A Buffalo Named Rose

When we first looked at this house, a little over three years ago, there was a buffalo living here. Her name was Rose and she was about half-grown. She scared people. I think she probably scared potential buyers away, much to our good fortune. There are exactly 2.77 acres here, and Rose had decimated all of them. Not a blade of grass grew. Tufts of buffalo fur clung to fences and trees. Buffalo "pies" littered the ground.

Poor Rose was lonely. She was misunderstood. My real estate agent was afraid of her. The owner would have to try to pin Rose up to show the property. Rose didn't like being pinned. She broke down the gate. It was told to us that Rose killed raccoons, that there were often raccoon carcasses lying around. But she also had a little cat-friend. A black and white tuxedo kitty, a stray who climbed trees and hung out around Rose, seemingly without fear.

When we arrived to look at the house, our real estate agent was already inside. She opened the front door and beckoned us to hurry in, that Rose was loose. We had already seen Rose over by the patio. We toured the house. We liked the layout. We liked the geodesic dome in the center, the uniqueness of it. We could see past the dirty pink carpeting and all the needed repairs. Most were cosmetic. But my SO was also interested in the lay of the land. He asked to go out and walk the property. The real estate agent said, "But there's a buffalo out there." My SO said, "OK. You don't have to go with me."

The agent cringed as he exited. She continued to show me interior features, but she kept a close eye on my SO outside walking the perimeters. Finally, I joined her at one of the windows. Out along the high boundary fence, there walked my SO. Close behind him, curious and cautious, was Rose. She followed him like a puppy, keeping about ten feet between herself and the strange man. As I explained that he was born and raised on a farm, had done ranching, been around livestock all his life, the real estate agent clearly delighted in watching Rose following him around as he inspected the grounds. The agent began to call my SO "The Buffalo Whisperer."

Obviously, we liked the place. We came back to look a few more times before an offer was made. We began to call it The Buffalo Wallow, because that's pretty much the way it looked, bare dirt, all those tufts of fur hanging about. There are over 80 trees on this small bit of land. I think more than anything, it was the trees that sold the house. We knew they would be a pain when leaf-shedding time came. There were drifts of leaves everywhere, years of leaves because the house had been sitting empty for at least two years that we knew about. We made the offer. We were shocked when it was accepted. The owner clearly just wanted to be rid of the place. We wondered if we could have offered even less than the low-ball offer we had made. Instant equity. And the economic crisis had not even hit Texas yet.

There are still signs of Rose. Occasionally we come across one of her pies, or a bit of buffalo hair. Mainly, the grass has never recovered completely. It's on the mend, but slowly. There was once a working sprinkler system, and Saint Augustine covered the ground. We have found a few leftover runners and have babied them along through two extended, devastating droughts. It is a little bit of paradise here, but it is hot. And it is a lot of upkeep. We like to travel. We go away for a few weeks and come back to as many weeks worth of work to get the place back into shape.

I fall in love with houses, with spaces, with lawns and porches, with seeing my stuff just the way it suits me. I have to desensitize myself when I began to think of leaving a place. I have to let go of the visions I have, the daydreams of future times. I have to fall out of love. I'm in the midst of that process as I write this. Of giving up on my Buffalo Wallow.

Onward ....

Final Commitment

What a week this is going to be! It started right off crazy busy with my cousins coming for lunch on the same day my SO left for NM. I will follow him later this week. I had a dentist appointment yesterday that was made clear back in January, and my dentist happens to be in Austin. So I got in a half-packed car and flew up there and back yesterday, stopping only long enough to run into PetSmart and Penney's. When I got back home, at 6:30 in the evening, there was an email with the subject header of FINAL COMMITMENT. Sounds so ominous. But what it means, in a nutshell, is WE GOT THE HOUSE!
It's been so nerve wracking, seeing that email was a little anti-climatic. But now I feel comfortable enough to tell the world.

Today I have to finish packing the car, go to the bank to ease the wire transfer along, the post office, and then to a doctor's appointment this afternoon that I have also had since last October. I'm so scattered, I've been making lists all over the place, then misplacing those. I've already misplaced the gate opener. I really miss my sweetheart and my dog. And today! Today, is the 3-year anniversary of our first date. It seems so much longer ago than that, and now we've made this FINAL COMMITMENT on a house in the mountains.

People who know seem excited for us. All except for Daddy that is. I think he's depressed about the whole idea of us being gone even more than we are already. And as I've stated here before, Daddy is a big dilemma. I think that he's beginning to get really feeble, and he's depressed about it, maybe thinks I should be tending to him on a daily basis. Some women would be doing that, I know a few who would, but I'm not that sort of woman. As selfish as it seems, I feel I have already given up a huge portion of my life for others, have basically put my life on hold for most of the last 40 years, and I'm just not willing to continue pushing the hold button. I don't know how many more years are left. At my age, my mother had just 7 years left. I wonder if she had known that when she was 57, what all would she have done differently. I feel, have always felt, that she died completely unfulfilled. And the other truth is, Daddy has had choices in all of this, too. It's his choice to live so isolated, so cut off from all the people since Mother died who reached out to him and tried to have a relationship with him. He rejected everybody, didn't want to have to make the effort to have a social life, and now he is so alone. But it was a decision he made all by himself, despite everyone's efforts.

And that brings me to another thought -- that we so often do these things to ourselves -- by making poor choices, for all sorts of different reasons. This house in the mountains, this man I am in love with, the way we live, things we do, I feel I am fully engaged in all of these things. I no longer feel when I wake up in the morning that I'm going through the motions, like some automaton. That's not to say all those earlier years were bad ones, they certainly were not. I have many many good memories, and I feel great fondness and love for my ex. It had a bad ending, but lots of stories do, that's just life. But I made choice that were not always good for me, I feel that so much of that time was spent just half-living, waiting for some mysterious better day that would come later, and those are mistakes I'm trying not to repeat now.

It's risky, buying this house. The economy is still struggling, especially the real estate market. Of course, that shakiness is what made buying this place nearly irresistible. We paid way under the tax appraisal, and way under the market value in the area. The house needs lots of work, and I'm going to have to control this impatient urge I have to get it perfect right NOW! But if some things should go south financially, for either one of us, it would be hard to sell either of these two houses quickly if we had to do that. We have made the difficult decision to put the place at the Coast up for sale right after the New Year. We've had so many good times down there, memorable times, but we're in a different place now, and this last year we haven't gone down there enough, or enjoyed ourselves there as much, so it's time to let it go.

And now I need to get back to my crazy busy day, so I can be ready to join my SO later this week to close on our house. I'll post a picture of it when we have the hot key in our hands. Things can, as I well know, always go wrong, so I'll reserve pictures for later.

Onward ....