So what did happen next? You know, after the lawyer-free divorce?
First thing I did was go out and buy several pairs of very high heeled shoes.
My former husband is five-foot-eight-point-something and my friend is over six feet tall. I am five foot ten. I was tired of trying to look short when I was with my spouse. I was proud of what I saw as an opportunity to walk tall.
Legally, the judge granted me the option to change my name back to my birth name. Since our assets were still entangled, along with our debts, I opted to wait, and use my birth name only for my creative purposes(writing and for my spiritual work as a minister) and this has made for some confusing moments.
The judge also said divide the assets and sell the house and divide the proceeds.
The ex-husband said get out of the house and take the six (that's right, six) dogs with you so I can repair the damage they have done to get this ready to sell. He had a yellow Labrador with a brain and behavior disorder, a chowchow and a poodle mix all rescues of one sort or another. I had two Cairn terriers and Bob the Wonder Dog (a Flat Coat Retriever look-alike that I had given Russ for his birthday one year,) but Bob and I bonded, so Bob subrogated himself to me. All six of them were rescued from horrible situations and all carried baggage that made for unique challenges. Well, guess what! You cannot rent a middle class home in South Florida if you have six dogs. People just look at you funny.
So I took the advice of a friend and reluctantly left Florida. Family in Missouri thought I should move there near them. I was attracted to Fort Worth, Texas, but only because I once enjoyed visiting a small chapel there. At the advice of that same friend (the one in Tennessee, I moved to Nashville.
Our liquid assets afforded me a substantial down payment and about two years' worth of mortgage payments and living expenses. The bookstore afforded me the opportunity of a transfer to a store near the Nashville house I bought.
Now, I had never made any financial decisions on my own before, and the joint decisions during the marriage were generally poor in outcome, so I didn't have any experience in managing my finances.
It was my very active fantasy life and my willingness to 'shoot from the hip' that kept me moving forward through all this change.
Having convinced myself that my tall handsome friend in Florida would soon get a fine professorship at Vanderbilt and move to Tennessee to live with me (with absolutely no indication of this from him you see) I undertook a massive remodeling and renovation project on this not-so-little brick two story on Percy Priest Lake. Why, against wise advice and common sense, did a woman alone with six dogs think she needed a twenty-seven hundred square foot two-story house, I will never understand. I guess it was simply my obsession with my fantasy of a perfect future life.
My first contractor robbed me and left me with huge holes in the exterior walls in the middle of my first winter in Nashville, and it was a cold and windy one. Natural gas in Tennessee is about four or more times the cost of the same fuel in Florida.
I could not use the fireplace because an inspector told me I needed a new chimney and it would cost about ten thousand dollars.
Back in Iowa when I was growing up, my dad had a saying that something was so poorly built you could 'throw a cat through the walls.' Well, I never liked that image, but I could see how it could be true that long windy winter.
I stuffed plastic grocery bags in the holes and shivered in front of a space heater.
I did not know where my camera was that winter, or you would be able to see the condition of the holes. This is where I would insert that picture. :>(
Well, we survived it and I eventually found a more honest and capable contractor. He and his wife worked together and were both very good to me. They re-did many of the messes the first fellow had left and carried on until my funds went dry.
When that happened, I began making late payments on the house and soon thereafter, started missing payments altogether.
I decided I should not have bought this house on the lake and wanted to sell it. About that same time, the bank determined to foreclose. I found a realtor. Now that was weird how that happened.
In the yellow pages I found an auctioneer who would come over and give me an estimate on the stuff I wanted to get rid of.
He came over and through a lengthy and convoluted explanation that sounded like double-speak, I determined that he was willing to simply cart my stuff off for me at a price that would more than equal what I could hope to gain from it and so I would owe him for the privilege. He did refer me though to a realtor whom he said specialized in short sales.
And then, as I thought he was finally getting ready to leave, he had his pants off and began groping me.
I made him get his pants back on and get out. I was glad I didn't have to reach for the Smith that was within arm's reach. He had seen and commented upon my qualifying target that I hung in the foyer proudly displaying the cluster I achieved on a cold windy March day in the pouring rain. I liked to have it hang there as a part of my security system. With dogs, obvious marksmanship, a couple of fake alarm system signs and new deadbolts, I felt secure inside the solid house.
It was only in other ways I felt vulnerable.
The next day, I made an appointment with the real estate agent who he had told me would whip through a short sale in no time at all. ;>)
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