I have seen something else under the sun:
–Ecclesiastes 9:11
The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
If you’ve ever flown on a plane you may have had the interesting experience of the jet needing to remain a little longer than usual in some holding pattern either on the runway for takeoff or in the air, circling around a general vicinity until it is cleared for landing.
Tonight, as I was driving home from a Christmas Party caricature gig in someone’s home that is about 25 minutes from me, I was ruminating during the last 11-15 minutes of my drive and eventually thought about holding patterns and happenstances…
I have lived in this rural area in Central PA over four years now and I still don’t have an extensive sense of the labyrinth of surrounding back roads, small communities and farming lands, small towns and small businesses.
I am GPS reliant and I think there is a lot of truth to something I read once that woman tend to navigate “close to the ground” and through landmarks, and men seem to have more of an aerial view–a GPS and compass is more likely wired into their brains…
I often recognize landmarks and think, “Oh, I’ve been here before…”
I will tend to remember beautiful stone houses like one I passed tonight with many Christmas lights on it…or certain types of pastures or gardens along the road…or unique church buildings and little country stores or diners.
I will recognize road numbers and think, I’ve been on this road number before, yet I don’t always have a good sense of where that road is heading whether north, south, east or west or how I might be on that road number in an area that I don’t associate it with…and wonder how in the world does that number show up here, too.
If had the leisure time to blow up and print a very huge aerial map of all the roads within even a 30 minutes radius of me (back roads) and then start drawing in or color coding things I’ve seen that interest me so I would begin to get a better sense of everything that surrounds me, I would do that!
Tonight on my way back after dark, I noticed off to my right a sweet little diner lit up, that looked welcoming and like some place I might stop in when running errands (I never, or rarely, simply decide to go out and eat somewhere) if it was convenient to where I shop in terms of big centers/stores.
The name of the diner was called “Ray of Sunshine Diner.” As I passed it, I glanced at my GPS and I was only eleven minutes from my house. That’s actually about the same–even slightly less–than one of my go-to eat out places…Jim and Neena’s Pizza in East Berlin.
It got me thinking and ruminating about places…and where I am…and how I got here.
When I left Alabama in January of 2020, I was in a holding pattern.
I went back to a temporary place in Delaware, a little upstairs area above a business. It had a bathroom/shower and a very tiny breakroom kitchen with a frig but no stove. These friends were renting to me month to month, and I had four cats with me and the two rooms were filled with many boxes of my belongings, and I only unpacked my computer, TV and matte cutter and had one table I could do work on.
It was crowded and never meant to be my final destination.
My divorce settlement said I would receive my first alimony payment on the day I vacated the previous marital property. I was permitted to stay at that property after the divorce was final December 19, 2019 for up to 60 days past the receipt of a 401K disbursement that was part of my rehabilitative settlement to get me back north.
When I came back north, I did not expect a pandemic.
What I expected was that I would come to the temporary place and had been told it would take 30-60 days from the time of the divorce to receive the part of the agreement that was a lump sum. From these funds, I needed to pay off divorce-related debts, and any other debts, and then once I found a property in PA, I would need some of the funds for a down payment.
I did expect that I would need to pay tax penalties to withdraw transferred funds at age 57, but, that was what the situation required.
What I did not expect was toward the end of January 2020, learning that if my older son came on the marital property to help me move, that he would be arrested.
This required another two hundred dollars or so to resolve. It was a weekend and I was upset and texted my lawyer. By Monday, the “odd” matter was resolved by the other lawyer saying that my son could come on the property but could not bring his dog, because the dog was aggressive.
(Above) My all-time favorite picture of my son’s dog, Wiley! I’m really not a dog person, but I have warmed up to dogs more ever since my son got this guy…I was trying to get Zach to take a photo of me here a couple years back with Wiley, and he wasn’t having it.
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This was so puzzling to me, since there were certainly photos of my son’s dog interacting with me and with my former husband, who seemed fond of Wiley and more of a dog person that I was. I didn’t quite get what that was all about or why this would suddenly be put upon me by the property’s new owner, but what I did was speed up my move. I quickly arranged and paid to fly my son down to Huntsville, and the plan was to take one more larger UHaul back north.
