are hoping for a home flooded with natural light that feels airy
Space: We don’t need or want a really big house, but we are hoping to have a small home gym/meditation area, an office, and a guest room.
So then COVID-19 happened, and that plan was filed away for the future. Until this flooding problem happened over the weekend. And now we are ready to power up our phones and start looking on Zillow, and hopefully if things start re-opening soon, we can start going to look at places in person. My mom always talks about trying to find the silver lining in tough times, and in this particular instance with the flooding, I’m grateful for the push to go through all our belongings to weed out unnecessary stuff, and I’m grateful that it has reignited the hope we had that we’d find the right first home for us.