One of my favorite people to follow on instagram is Jamick Beck. She’s a brilliant photographer and a lovely human to watch live her life through my phone screen. She lives in the South of France. During quarantine she worked on an Isolation Creation project, where she created a beautiful photograph every day and documented it on social media with the hashtag #isolationcreation. It was so inspiring, and I loved following along.
Social media has been flooded with all these amazing people creating amazing things with their newfound freetime. They are really living out #isolationcreation. I love it. My quarantine feels like the opposite: A vacuum where creativity and productivity have ceased to exist. I have been in quarantine (to the best of my ability) since the middle of March.
Now is not the time to be trapped inside my house with me, myself, and my multiple internal narratives of doom for company. My anxiety is having anxiety over how much anxiety I have over being anxious about everything. On top of it, my depression has been a raging ball of sadness and defeat. It’s an excellent combination for sustaining minimal productivity and an endless drowning sensation.
My sweet Duke wasn’t supposed to stay, but here he is furever.
On the surface, my everyday life has not drastically changed. I work from home and don’t have tons of reasons to leave the house. I used to travel a few times a month, and I was always bopping out to have lunch with friends or grab a coffee with someone or something in the world. None of that has happened, which is good for health reasons.
My quarantine has not included any of the things I would have liked it to include. Considering I can’t travel or leave the house and work has substantially slowed down, I should have time to do so many things. But not true. I have not written my book or even a short story. I’ve not even tended to my blog, which is my job. I don’t read the way I should be. Nothing that needs to be done is getting done. Nothing I want done is getting done. I’m existing in this space of doing the bare minimum. Here’s what the bare minimum has consisted of for me over the last few months:
Finding a dog, helping her have thirteen puppies, bottle feeding them, making sure they go to the vet every few weeks, emergency vet trips, finding them REALLY good furever homes, keeping them safe, and sending them to their furever homes. (I’m exhausted just thinking about it all again.)
Finding and buying a house. (The literal worst.)
Moving cross-country with all the dogs because the house situation took longer because of COVID and we were trying to…
Not be homeless.
Working on the few projects that came my way. (So slow… who needs a writer?)
Sleeping whenever I could, which was hardly never.
Moving back across the country with the dogs to…
Finally move into the house.
Unpacking the house… Unpacking the necessary things; still working on the unnecessary bits.
Battling my anxiety and depression.
Fixing the house because it was NOT in the shape it was supposed to be in.
Makeda front and center where she likes to be. They loved laying in the laundry basket. Don’t ask me why.
Productivity and efficiency are my main modes of existing. I hate doing nothing. I hate inefficiency. I hate wasting time. In my mind, nothing has been productive or efficient during quarantine. It’s wrong. I know I have been productive and as efficient as one can be with puppies considering the circumstances of COVID-19, fifteen dogs, moving, and not living in my own house for two and a half months. There’s this anxiety/depression monster that lives in my stomach (head but I feel it in my stomach) telling me I’m the fucking worst and I could do more and be better and why is nothing done the way it could be??? The last four months have not been my ideal version of productivity. When I see time where I’m just sitting, that’s time I could have been working, unpacking, or doing something with my life to achieve my dreams in any and all the ways. I could have done more during quarantine, but I also couldn’t have. I’m dealing with life, puppies, work being slow, COVID, anxiety, depression, and that’s my version of #isolationcreation.
This was my cue they were done playing and wanted to go in for a nap.
Instead of creating art or finding my love of needle point (I’m actually already not bad at that) or getting in shape or learning how to speak Urdu, I’ve been creating fourteen healthy lives. My #isolationcreation is the puppies and their mama. I took her and the thirteen puppies in during a really difficult time. I made sure she had everything she needed before, during, and after the birth. We almost lost her, but we didn’t. I’m working on getting her healthy – she has already come such a long way. We were told to only expect eight puppies to live, but all thirteen are alive, happy, and healthy. There were several puppies who needed extra attention because they were small, weak, and/or sick. They made it through and are living their best lives. Nine found their perfect homes. Four are stuck with me, two of which have special needs (I call them my miracle boys), but I know they’ll be taken care of. They are almost potty trained. They know how to sit and stay. They’re well behaved and wonderful to be around. They’re the image of health, and they’re growing like crazy. They bring me joy and keep me busy. Life is never dull.
I’m hard on myself, but I always have been. Struggling is my main form of existing right now [always], but I’ve created good where there was sadness during quarantine. I didn’t create beautiful artwork for the world to enjoy like Jamie Beck, but I created something intangibly beautiful for the puppies and their furever families. I did what I could, and I hope it was enough.
bisous und обьятий, RaeAnna
I did my very best for them, and I loved watching them grow and change.#isolationcreation
Celebrating PRIDE and the first few weeks in our house.Honestly, it’s amazing we made it through this year.