I was expecting to drive my 2005 Town and Country back north, with the four cats in the vehicle and my grandmother Orpha’s china carefully packed. I was hoping that everything would fit into that one UHaul. I had previously taken another load into storage earlier that month, driving north and storing stuff at a friend’s in upper Virginia. When I had been up, I had looked at some properties in PA with my realtor, to get a sense of things.
At the time, my oldest son was living in Lancaster, and doing regular work on a farm in Wrightsville, PA.
I could have gone anywhere, I suppose.
Last year a long-term close friend in Delaware asked if I regretted not coming back to Delaware. I said I did not.
While it would be nice to be geographically close to people I’ve known so long, there was no one I felt close enough to that would prompt me to purchase a home in that area to be accessible to them.
The world of Newark I left in 2012 no longer existed.
My sons did not live in that state and likely never would again.
I had no family in that state.
My former church community was wonderful, but not enough of an anchor to make Newark, Delaware my destination for my “return flight.”
As I continued my drive home tonight on windy back roads, passing nice farms and a variety of houses with nice Christmas lights, I remembered my notebook with notes about several other properties/addresses I had considered online from afar or even looked at. I’ve been intending to do a blog piece about the idea of “happenstance” and imagining what alternate life I might now be living had I chosen a different place.
I thought, “Maybe tonight I will just do that blog piece.” At the end here, I will put in some of these homes, and type the few notes I made about each, and grab a photo off of Realtor-dot-com. I just think it would be interesting, and then, I can dispose of the notes because I can’t stand excess paper that has served its purpose. Some things are keepers, others not. What better way to process those notes than to put them into this piece!
As for Newark, Delaware…every time I go there I’m always so happy to get on the road and head home to Central PA. I would have never even considered not living there, before the late fall of 2011. But, I left it all. And then, so much had changed I could literally never go back.
When I’m in Newark and northern Delaware, I feel like I still know almost every blade of grass at some stop sign, every turn of a corner and landmark. It is just so very familiar. But of course I do not literally know every blade of grass or garden or store or anything…this is simply a “psychological” phenomenon.
Our minds and memories are so very complicated…a vast web and network of roads and pathways that aren’t easily mapped…depending on the time of day I might be coming up Kirkwood Highway, the weather or the time of year…or like sitting at the light by Newark Library…I never know what kind of memory might waft through my mind.
Once, I was in Newark in May, and I pulled into the eye doctor’s office for an exam and as I got out of the car and heard the traffic off Main Street, there was something about the smell in the air that made me remember May of 1989 when my son Zach was born…and I thought about how we took him strawberry picking when he was only one week old and he slept in a little, shaded carrier.
When I first came back to Newark in early 2020, I had the strange experience of driving around on errands and somehow “feeling” as though my internal compass was telling me I was just a few blocks from St. John’s…or the intersection just before the bridge in Decatur. It was very bizarre and definitely a kind of emotional/psychological disorientation.
I mean, I absolutely knew where I was! But when we drive (or at least when I do!) we sometimes free associate and enter a kind of “La la land…” I think part of what prompted these feelings was that “errand running” for me tends to be a grouping of places and just like in Alabama, I would set out for several places in a general vicinity and certain areas gave me my bearings.
OK, I don’t seem to be explaining this too well because maybe it’s inexplicable…maybe it was like “Deja vu”…there I was again after 8 years in the deep south, trekking some of the same groupings of errands I would do when I lived in Newark–or when I lived in Alabama–yet I was in between two worlds…
Yes…that is it.
I was in some strange holding pattern.
I was neither grounded in Delaware nor grounded in Alabama…and the emotional/intellectual/spiritual/psychological disorientation was at play…so I had the strange emotional experience of making a right turn on to Main Street Newark and “feeling” like if I drove a ways up and made a left onto South College Avenue I might “emotionally” be turning off Highway 20, or that street that ran past the Mellow Mushroom (is that Moulton Street?) and then I’d be up by the bridge where there was a Waffle House in Decatur…
When my son and I were loading UHauls and I was paying a few people I knew to help…and paying to have garbage removed from the property, and was painting over my business sign and leaving everything in as best condition as possible (while feeling like I needed to flee quickly and get back north), at some point we realized we were going to need a second UHaul.
