A New Home in the Sun



I have been avoiding the next entry for fear that people will write me off as a victim of sunstroke. And although I don't really need to justify my actions to anyone, I am going to do so anyway. So forgive the mea culpas of this posting, but it helps me process what I have done...

After 4 days of camping at the frigid but sunny Tucson campground, I arrived at my friend Kathy's house and said to her, "This time I'm not going to do what I did 2 years ago here.  I'm not going to spend all my time driving around looking at 50 different houses to possibly buy.  I'm going to explore the community, do some volunteering at the border and have some fun."  My dream of having a second home in the desert had been shelved, and enough time had passed that I didn't think I'd exhume that notion.  But real estate listings insidiously worm their way into my emails and I can't help going down those rabbit holes once in a while.  Some people waste time playing video games, others fritter away their lives on FaceBook, some  obsess about online dating, and some look at houses on the internet. So, like the wicked witch of the East from the Wizard of Oz, a house fell out of the sky and landed on my head.  I saw an ad for a beautiful house, and when I walked in the door, I knew it was mine. For the next week I went around in a kind of fugue state asking a million questions, making a bid, figuring out the financing, lining up inspections, soul searching, and at every juncture, the stars seemed to keep aligning. 

My superego tells me, "how can you be so frivolous, impulsive, and materialistic?  The world is going to hell in a hand basket, and you're greedy enough to want 2 houses!" But my id says to me, "you spent  months of your life volunteering in Africa and Latin America, years working with abused children, and will grieve a deceased child for a lifetime, so why not allow yourself a little happiness?"  In the very short life that we have, we can agonize over the path not taken, and safely watch figures on investment statements grow, or we can take chances. Many people spend their lives working at spirit-breaking jobs, finally retire and then develop a terminal disease. My poor immigrant mother sadly worked her whole life away to leave us her fortune instead of spending it on herself. So, in the spirit of "you can't take it with you", here I am.




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