Somewhere Over The Rainbow

This morning we saw the most magnificent rainbow.  As we drove “closer” we noticed it was actually double and not only was it vibrant, but clearly it ended at our new house! Yes, we finally closed on a new home this afternoon. And for those of you who are kind enough o follow my blog, you know that the whole house chapter has been quite a story!

From selling our home unexpectedly and quickly last Spring, to landing in a great condo with darling Rockies baseball players as neighbors, to finding a house in a neighborhood in 48 hours after deciding that it was a hood we were interested in, we have to wonder if there really is a reason we took this leap of faith.

We found the house as serendipitously as we sold our last one.  While in Boston this summer, I made a list of what I wanted in our next house in my travel journal (plus glued in a pic of the top of a house with shingles and taped a piece of colored glass to the side). Then, as soon as I returned, I joined a project for large financial institution that sought to understand people’s thoughts on retirement. After the first week of interviews, I came home and questioned some of the retirement/housing decisions we were making. As for housing, why this hood vs that hood? Did I really have the bandwidth and brain strength to go through construction? If we wanted public high school to be an option so we could put money away for college, why were looking in neighborhoods that fell short?

And so, that Friday night at 2am, wine glass in hand, I hit zillow.com and mapped the school district d’jour onto the screen. And there, smack dab in the loveliest neighborhood sat this house. The next day, I called Jason (who was part of the home building team) and said, ‘let’s look’. We looked, took Ken and Addie back right away and I headed off to the 2^nd city for the 2^nd round of retirement interviews. As I drove to the airport, we made an offer.

Long story short, after a verbal acceptance, it fell apart. Now I could write a whole entry on integrity (or lack thereof) and lessons learned,  but suffice to say, that after we picked ourselves up and moved on, the house came back on the market. At this point, I easily could have gotten very judgmental and followed though on my rant of “we don’t do business with people like that – let them get someone else’s money”, but instead I asked myself, “Do you want the house or do you want to be right?”  We had looked at enough to know that it was well-done, solid and get this…it had everything, except for two things on the list I had made in Boston! Down to skylights. What are the chances of that? It also had, embedded between the flagstone in the backyard, bits of colored glass and pottery AND the top tip of the front looks just like the picture! It’s not perfect, but it is quite nice.

And so, here I am, once again between two cities, on the same project. I came home last night, we closed today and tomorrow I head out for the 2^nd city.

At some point, you have to believe that some things are meant to be. Now I have to trust that we can do the work we want to do with ease and that the couch will fit. After all, the rainbow landed there. I sure am hoping there is a pot of gold at the end of it.

How do you MindFULLY know when something is right? Let us know.