And I was not expecting or otherwise open to going back north and then coming down to that property again.
This threw a monkey wrench into things…and I made a very quick decision to sell my 2005 Chrysler Town and Country to someone for $600. I did not have time to get the best price. And though I had spent over $1500 in repairs on that vehicle just months before during summer 2019–a van I bought brand new and was fully paid off, a “devil vehicle I KNEW ha ha” as opposed to another “devil vehicle that would become mine because someone else had issues with it ha ha”–I figured I just needed to keep on “cutting my losses.”
(Above) As the new owner of my 2005 Town and Country came, I wanted to get some last photos of it and we took this fun picture of me pointing to the dent Zach made in it when he was about 19 years old (he was 30 in this photo). Zach had a little Honda then, and he accidentally back into the van in our driveway. I never bothered getting the dent fixed!
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My son drove the biggest UHaul, and I drove one that was bigger than the first UHaul I had rented earlier that January.
As I pulled out that driveway for the last time, Crouble was in a cage on the front seat and he was going nuts! I had Crouble and Sammy, and my son had Marley and Mr. Lost, in cages. It was raining, and by the time I reached the bridge out of Decatur toward Huntsville, Crouble had pooped himself!
It was going to be a long trip north.
But, I had been handed a hand-written check for the first month alimony, and I had the $600 and some other funds. I think we drove about 5 hours north and had dinner and stayed at a motel. The next day we got to Delaware in torrential rains.
I was already sick, I had some kind of bad stomach/respiratory virus that came on days after I had been north earlier that January. My son’s former girlfriend had a high fever and a very severe cough…had been incapacitated on the sofa and warned me maybe I might not want to come there but I wasn’t worried. Three days after I got back to Alabama I had the same thing and it was quite bad.
I wondered if I had a “flu”–I have never had a bad “flu” and thought maybe this is what it was like. I was incapacitated for days and my neighbor and a couple friends down there helped me. I could barely talk but several days later I was making UHaul arrangements.
My cough lingered for weeks and I still think I may have had covid. Of course people say it wasn’t possible. I don’t believe it. In fact, up here I met many people who had all those same symptoms in early January 2020 and later.
By the time Zach and I got to Delaware I was still hacking deeply and we were having to unload things in rainy conditions. I ended up keeping the UHaul a bit longer. A bunch of outdoor items/tools/business tables and such got stored in a friend’s barn in Delaware City, the UHaul was stuck in the mud in their yard. It was a mess.
Eventually, all my stuff got distributed into various storage, and the stuff I needed most accessible (boxes of kitchen stuff or whatever) stayed where I was staying. I bought a hot plate with two burners to cook on, and there was no oven to bake.
But that was fine, because I did not expect to be there longer than 2-3 months.
I did not expect that at the end of February, at the point I should have received the 401K disbursement, (I could have legally received that and STILL remained in the Alabama house another 60 days, found a home in PA and moved directly there; but I was so grateful for all the happenstance that expedited my exit from that state…because no one expected a full shutdown of much of the United States, or people confined to their homes…and that would have surely been a disaster to be confined in a previously owned marital home with my recently legalized “ex-spouse” and having to still live together and be confined to that house).
As I write this I think…it was annoying and not entirely unexpected (in a “sense” just not the specifics) but possibly God knew what He was permitting in the happenstance of anyone becoming afraid of my son’s dog! Some things are just so peculiar! And these very things that seem so pointless, in retrospect, sometimes turn out to be a kind of God-send.
What I also did not expect, was to learn at the end of that February 2020 that the other party’s lawyer sent the 401K paperwork to the wrong address. I don’t know how that happenstance happened…nor how over two full months could have gone by before anyone knew this…and once the error was found after I was inquiring…it was also discovered that there were name and other errors on the documents.
Talk about happenstance.
I literally had looked at a property in York Springs and told my realtor I wanted to make an offer. We were discussing the offer, but I could not make an offer on anything until I got the funds. And that prompted my inquiry…I was expecting any day pretty much, that situation would be complete. 30-60 days from end of December.
I clearly remember that weekend I looked at that place.
A close friend I had homeschooled with and whose son was close friends with my sons–Cheryl Sandstrom–had been chit chatting with me about finding properties. She knew some about good deals and had “flipped” a house or two before by putting in grit work.
