...without opening another door elsewhere, or giving you the phone number for a locksmith.

However, sometimes God wants you to CHANGE doors.

The strangest thing happened last week; out of nowhere, after I had had a course-correction regarding just who and what I am, and just what it is that I'm supposed to be doing with my life - we got a phone call from our realtor.

We had wanted to buy this Santa Fe Pueblo Revival home in New River, and found out that we were upside down (severely) in our home here in Anthem - not only that, but that foreclosures and shortsales were forcing the market even further down in Anthem, which meant that I was getting further into debt, and farther away from ever buying a Pueblo Revival (no, goshdarnit, I'm gonna say Santa Fe. So there! (My friend John, who's from Northern New Mexico, doesn't say Santa Fe. He says "Sahn-tah FEH!" : )

When I became fully aware that it simply wasn't going to happen - that NOTHING was going to happen - I had Ethel call the nice real estate lady and apologize for taking her time, and to let her know that we simply weren't able to do anything at all.

So that awareness of my increasing indebtedness - in a house that I didn't really want to live in - sort of helped me spiral down, until I remembered that I'm not supposed to be worried about stuff like that anyway; I'm not a homeowner; I'm an alcoholic and compulsive overeater. I'm not supposed to focus on my wants - I'm supposed to help others get sober and abstinent.

Just realizing that (my friend Amy helped a lot) changed my entire outlook; heck, it rerranged my personality. And I was genuinely happy for the first time in quite a while - happy without reservation or qualification. It was very freeing.

So imagine my surprise when the nice real estate lady called a left a message, saying that the builder of the house that I wanted to buy wanted to buy MY house (which wasn't even on the market) - and that he would pay the closing costs...just out of nowhere, apropos of nothing, with me having forgotten about it.

Not wanting to generate any more internal conflicts, Ethel and I prayed together before calling the nice real estate lady and saying "yes, I would love to work that out, I'll give him full price for his place, it won't take me more than ten minutes to pack my comic books and my other shirt".

Above you can see a picture of Ethel's new kitchen (assuming that this does, indeed, run the full course - now the contracts are signed and the loan is being processed. All that's left is inspections and closing). You might note that the exhaust hood (which is de rigeur for gourmet kitchens, you know) is stainless steel. ALL of the appliances are stainless steel. That doesn't seem like a big problem, until one realizes that Ethel has her new Bosch dishwasher that is BLACK.

Now, to you and me this wouldn't matter, because the new house has a nice new GE Profile stainless-steel dishwasher. But to Ethel, it's important, because...well, because she's Ethel. Ethel doesn't care what those silly Internet sites say - she doesn't care that the GE Profile has a decibel rating that's 4 points lower than the Bosch. She's sure that the GE will actually make her dishes DIRTIER, while sounding like a marching band going through the kitchen.

So now I'm waiting (again) on the phone, trying to buy Ethel a stainless steel dishwasher door for her Bosch, so that she won't have to have some cheesy non-Bosch dishwasher. We do have an additional problem now, in that the house does NOT have a refrigerator, so we'll have to buy one (since ours is black). And, of course, Ethel now wants a Bosch...