It was supposed to be just a flip.
Take a little old lady’s house circa 1970, dress her up and send her back into the prom world of real estate to look for its love match.
But it was WE who fell in love. Unexpectedly and obscenely in love and now can not let go.
We bought the cottage over a year ago. It’s only 15 minutes as the crow flies from our main house yet it feels lands away nestled in the foothills in a snug yet glorious lake region.
We put in all the work and spent a summer there enjoying the fruits of our efforts and then said good bye Labor Day when we rented it out for the winter and returned to our original abode.
Then we pined for it the entire year until this June, where we breathlessly showed up minutes after the renters pulled out of the driveway, our suitcases half-zipped with excitement.
Every day I feel giddy. Am I tricking myself somehow? Cheating on my beloved first house with some floozy of a renovation?
Do I love it here because its so different that the setting I’m used to?
Our main house is a grandly restored 1880s antique set amidst two hundred year old trees. We worked on it tirelessly for ten years, saving it from years of neglect and careless owners.
At the lake, it took us 6 months. We pulled up shag carpeting, opened the layout and painted it all white. I furnished it entirely from online catalogues.
We knew putting in a lap pool just outside the new living room french doors was a naughty, indulgent idea but we did it anyway and now skinny dip at night under the stars.
I wake up and feel serene. Is it knowing water is just steps away or the clean lines of the furniture and bare walls?
We take scooters down our little road to the dock my husband built and we zip out on our boat, often with our boys bouncing behind on knee-boards.
I never liked to bike before and now I bike around the lake every chance I get..
I don’t even like lakes so what is going on?
Is because we feel perpetually on vacation even though we are in our home town?
Or is this the place we should live in forever?
Or are we merely besotted with “here” because we know “there” is still “there?”
All I know is that we aren’t giving her up. Yet.