WE BOUGHT A HOUSE FOR OUR DOGS
I’m not even kidding.
We took possession and moved into our new home on May 29. I wish I could tell you that buying this house was a fairytale of magical bliss that brought us closer together. I would be lying.
IT WAS HELL!!!!!
If I never ever ever buy another house again ever, it will be too soon.
Dylan has been itching to buy a house since before we even met. I have been on the opposite side of the spectrum: I like apartment living. After three and a half years in an apartment, I finally gave in. He and I talked and talked and talked about it for about ten months. Should we? Were we ready? How would it work financially? Did we even like each other enough to buy a house together (the jury is still out on that one some days)? Also where would we buy a house? What did we want in a house? What did we NOT want in a house? In my mind, I’m nowhere near old enough to own a house. The bank disagreed with me, and gave us money to buy one eventually – more on that later.
This is a long and hellish story. Living it was something I hope to never experience again in my life. Granted, a lot of unique situations were at play.
In January, we found our realtor through my best friend. Michelle Miller is an angel. Honestly. She was sent to us by the great beyond to help us through this horrible experience, fight for us, assure us, keep us from killing each other, and be an absolute boss-babe Goddess. If you’re in Houston and wanting to buy a house, let me know, I will give you her information. She is AMAZING. I could write an entire love letter to her because I think she is just about the best human on this planet. We would not have made it through this without her.
I would not suggest EVER getting a mortgage through NAVY FEDERAL. Don’t do it. DO NOT DO IT. It was a miserable, horrible, terrible, anxiety-inducing, anger-filled experience. I cannot dissuade you enough.
It took us two months to get pre-approved for a mortgage. It should have taken a few days, tops. We kept getting denied. Which was very confusing because we were asking for less money than we knew we should get approved for. After changing loan officers, we found out the reason we weren’t getting approved is because the first one fucked up the paperwork SO bad. We were denied because he had tripled our debt and quartered our income. Well, obviously we didn’t get the loan under those circumstances because we wouldn’t have been able to afford oxygen. We eventually found out, the paperwork was saying the house wouldn’t be our primary residence… again, why would we buy our first house to not live in it? He was the WORST. Our second loan officer seemed better. We’ll circle back to her.
After two months of Michelle checking in to see how we were coming and two months of us being frustrated out of our minds because people suck, we were pre-approved!
It is now the end of February. On the day we received our pre-approval, I found a very pregnant Tess on the side of the road. We decided to keep her and take on the puppies because we knew we would be in a house within two months… (I’m rolling my eyes and face palming and sighing at my own naïveté on that one). We SHOULD have been in our house a month and a half lalter, but life had other things in store for us.
As happy and blessed as I am to have Tess and all thirteen puppies in my life, they made buying a house so much more stressful. I wouldn’t change anything because my life has so much more love in it, but it was hard and stressful. There was only so long we would be able to hide the existence of these puppies from our apartment complex before we needed to move into a house. The clock was ticking. Our lease on our apartment was also up at the beginning of April.
Dylan and I spent two days looking at the properties that fit our criteria. Which for me was: a space for a home office, a fenced in backyard for Beau and Tess (and eventually the puppies we were not planning on keeping but kept anyways!), and a Houston address. Dylan’s list included: two car garage, four bedrooms, a big house, updated, super awesome master bathroom, not a fixer upper, a place for him to game, room for his race car, room for his motorcycle, space in the garage to work, solar panels if possible, a big driveway, and more. He did actually get everything he wanted except solar panels. I got what I wanted too, which was easier because my list was short. We picked three houses to look at that would be perfect for us for the next few years. We were not looking for a forever home; we were looking for a fur-now-because-we-are-desperate house. We talked to Michelle, scheduled a day to look at houses and told her time was of the essence.
We’re in the first week of March. COVID was in the news. It was starting to be in the world, but it wasn’t a huge deal yet.
We looked at three houses. House number three was a four bedroom, relatively new house, with a decent backyard, recently renovated cookie cutter house in a newer subdivision. We didn’t really want a cookie cutter, new subdivision house. We like quirk. We like funk. We like trees. But, we needed a house. It was decently priced, and it had been on the market for just long enough, we hoped they would be happy to sell especially with the COVID shadow starting to loom. We put in an offer that day. They countered the next morning. We countered. We didn’t hear anything. We waited for four days… I had a feeling of foreboding the entire time, which has always been the precursor to bad news. The owners decided to go with another offer and never told us.
