The Baboon Congress

I Changed My Mind

54 Comments

Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale

Well, I Changed My Mind

Husband and I got a call on Monday from the Winona realtor who has been working with the seller of “our” house (See East Side, West Side).

Let’s call this House A. He said, and I quote, “I don’t want to complicate your lives, BUT…”  Turns out another east end house we had looked it has jumped back on the market – the newly divorced woman who had bought it has figured out (just before moving in) that she’s not ready to be a homeowner. Let’s call this House B.

When we viewed House B a couple of months ago, we were instantly ready to make an offer, until we found an offer had already been made, and it was no longer available. It was exactly what I was looking for in a house – smaller, so we’d have to downsize; lots of light; hardwood floors; gas stove) – and has several features not found in the House A, the house we thought we were buying. (House B is still on the east end of Winona, close to our friend Walken and a community of people we know, just not quite as close as before. It is only a few blocks from The River.)

MEANWHILE, the Seller of House A has, in the last 10 days, discovered she would like to back out of the sale, for a number of reasons we don’t need to go into here. I have to wonder how many times this situations occurs – a seller reneges on offer to sell, and the buyer gets to have a house they wanted, after all, which just happens to be available again. (Remind me not to go into real estate.)

So in short:

  • We will travel to Winona early next week for an inspection of House B, after which we will probably make an offer, when we are legally released from our offer on House A.
  • We will have to re-do several change of address notifications we have already sent.
  • We need to tour our current house again (House C?) and see what else we can discard, as House B is considerably smaller than House A.
  • We are still planning a move to Winona on June 8, with several of our late son Joel’s friends helping us load the U-Haul the evening before…  We just don’t yet know WHICH HOUSE we’re moving into.

What has been your most dramatic Change of Mind?

54 thoughts on “I Changed My Mind”

  1. Deciding not to move to central Illinois to pursue an MFA in theatrical design. Since about my sophomore year in undergrad it had been my plan to get an MFA with the ultimate intent of working and teaching at the college level. I loved designing sets, I loved the idea of teaching…but at about midnight one night I realized that I didn’t love either enough to make the years of sacrifices required to fulfill that dream (starting with living in a double-wide trailer with 3-4 smokers because it was cheap and they would let me bring my dog…). I remember calling my mother in those dark hours, sobbing so much she thought someone had died…no Mom, no person died. Maybe a dream, but not a person. I liked theater, I liked designing sets. I had the realization (before uprooting and putting myself likely into grad school debt…) that I would rather pursue theater as an avocation. Trying to make a living from it would suck all the magic out. It was hard to call the very nice head of the theater department and explain why I wouldn’t be there in a few weeks – he was kind and understanding (thank heavens). Dog and I stayed in Minneapolis. I got a very different master’s degree. And now I work with software developers. The pay is better, but I miss figuring out how to paint set floors.

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      1. It did take a bit to convince my mother that no one had died, I wasn’t in the ER and it was “just” a crisis of the heart…

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        1. …but it was also good to know that I could call my mommy at midnight, even as a grown-up, and she would know just what to say to help me feel better.

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  2. this ones a pip bir
    it takes the cake
    how wonderful that it all worked out and you are able to do what in hindsight as in foresight. that never happens but the fact. that you are open to it makes it interesting. ill bet the realtor smiled when he saw the opportunity to make is that three sales or four in one transaction by being astute and taking good notes.
    i bave no difficulty rolling with the punches but more a case of recognizing the opportunities at hand. i am often caught up in my train of thought and not in a mode of putting two and two together to arrive at the possible conclusion.
    so does the bedroom off the living room become part of the house or is the back bedroom destined to be the “other room”?
    looks like a great layout happy trails

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    1. I do like thinking of when he realized we might be able to help him solve two dilemmas at once… We enjoy him – he’s been a trooper, said he’s never in all his years seen one quite like this. He won’t be paid from House A, though – and he’s put a LOT of work into that one.

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  3. Hmm. Sounds like YOU didn’t change your mind so much as a chain of other people changed theirs, landing you with what you kind of wanted in the first place, without a whole lot of choosing left to you.

    Sounds like a serious case of “meant to be”.

    We are at the very beginning of the college decision process-figuring out where to apply and me wracking my brain trying to work out a way to make a major road trip to do some visits.

    And unlike a lot of Baboons, just “pick a date and go” is not realistic. See my earlier comments on other posts about working while travelling.

    To an extent, I control my own schedule, and yes, we could “just go”, but that means I have a quantity of work done before we leave and all the bills that work covers paid up. And my yard straightened out enough to not have the new neighbors call the city on me.

