RIP, Rottlund Homes

I really do love blogging challenges. So I’m happy to participate in this one, hosted by the very funny ProntoPup. I like this challenge because I can pretty much write about anything I want, right? I think so.

Yesterday, I saw a tweet saying that Rottlund Homes, a local home builder, was going out of business. And I laughed out loud. I swear I'm not evil.

When I was little, I always went grocery shopping with my dad. My biggest job was to make sure we brought chocolate home for my mom, but my second biggest job was to unpack all the groceries onto the belt while he bagged them on the other end. One time when I was around six, we saw a raffle to win a ROTTLUND HOME at the checkout.

As a kid, I didn’t know we were relatively poor. But I knew that we didn’t live in a glamorous brick-style mansion on a sprawling plot, like the ROTTLUND HOME RAFFLE showcased. And I wanted to live in that ROTTLUND HOME.

As a Catholic kid, I knew that my best shot at this ROTTLUND HOME was not in a grocery store raffle, but in a formal appeal to JC. I already had quite the bedtime prayer regimen at this time in my life, but I decided the ROTTLUND HOME was a necessary addition. So each night, I prayed for the safety of my family and my dog, followed by a request for a ROTTLUND HOME, followed by the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Guardian Angel prayer.

This routine went on for years, I’m pretty sure. I don't know when I stopped praying for the ROTTLUND HOME, or stopped praying in general. I do know that my parents never won a ROTTLUND HOME, but they did manage to buy a very nice home all by themselves about a decade later. (The original home we lived in had mauve carpeting. My mother will never live down the fact that she once thought said carpeting was super chic.)

Anyway, I emailed my parents to share the story, which neither of them had ever heard. Both of them were apologetic that we never lived in a ROTTLUND HOME, and also seemed unsurprised that I was such an utter spaz about the whole thing.

RIP, ROTTLUND HOMES. For what it’s worth, I tried to get God on your side.