I love to decorate, and my creative daughter is helping me shop.

We saw a flyer with 'for sale' information and pursued purchase for more than a year. We've stayed in bed-and-breakfast residences from the time we were married and felt it was something we could do.

Some of his family still live locally and we hope to get stories to give people when they visit, on what occurred at this residence.

We'd love to see them go back up, I just don't see that happening.

You broke up with him," a combination Effie-Carmen voice in her head reminded her.

"But that didn't mean you were allowed to stop loving me," she felt like saying to him.

At the time I thought this was my big chance for love, that I was going something very romantic and important, but looking back on it now, it all seems part of a very simple equation: I left the house where I lived with someone who loved me to go to the house of someone who did not love me at all.