    Thank goodness the mom schedule is lightening…..a little.

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    1. If you’ve got a mower, I can always come over and cut your grass if you’re gone for a length of time!

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      1. I’ve pretty much done away with the grass, but thanks for the generous offer.

        I need to seriously weed/prune/ declutter (much like inside).

        The thrilling part will be seeing if I can manage to find time to do stuff I have not had time to do for a couple years while simultaneously doubling down on the billable work.

        I think a solidnal would be a great way to start this little marathon 😉

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        1. cant you do your work on the laptop driving down the road while s&h is driving and then wifi it off at the hotel at night? if you need wifi driving down the road it is not that expensive if you are doing bilable work while using it. its doesnt need to be on 24/7 just when you need to send or receive information. a lot of billable stuff is creating and plugging in stuff you dont need to be online for. just turn on the wifi when you need to or go sit in mcdonalds for a cup of coffee to upload or downaload the required data to get the next 4 hours work done. heck montreal will come really quick if you are working all the way there.
          he want to go to school in montreal? they talk funny there.

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  4. Since I haven’t seen the two homes, I shouldn’t offer an opinion. But I agree with mig: it feels like House B is the one you were meant to have. I initially preferred House B. I smile to remember a friend who would have taken your recent events as strong evidence that the universe is telling you to go for House B. But then, the universe apparently goofed twice in a big way when it told him to get married . . . so it is always good to think things through before making momentous decisions.

    Last night I watched an intelligent PBS Frontline show about ISIS. The G W Bush administration seems to have made a botch of its decisions about the Middle East. Then Obama came along to prove Democrats could screw up those decisions in new ways. All we have proven so far is that the US seems to have NO talent for leading the Middle East. If Trump wins, I have perfect faith he will demonstrate there are new, uniquely Trumpian ways to screw up over there.

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  5. Rise and Waffle about Your Decision Baboons!

    BiR, the situation must feel so uncertain. Do I feel your pain or what? Yes, indeed, I do.

    This sounds like MY life right now, only with the property in question a business, not a house. My buyer, who appears to have extraordinary difficulty with a clear, cogent decision is doing similar stuff, leaving me with a BiR-like decision, as well. However, I get decide about where I locate a different office. Yesterday I stated, well, re-stated, my limits, to the indecision-maker’s disbelief.

    “How can you say that my decision-making process is stressful for you? Clearly you, Mystery Business Owner, are the one with a problem. This is your fault.” This opinion because I finally lost it with her (dramatically, and awkwardly) in March after tolerating 9 months of indecision-making which leaves 9 other employees without a way to make a living.

    Thus my carefully shrouded identity in this post. I must express my frustration anonymously, mysteriously, discretely.

    HMMM. Is it the alignment of starts and planets? Barometric pressure?
    Invasion of indecisive aliens?

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  6. At the last minute I was accepted to do graduate study at Cornell, and could have gone there instead of going to Purdue where I had been accepted earlier. Having paid a visit to Purdue and never having been to Cornell, I wasn’t comfortable with switching from Purdue to Cornell as my choice for graduate work at the last minute. I probably would have fitted in better at Cornell. I’m sure that there was and probably still is a much larger collection of progressive people at Cornell compared to Purdue. However, I did managed to find a group of people at Purdue who had political beliefs similar to mine.

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  7. My most dramatic change of mind was probably when I decided not to return to the University of Miami for my sophomore year. I came to the harsh realization I wasn’t talented enough to be a professional jazz musician (more physical than mental because I was a trumpet player who didn’t have the proper embouchure to play trumpet–no endurance, weak high range.

    That set me on my music education path a year later at the U of M. (Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Right?) But it also ensured I’d marry my wife, which was probably the smartest move I ever made.

    Chris in O-town

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  8. It embarrasses me to reflect on my big decisions. Mostly, I made decisions by taking the path of least resistance.

    One big change of mind stands out. Early in my marriage I was convinced we couldn’t afford to have a child, and I seriously doubted that the right time would ever come. I even remember thinking that having a child would limit my development as a trout fisherman. (It isn’t pleasant to admit that now.) And then I decided that it was the right time to have a child. It was the best single decision of my life.

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  9. Like a few others here, I also had a major education change in my early twenties. I was completed burned out at college and not sure what I was going to do with this education for which my parents were paying a fortune. So after the fall trimester of my junior year, I took a two-trimester leave. Of course I never did go back – at least to that school. Eventually did finish my degree on my own while working full-time. The irony is that if now I didn’t have to support myself, being a college student would be a great fantasy of mine. Go to class, read, soak in other folks’ knowledge – sign me up!

