Back in June, when we were really ramping up the house hunting for our Forever Home and going through Zillow listings by the hundreds, I ended up with what I called my “War Board.” I’ve always had a fondness for these magnetic, white, dry erase boards that you can write on or use colorful little magnets to attach printouts and pictures and documents to.
The War Board was one of these, about 26″ by 40″, with documents for the ‘top twelve’ current Victor Valley listings that we were researching. Some of them we had looked at in person, some we had just driven by, all of them had been researched for hours and hours by me, looking online at their neighborhoods, where stores were located, where the post office and municipal buildings and fire stations were, where the flooding hazards were, and on and on and on. Then I would save the Zillow listing, add lists of notes, pros and cons, print them out, rank them #01 to #12, and put them up on the board so we could look at them all. See the big picture! Take in the gestalt! Leave ourselves open for insight and inspiration!
Now, seven and a half months after we moved in here, I finally found the white boards and was taking time tonight to mount them above my desk in my office.
It was odd, really odd. Looking at this I was transported back in my head to the mindspace of last May and June (go look up some of those daily posts from late June 2025) and it was overlaid with my current mindstate, which has changed considerably since I see many of these areas and streets every time I go out. It was like seeing some sort of mental double exposure where the two images are close enough to being the same so that they do line up, but not perfectly, and in weird, warped, and distorted ways.
The first thing I noticed was that the house we fell in love with, bought, and is now our beloved Forever Home isn’t on here at all. I remember that happening – we had several places we REALLY wanted to see in person after having just seen all of the online information, but they weren’t having open houses. A couple we were seriously thinking about making an offer on if we didn’t hit any red flags when we saw them in person, but figured we might have to make offers on two or three before we got an offer accepted. The weekend at the end of June when we came up to the area to look at houses, two that we REALLY wanted had just gotten offers by other folks accepted before we could look at them, which was discouraging. (One is just a couple blocks away and we drive by it regularly.) The weekend we came up there were just a small handful of open houses, including the house we bought, but it had several things that I was looking at as yellow flags, and I wasn’t hopeful at all.
The other thing is that I remember looking at so many of these houses up in Apple Valley, about ten miles away, and remembering how much I was focused on that area and not where we ended up. That’s especially notable since I know how much we both enjoy the area where we are, now that we’re here. I’m sure the Apple Valley areas would have been very nice as well, but we’re honestly extremely glad that we ended up down in the Hesperia/Oak Hills area. (We’re within the Hesperia city limits by about 200 yards, and Oak Hills is the unincorporated area surrounding us, but the Post Office and the Assessor and Tax Collector all say we’re in Oak Hills, so okey dokey!)
The War Board contents have been disassembled and filed while the board itself has been mounted, to be used on the next tasks. It’s like that board the detectives have with all of the pictures of the suspects and witnesses, and bits of red yarn or string connecting one to another, looking for patterns or connections, but now the murder’s been solved, so we move on.
I also went back and re-read all of the posts and looked at all of the pictures from last June (house hunting) and July (escrow and moving) – how did I not just give up, curl into a ball, and die? I swear I’ve got PTSD tonight just from re-reading all of that.
I guess you just do what you have to do!
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 