WILD things

Our lives are crazy right now. We should probably be in the insane asylum... but instead we've settled for the Nut House, right?

When we started the flip house, and I started blogging about it with no inkling of the sharp turn our lives were about to take.  Then it felt weird in the middle of "project - project - project - project" to be like, "Joe left his job and we're moving to Colorado!" It felt especially weird since they are intimately connected, but it's hard to see unless I get it down from the very beginning. Which I didn't, but I will now.

Here's why: we did the flip house because Joe needed to be done with his job at Target Distribution here in Olympia. It was such an opportunity when we moved up! A promotion to Senior Group Leader, a pay raise, some cool scenery to go with it... we were in heaven! It went south quickly, though, and before a year had passed, incompatibility with his General Manager had Joe browsing local job openings online. Just when we though he was stressed to the max, the GM quit and Joe was left working in a building as the only Senior Group Leader, where there should have been a minimum of 3, and without a GM. "Max" had reached a new level! Rather than find simply another job to tide him over, we pursued a long-term dream of ours as a couple: flipping houses. When we bought this Nut House he intended to stay at Target one more stress-filled year while we would flip multiple houses, and at the end of that year he could comfortably leave Target and we would just flip full time. So while he was still working at the Target DC I couldn't write anything negative about his job situation - that is biting the hand that feeds us! What if he mentioned the blog to a co-worker so they could see pictures of the house and BOOM, negative comments got him fired? Far better to simply be excited about the project for what it was: a cool opportunity to flip a house. So that it how I presented it here - no secret hopes attached!

Come Thanksgiving, Joe was sat down by his District Manager (because he had no direct boss, remember) and it seemed clear to him that Target was heading one direction and Joe was heading another. This A) Scared the crap out of us, and B) Left us with some big decisions to make. Should Joe re-direct himself and stay with a job he didn't love, but that had a steady paycheck? Should he look for a different job? Jobs here or jobs outside Washington? Stay in Distribution, or go back to Construction Management? There were many good options, and we sorted through them a little bit like an optometrist checks your prescription; "which looks better, A or B? ... now B or C? .... " They make a few adjustments and do it again, whittling out what your prescription ISN'T until they find what it IS. And we found that what we want IS to move back to Colorado, it IS to live in Grand Junction, and it IS to do something Construction Management related. We needed to get to work.

Enter: Facebook. (Who knew Facebook could save you? I could sworn it was just a time-waster!) But it saved us this time, as I connected with old friends who live in Grand Junction, who have husbands in Construction Management, who were able to get Joe some interviews with General Contractors in town. My dad, who is King John to the Grandkids but could usually be called King of Keeping Out Of Your Business, made it his business to find contacts and job leads for Joe.  It seemed like a long shot at the very best, but everyone was warm and welcoming in spite of the random connections, and LO AND BEHOLD - Joe interviewed for, and was offered, a job.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If life seemed wild and stressful and maxxed out before, we just hit a new level! We leveled up! Suddenly our time frame was much more real, as Joe had "last day of work" and "first day of work" to bookend "get this crazy flip house on the market, and oh yeah, don't forget to sell your own house too." His last day in the building at the DC was December 15th and he has worked at the flip house every day except Sundays since then, and we are closing in on it.  We have been blessed beyond measure with the things that have fallen into place during the process, from installations to inspections being completed earlier than planned and without a hiccup. We have also been blessed in general health, which has allowed us to work as hard as we possibly can. We have been DOUBLY blessed because without even trying to, our house here is under contract and we have a home ready to move into when we do finally get to leave. A close friend with 4 kids approached us after I broke down to her during the "I don't know what we're doing!" phase and said she and her family would like to buy the Ken Lake house. Of course!!!! Not having to deal with putting the house on the market, intense cleaning and staging, scheduling showings, ALL of that, would save us SO MUCH HEADACHE. Blessings!!

So that is life. House under contract, flip house nearly on the market, moving truck scheduled, new job lined up, new house to move into... life is WILD.