A House is just a House until you make it Your Home

August 1989. We moved into our new home. Neal's bowling team helped us paint the kitchen and move in. The house was in nice shape, but I wanted to make it mine and so I started in transforming this little ranch into my castle.

Mimi's Welcome Card for my housewarming

The basement was finished. It had a full bath, possible third bedroom, nice laundry room, storage and a large area that I converted into an exercise room. I went all out working on this house.  I would stay up until three or four in the morning painting, unpacking, decorating and nesting.  I tore up carpet on the stairs to the basement and learned how to install it myself.  I changed all the doors out from plain pine doors to six panel doors with new gold fixtures.

I wanted to wallpaper and didn't know how, so I wallpapered the garage.  I bought every kind of wallpaper known and learned to hang it in the garage. I figured if I made a mistake learning, no one would notice.  The garage was very tastefully done.  I put up chair rail molding on the wall that the garage entry door was on as I had bought rolls of wallpaper that were on clearance to practice with and did not always have enough to do the entire wall.

My first project, the second bedroom. I wallpapered the room, had new carpeting installed and did it in shades of pink so Kaitlyn would have a place to call hers when she was with us.

My first wallpaper job!

The first three months we were in this house, I knocked out a lot of projects.  Neal had no interest in making this our home. He focused on his work, bowling and Kaitlyn.

We started to have some disagreements over his former wife. He paid a considerable amount of money in child support, but he always felt obligated to help her.  If  her furnace went out, she called him and no matter what time it was, he dropped every thing to go help her.  If she needed help with moving furniture, he was there.  If she wanted some thing for Kaitlyn, such as a phone with large buttons, he bought it.  Yet, when I needed him to help around the house, he was too busy with work or other obligations.

I let it go.  I did what I wanted to do.  I learned to take care of things on my own. This was the same Neal from the days we lived in the apartment. He would go golf during the day and then have to work at night so he wasn't around.   It just became our life.

In the fall, the Accident Fund had a bowling league.  We signed up to bowl every Sunday night with another couple from work.  Some of Neal's bowling buddies  were married to women who worked there so we all became part of a small group that enjoyed bowling together.

Neal was an excellent bowler.  I could hold my own, but I practiced and I became very good.  I averaged 180 which was pretty good for a woman.  I learned how to throw a curve ball and my average increased tremendously.

We enjoyed bowling together.  We enjoyed a lot of things, but the commitment was never there. There was always some thing lurking in the back ground that made me uneasy.

For Christmas, Neal presented me with two tickets for a cruise.  He thought it would be a nice gift as I had always wanted to go on one.  We made plans to go the following February 1990.