Hope4Peyton

I would love to be posting something that even resembles a post about something…but alas, I cannot.

Why can I cannot?  <– like that sentence structure? Total brain fart, but I’m leaving it.

Because (1) it’s almost 3 AM when I’m writing this and (2) we just made an offer on the Barbie dream home! and (D) the realtor gave them until 5 PM on Sunday to either accept or counter and I can only imagine how stressed my week is going to be through this whole process.

Is it wrong to just write them a letter saying:

Dear Mr and Mrs MY HOUSE owners,

I know you just bought yourself a nice, new shiny *ahem* $600,000 home….think you could just crap or get off the pot on this one?

Oh, and did I tell you my kid had cancer?  She doesn’t anymore, but she totally used to.  And we plan to have lots of friends come visit, some who had/have cancer and just consider your acceptance of our offer as a major kindness to mankind. And kids. Or puppies.

Sincerely,

Those people who will just squat in the house like vagrants if you don’t sell it to us N.O.W.

Little much?

Just sell me the house!

Me = nervous freaking wreck.

There are certain benefits to having a sick child.

It’s not ALL bad.

For example, I have a handicap sticker and a fabulous parking spot at any Wal-mart on the planet.

For two and half years I’ve had a built-in excuse to avoid anything I didn’t want to attend…ok, maybe she didn’t have pre-bubonic plague…five times.

And hospital swag.  Oh yeah!

If you’re going to be stuck in the hospital for a week,  you should at least get to score some freebies (which are never really freebies because GOD KNOWS we’re paying for it!) and take home some supplies.

Latex gloves – which came in extremely helpful when Peyton went through that patch of constipation and required suppositories.

Tape – well, cause you can never have enough tape (I may or many not have ran out of scotch tape one time and wrapped up a present in Hypo-fix).

Bandages, gauze, socks, pull-ups, flashlights, Bacitracin, alcohol swabs…and band-aids. LOTS and LOTS of band-aids.

I cut the bottom of my foot while I was up at Pete’s last weekend and the crappy thing about a cut in that place is that no matter what, you can’t STOP irritating it!  So it kept popping open and bleeding and getting all funky.

Six, people.

That’s how many empty band-aid boxes I found in all the band-aid-y places in my house. I couldn’t even find one of those retarded little round ones that has a peice of guaze the size of a chicklet.

My kingdom for a band-aid!

I have hoarked enough medical supplies to host my own episode of Grey’s Anatomy and I can’t find a band-aid.

Thank you, children!  When my cut gets infected, I develop gangrene, find out that amputation is my only option, and have to have one of those special made springy prosthetic feet, I’ll know that it was because you can’t stop putting band-aids on your windows as room decor!

Grrrrrrrrr

The separation was supposed to be very temporary, a matter of a few months.

Peter and I both knew it was the right choice for him to move up and get situated in his job and familiar with the area while I waited here until the kids finished the school year.

And then a cancer child died…and another…and more followed in rapid succession and my confidence crumbled to ash.  I threw on the brakes and stamped my feet like a child and demanded that he find a job back here…I couldn’t possibly be expected to leave when THIS is where I’m comfortable and THIS is where I want to be if, God forbid, Peyton ever relapsed….and HOW could he not get that my delicate emotions were way more important at that moment than his paycheck?

My husband looked for another job.

While he lived alone in his apartment, eating crap food and missing us all terribly.  While I lived here, exhausted and frustrated and facing the fear of the unknown without his comfort.  While the kids lived in limbo, counting the days until Daddy would show up and watching the clock for when he would have to walk out the door and go back to work.

I OWN that one.  That one was all me.  My anxiety and fear got the better of me and I couldn’t see past it to understand how I was hurting us all by forcing the separation to go on.  Peter and I had some bitter fights about it, I won’t kid you there.  He accused me of not loving him enough to leave my friends, I lashed out and said he was so disconnected from all my pain that he couldn’t understand what I was going through.

We made the best compromise of the situation, with him commuting back and forth every other weekend to see us, sometimes spending the week with us while working from the living room.

“When are you going to move?”

“Are you going to move?”

“You’re never going to move, are you?”

My husband got more and more discouraged that I would pack up the kids and actually move to be with him. I did the thirty-four year old version of holding my breath til I passed out, hoping that he’d give in and just find a job, ANY job, to come back.

Life continued…but differently, always changing and evolving.

The kids stopped crying every time Daddy left.

We would be so busy that we’d suddenly awaken to the fact that it had been two or three days since Pete talked to the kids.

Peter had a life of new friends and co-workers, making accomplishments and growing in his new surroundings.

I immersed myself in the blog as a full time effort, found a community of bloggers to fill my time, made new friends and began to have goals and ambitions that had he had no part of.

We were doing it.  We were drifting apart.  I would talk to him about something and we’d both realize that he had no idea what I was talking about….we’d have whole conversations about people that, as far as I knew, were totally fictional characters in the life of Pete.

You know what?  I realize I didn’t give him a lot of choice in the matter, because I? Am stubborn as hell!…but Peter didn’t puff out his chest and throw around his husbandly demands and force me to move before I was ready. As much as I know he wanted to and was sorely tempted, he didn’t do it.  Cause, this man loves me. Deep down, he knew that I would come to the decision to go and the time would be right and it would feel like a good decision for us all, not just something I was doing for him.

In the Internet generation, we’ve made the best of the twelve months we’ve been apart.  Webcams and constant emails and texting, phone calls and instant messaging have made it easier for us to stay together when we’re not together.

