Home Sweet Home

Since last July, Tim and I have moved four times. Once from Minnesota to the Teton Valley, and into a temporary living situation in a friend’s converted garage; then to a home that we wished to purchase, ended up renting, and then left dejected when our home in Shakopee refused to sell; then into an old farm home where we kept company with our landlord’s jackasses, horses and about 15 head of cattle.

And now, for the fourth time, we have moved yet again. This time, though, it is for good.

We were finally able to purchase a home in the place that we have been calling home for almost a year. It is a feeling of both relief (finally something that is ours) and anxiety (a mortgage that is ours), but mostly, complete and utter bliss.

When we met, Tim had been a homeowner for going on eleven years. I had always rented, and never truly saw a way out of this situation, therefore I didn’t really concern myself with the ramifications that becoming a homeowner brings. Certainly, I shared the home that was Tim’s before it was ours, and we lived together there for three years. But had I signed the title paperwork with Tim? No. Was I there to help when a windstorm blew through and landed a tree on the roof? No, that was pre-Jenn.

I did participate in changes to the finish work – not to mention the appliances that suddenly needed purchasing only after we got married: a new water softener, hot water heater, dishwasher, and refrigerator. We made the home ours throughout the duration of our stay there. Tim’s friends told him that it got “girl’d up”, but little did they know that he picked every paint color, even the light and subtlety purple hue we had in our master bedroom.

That’s what a Masters degree in Fine Arts will get ya – great taste in paint.

Now onto the current situation, in which I do sign the title paperwork and the two of us are involved in both the choice of the home itself and all of the headaches that come along with a closing. We did finally close, cleaned out the farm home in one fell swoop, and started digging our roots in immediately at the new place.

A dramatically vaulted ceiling will present painting trouble – I can feel it. I wonder how one acquires scaffolding.

We have an invasive weed in our yard that hails from parts unknown, but that we have to keep an eye out for and dig up when necessary.

There is an irrigation system in place that Tim fiddles with constantly – replacing the heads that allow the water to dribble at the base of the many fir trees on our property.

But the peaked ceiling that will challenge our painting prowess is ours, the invasive weed is ours and the irrigation system is ours. The cattle that feed on the property across our road are our neighbors, and evening songstresses. The frogs, the swallows, and every manner of mountain bug that surrounds us do so while on our property.

It is a fine feeling, friends.

We are home.