Cry, Scream, and... Dance?

We're...

I started to say "We are done working on Cottage East." But that isn't entirely accurate. We still have a yard to landscape (I just tossed out plenty of mini-clover seed today), and a fence to build. A couple of little inconsequential fixes still, but... yeah... the house is functioning for the first time, tonight, as a rental property. About an hour ago, I welcomed Cottage East's first guest.

The emotion that wells up in me just thinking about it is quite literally overwhelming. I told my family that I feel like crying, screaming, and dancing all at once. We have worked so hard for this, scrimped, saved, gone without, and tried to balance caring for the Littles with etching away at everything that needed doing. And there was a lot to do!

But there's no time for celebration. I still have so much to do. I need to:

• Buy a zillion plants and put them in planters and the ground

• Remove every last piece of garbage from the backyard and seed it with flower seed after I dig up all of the damn weeds.

  

• Build a fence on the east side of the yard and along the front of the yard.

• Tame my massive property without losing the ability to walk (thank you so much, arthritis!)

• Get a rhythm going of tackling the turnovers efficiently and without losing my cotton pickin' mind

• Return to my writing projects - FINISH the audio edits of Zarmina's World and Plague Tales II, finish editing The Glass Forest and move on to more writing.

  

So many things.

And we are getting solar installed over at Cottage West! The price was finally right, and I'll get it paid off in around six years, saving myself around $26k in interest payments.

Finally, we stand on the precipice of being debt-free in less than five more years. It has been a long time coming. It has quite literally taken us years of blood, sweat, and tears to get here, and I'm just gobsmacked it might finally be "just around the corner."

I can't tell you how many times I've thought in the past 24 hours, "Now I can dig in and really make my writing a priority." After all, once I get into the swing of things, the turnovers will only take me a max of 2+ hours across both of these properties. Just imagine what I can get done with the rest of the day!

So here is to new beginnings with Cottage East. My son is now living there and managing the property for most everything else, which means, aside from cleaning Cottage East, I can finally focus on writing and all that entails.

I think that, in some ways, I'm in a state of shock. I'm... finally... done renovating Cottage East!