It’s no longer enough, it never really has been.

We want to be a family again and as hard as it was to reach this point: I’m ready.

I had to jump through over some mighty large hurdles of selfishness and put the kids and Peter and our family before my neurosis and you know what?  Once I did, the decisions made themselves and I know it’s R.I.G.H.T.

My excitement at a big new shiny house is nothing compared to knowing that I’ll be sharing that house with my family as a whole again.

Although, did you SEE that house? It’s pretty sweet, huh?

Ok, folks! Here it is.

This is the house that we hope will come through for us in GA….all *ahem* 3600 sq. feet of it.

Are you jumping up and down right now? Because I am!!!  Seriously, two and a half of my current houses would fit in the new house.

I am so full of nervous anticipation, so excited yet afraid to get too excited in case it doesn’t work out, but if it doesn’t work out it wasn’t meant to be, the singing angels may have just been a car driving by at an inopportune moment and led me to  believe that it was the perfect house, yet I really think it is and we all love it and I HOPE HOPE HOPE we get it!

Breathe.

Alrighty.

There are some pictures on here that look sort of dorky, those would be of the attic and the storage/potential 4th bathroom in the upstairs bonus room (aka Nathaniel’s boy cave).  All of the empty white rooms are basement rooms, just awaiting our invasion to make them whole and give them personality.  And that loooooong garage? That’s the the second garage (aka Peter’s man cave).  Oh, and see that little nook off the living room by the front door?  That would be ANISSA’S WRITING SPACE.

See, there go those singing angels again.

Anyway, here’s the house that we don’t own yet, but that I’ve already mentally furnished through many trips to Ikea’s website.

Friday night, Peter and I dragged our tired, frustrated carcasses back into the apartment he keeps in Alabama.  An afternoon of scoping houses had turned futile and we found ourselves in a Mexican standoff.

I’d fallen in love with a gorgeous house full of natural light, sprawling open space and a kitchen to die for.

On a behemoth of a piece of property that would require an entire league of lawn service professionals to keep it in check because of the ridiculous incline and the rock outcroppings.

Peter was giddy over a fabulous property that was perfectly flat, tons of room for a future pool and a dog’s draeam habitat.

The house was pretty, but claustrophobic and I couldn’t wipe out the memory of MY house.

*sigh*

Granted, we had a bit of GIMMEGIMMEGIMMENOW syndrome.  Neither house was going to work and after one day I was already prepared to just give up on buying a house and buy a double-wide somewhere.

On Saturday morning, we had renewed spirits and a resolution to be open-minded to each other’s opinions on the house options (which translated into “I will snark uncontrollably about any house I don’t like until you realize that I will make your life an unending blistering hell if you try to make me live there”) and concentrate on the good of each place.

We give new meaning to the phrase EPIC FAIL.

Can I just take this moment to tell you how absolutely gorgeous our realtor is?  Totally unfair.  Skin like a pool of milk, bouncy hair, tall AND thin, Angelina Jolie lips and really freaking nice. I hate her. Unless she gets me the house of my dreams and then I’ll make sure to hide my resentment for her under a shiny cloak of gratitude. Lucky her, she’s extremely good at her job, or I’d have to run her down with the van.

ANYWHOOOO!

On our drive up to start another day of house-stalking, we decided to just ask God to lead us to the right house. We had a group prayer that we’d find it with as little difficulty as possible.

We saw the first house.

Then the second.

The third barely registered.

Number four and our enthusiasm began to wane.

Eat! We’ll eat and then we’ll be happy and the rest of the houses will be better.

Right?

RIGHT!??

Jessica talked us into checking out one last house before we went to drown our sorrows in waffle fries.

And we drove into a totally unglamorous driveway.

We walked up a perfectly non-exciting sidewalk.

The door opened.

Now, I’m prone to a little bit of exaggeration when I’m really excited about something.  I can go overboard in my wild infatuation.

This next part really happened.

The door opened and a choir of angels FREAKING sang!

Yes, sang. A chorus of angels greeted us at the door.

I think the song was something by Van Halen, I’m not sure.

This house was everything we’d hoped to find.  We all loved it instantly and found it’s quirky personality a perfect match for our family.

The essentials were all there: huge closets, storage space galore, a kitchen that made the singing angels choir weep, beautiful hardwood and almost an acre lot.

The unexpected grabbed our heads and shook us into complete submission:  a full finished basement, a second two car garage, enough room that the Jolie-Pitt clan could come and visit and there’d be no threat of overcrowding. *although, on a side note, if Brad did ever decide to visit, there’d be no worries about a place for him to lay his pretty head.

I love.

I love with big pink puffy hearts and scribbling Mrs. Anissa New House on my binder!

So, I’m strolling through the house, checking out all the giddy-inspiring goodness and thinking to myself, “God, if this is THE house, please just make it clearly obvious and give me a sign.”  What kind of sign does God give a househunter?  I’m not sure, but I was pretty sure that something would happen.

You doubt me?

Almost immediately, Peter starts yelling for me.

The house was vacant but it had been staged, meaning that the sellers had someone come in and throw in some pretty furniture and decorations so it wouldn’t look so empty and vague.

In the basement, in a forgotten corner of the house, on a wall in a storage room was our sign.

SIGN, I tell you!

Five feet tall…in full living color…is a poster…Barry Sanders.

That’s all we needed to know.

That house is OURS!

**I have photos of THE HOUSE, they will be coming shortly!