Old Houses

Well my mind has been a mental desert of late, and when I do think I’m not really thinking straight, and now my husband is upset with me.

Question, do any of you that have moved around have problems when it comes to seeing your old houses?  Is it just me?  Maybe my problem with ‘driving by the old place’ has less to do with the actual house, but regrets in leaving it.  It all started innocently enough, this journey of ours.  We were stable one, honest we were.  We lived in our ‘first house’ for almost 19 years.  Wow!  We left that house due to the neighborhood deteriorating to the point of having gang bangers move in next door.  And to tell you the conflict we had in leaving that house, or rather, most likely the conflict I had, we had it listed and delisted THREE times before we actually sold it.  Our 2nd house was so much better, upscale neighborhood, newer home, swimming pool.  We were there for almost 6 years. 

We decided to sell that home because hubs was wanting to retire and I had become ill with the Epstein Barr Virus that has turned into this awful Fibromyalgia and I was not sure I could continue working.  So we sold our home in July, 2003.  We made some money on it and decided to move closer to my folks out here in the desert, but not IN the desert, as we didn’t like the desert..We bought a brand new home and moved in. 

It was a really nice home, but we didn’t really care for the area, so we stayed there a year, this was still a boom time for real estate so we made some money on that one.  We  decided to go BIG and move to Northern CA, buy a house with property and possibly be able to put a granny house on the property for my folks to live in as we had discussed all this with them and they seemed to wanted to do something different as they got older.  So we found a nice ranch home on 2.5 acres about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento and moved in there in Oct. 2004. 

I got a job at a local junior high school in the library and we waited for my folks to fix up and sell their home..well the longer we waited the less they seemed to want to come up north, and we realized that we had just bit off more than we could handle financially.  So..we decided to sell and move with my folks to the St. George, UT area..we thought this might work as it was closer to southern CA and our older son, and my folks other grandsons still in SoCal.  We found a really beautiful home with a ‘wing’ for my folks.  We moved in there in Oct. 2005.

Do you see a pattern here??  We lost some money on the Nor Cal home, not disastrously so, but the boom was over.  Well, as much as we thought living with my folks would work out, it just did not..they moved back to the desert in January 2008, and we were sitting in a house too big for us, and too expensive..so you know how this story goes..we sold it in August 2008, and lost $100,000 on it.  UGH..so we were in the same shape as most folks were at that point.  We decided we needed to just chill out in our little 800 sq. foot mobile home we had bought the year before in WA state, as a summer getaway from the awful desert heat of St. George..we put everything in storage there in Utah, and with a car full of dogs and a truck and trailer full of our belongings, settled into our little cottage. 

Not ideal for living full time, but we were relieved to be financially free of a house and mortgage..we only had a small space rent monthly.  Now we had furnished the cottage with the basics and of course added our creature for the duration.  it was a long winter with snow, ice and rain..and we were squeezed pretty tight.  We decided we wanted to go back to Northern CA, our younger son lived there and was getting married that spring..except as much as the housing had dropped in CA, in the area we wanted to go, it was still too expensive for us.  I guess we just got tired and stopped thinking straight, but when my folks called that there were several homes for sale in their development we started thinking maybe we should just head back south..and that is what as we did.  I think we felt rushed as we had a couple of neighbors in this mobile home park we lived in that just seemed to hate us and our dogs..We had some temporary fencing rigged for the dogs, and we never let them outside for any length of time except to do their ‘duty’ and come back in..but one neighbor tried to hit India the brown dog one day and that did it.

 

No one hits our dogs..we felt pressured to find something so we bought the place we are in now..this was in May, 2009.

We live 4 blocks from my folks in the desert we said we would never live in.  Our house is small, yes I know I am lucky to have it, but if we had been thinking straight, we would have held out for a bigger house and in retrospect should have tried to find a house up north.  Now we have a granddaughter who lives 550 miles away, we are in the desert neither of us can stand, and we are financially stuck for now.  I know, so many would love to have a house like ours, we are lucky, etc..when I am thinking straight I know that..but it does not stop me from yearning to go back up north almost every day.  I work on those thoughts every day, I try to push them out of my mind, but they are THERE.  We can’t make enough money on this house to even put down on something else as housing in our county is one of the worst in the state.  And I don’t think we are really ready to chuck it all and leave..our payment is lower here than it would even be to rent this same house, so selling is not an option.

Now, old houses..my problem is that I can’t even stand to drive past them.  I guess that stems from so many regrets at leaving each one, it hurts my heart to see them.  I’d love to not feel that way.  But I do.  We have made some poor decisions and now we are ‘paying’ for them.  It seems that once we sold that 2nd house we loved so much, it was all downhill from there.  Do I wish I could go back a few years and do different.  Oh yeah.  But no one can go backwards.

Hubby is upset with me, he got a message from old neighbors from the brand new house we lived in that our house is for sale again and they would love to have us move back..he wants to go stop by and see them, and I can’t do it.  So he is upset.  I know I need to ‘buck up’ and go, for his sake.  But it’s going to hurt my heart to see my old house empty and think, we should have stayed there.  I loved the floor plan and the area has grown up now with shops, etc..and now it’s for sale again.  I know I should go with him to visit them.  I do.  I can’t explain to him that it hurts my heart.  I don’t think he would understand. It’s just a reminder of dumb mistakes for me.

My question is, has anyone else ever felt this way, or is it just me that can’t handle seeing my old houses, and to me that just amplifies the mistakes we  have made.

Would appreciate any thoughts..