A House for Me

Daily Prompt: But No Cigar
Tell about a time things came this close to working out — but didn’t. What happened next? Would you like the chance to try again, or are you happy with how things eventually worked out?
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My husband R was fifty at the time. He was two years away from retirement. We had been waiting for a house in balloting from the Army. It was like this. A certain amount of R’s pay was deducted every month towards him getting a house on retirement. We waited for R’s name to come up in balloting but there was no such good luck for us.

I am a person who wants to plan ahead so I persuaded R to build a house on a plot we already had. R was not that much keen on building a house but grudgingly he gave in to my demand. I had dreams for a small house and a big garden. R decided to build two houses and no garden. He exacted a promise from me that I will keep mum otherwise no house. I had to give in.

The digging started for the foundation. It was found that the site was a landfill. To find solid ground the digging went deep till twenty seven feet underground. The place looked like a vast hole in the ground. On a visit there I noticed my husband looked like a speck on the rim of that hole.

At this point R was ready to abandon Project House. He searched for houses on sale. There were many hitches. Either the houses were old requiring huge amounts of money to be spent on renovations, or the owners asked for a price beyond our budget. Or the areas were such where we didn’t want to live. R had to give up and return to Project House.

Rains came and the whole thing filled with water. It looked like a lake. Poor R had to find and hire machines to empty it. To cut a long story short the houses were ready by the time of his retirement. There were fifteen days to go when we shifted to our home. By the way we never got a house from the Army.

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A House for Me