Dawn Brocco's Life and Design Blog

Spring isn't officially here until the animals are propagating. 2 goosie families have set up home in the pond - 4 adults and I think 9 or 10 goslings. And Mr. and Mrs. Bunny are regulars on the rear lawn, often just outside the kitchen window. She, nibbling away, minding her own business, then he comes over and the boing fest begins - he moves closer, she hops over him, then he over her, then they run off. Young love.

I finished the new design - a baby blanket. Sound boring? Ha! But, it isn't, not by a long shot! I need to weave in the ends and give it a bath and lay it flat to dry. Would have done it yesterday or Friday, but son's Master's graduation from RIT was yesterday.

He flies off soon to CA to begin his SRC/IBM-fellowship sponsored doctorate work. And daughter is finally leaving Buffalo for Phoenix. The same day son is leaving Rochester. Hallelujah. Little good exists in Buffalo (apologies to all Buffalonians who are still stuck there.) She's had nothing but struggle living and working there, since she started UB 8 years ago. And she has 2 degrees, so her struggle is not from a lack of education or job experience in her current field (which will hopefully change once she can get back to school). She's not even in Phoenix yet and has 3 job interviews lined up already. Now *that's* the way it's supposed to be when you are young, bright and hardworking with a good education.

So, both my children are running off into new, exciting and more prosperous futures. I couldn't be happier for them. Now, there's just we 2, this unsold house and *our* new, exciting and prosperous future to somehow get.

Butcha can't make people come and buy houses when they're just not even calling or emailing the agency! For spring, this is one dead market lately. Except -

We did have a newly married couple here recently. He wants to live in Saugerties, as he's lived here before and she loves everything about the house - they had not one negative thing to say about it, even the green frog pond. But they're now temporarily in Germany, tending to a *proper* wedding with family. If this couple does indeed buy this place, you're all gonna fall over, because I know what business they own. It would be serendipitous. And serendipity seems to play an important role in our lives. And the fact that she's German and Germans built this house 200 years ago is an interesting tidbit.

Our last house (our first house!) was on and off the market for 4 years. It was in a mixed neighborhood, which is putting it mildly. We had no idea what the people were like, as we were house-shopping in October and didn't see a soul on the streets (and they did like living on the streets) - so the area just looked like a lot of small, lower income level houses. And in '86-'87, the market was booming FAR past our buying potential, day by day, so much so that when we said it had to cost under a 100 grand, the agents laughed. It was either the house we bought or a double wide out on an acre in the town - nope, not for us.

So, after 4 years of trying to sell a house in a neighborhood that no-one wanted to live in (especially as it was next to an AME church, so Sunday mornings were loud), all the while being tortured by some new kid on the block blasting his car radio/boom box all the time, who ended up buying the house? That loud-music kid and his fiancee, who's grandmother, it turns out, was the original owner/builder of the house. Fate. A slow and torturous fate, but fate, nonetheless.

Which is why this place felt like heaven, and still does, until it gets hot and humid! It's not a perfect heaven, but is the most serene place we've ever lived in, and P & Q are TOPS on our list of requirements for a home. It must be serene. No noisy neighbors, no nosy neighbors!, no-one looking out their windows into our windows, no kids screaming, no mothers yelling, no teens blasting music, no early Sunday morning cacophony of a gazillion lawn mowers starting up. I grew up in Brooklyn, then Staten Island, then the Welfare end of Warwick, all noisy, all far too closely-populated. All grating on the nerves. Some people thrive on all that. It sucks our joy big time.

Despite the nearly 12 years of extreme financial difficulty it has been to own and restore this house, I am grateful for it. I am grateful for having the chance to have been stewards to a big antique house (that needed rescuing) and 6 acres of nature and wildlife, which I love. I would be happy to turn it over to someone who'll love it as we do. Just like the old woman before us. She turned away prospective buyers, until she met us and knew we'd care for the house and love it as she did, all the 40 years she lived here. One doesn't JUST sell an old house, one passes its stewardship on.