Wow, this post sounds really familiar. OMG! Its mineÂ.. First of all, everyone who responded was really helpful to me. I appreciate all your support and great advice. Your words and thoughts all brought me a lot of comfort. Thank you - all you very kind people. And hereÂs what happened. To get to the end first, as I myself hate waiting for the punch line, I did not move. I did put my house on the market though. But first I spent money fixing it up in various ways, such as finally finishing a bathroom. Fixing up all the electrical things I always had intended doing. $$$$. So after 8 years of living with the intention of having a front entryway light, and splitting the outlet/light switch which had been combined, I did all those things. Plus a lot more electric work. This made it nicer for me, but $$$$ which I did not recoup. Based on a post in Buying Selling House forum, I spent oodles of time trying to get grass to grow in my full sun, scorching Maryland climate, red clay front yard which was a major flop. Nevertheless, I spent months doing this and it became a minor obsession. You have no idea. I also spray painted my rusted chain link fence a silver color  major improvement. Then I put my house on the market, kept it pretty clean, rented storage, lived on egg-shells. Of course this was right during the Real Estate flop of last spring/summer. I also occasionally traveled to North Carolina and checked out amazing housing prices there. BUT my little, very nice on the inside, 2 BD/2 BA house did not sell. I would have had to drop the price much lower as the inventory in my area was huge, and 2 bedroom houses would not sell before 3 or 4 bedroom ones. I didnÂt need to move, and saw no reason to cut so far into the "profits dancing in my head" that a move would no longer be financially beneficial. Driving back and forth between Maryland and North Carolina, I also started to understand the value of the family and friends I have in the area. After nearly 3 months on the market, I look my house off. I almost donÂt remember where I planned to go. In September I realized that a co-worker and I could start a creative business which I had always dreamed of. I approached him and we formed a business partnership. We are working on this all the time, and that is my current focus. I am doing things which I hadnÂt planned to do before, such as writing childrenÂs stories while he creates the online characters. There are still many aspects of my life which probably would make me as impatient as I was when I wrote my original post. I mostly donÂt have time to think about them. I am pretty busy with launching a business and learning about all that  itÂs a real baptism by fire. I did get rid of a negative "friend" which has improved my life greatly. And I am a "convert" to The Secret which truly works. The business was totally unexpected, and perhaps if it didnÂt materialize when it did, I would happily be living in Raleigh or someplace in that area. I look forward to enjoying my house and yard this spring and summer. The lovely screened porch, the quiet neighborhood, the improved house, a soon to be successful business (fingers crossed). Life is certainly unexpected.

