Back to square one. Literally.

Ahh Belmonte.  Yes.  Here again.  Please say it isn’t so.  Last weekend I found myself sitting on the floor of the dining room with paint chips spread out all around me in a gigantic fan.  I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.  Am I really painting this house AGAIN?  Please someone pinch me because I must be having a nightmare.

Maybe I should back up slightly so you can catch up…

Hi.  My is Kristen and I am married to the most wonderful man on the planet and we have a diabetic furbaby Arnold.  (Is that one word?  Furbaby?  Fur-baby?  Fur baby?)  More on the cat to come – but first the story of us.  I am from New Jersey, Dave is from Mississippi, and we met and fell in love in Florida.  Yes – we called our wedding the civil war.  No – people did not have to wear red or blue uniforms and there was no fighting.  Well.  It was quite the throw down, but in a good way, as in a kick ass par-tay.  Thankfully no one was injured; maybe just a few hangovers the next day.  

We decided to stay here, because, well, it was… easy.  My family lives here, our jobs were here, there’s the beach, the golf courses, the whole “no snow” thing… and Dave already had… this… house.  The Belmonte house.  Belmonte Estate as I like to call it.  It’s actually a cute little thing, 1,000 sq feet, built in 1920, nestled in the heart of the historic district.  So I moved in after saying I do.  Since then, we’ve gown up, we’ve changed, we added to our family (remember the furbaby?) and started acquiring lots of STUFF as George Carlin used to say.  So we decided to move it on up like the Jeffersons.  Unfortunately the real estate market tanked just as we made this life changing decision.  Anyways, I’ll spare you all the details but like so many Americans we ended up buying a new house (got a fantastic deal!) but couldn’t sell the old one (oh wait, now its not so good of a deal).  Yeah.  You can say that again.  UH OH. 

So.  Here we are.  The proud owners of 2 old houses, 5 miles apart.  Yes.  We are those crazy neighbors.  The ones running back and forth between the two houses, all hours of the night, patching plaster, fixing kitchen drains, and pushing ourselves to the point of exhaustion.  Why at night?  Oh maybe because we ALREADY HAVE DAY JOBS.  Yeah.  It’s a crazy life.     

But back to the paint chips…  So for 3 years we’ve been renting Belmonte.  But I have this feeling like maybe we should try selling again.  We already tried that and were totally unsuccessful.  BUT the market seems to be coming back right?  Although what’s one more year of renting!  At least its money coming IN instead of an empty house just sitting there going unloved. 


Either way I am going to have to paint.  This house.  Again. 


Now – who needs a tissue?  I’m getting up to get one anyway… along with my roller.