We came home from the park on Tuesday to find two guinea hogs chillin' in the driveway waiting for us. Cute, but um...not where they are supposed to be. I thought I was going to cry. I just wanted to go inside and finish painting gold dots in the girls' room and listen to my book while the kids played house. Instead, I channeled all the strength of my pioneer ancestors and went searching for the post puller and driver. Damn it if I didn't build a DIY fence stretcher, string a straight fence line, and set those posts by myself. Don't get me wrong...I am living the dream. Raising our family on acreage with lots of animals and plans for a big garden. Our home orchard is even under way. We have gotten so much done as fast as we can in the last four months. It is just so much back breaking, never-ending work. Why couldn't my dream have been a white, minamalist, two bedroom condo on the beach? In my dreams I simply glazed over the necessaries of fencing and vet bills. By late Tuesday afternoon when I called Husband to bring me Subway, like now, I also informed him that I was moving back to my almost finished house in the golf course community. He could shoot the stupid deer who ate my broccoli. Stupid, stupid disease-carrying, garden pillaging nuisances. Bambi and his buddies are further down the crap list than even the well pump, which seems to be behaving itself for the moment. Thank you for that because Mommy's time-out is a hot shower- drought or no drought.

I keep reminding myself that I was in a similar slump four years ago. I found out I was pregnant the first month after moving into our last house. For all my planning, things still moved in slow-motion for about two years. Maybe it's a blessing. I don't make the wisest pregnancy paint choices. Remember my yellow kitchen and the "cheap South American hotel" color scheme? I can't find a picture of it right now, but honest. Picture a cheap South American hotel minus the paper mache Jesus on the wall and you'd have my house back then. So, I keep reminding myself...Patience. It's a virtue. One I lack. Like it or not, I am being forced into working on it.

Just so you know, eventually things came together. When we listed our house it no longer looked so South of the Border. These are the pictures from our listing. They make me miss my old house, but also help remind me that it took me years of back breaking, never ending work to get there and that was a much smaller house and yard to work with. This was staged for the listing. I know because it was hard to move out my beloved green piano, all our family pictures, and my even more beloved cow-hide rug.