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  10. I can’t think of any dramatic change of mind I’ve had; I guess most of my decisions tend to be gradual processes. But I wanted to say, BiR, that this sounds pretty exciting for you. And June 8 is just 3 weeks away!!!

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  11. I’ve never done a real about-face – mostly I go with the flow that seems to be moving me forward.

    OT for metro-area baboons – there is an event in Minnehaha Park on Saturday, the Little Free Library Festival, features Kevin Kling, Dan Choinard, Ann Reed, Prudence Johnson, and others. Looks like it will be a beautiful day. I may wander over there.

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  12. I wish I could say that we’ve never made an about face. We have, and it was costly. We sacrificed $5,000.00 in earnest money, and it came very close to causing the demise of this marriage.

    At the time we were living in a very nice house in Inver Grove Heights situated on two scenic acres sloping down toward a city park in the back. Lovely! The trouble was, my income was what enabled us to stay in that house, and the stress of my job at the law firm was really getting to me. I wasn’t sleeping at night, and I realized that I needed to make a change. Hans seemingly bought into my dream of finding a place in the countryside, a hobby farm, where we could become part of a smaller community. He could move his furniture making shop there, and I’d find something less stressful to do, and we’d live happily ever after.

    Well, that’s not how that dream played out. We found a hobby farm with forty acres of beautiful land in Luck, Wisconsin. The old farmhouse was nice enough but not worth writing home about, but it had a lovely big old barn, a nice pasture, and wooded acreage with a creek running through it. The possibilities were endless. We made an offer, contingent on selling our house in IGH, and it was accepted. We gave them $5,000.00 in earnest money, and set about getting ready to sell our house. The seller was in no particular rush to sell, they had already bought another farm, and were renting out “our” farm on a month to month basis.

    Unfortunately Hans insisted on painting all the trim on the house and replacing the roof before we put our IGH house on the market, this, of course, took a considerable amount of time. At the time I didn’t see this for what it was, stalling on his part, for a move he didn’t really want to make.

    To make a long story short. By the time we sold our house, one and one half years later, Hans had discovered that moving his shop to Luck was not financially viable. I was extremely unhappy (understatement of the year) that he could not have discovered this PRIOR to us paying the $5,000.00 earnest money or at least disclosed it before selling our dream house. I came very, very close to walking away from our marriage at that juncture.

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  13. Typically, I would try to come up with some bit of comedic expression to answer the question. Today I will take a pass and answer most truthfully that I have changed my mind dramatically when it comes to same sex marriage. I was raised to reject homosexuality as a sin. The question of marriage of same sex couples never even entered the equation. But since I have been living for some time in a cosmopolitan environment and become acquainted with homosexual and lesbian couples, I have changed my mind about “those people”. “They” are humans with the same desires, wants and foibles as the rest of “us”. Let us all have peace with our fellow men and women.

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    2. I’m happy that you’ve changed your mind, Wes. Twenty or twenty-five years ago, most people weren’t really that aware of gays and lesbians, or they didn’t consider them “normal, and most people never thought of the implications of being sexually “other.” I consider myself very lucky that I grew up with a lesbian couple as very close friends of my parents, so I have never really thought of people with a sexual orientation different than my own as “different.” Of course, at the time, I had no idea.

      I have great compassion for people who are transgender as well. Most people take their sexual orientation for granted, and don’t realize how much more difficult their lives would be if the body parts with which they were born don’t align with whom they perceive themselves to be. All of these so-called “bathroom bills” that have recently been proposed and, in some cases enacted, are an abomination. This should not be happening in this day and age. It behooves us all to educate ourselves on what is involved, what gender identity is, and how it differs from sexual orientation.

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      1. i consider the bathroom bills as the equivilant to donald trump. i think it it the greatest thing ever to happen in the name of letting the non thinking realize what is going on in the heads of the over the top whack jobs. with the carolinas making such messes of the prejudace and far right it an only be obvious that it needs to be rethought. same as the republican party and tea party zealots

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        1. Now if legislators want to do something really effective with regard to bathrooms, they would make it a law that everyone must wash their hands after use. Toilet cop will be the newest employment opportunity. Heck, it might even be necessary for Trump University to open a training program.

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      2. Like you, PJ, I had the luck of knowing quite a few smart and likable people who were out of the closet. That was a common experience in grad school in the 1970s. It is easy to be tolerant when you have friends who are drawn to people of their own gender.

