Building A Dream

This is the time of year when I'm prone to pondering if I should have raised Poodles instead of German Shepherds. Imagine having three 100-pound dogs shedding like crazy in a nice new house that has almost no carpeting.

Thank God for Dustbusters is all I can say on the shedding phase we're in right now. Dustbusting and dog brushing is my daily routine.

As for my nice new house, I finally got a slide show together of it being built. These photos are entitled, "Building A Dream," but the reality was more like, "Living A Nightmare." Even before my husband passed away, I swore I'd never go through the trauma of having a house built ever again.

I'm not sure if all contractors are idiots, or it's just the ones we had. I came to the conclusion the ideal contractor would be a gay man. He would, in a perfect world, immediately understand what I want and do it right the first time.

There is a certain plumber, whose name I won't mention, whom I believe is not only an total idiot, but a malicious one, too. I just can't believe he didn't do some of the ridiculously stupid things he did on this house out of sheer incompetence. It had to have been on purpose, because he and I didn't hit it off, to say the least. He's old, and definitely old school.

When I asked for things he didn't know how, or want to do, he'd just do it anyway, his way. He screwed up a lot around here. Plumbing that works correctly is right up there on my list of big deals when it comes to living in any house, let alone a brand-new one for which you're paying hundreds of thousands of hard-earned dollars.

To say I was, and remain, highly irritated with him is an understatement. I try to not hope I'll open the newspaper someday and read that he was hit by a bus. That's so negative!

At any rate, since nearly all of my followers are women, I figured you'd like to see some interior shots, too. All you fellow artsy-fartsy folks will see how fascinated I was by the arches.

I do love this house and plan to stay here indefinitely if I can afford it. It's a good thing so many people advised me to not make any big decisions for at least a year after my husband died. My immediate reaction was to sell this place, down market or not.

"Too many memories here," I can recall telling a friend. Since then, I've come to realize that after losing someone who was such a big part of me, the memories of him are all I've got now. They're essential to my wellness; he completed me. I need my memories of him to be the person I am.

There's a lot of both of us in this house. Everything I have of his will remain here as long as I do. I find those things comforting now. At first I couldn't stand to even look at them.

So enjoy the slideshow, ladies and gentleman. Putting it together knocked me down a few times, but here it is, and here I am, anyway.

I heard this somewhere and I think about it all the time: Living is My Legacy.