Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

John Howard Payne
US actor & dramatist (1791 - 1852)

We've taken to calling it The Money Pit.

This is the main door to the house my great grandfather built in 1923 after the old one burnt, on land that had been in our family since the 1790's which if you do the math means that my family has called the same plot of earth home for more than two hundred years. Back in 1991, about 2 years shy of that bicentennial, my mother sold the property to strangers, in pursuit of a promotion in Northern Ontario. As a lonely 15 year old, at the time, I was nothing short of traumatized and it took me a long time to forgive her---along with our home she sold our hope, our place in world, my grandchildren were someday going to play here, or so I had always thought--- but forgiveness comes with time and it came easiest to me the summer before last when she bought it back.

The old house has seen much better days. Mom's investing every dime she's got into bringing it back to it's former Craftsman inspired charm, however she's got her work cut out for her: the front of the house has been painted while the sides and back are the same old white they've always been (Mom did this before she realized it would be a better idea to reside the whole house). Since it already has what my step father would call a mother-in-law-door all it needs now is a bunch of cars rusting in the back yard to make it a red neck special.

In case you wondered, I'm not sure what possessed her to paint the front door red, but through that front door is a sun porch. My uncle Pat once drove a snow mobile through it. Going forward through another door is the kitchen, where I said my first word, "happy," and in which I stood just yesterday and was less than happy as I gazed about the room which was gutted and full of old building materials. The old floor planks were bare to the elements.

So finding myself in the middle of what can only be described as devastation I was snapping pictures left and right and I could not help but feel as though I were documenting a third world operating room where a dear old friend lay splayed upon a shabby old table with all his precious organs set out upon a tarnished tray, awaiting not just for a good heart but kidneys as well.

The fact is that this whole section of the house needs to be made level before any lasting and worthwhile change can take place, and that is just not something that is in the budget, meanwhile the house is not livable with no kitchen and no bathroom so my mother is renting. Hence the monicker: the Money Pit after the 1980's comedy flic about a couple who purchase a so called fixer upper mansion and it's just one 'hillarious' and expensive catastrophe after another as they attempt to build a life in a building that should have been condemned.

Don't get me wrong the old house is still Home to me, a member of the family, but for the life of me I can't figure out how we'll ever get her ticker going again.