Can’t Write My Way Out of My Own House…

I was home sick yesterday with fever, chills and a really nasty 24-hr stomach-thing.  Fun stuff…  The dream that woke my sweat-soaked head around 11:00 a.m. was about being Matt Leblanc’s housekeeper and finding some really trippy accoutrements on a shelf or something…  Which, clearly I can’t articulate since fever seems to have melted away that memory.

Needless to say it’s been a rough week with my tummy-sickness capping off days of stress about whether or not the Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007 is just a “piece of paper”.  Adding to this fact is our slacking-ass accountant who waited a month and a half to scare the bejeezus out of us with something about which even HE was not sufficiently knowledgeable (and is currently convinced is “just a piece of paper”); which gives you my facepalm-of-the-week.  Dumbass.

So hubby and I had one of those ridiculously worthless arguments where everyone is wrong and simultaneously right in their own heads.  I’d personally blame the dumbass accountant but he’s a “family friend” so this would make me “”evil””...

It was about this little gem of a contest whose entire concept has me completely smitten; not only for its mission but for the potential to rescue us (AND and entire locale in Michigan) on multiple levels.  Write a House is a nonprofit based in and involved with the TLC and rebuilding of Detroit, Michigan.  One house at a time and one writer at a time they are breathing life, love and hope back into these dilapidated neighborhoods. Being able to win a house to get more writing done and to be directly involved with not only the beautification of an area with LOTS of potential but giving back to and expanding the literary community… *sigh* – has me completely head-over-heels.

I started by joking around about us needing a divorce for me to even qualify for this contest since we make too much money as a couple.  Even though we are a gruesome-twosome of broke-assedness, we are not technically poor enough to fit into WAH’s clearly stated income parameters of “low to moderate”.  Moot point, either way…

Hubby’s stand – he ain’t moving to no “DEE-troit” so he guesses I’m going by myself and that any so-called “renaissance” would take about 40 years anyway.  So good luck good luck keeping myself from being robbed or murdered or worse.

Whaaa…aaahhht???

#1 – Thanks for being so quick to dismiss me to move to Detroit without you.  #2 – people with property in places like Harlem, East New York and Alphabet City who got in before all the buzz and gentrification happened are sitting pretty in their gold mines right now.  After less than ten years.  #3 – WHAT in the sevenhells is worse than being murdered!??

All of this is insignificant since even if we DID get divorced tomorrow, I’d have to wait 2 years before being eligible to apply so it really doesn’t even matter.  Making our entire exchange a: Completely. Pointless. Conflict.

So we couldn’t agree on the definition and time-frame of a neighborhood renaissance; or apparently what are mean things to say to one another.  I needed to retreat upstairs for a bit, with my good friends Shower, Cabernet and 2 glasses.  Trust me, it’s classier that way…

---

How depressing that I can’t even write my way out of this vacuum of a house and into a newly renovated abandoned one!  It’d be really nice to be able to get back to my urban roots and have a permanent future-paradise to do all my writing in sans money-stress.  If I had a goldmine like that, I’d probably be loath to ever part with it…

It would be quite a sigh of relief to be able to qualify and actually win; and to be able to forgo all the dreaming-up-crazy-ideas-to-supplement-my-income (that may or may not involve my feet… and maybe a pimp).  But this is the way things seem to go for us these days – too “rich” to win a house, or qualify for food-stamps; too poor to hope to make ends meet…

Sample art house in Banglatown – The “Write” way isn’t so horrible…