Michelle felt HORRIBLE. It wasn’t her fault. The sellers and their realtors were crapwads. Those four days were precious because the puppies were now outside their mama, and the clock was ticking. We weren’t heartbroken about that house because we weren’t in love with it, but we were in love with not being homeless. We needed a place to live, and our lease was up soon. Michelle told us to pick a gazillion houses and we would look at all of them the next day. So we did. We had wanted to be picky and keep the list small, but we were running out of time. I talked to the apartment and extended our lease three months. Thank God.
The next day, we looked at twelve houses. None of them were right. The next day, we looked at seven. I had almost made the executive decision to not go see the very first house on the second day, but Dylan said he wanted to. We walked through it, Dylan had the warm fuzzy feeling. I was being overwhelmed by anxiety and taken over by foreboding. Nothing felt right or good. Something was wrong or going to go wrong, I just didn’t know what that was. Dylan made a solid argument for the first house from the second day. I said “fine.” I didn’t care as long as we were going to have a place to live.
Our house had been on the market for 123 days when we put an offer in. The family that owned it were also military, so I played up Dylan’s 100% disabled veteran card a whole lot in our letter. I am not above using the truth to our advantage. Thank God I did. They liked us. They wanted to sell to us. After a little back and forth and Michelle being a badass, she got us an amazing deal in a super timely fashion. They accepted our offer. We had 45 days until we would take possession. That meant the puppies would be ten weeks old when we moved into the house. I would have to figure out somewhere for us to live for three-ish weeks once they turned six weeks old and were too big to be hidden.
We had the inspection done and all that jazz. Awesome. Things were moving along.
Pretty much as soon as they accepted our offer, COVID started being a really serious issue. Things were closing. People were staying at home. Quarantine was put in place. Masks were being mandated. Things were changing very quickly. Luckily for us, all the physical, in-person things were taken care of. We were assured nothing would keep us from moving in on May 4, our closing date. We had done everything we needed to do. It was the bank’s turn to get their ducks in a row.
The puppies and I and Tess and Beau and Dylan lived in our apartment until they were five weeks old and too old and big to hide and cover up the noise. There was a two pet rule in our apartment; we were thirteen over. Woops. I’m a rule breaker when I have to be. When it became too much for our apartment, we moved in with my best friend, Amanda the Saint, for three and a half weeks until we closed on the house and moved in on May 4! Yay…
Kidding.
COVID had turned the world upside down. We were lucky in a lot of ways, but it fucked some things up for us. Dylan did end up losing his job. The bigger problem was NAVY FEDERAL AND OUR LOAN OFFICER NOT DOING HER FUCKING JOB. Two days before we were supposed to close, we found out through a very round-about way that we weren’t going to close on time. We had to track down our loan officer’s boss – because our loan officer had a very bad habit of never picking up her phone and taking DAYS to call us back – to find out what was happening and why we weren’t closing on time. Also… I’m going to be fucking homeless with fifteen dogs in two days. Turns out, our loan officer didn’t do the paperwork she was supposed to do so we could close, which meant the potentiality of being homeless, living under an underpass with FIFTEEN dogs.
Michelle worked her magic and found a way to convince the sellers that we would move Heaven and Earth to figure this shit out and buy the house from them. They agreed to give us a three week extension. All they wanted was to sell their house and get their money. All we wanted was to buy their house and give them our money. But the bank didn’t want to do their goddamn job, so that they could take our money.
My dad flew down on Sunday to help me drive to Iowa with the thirteen puppies and Tess. Holy fuck, that was a horrible drive to Iowa. It was gross and disgusting. I should really write that story because yuck. I was going to Iowa for at least three weeks. If things didn’t get figured out with the house in that period of time, I would be in Iowa until we could figure something else out or find a new house. So you know… I would be living with my parents.
I was homeless with fourteen dogs. Beau stayed with Dylan, whose job was to pack up everything in the apartment. He got the luxury end of that deal.
After a really long and frustrating and fucked up process, we finally got the go-ahead to close on the house on Friday, May 29. I had been in Iowa for a month. My dad and I left Friday morning super early. We weren’t sure we were going to get the keys to the house that day, though. So we were driving to Houston on a hope and a prayer. Dylan got the keys at 5:00 pm. Dad and I were driving straight to the house and would get in at 10:30. Dylan would meet us at the house with Beau where he would have the air mattress set up for my dad, blankets for us, shower stuff so we could shower and go to sleep after a long day in the car. The movers would move everything the next day. We would hand over our keys to the apartment in the nick of time. Things would be golden.
