“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy famously said.

(my husband and i wed in my parents’home. This post is written on the date of their wedding anniversary, which I’m certain they are celebrating in heaven)

“There’s no place like home,” says me. In fact, this theme is the through-line of each novel in my Faith, Family, Frenzy! series.

Coupled with the cast of characters’ forgetting, in each turn and in their own way, that consequences always return to bite you in the butt, no matter what. Call it Karma, call it Kismet, call it the Lord correcting your path when you meander off the path. Call the occurrence anything you want, but the truth is that consequences always prevail.

But I digress. I need to swerve this blog post back to its path, to write about a monument to our love: Casa Colando.

You’d never believe that this home – and it’s two-hundred-degree view from the back patio – was hidden behind an eighteen-foot high hedge, unseeable curbside as per the prior owners’ desire. My husband and I, with the help of relatives ‘Back East’, chainsawed the yard. For example, Monster clusters of oleander and pompous grass stood shoulder-to-shoulder to shield (!) the owners from their stupendous view. Certainly, from view by other human beings. Gasp!

This is a house with a killer past: one of the residents was fabricating detonators in the former garage. For IRA bombs.

This house was not only a house we could afford, but it was a house we could save! We could mend it’s blemishes, warts, and faults to mold into our together forever home. We got down to business, up to our necks in various types of nuts and bolts and nails. We have five hammers, two drills, and acres of duct tape. What color would you like?

Hundreds of trips to the hardware store – sometimes four-per-day – spending oodles of cash, devoting hours of time, and forging an unshakeable bond.

Our fixer-upper home was a call to action, to team-build our partnership in a project.

As, I often stated, with a twinkle in my eye, to family and friends, “I live in the Projects.”