Tag: life

Etched in stone

bungalowwriter

In the early 2000s, the Crawfordsville Public Library drew up plans to repurpose the old Carnegie Library and build a much larger facility out of brick, stone and glass on the other side of Washington Street, the main thoroughfare running north and south through this town of about 16,000.

Joe and I were living in a 1950s brick ranch on Country Club Road at the time, raising young children on a tight budget. When a letter arrived asking for contributions to the library’s building fund, we sent in a modest check – likely no more than $50.

Much to my surprise, when I attended the grand opening of the new library in 2005 with my girls, I saw my name and Joe’s etched into a stone wall near the entrance. Directly underneath us on the honor roll of donors were the names of my in-laws, Ken and Velma Roberts. 

I first met the Roberts family in 1987, the summer that Joe and I fell in love at Ball State University. One weekend, Joe drove us to his family’s home in rural Crawfordsville, where fields of corn and beans swayed in the July breeze. 

A liberal suburban girl at heart, I worried I wouldn’t have much in common with two empty nesters living out in the country. And yet from the first night I stepped into their house, I immediately felt welcome in the loving home that Ken and Velma had created. 

That weekend, as we crowded in the dining room to celebrate the birthday of one of Joe’s nieces, I thought to myself, “If I marry this guy, I get all of his family as a bonus.”

Joe and I married at the Wabash College Chapel in 1990. As we posed for photos, me in an ivory beaded dress and Joe in a gray tuxedo, my new in-laws stood alongside us. Velma, a short brunette, looked elegant in mint green chiffon, while Ken, a foot taller, towered over her in a tux that matched his son’s.

My brother-in-law Bruce joked that I was now officially one of the “outlaws.” But everyone knew the truth: to Ken and Velma, there were no in-laws. We were just family. 

Settling into a town two and a half hours away, we drove to Crawfordsville on weekends and for the family’s annual Christmas Eve party, simply called Roberts Family Christmas. 

Five years later, I accepted a position in Crawfordsville and we purchased a DIY special, a 1920s Craftsman bungalow on Market Street. For three months, I lived with Ken and Velma while I started my new job, Joe packed up our existing home and we rehabbed the bungalow on weekends. 

As Velma cooked meals and I washed dishes at the Roberts homestead every night, Ken rode his lawnmower around their vast yard and tended to his Calla lilies and irises. 

When our firstborn arrived in 1998, Ken and Velma waited with my parents at the hospital in Indianapolis for the birth of their ninth grandchild. In 2001, when their tenth and final grandchild was born, they cared for Eve until we came home with Allie a few days later. 

As the children grew, so did their bond with Grandpa and Grandma Roberts. They had tea parties with root beer in Grandma’s kitchen and rode around the yard with Grandpa on his riding mower. Eve and Allie loved how genuinely interested their grandparents were in their school activities and hobbies.

Life eventually took us further away. In 2012, we moved to the Lafayette/West Lafayette area, and in 2022, to Cincinnati. Between visits, we stayed in touch via phone and Facebook, where on days when he had nothing profound to say, my father-in-law would simply post, “Still vertical.”

Not long after our move to Lafayette, my mother-in-law became ill. Ken devoted the next four years to caring full-time for Velma, learning to cook regularly for the first time in his life. Soon, he was baking homemade cinnamon rolls, casseroles and decadent brownies. 

For his 80-something birthday, the family gifted Ken with a stack of cookbooks. When he unwrapped an apron and tied it on, the living room erupted in laughter. My father-in-law, in on the joke, laughed alongside us.

Velma died in 2017. Ken remained in their home until last November, seven months after we celebrated his 95th birthday. With more than 50 people in the immediate family by then, we had to rent an event space in a church, where some of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren shared tributes to Grandpa Roberts as we snacked on cookies and cupcakes. 

Last winter, after moving to assisted living, Ken was hospitalized with double pneumonia, caught COVID in rehab and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism, defying the odds on all three. During one of our last visits this spring, he was still vertical in his office chair, checking Major League Baseball scores on his computer and sharing funny stories about the staff and residents. 

Last Wednesday, Ken was hospitalized for the final time. By the time Joe and I arrived after midnight, he was sleeping peacefully. 

Just after 5 p.m. on Thursday, Ken slipped away. He was 96 years and 3 months old.

On Friday, after running some funeral-related errands, Joe and I stopped at one of our local favorites, Arni’s, just west of the library. Walking back toward the van after lunch, I told Joe I wanted to visit the donor wall next door.

Standing there, looking at our names etched one on top of the other, I felt a sense of shared history with my father-in-law. 

The family that Ken built, the love he gave and the names we share are permanently set in stone. I am honored to stand alongside him for as long as that building remains. 

One thing to know

bungalowwriter
Eve and Allie

(Above: My girls in 2002.)

Twenty-five years ago, I swallowed my pride and accepted $25 an article.

It was summer 2001, the Dot Com Bubble had burst, and I had lost the anchor contract that funded my consulting business. With a toddler and a newborn at home, I was in a tough spot and needed to bring in income. Fast.

I called a local editor whom I had politely turned down the year before because her rate was “too low.” She didn’t seem to remember me, thankfully, and offered me the gig again.

That summer, I went on the road, often with my girls in tow, conducting interviews with a notepad and pen at farms and county fairs. I mapped out stories in my head while taking quick showers, and I typed frantically during nap times, turning out dozens of articles over the next few months.

Did I make a fortune? Absolutely not. But looking back, that grueling summer taught me two valuable lessons:

Market value supersedes ego. It doesn’t matter what you want to charge if no one is willing to pay it. Taking a lower rate at that moment got me through a tough spot and ultimately led to much-better paying opportunities.