Hahahahahahaha…
Dylan fucked that up.
After fourteen hours of being on the road, I called Dylan to see how things were at 9:30. He didn’t pick up. I kept calling. My dad kept calling. I just knew in my gut, he fucked up. I pulled into the house. The car was nowhere to be found. The lights were off. There was nothing in the house. I drove to the apartment. Keep in mind. We had been on the road for fifteen and a half hours with nine puppies and Tess. They were hungry and bored and ready to stretch their legs. So was I. I banged and banged and banged on the apartment door. He finally woke up. Turns out, he had laid down for a nap after getting the keys without setting an alarm. To say I was pissed is an understatement. I had spent the last three months NOT sleeping, taking care of puppies, and generally not having any kind of life. And on the ONE day I needed him to do ONE thing, he took a nap. When he finally opened the door of the apartment, I walked in to find NOTHING packed. I was ANGRY. Beyond angry. Like I said, I had spent the last three months taking care of the puppies by myself, going without sleep, giving up my life, moving out of town, being homeless, and a whole lot of other things. His ONE job was to pack the apartment. Our lease was up the next day. How the fuck was he going to get it done? He had planned on having the movers do everything, and I was never supposed to know because I was going to be busy at the house with the puppies.
Honestly, it’s a little bit of a miracle that we are still together. I was livid. I was fucking pissed. And tired. Really, really, really tired.
I took the key, the puppies, Beau, Tess, and my dad to the house. We let them run around the backyard and put some food in their bellies. Dylan finally showed up with the air mattress and towels and shower stuff. I looked at Beau. She’s white, but her skin has black spots. It looked like her spots were moving…. The backyard was INFESTED with fleas. I have terrible PTSD that is triggered by bugs. We were laying on the floor in our bedroom, so our bedroom was now infested with fleas. It was pretty much my worst nightmare. It was the exact opposite of the thing I needed that night. I didn’t get to sleep until 3:00 am. The puppies woke me up at 6:00. It was a hellish day.
Dylan and I ended up having a very long conversation, and he apologized for his stupidity. We’re fine now, but I was very upset. He was dealing with his anxiety and depression. He’s not just a lazy, good-for-nothing fuck noodle; he’s got his issues. Between COVID and all that went wrong with the house, we were both basket cases. It was a hard three months for everyone. But it was not the happy closing day where we left all the bad shit behind us that I had hoped for.
We have spent the first month living in our house dealing with life. COVID has made things difficult. I am the kind of person who likes to be unpacked immediately. That didn’t happen here. We’ve had basic life things to deal with like vet check ups, health issues, buying necessary owning-your-first-home items, catching up on sleep because I went without for three months, getting the dogs and puppies acclimated to their new life, and more. A week after moving into the house, four puppies went to their furever homes. The next week, two more went to their furever homes. Two weeks after moving in, we found out one of our A/C units and the furnace needs to be replaced. Three weeks after moving in, the water heater went out. We didn’t have a washer or dryer for the first three and a half weeks, which was terrible because I have a gazillion puppies that make a lot of laundry. We spent three weeks deinfesting the backyard and house of fleas, which we are now flea free. The plumbing had some issues, which cost more money. We need new windows because well yikes. Nothing has been painted, and it desperately needs paint because it’s this horrible purply-gray-taupe color with terrible stenciling. It has been a VERY expensive month. There are still boxes everywhere. The bed isn’t on it’s bed frame. The house is a mess. But we’re not homeless! We love our house and what it will be. The neighborhood is great. Life is starting to get into a new rhythm of normal.
Our family consists of Dylan, Beau, Tess, Makeda, Knight, Bear, Duke, and I. We were only going to keep three puppies, but no one wanted Duke. Which makes me so sad because he is the sweetest little cartoon of a puppy. He has a serious overbite that will take some money and work to make him better and let him live a full and happy life. We love him very, very much.
We took family pictures in front of our house a few weeks ago. All the puppies (except Duke because we didn’t know he was ours at that point), Beau, Tess, Dylan, and I in our rainbow PRIDE outfits, flying our rainbow flag and our Marine flag. We are a military family. We also believe in inclusivity and living your truth. We are a family full of disabilities. Our home is welcoming to all. We accept everyone as they are. Rescues, strays, pregnant mothers, and everything in between. Humans are welcome too. Our home will always be open and loving. It has been a journey getting here. It was hard and stressful. There were a lot of tears and fights, but we made it. Five months ago, we had one dog and lived in an apartment.
Today, we have a house with a big yard that we bought for our SIX dogs.
bisous und обьятий, RaeAnna
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