In My Words: Kimberly Burton Allen, Writer

Offer accepted. We are in contract. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows us that we found a property that can be a project. Built in 1900, extensively renovated and updated in in the mid-80s, while keeping and enhancing the original details (beautiful woodwork, floors), the house is 2600 square feet on an acre and a half, with 250' feet of waterfront on a large pond fed by a river.  The house is set up with a small apartment which has its own entrance (exterior spiral staircase) which we envisage renovating so that we have both a guest room with bathroom and the apartment. Perhaps, down the line, we'll need the apartment should one of us require live-in care. In the nearer future, perhaps we'll (gasp!) Airbnb it. Under the previous owners it also operated as a garden center, and there are greenhouses, hoop houses, and a raised vegetable bed on the property. And -- be still, Chris's beating heart-- there's a barn with a workshop, an office (origina

I write from a rental cottage in Connecticut that Chris and I took for the month of December. I've k ept the news on the down-low primarily because I don't want to tempt Fate, but we have sold the bed and breakfast, and are retiring from innkeeping. We are scheduled to close at the end of next week --the closing was delayed two weeks, resulting in more hesitation in sharing the news. Once the closing has  taken place and I know it's a done deal, then I would feel more comfor table in announcing it  I studied psychology in college because I was fascinated by how people were wired, how they thought,  what made them do what they did. Specifically, I was obsessed with why I did/thought/felt what I did, and what it meant.  Early on, I took the Myers-Briggs Personality Test (result: ENFT [Extrovert/Intuitive/Feeling/Judging]) and there was a question that has returned to me thousands of times since I first encountered it:  " Do you prefer things settled and decided, or unset