Cheryl worked for H&R Block and February was a swamped time. Actually, according to the Messenger chat, this was 3/7/20, 8:58 AM that I responded back to her message. Yep, March 7 was a Saturday and Cheryl and I had plans to go out to dinner that coming Tuesday night.
That Saturday morning, my good friend Cheryl had sent me the link to some big farmhouse somewhere in West Virginia–and amazing look place and really dirt cheap. The attachment is now gone but I think it was ridiculous like $50K or something! Cheryl sent it for me to check out and said, “Someone posted this. Thought of you. Don’t know if the listing is real.”
I chit chatted with her about it and then said I was on my way out that day to see a property in York area and sent her the link. This was the property I decided I would risk an offer.
When that Tuesday, March 10th came, Cheryl messaged she was swamped at work and we’d have to reschedule our dinner. Cheryl passed away suddenly in her sleep on March 13, 2020. I notice in the obituary she was 61, which is the age I now am.
It was quite a shock, and by then things were shut down with covid. It was sad to not be able to attend any funeral.
No, I did not expect things to totally shut down due to a global pandemic.
I expected that as soon as I was back north in the temporary place, I would possibly be getting caricature work and other routine things such as bridal bouquet preservation, especially as things moved into the spring.
I did not expect these in-person industries to come to a halt, some for well over a full 18 months or longer. To this day, I no longer get many bridal bouquets to preserve. A local florist said they don’t get many flower orders for weddings since the pandemic…people somehow decided they no longer needed real flowers, she said.
I also did not expect for Pennsylvania to shut down its entire real estate market, essentially. Many states still allowed realtors to show homes–it was considered an essential business. But Pennsylvania took exception and I know my realtor and others were quite upset. Many people who were in process of job relocations or who had sold or put an offer on a home were stuck…many in motels and otherwise. I can’t imagine the economic losses many people took in such situations.
It was quite a holding pattern for many.
What happened in Pennsylvania is that when interest rates seemed to go super low during the lockdowns, sales could still be made but sight-unseen. Investors and house flippers, according to my realtor, were scooping up properties without any home inspection, just based on having the funds to invest.
Meanwhile, I kept my eye on that property at 4753 E. Prospect Road, but since I didn’t have the 401K funds as expected, my hands were tied. I had seen the inside of the house, but had not got as far as putting an offer and having any inspection, of course. Eventually, I saw the property was taken off the market.
As it was, I did not receive the 401K funds until sometime in May 2020.
The documents had to be corrected, and the Morgan Courts had shut down during covid, to a limited operation. Also, the John Hancock people had shut down, too, and I was trying to figure some stuff out with people working from home. There was a ton of mess. When I had first come back north, I went to PNC and opened the type of account I had been told to open, in anticipation of a rollover of some sort after things went through process.
I lay all documents/instructions out to this branch manager in Delaware and explained as best I could the situation. He seemed to understand what type of account was needed. He told me he did not need some of the documents I handed him, and I understood that he had set this account up.
I did not expect than when I finally received a check for $97K (the amount determined as part of my rehabilitative settlement to “restore” me to my previous condition back north, along with other things, in exchange for signing over the marital property) that I would contact the branch manager, drive up there and hand him the check at the front door, while both of us wearing a mask, and then get a call the next day that this check could not be deposited.
(Note: At one point I heard through a grapevine that someone wrote online something to the effect that I had “walked away with $200K” and “taken everything from the house.” I did get 42 months of rehabilitative alimony. I suppose if one rounds some numbers up and doesn’t account for embedded losses from that figure, it is half-true. It certainly did not come all at once, nor without further strife of various kinds. As for taking everything out of the house, that is 99.9% true. I took everything I brought to Alabama out of that house, everything I owned prior to that marriage, which I was legally entitled to do and was in the agreement. So yes, the house was left empty expect for several items purchased together, and there were some things of course I took according to the agreement that were purchased together).
Whenever I think of the term “rehabilitative alimony” I can’t help but think of the very funny/absurd line in the song Alice’s Restaurant : “KID, Have you ‘rehabilitated yourself’ yet??!!!”
