house remodeling | Rachel Carrera, Novelist

When Sister Michelle, Son Jeremy, and I bought our house a couple of years back, we, of course, had our mail forwarded. We were so proud to own our first house and no longer be renters that we changed our Driver’s Licenses, Voters’ Registrations, magazine subscriptions, various insurances, etc., as soon as we could.

Between the three of us, we probably get a total of about five or six magazine subscriptions per month. When you go on the magazine’s website to change your address, most of them tell you that it will likely be after the next issue is mailed before the change will take place, so be sure to notify the Post Office of your new address. Okay, no big deal.

All three of us spent a lot of time those first couple of months camped out at Home Depot, Lowes, and Floor and Décor, among other home improvement stores. We had tons of changes to make to make this place feel like it was really ours, and nothing was going to stop us.

Meanwhile, the mail piled up on a table by the door while we busily learned how to build walls, change out light fixtures, paint textured walls, etc. Then came the day that we took a break and sorted through the mail. That’s when we found this magazine.

Or what was left of a magazine after the Post Office damaged it. (If you can’t tell, this is literally the bottom corner of the cover only of a magazine!) At least they apologized for their error and included their wishes that the problem didn’t cause us too much inconvenience.

Let’s talk: Is this hilarious, or what? Did you ever get something like this from the Post Office? What’s the most damaged item you’ve ever received from any shipping company? Regarding the last place you moved, did you make any changes as soon as you got there, or did you wait a while?

Greetings, friends!

It feels like forever since I’ve paid my respects to Bloggyville. Just over a year, actually. (Technically, I’ve read a lot of your blog posts many times, was able to comment on them some of the time, but haven’t posted myself in forever.) I’ve had so many things going on and haven’t actually had a working computer for several of those months (I’ll share why momentarily), but I’m up and running again as far as the techy end of things. And as for that and everything else going on, it’s too much to go into all the details here, so I’ll give you the quick skinny now, then space the details out on subsequent posts.

In the past twelve months, I have:

Bought a new (slightly used) house
Remodeled nearly every room of said house
Sued my previous landlord
Lived in the living room for several months while I was waiting for my bedroom/office to be finished (hence the lack of computer)
Lost a lot of money to contractors who said they could do a job but couldn’t
Found out that I can’t trust most contractors
Figured out how to do a lot of contract work myself (with help of my sister, Michelle, and my son, Jeremy)!
Stayed in flare with my Lupus for another entire year!
Had bronchitis for 5 weeks
And then had bacterial pneumonia for 3 weeks
And thought I was going to die!
Discovered the absolute best bed in the world!
Worked on creating custom works of art to decorate said new house
Designed a few genealogical books for a few people (myself included)
Uncovered some pretty cool genealogical finds within my own family as well as my sister, Michelle’s
Had to get a new computer and monitor because both went bad while they were sitting stagnant during my transition
Lived through and survived a major hurricane (in the new house)
Had a major change in employment status

That’s all I can share for now, though I actually have another couple of things in the works that I’ll reveal soon. But just so I don’t keep you entirely in the dark, I’ll share a couple of photos… One is my new house, and the other is my new life’s mantra.

Rachel's new house! Woo Hoo!