Home Sweet Home

After being married for just a couple of months, we went to go look at a house in Liverpool.  Mark had already decided that he disliked the creepy landlord and that we were going to just buy a house instead.  I was making a very, very nice salary and we could easily afford a house between our two incomes.  Of course, my plan was to be a stay-at-home mom.  Mark’s plan was to just have me and my job and my income for the rest of forever without any children.  The house we looked at was an adorable ranch that was meticulously maintained by an older couple moving to Florida.  It was so perfect that we asked my dad to come and look at it with us a second time to see if it would be a good investment.  My father thought it was very well built (my dad built houses when I was a kid so he knew his stuff).  He was impressed by the layout and the ‘bones’ of the house.  My dad also mumbled something under his breath about Mark making minimum wage and how was he going to afford a house that was so expensive.  I found out then that my parents paid something like $6500 for their house so this was really pricey to my father.  So, just like all the other times we didn’t listen to what my dad said, Mark and I decided to make an offer on the house without Mark having a well-paying job or a real future.  I think the house was something like $40,000 and we called the realtor and made an offer.  I remember one thing about the house more than anything else and that was the ceramic statue of a boy holding a lantern in the front yard by the walkway.  I remember asking the homeowners if we bought the house could we have the boy with the lantern and they said “no.”  And not in a nice way either!  The day after we signed and the homeowner accepted our offer, Mark got fired from his job at Bresee Chevrolet.  I don’t quite remember why he got fired but I think it had something to do with him running around for parts for them and when he came back, they had told him the wrong thing so he had to go back out and get a different part in a hurry because it was the end of the day.  Mark used his colorful language and told off the manager of the car place.  They asked Mark to take a little drive in his own car away from his job!  So, when he came to pick me up from work that night, we sat in the little red Chevy Chevette very quietly as we realized we needed to call the realtor and rescind our offer.  That’s exactly what we did.  We made a choice to wait to buy a house until our 20 year old selves could figure out what we would do next.  I wanted to tell the real estate lady that the reason we backed out was because we really wanted the boy with the lantern statue to stay with the house.  There are so many times that I wish I listened to my dad about so many things.  I think it’s kinda like God.  We hear what He has to say, contemplate, and then do our own thing.