As I was looking through photo folder from my final move for another photo, I noticed this one…I remember now that I left my wedding veil with the rainbow netting hanging on the living room wall next to the mural I painted…actually it always hung there…but it is just so visually apropos as I notice this element.
Back to May 2020…
I did not expect to hear that, because I understood that I, a “peon” PNC customer, had trusted this bank manager to have dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s. It’s funny, because initially had had me come meet a 2nd time in early February with another guy at the bank to clarify what kind of “IRA” or whatever I should set up.
When they found out I would need to make withdraws of the funds, I got the sense they may not have been as attentive to details on my behalf. It turns out that he did NOT set up the account properly and HAD needed some of those documents I lay on his desk initially that he said he did NOT need!
(You can’t make this stuff up, ha ha!)
Thus began me being on the phone with PNC Pittsburgh multiple times, trying to expedite a confusing process with all kinds of legal requirements/waiting periods, etc (oh and people were working from home, too!) to get the situation straightened out. It seemed to be a situation with PNC where no one knew what the other was supposed to do or had done, nor, how to easily fix it.
I remember being so very stressed and eventually getting a woman manager at a different Delaware PNC on the phone to start at the beginning and explain the situation. It wasn’t like I could just go into the bank with the documents–the banks were shut down–and someone could read things over. I was in an unfortunate position of half-hysteria, ha ha, and trying to do all the jobs of the people at PNC that didn’t do their jobs???
Thankfully, she made calls to Pittsburgh PNC and figured what needed to be done. I remember driving up to this PNC and having to go through the drive through several times to do all the transactions/signatures/paperwork. I’d go sit in the parking lot awhile and then she’d tell me to drive back through the drive through and what to sign.
Thankfully, a good friend in Delaware had a spare 2007 Town and Country (that’s funny, right?) she loaned me to drive, and when I finally had the funds that May, I decided I should look for another van to buy. To replace the 2005 Town and Country my first husband and I bought together and that I kept/paid off after the divorce in December 2005. Yes, we knew we were about to mutually file for divorce, and he knew I needed a larger vehicle for youth group stuff and my business. We bought it together, agreed for me to make all payments which I did, and when it was paid off his name came off the title.
Yes…that was the van I drove to Alabama in the end of January 2012, with a mattress strapped to the roof and full of a couch, microwave and some basic furniture my “to be” husband might use in a rental house until I came there with all I owned, including a refrigerator since the rental house on Modaus Road had none.
I remember driving that first time south and coming into Chattanooga to stay at a friend’s overnight–a couple I had known from a church up north that had moved there. It was raining that night and the mattress on the roof of my van covered in plastic…they lived up on Signal Mountain and I was taking quite sharp turns/curves with surprise and caution. I’d never driven on those kinds of treacherous mountain inclines before…at least not in heavy rain with my van weighed down, worried about a mattress getting wet.
Anyway…there I was in Delaware in May 2020, ready to replace that 2005 van that I had sold for $600 in Alabama…during a pandemic. I found a van listed on Facebook—you guessed it! It was a 2007 Town and Country!!!
Pennsylvania was not allowing people to drive across the state line into Delaware, etc at that point, so my son couldn’t come with me to check it out. I suppose, to be fair, I should have asked some other local man. But it was all so scary!
It was my first excursion other than to needful stores (or to PNC bank) I had made to the outside world! I drove myself up to some lot in New Castle (I thought it was an individual seller at first)…they were foreign and he said they bought/sold nice vehicles from auctions.
I remember I had my mask on and was sanitizing my friend’s van after being inside their shop and touching anything…I was scared to use a bathroom there…what if I touched something and got “covid?”
I stood back from the guy…looked at the 2007 Town and Country from the outside…it had a little rust. I looked inside, it wasn’t through the floorboard and didn’t seem significant. I looked under the hood, lol…I was texting pictures to my son…we may have briefly talked about the rust I don’t recall.
I took it for a drive…oh it was so familiar…felt just like my 2005 T & C or my friend’s 2007…oh wait, no hers is a 2008! The lemon I bought was that blue 2007 Town & Country that day! It just felt so right. Looked clean inside…ran nice…felt just like…just like…oh never mind.
