It’s slowly coming back around.  This is going to be the summer of change for me.  Again, my life will be cycling into a new chapter.  I have spent two years in the midst of a divorce and this chapter has been hell.  In the process, sure, I found the woman I was supposed to have been with for the last twelve years or so, but even that has been a trying process.  Our love for each other is the most clear thing I’ve ever felt and we blend together the way you dream a romance would be.  We’re happy.  We work hard to please each other.  We’re apologetic.  We try to be a team.  We’re building a new life and a new family together.  But amidst all of that happiness, financial woes and divorce has forced us to live in a tiny, TINY one bedroom, second floor apartment.

Our happiness together and gratefulness of each other always comes out on top, but that doesn’t mean it’s not rough.  As I wrote about before.  My marriage and divorce put me in a agoraphobic and claustrophobic state and living in a second floor apartment, where the ceilings in some places are at about 4 1/2 feet with the slanted roof has made it quite difficult for me to survive with my sanity.  thank God she’s been here for me.

The next chapter, possibly the next book, in this life is right there on my doorstep.  We’re looking at the prologue right now.

I am nervous as all hell.  Peace and serenity are within reach.  We’ve been looking into a new house.  One that will get us out of this hellish, piss and pot smelling apartment.  This apartment that severed her relationship with her brother.  This apartment that killed my dog.  This apartment.

The new house is a money pit.  In the literal sense.  It’s old.  Very old.  No, you don’t get it.  It’s fucking OLD.  The price of the house can’t be beat.  The owner is willing to work with us and rent the place until we get some financial crap in order.

I’ve tried so hard not to fall in love with this house.  We’ve looked at too many houses over the last year and have gotten too far with too many, only have the carpet yanked out from under us.  It’s hard not to fall in love with this house.  It is what I need.

As a write, this is the place I need.

It is serenity.  It is peace.  It is peace and piece of mind.  It is a holy place.  No, really, it is.  When the town was founded and there was no church, the followers met here at this house.  It is filled with family history.  As we are looking at the house and walking our parents through, my mother walked into the kitchen and realized that it was built by her father.

My grandfather was a great man.  He had to be.  Had seven kids and millions of bees.  He was a beekeeper.  He was an inventor.  He practically invented the modern honey separator machines where the honey is sucked from the honeycomb.  Don’t ask me the specifics, I have no freakin clue.  All I know is that he invented it.  In his younger days, he was a carpenter.  He built houses all over Northern New York, with his father.

My grandfather has been dead for many, many years.  Probably about fifteen now.  Yet from time to time I still see him.  I wouldn’t call it haunted, but I tend to see a few dead people now and then when I am asleep.  I can recall three times specifically where it has happened.  The first time I remember having a conversation with my grandfather… after he was dead… was in 2001.  It was around the birth of my first child.  The “dream” took place at my uncle’s house, right next door to where my grandfather lived.  We were sitting on an screened in porch.  Me, with my grandfather.  He was sitting in a large wicker chair, and wearing his coveralls.  If you knew my grandfather, you knew the coveralls.  He was talking to me.  His lips were moving, but no words were coming out, yet, I heard his voice and just sensed the sheer intonation of every single word.  We were discussing the pregnancy, and he assured me I was doing the right thing.

There has been one other conversation with him, that is less vivid in my mind, perhaps it’s because it wasn’t as striking as the first.  But again, it was a reassurance.  Most recently I have had a couple dreams off and on with my Dad’s father.  He was a rickety old hunched over hillbilly, and I remember two dreams with him, where I remember actually saying to him… “I know you’re dead”  Again, it comes down to reassurance that all is well and all is right in the world.

I’m not a religious man.  But, I’ve seen some shit that will turn your brain inside out.  I can’t explain it.  I know when I died under anesthesia while having a routine kidney stone removal, there was nothing.  No lights.  No blacks.  NOTHING.  The only reason I know there was nothing, is because when I woke, no time had passed in my mind.  It was off.  Then back on.

Wow.  tangent day apparently.

The house.  What will be my house.  Our house.  Will be my saving grace.  Remodeling the damn thing will also be the death of me, but I’ve gotta get my hands dirty sooner or later.

The house is on a small river in the countryside.  A writer couldn’t ask for anything more.