The long wait and the slow boil

I left my office about an hour and a half ago and yet, I'm fully dressed with my tie, for the moment, still wrapped tightly around my throat. With each inhale, the fabric caresses the sandpaper of my facial hair, giving life to the faint rasps of the Darth Vader voice in my head.  I sense that tonight will not be a good one as I once again return to my place at this keyboard, dissecting myself with the methodic, laser-precision of an MRI casting images on this screen in bright yet intricate colors only discernable by a trained eye.

Tonight I'm a bit frustrated because I'm trying to do the impossible and some faceless creature from the planet "underwriting" is thwarting my every move. Accomplishing the impossible is a pattern for me. It always has been, and I guess unless I do something to break this habit, as I have with all my others, I will continue to find myself battling demons with unknowable powers lurking in the darkness of 1-800 hold hell.

My bite has a stronger hold than a ring-champion pit bull with a week-long hunger for food and blood. I charm, outwit and, when challenged, bully even the best-trained customer service professionals into submission. I take no prisoners and when I'm right there is no monolithic corporation nor government that can stand in my way. (Just ask the folks at Essig Pools, AT&T, and US HUD if they remember me.)

But this time something is different. I just don't feel like forcing this one. Maybe I know I'm wrong. Maybe the house on Sugar Mill Road is too big, too much, and therefore, out of my league.  Maybe I know my timing is off and I should wait another few months to save the remaining money to make a 20% down payment.  Maybe, just maybe, I know in the back of my head that although I love my job, I don't really care for Dallas as a city nor do I, for the most part, care for Dallasites and buying a house here is akin to "selling out" and that once ensconced in 2477 air-conditioned sqft, I will find it hard to leave regardless of my growing distain of this land-locked place devoid of physical beauty and clear waters.

I think there might be another reason for my fatalistic approach to this house purchase...  I just can't fully let go of my connection to Miami Shores and the house on 92nd street even though it alone is the albatross impeding my advancement in Dallas.  The house, and Miami Shores, occupies a constant presence in my daily life and not a day goes by that I don't find something better, cleaner, nicer about Miami to the passive annoyance of many a Texan, including my blue-eyed cowboy poet.

It has been much tougher than expected to build meaningful friendships in Dallas. And maybe because of that, I have clung to facebook and trips Home to get enough of the stuff that makes life (for one as social as me) rewarding. So here I stand, with a heavy mortgage in Miami, trying to buy a second home in Dallas with (almost) no money down in a banking environment understandably gun shy. If I pull it off, I'm a mad man or a genius.

What attracts me to this particular house in Dallas? Evelyn.  Evelyn McCullough, from Sulfur Springs TX, graduated from Texas Teacher's College in 1943 with a Bachelor's of Home Economics and was the Home Ec teacher at the high school in College Station, TX when she was introduced to Curtis Turner, the aeronautical engineering freshman at Texas A&M. Curtis had just returned to his studies after serving in WWII. After a long courtship (Evelyn wouldn't marry before Curtis graduated), they wed and moved to Dallas. In 1966, the Turners moved into 4425 Sugar Mill Road and Evelyn Turner, trained to be a perfect wife, set about creating her version of the American dream and she lived exactly as she willed until she passed away last April. This is clearly the home of a person in full control of time and space and detail. That control is apparent in perfectly even vacuum patterns on the carpets, meticulously labeled photos, and alphabetically-ordered (and color coded) reel to reel tapes. Evelyn had clear ideas about how a life should be lived and how a home should be managed. Should this closing actually go through and I yet again accomplish the impossible (but this time without trying so damn hard), I will most certainly order an embroidered pillow for the sofa in the living room that says, "What Would Evelyn Do?"  (I might, in her honor, even keep the wallpaper in the bathroom.)