From the North 40: Doomed to domestic disaster

Despite my long, sordid history of being unable to snap out of my obsessive obsession with, well, random obsessive things, I had fully planned on writing this week about something besides my house project. It would’ve happened, too, if I hadn’t suddenly realized that I am doomed. Duh-ooomed, I tell you.

I could have written about any number of disasters, weird news items or politics, or the trifecta of disastrously weird politics, or even weirdly disastrous politics, which is a different thing altogether, though equally plausible.

But no, sorry, I am far too doomed to think about those things.

I have been struggling with such heady, house-building questions as structural building materials (wood or metal?), electrical hookup (leave it here or move it? overhead? buried?), heating (what combination of gas, in-floor, radiator and electric is going to work?) and windows and doors (you want it where?! because that beam right there is structural, y'know).

These are home-altering questions I will have to live with for years to come. I can't just replace this home with another white trash abode like a dilapidated single-wide trailer house.

Then some joker, who I married a few decades ago, says I need to make up my mind on our ceiling material, like I can just pull a decision like that right out of some place the sun don’t shine. Like my mind.

It was at this point that I had my epiphany. After months of agonizing — which started with “What are we going to do about a new dwelling, before our current on has to be humanely euthanized?” and has moved to more specific, life-altering, decisions on our current course of action — it finally occurred to me, just this weekend, that I am wholly and entirely unfit for this project.

And I’m not just talking mentally.

Now that we have decided on a course of action, we have invested time and money, we have begun work that would cost more time and money to reverse, now — after all the countless hours of obsessing — it has occurred to me that I have no experience in these matters. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. In almost 50 years of existence, nothing.

I have never built, decorated or remodeled a home or living type structure, or part thereof. I have never even purchased one new piece of furniture, except a bed. One bed. Oh, and my washer and dryer.

I have repaired various parts of a home, even replaced a few things with some hand-made stuff. That's the sum of my experience.

Everything I’ve purchased, even my current home, has been purchased or otherwise acquired through expedience, luck or happenstance. Everything has been secondhand, a hand-me-down, trade or cheap purchase. Everything is here because of an opportunity that presented itself at the right time and the right cost. None of it as a deliberate choice of style. Not even the bed or washer/dryer for that matter.

All my furniture, my flooring, my shelving, my curtains, all my other appliances. My house itself. Even the towel I have over the front door window. (What?! Don’t judge me. I had a curtain, a cute acquisition that I complained about because it kept getting sucked out the door and shut in the jam and my husband complained about because it didn’t block the sun. I hung the towel up in frustration one day and it worked perfectly. I don’t mess with workable, cheap, solutions.)

Now I'm the person in charge of creating — and decorating — a new living space.

That's not all.

To seal my fate: right down to the most raw, most intimate, deepest depths of my soul, I hate shopping.

I am so totally, irredeemably doomed.

(Well, part of that's a lie. I love shopping for anything horse-related. If only I were building a barn at [email protected].)