It’s a new year, and it looks like it’s going to be a busy one here in the Carter household. With four of us living here now, the place has been starting to feel a little small. After lots of agonizing, we decided to do a major remodel of our current house rather than move. We love our neighborhood and just couldn’t find anything we liked enough to go through the painful process of selling our house and moving into a new one — plus the crummy real estate market makes that prospect iffy at best anyway.
Of course, in a few months we’ll be going through the painful process of remodeling both bathrooms, adding a new master suite, and expanding the family room, but it’s going to be a wonderful house to raise a family in when we’re done. It will also involve living with my mother for two months while the contractor does his thing. These two facts have made many people question our sanity, but I think it’s going to work out all right. Mom’s excited about having us live with her for a while, anyway. Hope she still feels that way after we’ve been in her house for a month.
It’s funny. I can’t say that when I moved back to my hometown after college that I envisioned staying here for the bulk of my adult life, but unless something unexpected happens, it’s turning out that way. It’s not so bad, though. In all my travels, I’ve seen some pretty nifty places, but I haven’t yet found somewhere I’d rather live than Oregon. Now, if I could eventually get a second house on a lake somewhere in Oregon, that would be about perfect, but we’ll have to wait on that one.
On the writing front, nothing new to share for now, but I have a gut sense this could end up being a big year. The agent’s going to market with not one, but two new books, so I have my fingers crossed. Meanwhile, I’m starting a new novel that’s got me pretty intimidated — one of those books that I’m not quite sure I can pull off yet. But I’m pressing forward anyway. That’s the only way you can grow as a writer, after all. You push yourself to do new and challenging things.
Of course, that’s a good recipe for growing as a human being, too.