…my husband and i performed a full-home remodel. we had initially rented the hell hole that we lived in then purchased it three years later when our landlord got divorced and the courts forced the sale.

“enough of this” we both said the day we closed which, incidentally was also the day we worked into the early hours of the morning pulling up pergo, demo’ing chipped and dated tile and removing threadbare carpeting along with its exposed tack strips.

we enthusiastically sprinted head-first into a renovation because we were newly married and in love and wholly ignorant of just how far a remodeling project could push the limits of our relationship.

clearly we survived but – like childbirth – the pain of the experience clearly hasn’t sunk into our shared memory because not even ten years later we’re at it again only with more complexities! and processes that are totally foreign to us! and more risk and money than we’ve ever dealt with! with special guest stars attorneys and cpas and some money dude whose presence in this transaction has so far been inexplicable to me!

because not only are we having work done on a home, it’s a home that we purchased sight-unseen, 3,000 miles away that will take us a minimum of four days to drive to with two cats, a dog and a phil the phish.

after we close on our house in california.

and while we’re in the middle of taking over a business, negotiating a business loan with the small business administration, securing wind and flood insurance which has turned out to be a bit of A Thing in florida and probably about half a dozen other processes that we’re actively putting effort into that i can’t remember because we’ve become so overwhelmed with it all that our mantra has become “you’re sitting still? why are you sitting still? there’s no time for that, there’s probably at least five different things that require your effort right now.”

which is a long way of saying our relationship is not just being challenged, it is being T-E-S-T-E-D. it’s as if we both took a long look at our very happy marriage before saying, “challenge accepted” and then going about doing everything we could to sabotage ourselves.

happily, though, i’m glad to say we’re getting through it quite beautifully despite a few moments in which the other’s survival was not guaranteed and as we build up momentum – and the corresponding muscles to get through this – we’re actually becoming closer friends. we like and have a great deal more respect for each other more these days.

there’s a lot less talk of what we’d do with the life insurance money should the other one unexpectedly die.