Three steps forward, two steps back

Our lives have been consumed lately, by all things related to moving our business. We were finally on-track with a building that was the right size, price and location. We signed a letter of intent, had verbal agreements through our Agent and theirs and a start date of September 23rd, which would give us a week to vacate the old place by month's end.
The other side didn't buy into the urgency and let days go by with lawyers writing addendums at snail's pace and then those who needed to sign were away for a few days and then felt disinclined to drive a few miles to do paperwork, so FedEx was our intermediary. Frustrations almost boiled over when we were finally given a lease to sign on September 27th. Our agent went off with the lease and our deposit check to finalize the hand over.
Our new landlord, whom we had yet to meet, sent us an email saying it would be convenient for him to drive (the huge 50 miles) on the afternoon of Thursday Sept.29th, to meet us and give us a key. Another two days lost, with no recourse.
The minute we had the key our electrician came in to start preparing for our machines. Ten minutes into his visit, he announced that there was no three-phase power in the building!
Someone, somewhere must know the name of that sinking feeling we all get and recognize when things are going horribly wrong.
We had gone through several hoops regarding previous sites that had turned out to be inadequate or too expensive to adapt. Our agent is a professional who is also involved in commercial construction projects so, when he phoned and said "I have a great building for you, and it has all the power you need", we never doubted him for a minute.
I know that when he received my "Houston, we have a problem!" call, he also experienced that "feeling". He came right over and set about trying to contact our landlords, through their agent. It was still before 9am on our first day of possession of the building and we were already dead in the water.
We had to wait and wonder what our Plan-B would be if this deal was falling through. We were under pressure, already exceeding our move out dates on one side and no firm idea of where to go on the other. In addition, if this were to blow up and go "Legal" we had committed our funds and had no room to maneuver to get another place.
I respect rules of etiquette and know that our agent had to go through the agent on the other side. I gave them until early afternoon and then over-rode my Good-Girl instincts and took it upon myself to call our new landlord directly. I was met by an answering machine and left a message detailing how upset we were and asking for an immediate response.
Hubby and I were frantically trying to talk through our options and alternatives and decided that, in the interest of self-preservation, we had to put a stop payment on our deposit check. At the risk of ruining our relationship with our new landlords from the start, we had to maintain the ability to go somewhere else and live to fight another day.
Late in the afternoon, as I was getting in my car to head home, my cell phone rang with a response to my frantic message. Susie, co-owner of our property and designated property manager, had just received my cry for help and we were able to introduce ourselves and discuss our problem. I asked her to get in touch with our agent herself. I also apologized about the necessity we had felt to stop payment on the check. I said we'd replace it the next day, if we could all agree on a solution. She was very understanding and not upset as I had feared she might be.
Multiple calls went back and forth, one from our agent, happy to be released from his obligation to wait for a call back from his counterpart. He has a genuine concern for our needs with the added incentive of a commission to lose if this falls apart.
The positive side of all this is finding out that our landlords are reasonable people, after all the lawyerly paperwork and keeping their distance, we had our doubts about them. They propose to participate and pay half of any work that's required, financing the rest for us for a nominal increased rent over time. We can wait a week or two to get machines rolling, to allow them to do the work. Our agent is getting bids, pulling permits and supervising the task. Everyone takes a small hit and we all move forward. We are all making a leap of faith that we can get through this. I'm sure it's going to cost more than the  initial estimate. Prove me wrong, please. Not working and not knowing what comes next would cost us more.
Yesterday we loaded up and transported eight truck loads of stone. We started again at first light this morning.

Something's Got to Change, contd.

