Real estate mogul in the making

If this blog is to be true to its title, "What's going on in Amy's head," then I should discuss the plans Paul and I have for becoming land barons.

See, we were looking at renting a cabin in the Smokies when we go home for Christmas. The prices aren't really that bad, compared to prices for a hotel room in Knoxville. With a cabin, though, we'll have a fireplace and a kitchen and a hot tub and it will be just us and the mountains...and the people in the cabin ten feet away, of course, but we can pretend they're not there, right? So we were looking at the listings online and one of the web pages had a link labeled something like "Own your very own cabin!" and I thought, "Hmm." We're still making payments on our old house in Tennessee. It's sitting there full of junk, costing us money. If we sold that house and bought a house in the Smokies for a comparable price, we could continue making those payments we're already making, but those payments would be subsidised by people who rent the cabin. Hmm, indeed.

We're still a long way away from buying a cabin. Step one: Sell the old house. That could certainly take some time. We're talking about auctioning the house and contents just to get it over and done with. We're going home next weekend. It'll be the first time I've been in the Tennessee house since last Christmas. I wonder how many of the treasure I've collected will still be calling me to take them to Las Vegas with me. If I can let go of those old things and that old house, though, maybe I can make it to the next part of my life. It's just a temporary move away from Tennessee. The thought of owning a cabin in the Smokies is appealing on another level besides the monetary one. It's a foothold in Tennessee -- home. We will go home again. It may be a few years, but we're Tennesseeans and we'll be going back again.

Are we getting too old?

I started to entitle this post "Are we getting old?" but I think the answer to that question is just too clear. Yes, we are. We are getting older all the time. I, for one, have no use for today's music, which means I'm not nearly as cool as my own mother was. She would listen to my music and would even form opinions about which songs she liked and which she didn't. Granted, I was none too cool even then, so I probably had an old person's taste. No hard rock. I wanted things I could sing along to.

But anyway, yes, we're getting old. (And we sometimes ramble.) It's almost inevitable, although a few people get out of it by dying young -- not much of an option. But are we getting too old? Too old for what? There's been a theme running through my friends' conversations lately. Several of them have started saying "I haven't accomplished what I thought I would by now." It's true of me, too. I was an overachiever in school, so everyone expected me to be super successful. Didn't happen. I'm comfortable, yes, but I'm not filthy rich. The truth of the matter is that I don't want to do what it takes to get filthy rich. I'm smart enough to see ways of getting there, but my life gets in the way. I'm too busy living my life to stop and do what it takes to make that kind of money. I'm not heartless enough to step on others to get there. I'm comfortable where I am.

Am I too old to play? Oh, I hope not. At this writing I have a rubber chicken antenna topper on my MINI out in the garage. I contend that one cannot be old and have a rubber chicken on one's antenna. I hope that when I have even more gray hairs than I have now, I will still see the humor in a rubber chicken on my antenna. And that I'll still be able to get in and out of the MINI.

Am I too old to achieve? Not at all. I've finally realized I'm just not cut out to be a writer. I'll have to figure out something else I want to achieve. I know someone who is a born writer, though. She writes beautifully. I've begged her...heck, everyone who's read what she's written has begged her to write a book. She writes things that people want to read. When she wants to be funny, she writes things that will literally make you laugh out loud. (People use the acronym "LOL" far too much. They're not really laughing out loud most of the time. It's a real accomplishment when the written word makes someone laugh out loud.) When she writes poignant pieces, she'll make the hardest heart break. She's a writer. And she's worried that it's too late. She's almost forty. (Yep, that's right. She's washed up and she's not even forty yet.)

Too old? I think not.