Nancy was struggling.  She looked around. Five children, three dogs, four bunnies, one puppy, five cats, and one bird had taken a big toll on their home over the last decade.

She thought about her shark-bitten, broken-air-conditioned mini-van parked in their cracked driveway with the dented garage door.

She reflected on the front door knob had been missing for the last eight years.  It was an older, custom door, and new door knob parts just didn't work. 

The back patio door knob was in place, but pulled free each time it was grabbed.  It too was a custom piece and the only way to fix it was to install a new door, estimate $2,000.  For that cost, she could fix the van's shark bite and air conditioner! So for the last nine years, Nancy learned the art of opening the door and keeping the knob in place.  Evil Baby liked to pull the knob out.  Usually while the family was lounging in the back yard, which resulted in family being locked out and Evil Baby rampaging inside the house.

That wasn't a problem though, because all of the sun porch windows were broken and missing screens from when dogs bolted right through the open windows.  It was very easy to access the house through the windows.

The parquet flooring was water damaged, scratched, rubbed, bubble gummed, and thoroughly worn. 

The family room carpet, just replaced a mere 4 years ago with industrial restaurant grade carpet, was disgustingly dirty and worn.  So much for its promise of high traffic-ability.

The stair wall had a giant hole in it where Nancy went flying into the wall when she tripped late one night over the black 40 pound cat who slept soundly on the middle step.  Ned had already patched and repaired the hole once, he was in no hurry to do it again. Though, now that the 40 pound cat had died over his food dish, perhaps it was a safe time to begin repair.

Every single wall in the entire house was dirty, grimy, finger and booger stained. 

Her kitchen cabinets, which were painted a lovely crème when they first moved in, now revealed streaks of brown stain from her constant scrubbings. 

The new stove had drip marks BETWEEN the two doors and Nancy had no idea on earth how to get that clean. 

The third microwave in four years, had a fresh broken handle.

The backdoor into the garage would blow open because for some reason the door no longer latched. 

The older boys bathroom had urine curdled floor tiles that had absorbed years of bad aim.

The ceilings all showed signs of former roof leaks.

Her back sliding glass door had no R factor as it had to be hurriedly replaced when, during the dead of winter, when baby number four was prematurely born and family was in crisis, and the toked up neighbor boy pushed it off its very tracks and shattered the entire sliding half. Nancy and Ned had never yet had the time, money, or energy to properly replace the entire unit.

In fact, Nancy and Ned had let all of these issues slide over the years, only doing the minimal that their limited wallets and energies allowed.  Back-to-back babies and medical issues had held their attention for the last seven years.

Nancy wasn't sure where to begin. Or how. So much needed to be rebuilt, repaired, redone. Ned had wooed her with his siren songs of handy-dom in their courting days, but he really was more arm-charm than a handy-manny.

The couple had decided long ago that this would be the house they would retire in. It wasn't a big house. It wasn't a new house. It was the house that saw the life of their family grow.

Nancy's oldest child was in college.  Her youngest just started preschool. She looked around again.  She added up the cost to live in the home she dreamed about; the house that was on the cover of magazines. She thought about the amount of work and energy it would require to bring life back to the old house.

Maybe now is not the time thought Nancy. Do I really need Pella windows and Honda Pilots and Bamboo floors?

Instead Nancy thought she would continue to live with her house of decrepit chaos. It was truly filled with plenty of life, albeit broken and dirty and sometimes blood tinged. 

A magazine house was probably not something she would have today or even in the next decade or maybe even, well, EVER.

She didn't have a glorious house but she had a home, five children and a handsome, dedicated, loving husband.  She had hope. She had pets nearing the end of their life cycles (except for that damn puppy but odds were good it could be hit by a car.)

Nancy reflected.  It had been one crazy-ass ride. She always seemed to have just enough to do enough. Maybe that was ultimately more important than a driveway without cracks and weather resistant windows. Besides, if she fixed the screens, the new puppy would surely run through them anyway.