We got impulsive in the fall of 2005 when we realized that my good-paying job was not just for the year that had just ended, but was going on indefinitely. DH's dad had moved in with us in June, when his wife died. We loved having him with us, but he had to go to the basement to do laundry and down 6 steps to let our three dogs in and out, and at a very independent 86 years old, there was no getting him to NOT do those things. Plus, there was the only having one bathroom issue and the fact that we were using every square inch of that house before he moved in. So we got impulsive and went house hunting and within 8 weeks closed on a much more practical house that was 225 sq ft bigger (1450 to 1675) and had an extra half bath and a first floor laundry. Talk about minimum requirements! [We were very happy in the long run that we did not "win" the two-buyer bidding war on the slightly larger house with the finished basement, huge lot, and in-ground, heated swimming pool. It was 25% more expensive than the house we bought, and with what happened next, we needed the smaller mortgage.] With all of our stuff squashed into the old house, with peeling wallpaper I had lived with for 14 years because it was pulling off the skim coat of plaster and meant getting the room replastered, with a bathroom ceiling that needed replacement, with original oak floors that needed refinishing, and no room to put everything to do this work, we knew that we would need to move first, then do repairs and put the house on the market. We did this and got the house on the market March 1, 2006. I tried For Sale By Owner with a Realtor/broker back-up who would get a small fee and who got the house into the MLS. I offered selling Realtors a 3% commission. I had printed "Open House" signs with arrows that I posted around the neighborhood each Sunday, I had strings of colored flags like you used to see at used car lots and grand openings going from trees to the front porch and a big For Sale sign with info about the house on the front lawn. I baked cookies. Lots of lookers, no offers. I had the house assessed and he said we should UP our price! In June we hired a full-service Realtor. Over the months we lowered the price regularly. A year and a quarter later, I brought him a nurse I had met who wanted to do a rent-to-own with my house. We agreed to a price that was 84% of our original asking price. The nurse had recently gone through bankruptcy because of a husband with a drug problem and business debt that fell on her. So she needed a two-year rent-to-own. It didn't matter to us, her rent paid our mortgage! Since we had not sold the old house first, we had no down payment for the new house. Originally, we were going to do 100% financing with an 80% first mortgage and a 20% second mortgage on the new house. Then our mortgage guy came up with the idea of putting a second mortgage on the old house, instead. We would pay it off when we sold the house. It was a good idea, we thought, because it brought the mortgages on that house up to $25,000 less than it was appraised for, a good cushion, we thought in October 2005. When we got into the rent-to-own agreement, however, it was low enough that it meant bringing money to the table for the closing costs. In 2007 housing prices began to fall. In 2008, we all know that the entire economy fell. In late 2008, my DH was downsized into "early retirement" and it took him 7 months to get another job. No sooner were we comfortably back on track from that, when the nurse in our old house figured out that it was cheaper for her to buy a foreclosed house and lose her down payment on our house! That left us hanging in the winter of 2009 with an empty house in a housing market in which the empty house was now worth about $69,000 - precisely what I had paid for it in 1994 before replacing the furnace and ducts, kitchen, electrical service, water heater, concrete driveway, windows and doors, siding, trim, garage door, fence, porch, and adding central air and lots of insulation. Not to mention refinishing the wood floors throughout. Meanwhile, Dad had gone suddenly blind at the age of 91, then had prostate cancer, then skin cancer, and was bed-bound with daytime caregivers at our house. His favorite aide had left his employ and returned to her home state the summer of 2009. Her replacement was NOT comparable. Dad missed his Jenny so much, because Jen would go with the flow when it was okay and let him sleep, but force him to wake up and get food and drink in a gentle way that did not bother him, when it was necessary. She read to him and knew what he liked to hear. She read his moods well and could tell if he wanted to listen to a ball game on or wanted to rest. She kept a positive attitude even when cleaning up horrible messes from his hospital-acquired C-Dif. We could all see that he was declining without her. I heard through the grapevine that Jenny had her car and purse stolen and that neither she nor her husband had managed to get good jobs in the several months that she had been back home. After consulting with DH, I called and gave them an offer they could not refuse: a car to drive their menagerie of mammals and reptiles back to Mich and to use when they got here, shipping for their household goods, low rent in our old house. That way, we got Jenny back for Dad and had renters we knew, liked, and trusted in our house. Dad passed away several months later. Because he paid for unemployment insurance for his homecare staff, Jenny got to have free training and ended up with five health care certificates during our economic depression. She is working now, but her DH was hurt at work and is fighting for disability benefits and worker's compensation. They are still in our old house, so we have nothing to worry about as far as renters trashing our house, but they can't currently pay much. Okay, they can't pay anything, I'll admit it. It has been about three years that we have carried them. The husband has had multiple back surgeries and our Jenny is working as a nurse's aide and just not making a lot of money. But she studied hard and got her GED and all of those medical certificates, so she is trying. We don't have children of our own. I guess we got the boomerang phenomenon without having the first half where you give birth and raise the little critters, LOL! We were thinking that we might have to wait until my DH reaches the age of 59.5 and take some $$$ out of our retirement to finally unload this house. We have that second mortgage down to $25,000 from $40,000. The house is now worth about what is left of the first mortgage. It has been hard. Our new house had a expensive foundation disaster two years ago and needed a new roof last Christmas. The roof will be paid off at the end of this year, so we can be more relaxed after that. It does not help that my health has worsened and I am not working. DH is a saint! But now Discover is offering us $25,000 at 7.99%. We have to investigate it more, but if that is still being offered at the end of the year, we could use it to pay off that second mortgage and get the house on the market next spring. Incredible. We weren't sure when that could happen, but did not expect it for several years yet. In a couple, three years we might be able to have that Discover loan gone, too and be FREE! Buyer remorse. I don't know. Who knew that the market would tank so bad? I do like this larger house. My knees appreciate not having the steps. I agree with DH that it is a darned good thing that we did not get that house with the pool! We have thrown money around the past six years like it meant nothing, and I have come to the conclusion that this is partially true. As long as you can keep your heads above water, money is just a tool. It has allowed us to help our young friends have a place to live through their hard times. We will do it as long as we can. We will give them warning when we decide to do the Discover deal or not, but they will have to be on their own eventually. With luck, they will get Social Security to allow disability benefits by then. All the long timers here knew this sorry story. If anyone has read this far, I hope there was something to learn in all of this!

I live in Canada so we don't have State Fairs but next weekend is the 157th Harrow Agricultural Fair which I love going to. Lots of judging contests for fruit, baked goods, preserves, crafts, photography, hand stitched items, quilts - you make they judge it. Love it. I love going into all the barns to look at the animals - pigs, cows, goats, chickens, horses, turkeys, rabbits, etc. The young kids that belong to the 4H Club are so proud of the animals they have raised. I love walking through all the buildings and of course sampling the food offerings. Ribs as soon as you walk into the fair grounds are the best. We eat and drink our way through the grounds. We play corn bingo which is a lot of fun, we even bet on where the cows are going to plop. Just a lot of fun. We always stop for a piece of homemade pie right before we leave. Too many pies to choose from so you just close your eyes and point. LOL I always buy a pie to take home. Pies are auctioned off for a lot of money. I went to the Corn Fest last night but it wasn't very good this year. Most of the vendors and craft people had booths down at Art by the River which really wasn't good for the Corn Fest. Our Lady Peace played there last night so they brought in the crowds and the charity beer tents did good business. We were disappointed though and most likely won't go next year. Ruthven Apple Festival should be sometime in September. I live in a Essex County which is very agricultural so there is always some kind of fair or food festival going on which focus on the bounty from the County LOL We also have some award winning wineries so there is always some kind of Wine Festival. Anne

For the past 2 years our Gold Wing chapter has given me 2 or 3 hundred dollars to use for the Salvation Army Elder Tree. I don't pull names I contact the lady in charge of it instead. She calls me after everyone has turned in their gifts for the folks that they picked. Then we go out and get things that weren't included and also fillers for all the people. My girlfriend and I can really shop. We end up filling the trunk of my Lincoln to the brim. If we run short of funds from our GW chapter we put in from our own pockets to get other things that we know they would like. Most of the people on the Elder Tree are from the nursing homes and low income apartments. My friend works for the county going into peoples homes to give baths, cook meals, shop for their groceries and other things that they need. She always gets so tickled when they excitedly show her what Santa brought. We are pleased that they are happy with what we have shopped for. It is sad when we read what these people put on their wish lists...stamps, stationery, paper towels, toilet paper, snacks. Sometimes they ask for pj's, slippers or sweaters. I called Carolyn the other day and am just waiting for the call to shop. It sure does put you in the spirit of Christmas.