Our AWESOME Home Sweet Home

There is nothing quite as unsettling as seeing that your new home is worse than your last.  Yes, our home was quite unbecoming when we walked up to it.  However, being a "Glass Half Full" kind of gal that I am, I decided that they just didn't waste money on outside aesthetics. Unfortunately, opening the ill-sealed front door, I realized that the house was in worse shape than I had ever lived in.

Our home was a two bedroom, one bath.  Upon entering the brown painted wooden, front door with NO SEALS, I stepped into a house that was floored with the same cement flooring found in old grocery stores.  The tiles were grayish brown and cracked.  The baseboards were 4 inch tall brown plastic flexible moulding.  The walls were hospital white with multiple poorly patched holes.

Looking into the bedrooms, which didn't take long, I saw that all of our storage was there....in the closets.  I remember mumbling something about "it's a good thing we don't have very much."  My stomach was still teetering where it was supposed to be until I saw the kitchen.

Honestly, I felt like I had found my place in the world through what I could create in the kitchen.  My stomach dropped out of me when I saw that dump.  Though "spotless," it had obviously been abused.  Not lived in....ABUSED!  Standing in the middle, I could rest my right palm on the stove and my left flat on the frig.  The stove, cracked enamel and questionable electric ranges, had knobs that came off in my hands.  The cabinet doors were painted the same brown as the doors and trim and had never been sanded.  They were rough and crooked.  Looking down, I saw the floors were a different tile...but also chipped, cracked, and stained.

After our last home and all its hidden flaws, I was scared half to death of the surprises we were going to find in our new, abused home.  Honestly, this house was pretty depressing.  In the back of my mind, the mantra, "it is just two years...it is just two years" was circling.  Gulping, I watched as my engineer took the keys and signed the paperwork.

That night, we slept, one last time, in billeting.  My engineer had walked most of our belongings over to our new home.  Our loaner furniture was to be delivered "sometime" the next day.  If I had known that night was going to be the last night's sleep on a comfortable bed for a very long time, I would have cherished it more.  I was young!  I didn't know just how bad loaner furniture could be yet.  Chuckling, I now think back at just how nice that room in billeting really was!  The kitchen was WONDERFUL compared to what I now had to live with.  Obviously, to this day, my mind reverts to the kitchen.  It left a mark, that is all I can say.

The next day, we had breakfast, made the final haul of stuff to the new house, and my engineer checked us out of billeting.  I immediately put our Angel's suitcase of toys in her room.  Santa had come to town!!  Or, at least, that is what her little mind was thinking.  Toys quickly found themselves strewn throughout the house.  While she was having a blast "christening" the house as only a toddler can, I was waiting.

It wasn't until afternoon when they finally delivered our loaner furniture.  Rock hard couch & chairs, really hard & bumpy beds....  The most comfortable of the lot was a dining room chair.  Knowing that it was temporary, I happily directed the movers.  Seeing them out, I turned around and looked at our new home.

I remember thinking, as I looked down the hall into the living room, "it will be better when our household goods are delivered....."  It is a VERY good thing that I didn't know, at that point, exactly how long that wait would be.