Trying to examine my options can only be accomplished once I pin down what I want to achieve. This is my "thinking out loud and trying to answer my own questions" phase and blogging really helps.
One thing I am now sure of is that my husband must soon retire from our physically arduous stone-carving business. Unless we find someone else to invest in or buy our business; which was our original retirement plan, but is unrealistic in today's market; we will have to call it quits without reaping any substantial return on all those years we put in. We have lived well, no complaints, and I /we have a network of contacts, clients and friends that are a treasure.
I know a lot of people who could help me find my niche in the job world. I am not sure that I can single-handedly pull in enough money to stay in our large, rented home. I am not sure that I want to!
We live in an expensive area and hubby likes his space. Our house is ideal with a bedroom used as an office, a large bonus room for the main Art Studio and the formal dining room as a Water-Color studio.
It is just a house and not even ours. I could leave tomorrow and not miss a piece of furniture or a dish or a painting. I would take my passport and my file containing "people and places of interest", as well as the "quotes and poems" file. I'd need some clothes and my riding boots, my address book, of course. My daughter would become the keeper of photo albums.
I am no more tied to this area than to the house we live in. Once that conclusion is reached then there are almost too many options to consider.
Southern California is appealing. Work is not the only thing in life, having friends and spending time with them creates a good balance. Life is cheaper and sunnier there. Work is a question mark but not impossible.
Daughter is top of my list of important factors, although she and her husband are self-sufficient and we could handle being apart. Being in the same Country is easier.
I miss England, and the English. If I had a life with real vacation time I would spend it there. I have a Sister and Aunts and Cousins and many places to visit and enjoy.
I pragmatically didn't even stay for my Mother's funeral a few years ago. I had sat with her for two weeks as she died, in a sunny nursing-home room with a view of the sparkling summer-sea and peacocks strutting in the garden. I sat and played tapes of Frank Sinatra and my mother's own piano playing and drank more tea than one would think possible, crying as I composed her Eulogy.
I felt that my responsibility was to my living family and, of course, the business.
That is one of the decisions I most regret in my life and someone should have told me to stay and take my time. I am way too convincingly independent. Blame is mine alone.
England would be my first choice for my new beginnings, although the climate would take some getting used to after so many years away. Another draw-back is that Hubby would not live in England, unless he was doing the "Independently Wealthy, Jet-Set Artist Lifestyle", and there we go again with believing his own P.R.
France is a possibility. The French generally annoy me, but I married one so I am used to that. We would be far from our daughter, but she would visit and hubby has other family there. From France it would be easier to visit England, without an eleven hour plane ride.
There are jobs I could do in France. I lived there for five years so I know what I'm getting into. My spoken French is fluent but my written French is unacceptable and never going to improve. I can translate French to English and verbally do the opposite. I wing-it on verb endings. They all sound right as long as I don't have to put it in writing.
The choice that doesn't seem palatable is to keep doing what we are doing and wait for our lives to implode.

Wow! I've come a long way in my self-analysis. I have a notion of some steps to take to move myself forward.

Action List (I have a client who calls it that, instead of a To-Do list)
Put together some kind of resume
Look at house prices and rentals in France and jobs in San Diego.
Don't completely exclude England.
Get input from friends.
See what thoughts tomorrow will bring.

Something's Got to Change

Partly due to the event of my recent birthday, partly the economy, but mostly just waking up and asking myself what the heck the future holds and, if it's more of the same, do I want that?
My husband is averse to planning ahead. One thing he cannot "spontaneously un-plan" is his seventy-fourth birthday, which looms in May.
He is an Artist, a Creative Soul, and we have lived and worked together for more than twenty-five years. That's the good and the bad news.
I have created a monster! He believes in his own P.R. but I wrote it. There are clever pull-quotes in some articles that, when people ask, "Did he really say that?" I reply, "He would have, if he'd thought of it"
I put a positive spin on most everything and often we succeed just by creating our own momentum. But we don't have a plan. Other than perpetually getting up and doing the whole thing over again tomorrow, there is no plan.
It may come from a deeply female, nurturing instinct from the past but I want to know which cave I will be coming home to, in the event the dinosaurs overtake my cave-man.

to be continued...