It's a high stress life

[indigo_rose99]

Sept 2013-Sept 2014 was all travel all the time. It was an insane amount of travel. Amost all international. I hated it. I was lonely and overworked.

Feb 2015 my brother told me he had been diagnosed with cancer. Feb 2015-May 2016 was traveling to take care of him, doing tasks for him long distance, dealing with his death, being the executrix for his estate, and building a house to hold the family furniture he would give me when he died. The travel to take care of him was Hugely Stressful (a vast understatement. I ended up buying and wearing a TENS just for those visits)

My brother's estate is mostly done except for the paperwork. I have some checks to write, some paperwork to fill out. Documentation. A few hours, and then it is mostly maintenance. I should be able to close the estate entirely in nine months.

But the house building is going gangbusters. We have a roof, drywall, painted drywall, cases, and bases. There are of course issues (a broken window in the master bath, crunshed drainage tubes in the driveway, stuff like that. They will fix it.), but overall it looks really lovely. We are thrilled with the look of the house, with the insulation the builder talked us into, with the layout and design. The windows provide a huge amount of indirect light. I really love that.

T and I spent the past weekend trying desperately to choose ALL OF THE LIGHT FIXTURES. Count the light fixtures in your house. Every stupid light, inside and out. Every fan. ALL OF THEM. It was crazy.

And this past week? Together we spent Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday and Monday picking floors, shower tiles, lighting fixtures, potential wrong paint color and more. Friday I spent working on the light fixtures on my own.

T and I are not enjoying this process. He thinks that we have had a stressful couple of years. He thinks that we haven't had a chance to come "down" from the insanity. He suspects other people would actually enjoy this choosing-stuff-for-new-house. We  just want it DONE.

*sigh*

Comments

[reedrover]

I get it. I totally get it. Mom spent 2009-2012 dealing with the terminal decline of both of her parents and my Dad. 2012-2013 was dealing with her parents' estate and the terminal decline of Dad. 2013-2014 was dealing with the remnants of her parents' estate and Dad's estate/stuff. When she finally came up for air last year, she discovered she had three new hobbies and a totally new sleep pattern. She's *ecstatic* to finally be able to not just be self-aware, but do something about it. She's taking joy in little things, and fixing things that don't bring her joy... Ok, the summary of this paragraph is "It takes time to dig out from under, but behold the sunshine when you do."

Also, I totally get it about the decision-making with the house. When we put an addition onto the house, we accepted the guidance from our contractor regarding light fixtures and only provided minimal guidance as to location and wiring. The guy almost fainted in surprise when we returned our paint color choices to him within a day. "What? It's paint. If we absolutely hate it, we'll either redo it or cover it with so much artwork it won't matter." (Ok, I admit that picking the floors took two or three days. We wanted the trophy room to be special.)

As an aside, since we know each other's taste in general, we allow each other to make interior decoration decisions with minimal coordination. "I picked this color tile, that accent tile, and this layout. Up or down vote?" "Up. Looks fine."