I bought the thing. I think it was about $2500 or so. Days late it was not running like it did when I drove it. I forget…it needed a wheel sensor (I knew that, but that was supposed to be cheap to fix…it wasn’t so much…). It needed something else fixed. I fixed it. Because it felt like I had cushion money then…
I wasn’t expecting…well… a lot of things!
One thing I wasn’t expecting was that the van wouldn’t pass PA inspection with the type of seemingly cosmetic rust. It required about an $800 “half fix” since it involved something under the door. Really fixing it would be a few thousand dollars I think…but hey…“I’m not so good with ciphering or maff”!
Eventually this van became known as the “Daisy Van” by a local mechanic here. It developed some bizarre wiring issue…and after two years and about $5-$6K total into it, I decided to replace it with a 2007 Honda Odyssey in 2022.
This story is getting involved! Ha ha. Any friends who read this are probably laughing…right…my Odyssey (I do like her) has given me a host of peculiar issues…major issues…lol….too. Bizarre issues…parasitic battery drains fixed with an $18 remote “turn off your battery” every night is the only solution! Alternators breaking requiring $700 towing bills back from upper Virginia, only to need replacing again this past summer (yes…that alternator was under warranty…2nd alternator only cost me the labor and three towing fiascos since no one could totally decide if it was the battery or the alternator!)
I didn’t expect all that!
You know…it’s like Monty Python!
“No one expects the Spanish inquisition!!” ha ha.
Hmmm…a lot of ruminations over holding patterns and happenstance as I keep typing and writing here!
Of course there is more I didn’t expect…there is always more!!
I think of other emotional-financial-time-sucking-money-sucking gliches and happenings even in the process of getting the property I am now at. But, I’m grateful to God He brought me here, finally, on August 20, 2020.
I could have gone anywhere. I was in a holding pattern, exploring a one hour radius north/east/south/west from Lancaster, basically. My son now lives in Airville, PA. I looked at places much closer to there. There was a farmhouse in Red Lion I was interested in, but it needed major work. But, it was cheap! ha ha
I could have decided on a whim to take my settlement and go buy a house near Portland, Maine, for example. Or, I could have foresaw the economic situation or that my older son would have become so busy that it is often hard to connect…and I could have gone into the mountains of West Virginia and actually bought a whole property this size or more literally for $50K! Some little place I’d never be much found…I suppose…that maybe I would have had zero mortgage and a whole other life.
Maybe I would have been remarried by now to some mountain farmer or whatever…
At one point, I even wondered/considered might my grandfather’s place actually be for sale again in western Maryland? (it wasn’t of course…but I did put the address in just in case…)
I could have moved to Boonsboro perhaps…or down on the Eastern shore of Maryland.
I could have decided I think I’ve always wanted to live in Kansas…or Tennessee…or even New Jersey.
Who knows.
I didn’t really much consider any of these other locations with my older son in Lancaster. What I did know and vow to myself that never again did I want to hear these words from my younger son at a time he was virtually living out of his car around 2016 or 2017 or so: “If you were still here (in Delaware) I’d have a place to go…”
At the time I bought this property, my younger son was floating around between Maine and Philly…I made sure I bought a property sufficient to house for any length of time either of my sons if they should ever need.
My younger son has never been on this property, and I continue to navigate many confusing and heartbreaking things even as I write.
I don’t know what the future holds. Someday I hope my grandchildren will get to come here…they’d have so much fun playing hide and seek on the two stairs cases the have a center wall between them…after this duplex was converted into a single home.
Before I even knew I’d have twin grandbabies…I dreamed and imagined children playing on those stairs! It’s like an “Escher” set up!
In the bible, Joseph was sent into Egypt under terrible circumstances, but God had a plan and knew the future.
Genesis 50:19-22 New King James Version (NKJV)
Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.
As I drove home tonight through Wellsville area (I now think I might remember that name) and was really only less than fifteen minutes from home here, I thought about all these holding patterns and happenstance…all of our stories are yet being written and we do not know where we are, ultimately, in any of it, in a sense.
My friend Cheryl had no idea we’d never meet up for dinner/see each other again in person after I came back north…and especially the reason why.
I have wonderful neighbors here…and I love where I am. It’s hard and rough, but I believe I’m right where God wanted me.
