Carpe Cabin

LSW here.

The Vermonster will readily admit that he's Type A. He's a leader, a strong personality, he feels the need to control things.

But he's not as bad as he makes himself out to be. Over the years, my decidedly un-Type A family has beat him down, so now he's able to go-with-the-flow. Sometimes.

But recently, when the stock market started plunging, he, to put it simply, freaked.

"Should we? Shouldn't we? Withdraw our 401k? Take a loan? Buy the property and just let it sit? Build immediately?" There were many questions and I know they were keeping him up at night.

Me, well, it's not that I don't worry. It's just that I'm good at denial.

So when we decided to go for it-- to do this project without a loan from anyone-- I found that quiet place inside of me (the one fueled by a big glass of wine at the end of the day) and decided that yes, I would be all right with this.

Throughout the process thus far, I've been okay. I've tried to participate in decision-making, I've tried to be excited about the possibilities. I've really made an effort to be excited rather than totally freaked that we might be pissing away our retirement. But last week something happened that has made me realize that, hell yeah, we are totally doing the right thing.

A friend died of a heart attack. A 39-year-old friend. Yeah, scary shizz. After many days of deep introspection, I've come to realize that I want to live my life doing the things I think will be fun, because you just never, ever know when your time is gonna be up. More importantly, I want to pass this mindset onto my son. He will be three years old in just a few weeks. Some of his first memories will be of us building a cabin in "Mont," as he calls it. He'll climb trees and find bugs and go snowmobiling and do all sorts of outdoorsy boy things at the cabin that he won't be able to do here in the 'burbs. As he grows older, he'll probably hate going up there, and then the time will come when he'll want to go up there to party with his friends. And you know what? It'll be worth it. It'll be worth giving the finger to the stock market and 401ks and mutual funds. It'll be worth every single dime to be able to say, "Let's go up to 'Mont for the weekend."

(P.S. The Giraffe House is almost finished! Look at my boys!)