        I’ve been amazed at the speed with which attitudes have changed. It wasn’t that long ago that conservatives like Michele Bachmann were using fear of gays as a political lever to advance their careers. And then young people suddenly agreed that it was stupid to hate or discriminate on these matters. Public opinion rarely reverses itself so dramatically.

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    1. I’ve called people everything from “Abby Normal” to “Zither Brain” but I’ve never called anyone “In The Dead of Night.”

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  15. I had my moment of changed mind when almost a year into being separated from my ex, I realized I was fighting for the marriage only because I was fearful of being financially unable to support myself…and that wasn’t a good enough reason to continue the marriage. The decision helped me move on with my life as a single person. No regrets, lots of “thank goodnesses!”
    A major change of mind on my father’s part: when after two years at the University of Colorado, he told me he couldn’t afford to send me back. I loaded all my stuff on the train home to Cloquet, said tearful goodbyes to the friends I had come to love and left resigned to my “fate.” When I got off the train in Duluth, my father told me it was okay for me to return to CU. Glad he changed his mind, but. couldn’t he have done it BEFORE I left Boulder?

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  16. Only the front desk. On a trip to Puerto Vallarta many years ago, I ended up staying an extra night due to flight issues, so the rest of my group had gone home. I got a couple of very creepy phone calls and then someone knocking on my door at 2 a.m. I called the front desk; they sent up a security guy who sat outside my door until dawn, when I packed my bag, checked it w/ the bell desk and spent the whole morning by the pool until it was time to head to the airport.

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  17. OT – The Eddies’ 18th annual Memorial Day potluck picnic/concert is coming up. Here’s what you need to know:
    If you were wondering if the annual Eddies Potluck Picnic and Singing thing was happening again this year (18th year in a row!), the answer is yep. Same time, same place, rain or shine (and those of you who came out last year know that we mean it when we say rain or shine). If you have been to this really, really low key evening of outdoor eating and music, you know the drill.

    If you have not previously been to our Riverside celebration of staying at home on Memorial Day weekend (we ain’t got no stinking cabins), here are the things you need to know. It happens on Sunday, May 29th. This is a potluck picnic. We will supply meats, buns and condiments (not so much barbecue this year, though, because Paul doesn’t get back into town until the day of the picnic). But we will have some barbecue, and a bunch of brats and hot dogs. Your job is to bring a picnic dish to share.

    You also need to plan on bringing your own beverages. We don’t supply any and we want you to bring pot-luck food, not drink.

    Although we will have some plates, napkins and silverware, we encourage you to bring your own reusable eating things. It’s a big help to all of us. You should also bring a chair if you want to sit in one and weather suitable clothing/coverings.

    You will find us down on Harriet Island. Come in the east park entrance (the entrance off of Wabasha) and look for us under the big cottonwoods adjacent to the Showboat. If you haven’t been tracking street work in downtown St. Paul you will want to note that you cannot drive south out of downtown on the Wabasha Bridge. If you are not coming from/through the West Side, you will have to cross the River on either the High Bridge or the Robert Street bridge. We plan on starting the food line at about 5:00 so, hopefully, you can get there by then. We eat and have lawn fun until the eating is mostly over and, then, we will sing for you. Rain or shine!

    We hope you can stick around after the singing and help us clear out and clean up. It is rewarding work.

    Hope you can make it! And, of course, feel free to bring a friend or two and don’t be shy about mingling. We think the world of you all and if you can get to know one another a little bit better the world will be just a little bit better place. More in … harmony. Thats the word.

    – The Eddies

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  18. OT #1: I’ll be gone to Des Moines for the weekend, college reunion. (I regret missing that Little Free Lib. Fest… Be back Monday.

    OT #2: Anyone remember what the second book for BBC is, and the date for next meeting? (also, if I’d read The Girl on the Train before I suggested it, I wouldn’t have… pretty dark.

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    1. I just updated Blevin’s page – sorry it’s late.

      Sunday June 12, 2 p.m. at Sherrilee’s
      The Girl on the Train (Hawkins)
      &
      Uprooted (Novik)

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  19. Today we had to change our plans for the day. We hoped to spend a few hours at the British Museum. When we arrived this morning, the museum was closed because 14 Greenpeace activists had scaled the pillars at the entrance in protest of British Petroleum’s support of a new exhibit. The museum was immediately closed. There were loads of school children groups that had hoped to visit the museum this morning and who couldn’t. I don’t like BP, but Greenpeace isn’t going to win friends by ruining the hopes and plans of the general public. We hope to go there tomorrow.

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