Sisterhood

Hmm, I don't know if I got around to talking about this at all last year... Well, ok, I scrolled back and I did mention in August last year that my sister (I usually just call her P) and her husband had bought a house in our hometown. But I guess that was all I said here about it, except for another passing mention on Christmas Eve. What happened was that they were building this house, and everything was going along fine, and all the sudden the builder called them and asked for a meeting, I guess, and what they said was that the powers that be - whoever that might be in this case - had decided the house was in the flood plain. (I have never owned a home, so I know next to nothing about this stuff, except I know if affects your insurance.) I guess that meant it was much more possible that it would flood than they had anticipated, does that sound right? Well, so the builder was of course extremely apologetic, and I guess they were given various options, one of which was the option to just walk away and get their money back, and that's exactly what they did. My very uninformed decision was that that sounded like the right thing to do, given that we're close to the coast here and flooding is always an issue around here.

Naturally they were very upset and so they went back home to San Antonio and thought things over for a while. And honestly, I don't even remember how long the question of whether they were going to try again sat there undecided - I was deliberately trying not to push myself into the issue! - but finally P called me and said, well, we came back down, and we ended up buying another house. - This was just the same deal as the first one, a house that hadn't yet been built, but in a different subdivision and with a different builder. (The first builder was a very respected, well-known one, as I understand it, which is partly why it was so surprising to me when things went so spectacularly wrong. The second one was a somewhat smaller, more local company.)

Anyway, it took a while but the second house finally got all built and closed on and all that just a couple of weeks ago, and they are here, not much more than 10 miles from where I live. They are still getting unpacked and stuff so I'm giving them space - actually I think E, her husband, has gone back to sell the old house. They were very lucky to be able to keep his house in SA (which he had before they got married) while all this got ironed out, and it's a nice house and they should get a nice price for it, under the circumstances. (Everybody keeps saying real estate is a seller's market right now.)

I haven't even seen this house yet, except she sent me a picture of the front of it, which is not especially impressive. But I know P wouldn't have had anything to do with it if it didn't look much better on the inside. (She loves interior design and that kind of stuff. She is in her element.)

We had dinner with them on Thanksgiving, at a restaurant - it almost got called off because P texted me and said, "We can't even find our clothes!" but they eventually found at least some of them and we had a lovely dinner. (If you follow me on Twitter, this was where I was talking about having turkey in an Italian restaurant. But it turned out fine.)

I am not sure what it's going to be like having her nearby. I tried to figure it out and I think the closest we lived to each other since we left home was something like fifty miles or more - us in Galveston, them (her previous husband, it was then) way the hell out on the other side of Houston. I think the last time I lived at our childhood home was 1980, and that was just for the summer, and she would have been about to leave for college herself. Well, anyway, it's going to be interesting!! I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes. We are practically all the family each other has, now, except for her grown son - my nephew - who lives out of state and doesn't visit and rarely even calls - and some cousins.