Home Sweet Fricking Nightmare

Where to start? I suppose the best place to start is always the beginning...

July 13, 2007- Our new home is finished. The builder is touching up the paint, the Project Manager is walking the house with us one final time before he hands us the keys and we officially own it! It's beautiful. Big enough for the 3 of us and room for one more when we are ready. The yard is larger than the average for our new neighborhood and to top it all off we bought a lot that backed up to a future city park! I am thrilled beyond belief how this all just fell into place. I even joked that after 2 previous failed attempts to vacation then honeymoon on Grand Cayman, that this house, model name Cayman, would either be 3 times is a charm or another nightmare. It was on a whim that Dad and Penny drove me out here to look for homes and after all our hunting this was it! Things were just 'too good to be true'.

Fast forward 1 year - Our yard has finally been landscaped. It's beautiful, but we cannot enjoy it because they have started construction behind us, yup, you heard me right, construction. After all the promises from salesmen and all other manner of builder representative, the park we were promised, the park that made our home site more expensive, the beautiful, now disappearing, mountain views, One-Big-Lie! So now I have construction workers shouting and swearing and littering right behind my house from 5am through out the day. Kicking up dust, stinking of diesel, making so much noise it is miserable to be in my home, never mind in my beautiful new yard. They start at the crack of dawn, they wake Grace with their beeping trucks and then the leave at 3pm! Why can't they roll in at 6 o'clock and start at 7 o'clock instead of rolling in at 5 o'clock then leave at 4pm? This is making me sick. How could this be happening? Not only are they NOT building a park behind us, that foundation is less than 60 feet from my back wall! They are building a school right-on-top-of-us! I am pregnant with Lily and losing my mind, this stress and anger cannot be good for the baby. Breath Shelbi, keep telling yourself that horrible horrible blatant lie aside, you will not be looking at the back of someone else's home, this has to be better. Who knows, if the builder told you the truth you might still have bought this lot... Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

It's Fall now and that foundation has reached over 2 stories into the sky, it's blocking out the sun and almost entirely the beautiful mountain views we once had. It has become nearly impossible to be positive about this situation. I am angry! Lily is here and Grace needs to be out in the yard to get some of her energy out. It's just horrible to be out there. The construction workers are up on the roof and on scaffolding looking down into our yard. There's no privacy and it's loud and smelly. I am not sure if I am angry or sad but this is not the dream home I thought it once was.

It's winter and we have not enjoyed our yard once, not even on the weekends since they are working practically around the clock to get the school finished by August 2009. That almost 60 foot buffer between our back wall and the building... the nearly 60 feet that was there is now gone. In it's place they are building a wall. What the F^!*? How does it keep getting worse?? My beautiful home, my beautiful yard, my great neighborhood, it's all turned into a nightmare.

Spring is here, the weather is beautiful. Arizona usually only has two seasons, and Spring is not usually one of them. We are having the most glorious weather but they finishing up the Great Wall of China in my back yard. The remaining sliver of mountain view I had is not gone. This fricking school is closing in on us and I now feel claustrophobic in my own backyard! My sadness has once again become anger, but I am not sure who to be angry with. The builder who lied, the school district building this monstrosity or the dirty pervert construction workers who stop to watch Grace play in the back yard as they sit on my back wall and take a break from ruining my life! Okay that was a little dramatic, but I am seething about this whole thing now!

May.. Did you know the entire school lights up? They have parking lot lights and security lights and spot lights that light up the walls of the school. Did you know that one of my most favorite things when we moved here; before there were any houses across the street, before they put up street lights and when the lot behind me was empty; my favorite thing was the millions of stars you could see. Southern California is too populated, you don't see stars, same with Houston. Brian and I had not seen stars since we lived back home in Massachusetts. But out here, in the middle of the desert, you could practically touch the stars, not anymore!

June has arrived. We've had a few parties and the friend and neighbors have all tried to make it okay. They say "It's not that bad" and as they strain to see the mountains always reply "See you still have a mountain view." It's a kind thing to do. but it does not fix it. I might as well just get over it, accept it and start living with it. We cannot sell our home. The market crashed and will take years to recover. It's part of my life and there is nothing I can do but embrace it. Then something nice happens... The construction trucks roll out. The nasty chain link construction fence comes down. The landscapers come in and they plant some decent sized trees. It's gets quiet and it's not so bad. My shoulders drop and I stare out the second story windows at what is a decent looking school. Maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe I can get used to it and yeah, it's going to be okay.

YEAH RIGHT!!!

They turned the a/c units on! The big industrial, right behind my fence a/c units. It sound like a wind tunnel in my house! If it sounds like a wind tunnel in my house, can you imagine what it sounds like in my yard??? And now I am stuck, in this HOME SWEET FRICKING NIGHTMARE...