A valuable ROI might be hiding under a low price tag. That summer, I built a large portfolio of clips, became a much more efficient writer and honed the storytelling skills that I still use today.

In fact, those articles eventually led to regular writing assignments at a nearby university. When one of my university clients later offered me a full-time role, I paused my business to accept it, spending the next 13 years happily working there.

Fast forward to now. In 2023, I rebooted my consulting business with a new focus. I’ve shifted away from regional magazine writing to focus primarily on long-term partnerships with major university, education, healthcare and tourism clients.

The hustle looks different now, but I will never forget where I started.

If you are currently grinding through a tough season, or taking lower rates just to bridge a gap, please remember that the rate you accept today is not a life sentence. It is just a season.

Lean into the grit, build your skills and remember that sometimes you have to step back and rebuild your momentum before taking a giant leap forward.

Higher stakes

bungalowwriter
Angie holding a check

This is me in January 2024. It was the first Saturday of the new year, and I was at the credit union opening my first business account in Ohio. I hadn’t even bothered to put makeup on, but I wanted to capture the moment.

Standing in the parking lot later, I texted this photo to some girlfriends with a note that I was officially back in business for myself.

My first venture into entrepreneurship started in 1999 during the beautiful, chaotic early years of motherhood. Back then, my work was a balancing act, crafted around school schedules and the modest income goals of a young family. Ultimately, my ten years of self-employment landed me a role with my choice employer, where I stayed for 13 years.

Fast forward to November 2023. A year after I had relocated to Cincinnati for a director role, my position was eliminated.

I came home that day and immediately got to work.

This time, the stakes were higher. I was no longer a young mom working around the margins. I was a marketing director and hands-on creative with nearly 40 years of experience and a significantly higher income to replace.

I stopped asking, “Can I make this work?” and started asking, “How do I build this to scale?”

🖥️ I mobilized. Within weeks, I had built out a website, designed business cards and scheduled dozens of informational calls with my professional network.

🏦 I solidified. Less than a year after I took that photo, I transitioned from a simple DBA to a formal LLC, set up payroll and prioritized my future with a SEP retirement fund.

👭 I expanded. I started collaborating with people like my sister, Sheila Butler. And I joined The Upside, connecting with consultants in the United States and beyond to sharpen my strategy and broaden my reach.

If you’re standing at a career crossroads, know that you have more leverage than you think. Trust the expertise you’ve built, and don’t be afraid to claim the seat you’ve earned.

The Home of Undone Projects 

bungalowwriter

April 5, 2013

When our youngest daughter was an infant and we were searching for a quieter, safer place in Crawfordsville, Indiana, my husband found a 1950s brick ranch out in the country. The house itself wasn’t remarkable. In fact, it needed too much work. But the location was idyllic, with cows grazing across the road, a small neighborhood behind us and the Sugar Creek Trail just a short walk away. 

We watched that house for months as it languished on the market, and when the timing and price were right, took a chance on our third fixer-upper. The house had only two bedrooms and a single bath. The roof was actively leaking, and the dark walls and ceilings were dreary. But it was, we thought, the perfect place to raise our children and grow old together. 

As soon as we moved in that August, we began the work of making the house livable. Two bedrooms became three. The electricity was upgraded. And the roof was replaced (for the first of two times during our tenure there). And over the ensuing years, we stripped wallpaper, replaced fixtures, removed walls and put up new ones, all the while working and raising two very active children. 

We thought we would live in that house forever. So we took our time with the renovations, saving money by having Joe do most of the work. But gradually, our lives began moving north. Joe took a job in Lafayette. Then I began teaching part-time up there. Then I was offered a job with my favorite university, and we enrolled the kids in school across the river from Purdue. By 2009, all four of us were commuting in my Prius five days a week, leaving our home behind every day. 

Meanwhile, Joe continued to slog away at this Home of Undone Projects. A property that simply could not be sold as-is in the midst of the country’s worst housing crisis. And we continued to live in a state of renovation, me splashing new paint on the walls every now and then to pretty things up while Joe hammered, spackled and drilled. 

Over the ten years that we lived there, our children grew from toddlers to adolescents. On Christmas, they discovered overflowing stockings on a fireplace mantel constructed from an antique chalk rail. On Easter, they searched for eggs in the spacious back yard, where we had replaced the crumbling brick patio with a deck. And three times, they said goodbye to beloved pets, all buried where the garden pond used to be. 

Then last summer, a foreclosed builder’s model we had been watching on the south side of Lafayette was relisted at just the right price. A month later we were packing up a moving van and saying goodbye to Crawfordsville. 

I have to admit, when I moved out of the house last summer, I was relieved. After three house renovations over 22 years of marriage, I was beyond burned out. But when we left, the house and all its undoneness still beckoned. And so for six months, my intrepid husband commuted back to Crawfordsville nearly every weekend, installing trim, touching up woodwork and repainting walls and ceilings one last time. 

Halloween came and went. And then Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Finally, the weekend before Easter, the house was complete enough for a for-sale sign. 

This morning, less than two weeks after the house entered the MLS, we accepted an offer from a man who, we were told, has fallen in love with our house. That we found an enthusiastic and willing buyer so quickly is testimony to my husband’s meticulous attention to detail. 

It’s also a testament to his perseverance. I have complained, and admittedly, cried, many times in frustration over this home renovation. But Joe has never wavered in his dedication to see this project through to completion. He gets all the credit due for this victory. And my immense gratitude for finishing a home he will never get to fully enjoy.