Hurry up and wait

As with any project, you want to be ready to hit the ground running by the time you close on the property; and leading up to closing we were scrambling to get everything and everybody in place so we wouldn’t lose any time. But wouldn’t ya know it, the forecast was calling for a heavy chance of reality. We spent the first years of our marriage in a small town where Chayce got a lot of mileage out of the "it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" mantra, but in Dallas the saying goes, "it’s better to ask for permission than pay a fine". So yah, when an architect friend came over and mentioned,

“Okay, so you’ll definitely need a permit with architectural drawings, structural engineering, a green study, soil tests, endangered species study, Indian burial ground review, nuclear waste report, a gold-chested warbler habitat-infringement evaluation," and blah blah blah, we knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore (okay, I added a few in there for effect). So there we were, almost two months into the project and not even a mouse turd had been disturbed. Chayce couldn’t be bothered to wait any longer, so he literally picked up a sledgehammer and just started smashing stuff—it's kind of his thing…

(Spray paint art donated by local vandals...God bless them, God bless them all)

“They’ll have to pry this sledgehammer from my cold, dead hands if they want me to wait for a stinking permit,” he told me with a wild look of animal rage in his eye and a little drool coming from the side of his mouth; "It’s un-American to tell a man he doesn't have the right to smash something in the comfort and privacy of his own home—it's basic Second Amendment stuff, the right to keep and bear whatever’s in your arm…or something like that.” Luckily for us, we ended up not getting fined for starting demolition early and the 2nd Amendment was upheld, so win-win. The real bummer is that we’ve missed the spring selling season and this house won’t go on the market until late summer. Oh well, c’est la vie.