Yet, it can be an intellectual meandering to wonder what would my life now look like if I had had the 401K funds any sooner…what would things look like at any of the places I will show below…from my notes/recollections….
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
–Proverbs 3:5-6
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
This first house is the one I had wanted to make an offer on, after going through it on March 7, 2020. It seemed like an interesting, sweet pre-Civil War house built in 1861. At this point in my holding pattern, as a recently divorced woman, ready to begin a “new life” back north, I was intrigued by the thought of living in this type of house.
This house actually has more acreage than I recall…I thought it was “one acre.” I have 1.34 acres where I now live. The house was situation on a main street through the town and zoned commercial, which was one thing I was always considering. This meant I could easily/legally put a sign at the street and even have regular “hours of business.”
I had been searching for properties with either two houses or large in-law suites on the same property, and possibly outbuildings. I needed personal space, potential space for my either of my sons if ever needed, and plenty of space to run my business as I had in Delaware and eventually, in Alabama.
As you can see, there was a smaller “cottage house” (this could have also been rented out to someone) behind the main house. There was also a large garage behind that which was nothing like the building I now have, but I could have done framing and set up for classes in the area.
The bottom floor of this brick home could have been altered as a little “shop” and I imagined focusing on “bridal and wedding related” items with meeting room/displays. It was dark, and not ideal, but I could have worked with it.
The 2nd floor was typical brick/farm home with kitchen/living room etc. Bedrooms were small, and I would have had to use all three for business workspace. But the second small guest cottage with two bedrooms, kitchen etc made the trade-offs attractive. I did notice that the brick work needed attention, and given the age of this home and sagging floors, etc it might not have been the best choice.
This was situation not far from a landfill and pig farms and I was told the odor in the summer could be intense. There was a lot of land out back—flat and for gardening, but, I could not have any chickens. I was willing at that time to let go of that desire. I think the “zone commercial” was the very biggest draw for me. Any house I looked at I had to consider zoning issues and what I could and could not do. They varied greatly from township to township with various restrictions.
OK…now for more musing fun by putting addresses from my notes into Realtor-com…
5180 Picking Road, Hellam, PA
Hmmm….I can’t be positive but “I think” this might be the house that as soon as my realtor turned the key and we entered, we took one whiff and she said, “Do you still want to walk through it?”
Ha ha…I remember coming up with a joke:
“That moment as a realtor when you turn the key and realize that a thousand wild dogs must have lived in the home!” (or something like that…it was funny at the time)
I did walk through out of curiosity of space/pricing, etc…the odor in the carpets was very, very bad.
The next one is an address in my notebook, I don’t recall seeing this house in person.
I also don’t recall seeing this one. I was looking at a lot online while locked down in Newark…
I was probably attracted to this for the square footage of the house. I never saw this place either. I had so many I was browsing…just spinning my wheels and chomping at the bit…in a holding pattern…until PA opened up things again that people were allowed to go into houses with their realtor and look…
I hardly recall why I put a *star* by this one in my notepad! I think it might have been during a phase when there were a few other gliches going on, that later resolved…and I began to wonder just how “small” and “how cheap” I might make do. This would have never worked for my business to recover…not in any way, shape or form that it previously was.
At one point I recall looking at land with small cabins/trailers…my son started telling me I should “build something.” That would not have been a good plan, not at all…
This is another one I made a note of…never looked at it…but something must have made it seem a consideration.
Now this one I remember being there. I remember that backyard. I can’t recall if I went inside with realtor at some point. I do recall one day during the lockdown just taking a drive into PA and going to houses, looking from the outside. I think that PA residents couldn’t drive into DE, but not vice versa? I really can’t recall. I may have just decided to drive…
I think there were lots of pine trees around this house, possibly in some type of woods, but…maybe I’m mixing places up…I thought the stone work was sweet and home-like.
Well…that seems to be the end of the addresses I had in my notepad…I was thinking of some houses I had my eye on that weren’t included in my hand written notes. There were many months of searching, and a lot of my saves were in my realtor’s portal. I just happened at one point to be making notes…by hand.
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The selection of a home, and permanence/stability, is the foundation for so much in life. That is my belief. I’m grateful for the place God landed me here in East Berlin, PA…and I look forward to the rest of the story…
Below is the realtor listing for this place:
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