Hotel Stories: New Beginnings

September seems so long ago. Please accept my apologies for completely skipping blog writing in October. But, you see, October was a busy month.

Actually at the end of September, I returned to the empty house in IL, ready to face another winter of vacancy where the house would begin to decline with no one living there till spring.

I was meeting with a media rep at a local café, when one of my former media reps waved hello from another table. “Are you still trying to sell your house?” she queried. “Yes,” I said, “Interested?"

“Maybe,” she said. A few casual Facebook snippets and she and her husband decided to meet with me to see if we could brainstorm a good rental agreement. And, there it was. The empty house would have a family. At first I had been adverse to children and pets—new carpeting and countertops looming before me as ruined. Then, one morning in prayer, I realized how stupid and selfish that attitude was. A 3,000 square foot living space cries out for children. Pets, hmm, maybe not. But happily they have hamsters. They will not get a dog or cat as renters, and that is okay with them, and us. But, their lovely children will enjoy each having a room of their own, and these doting parents will have space at last to roam, even an acre of lawn for play.

So, October was spent in a frenzy of house and apartment hunting, and we actually decided to pursue a whimsical desire for a loft apartment. We really only needed a house for Jay to have a garage for the motorcycle building, tinkering, etc. So, in a happy serendipity, where our friend (originally the guy who sold me a Jag on EBay), who Jay has been helping for 17 months with Maserati restoration in his several Massachusetts barns, offered some barn space for Jay to work on his bikes, house hunting took on a different perspective.

We would look at 900 square foot homes, and they were ugly and needed lots of work. And, if we were to be renters here in CT or MA, we really didn’t need that house work to occupy our lives.

We Googled apartments and actually were amazed to find a 1200 square foot loft apartment, two bedrooms, two bathrooms (many houses we found had only one), and the real clincher was a 300 square foot storage room just down the hall from our second floor apartment. So the real problem of finding space for the 3,000 square foot of furnishings, suddenly became less of a hurdle, and the garage work became a positive relationship with a really nice friend for Jay—who by the way just bought two motorcycles. Life doesn’t get any better than that for Jay.

I, in the meantime, was giddy for the old manufacturing plant, turned loft apartments. Rent includes a health club, with both indoor and outdoor pools, an exercise room, a weight room, racquetball, tennis, and fitness classes, all included in the rent. Get ready for the new me. :)

So with a short space of double payments in CT and IL, we signed a lease ending our 17-month hotel stay, and we are moving into our lofty loft at the end of October.

God is good. All the time.