January of this year: I tucked myself deep under the covers, with my feet against the hot water jar. I had put on an extra sweater and one glove, holding one arm up from underneath the covers, to hold my umbrella high and keep me dry from the rain that poured through the ceiling.

 

 

This was it. This was finally the point, where I was ready to leave this house. I always told myself these flaws were the charms of this house. Not the leakage as it now has become off course, but the fact it is poorly isolated for one. So wind is blowing through every nook and cranny, whistling its same song over and over again like Mariah Carey during Christmas time. The fact it has only one stove to warm the entire house, which means the kitchen in wintertime is around 10 degrees Celsius. But with an extra sweater on, and take a few extra hot showers throughout the day, I thought it was just the perfect excuse to bake more cookies, and to let stews bubble all day on the gas stove. (imagine our energy costs….) Every part of this house has something we made ourselves, to make this house our home. And the fact it is so light because of the many big windows overlooking the water, and little New York when it’s nighttime, and the spacious rooms; I always wanted this house to be our forever home. And for a few moments in our lives, it almost was for me.

 

But now, with monthly rents going up-up-and away, and the fact that the housing corporation lacks their job to fix anything for real, or take complaints seriously, not to mention the gigantic energy costs; everything has now turned into frustration. There is nothing charming with this house anymore. It is the perfect house that is suffering from utter negligence, which makes the glittery sparkle I always saw reflecting from this old house, nothing more than the stains left by a soupy deuce.

 

So from there on, I was ready to join Ramon on the adventure that is called Funda, to search for our new potentially forever home.

 

 

My God!!! There is nothing fun about it.

 

Every time we picked a few houses that looked good on the web, they were already sold once I called for a house visit. And the ones we actually got to see, appeared to be in terrible condition. A corpse wearing a Chanel outfit. But because of the shortage of properties, the emotional manipulation of the estate agents to push you, putting in an offer the next day, almost makes you doubt walking away. And even though I was told again and again, not to make it so emotional; it’s the only way I can look at a house. It is not just a house, it will become so much more. It will be our new treasury holding our deepest memories.  And when there is even the slightest chance of one being just potentially that, my hopes and dreams of getting that house, becomes overwhelming.

 

It happened four times, which actually made me more sick than I already felt due to the chemo injections. But one of the four, actually was in perfect condition, so no major renovations needed. It has the location we were looking for, spacious rooms, big windows, and a quirky layout. Room to store our sidecar, a bathtub, huge kitchen area, and a sizable terrace facing north, which is perfect for the doggies. And it immediately felt like home when we walked through the house when we visited it.

 

So last week, we decided to make an offer on this house. Again, I felt sick. My energy was drained, and I was out of breath nonstop. But this time it had the right vibe. It even made me superstitious in lucky numbers and funny similarities that this house was meant to be. So to calm my nerves and distract myself, I started to paint. I never painted portraits with oil paint before, because I was convinced I couldn’t. But I imagined oil painted portraits of my nephew and nieces hanging on the walls of our guestroom to be, that I tried it anyway. And guess what?

 

 

 

 

 

 

It went great!

 

 

And when they were finished, so was the anxiety. Because our offer was accepted!!!

 

 

Out of pure joy I painted another one. This time little Malha.

 

 

And when that one was finished, the blood results came in good, so the chemo injections are finally doing their job!!!

 

This is becoming almost like a dream. We have to pinch each other frequently, to see if it’s not.