House Update 2

Again the picture in this post doesn't relate to the post at all.  These little guys kept us entertained last summer on vacation.  Hopefully by the next time I post I'll have pictures of the new house.

Let's see, where to start on the house update.  Well, the beginning might be considered to be the closing so I'll start there.  The closing happened on Tuesday, June 19th, but at 4:00 pm rather than 9:30 am.  The mortgage company finally got my loan approved and to the Title Company at 2:30, so they cut it kind of close.  Luckily, I had bugged them and the Title company enough on Monday that they gave me an estimated closing costs and I got a cashier's check for that amount.  Otherwise I couldn't have made it to an open bank before the closing, especially since even though they had gotten paperwork to the Title Company, they still hadn't gotten my final closing costs to me.


Anyway, the good news is I have a new house.  I somehow figured that once it was mine, things would calm down a little and I'd be less stressed.  In fact, the house is still consuming my life pretty much.  So much to do and to get done.  And I now am a firm believer that construction-type jobs never happen on an actual schedule. 


This week I've been having the entire interior painted and I had a plumber put in a new water heater.  Monday I had cable and internet connected.  Today and tomorrow, I'm having the three bathrooms and the laundry room re-tiled with ceramic tile.    So that's where I'll be tomorrow all day, baby-sitting tilers.   Actually, that's what I'm doing right at this moment, but I haven't been here all day.  A friend of mine has been sitting with them while my sister and I worked on getting my current house and garage packed.  I began at 5:40 am, she arrived at 6:50 am, and the two of us worked straight until 2:00 pm.  Can you say "exhausted"?  I'm going to sleep well tonight.  I just hope I can get out of bed tomorrow.  Packing is hard work!


I wish I could say that we got all the packing done.  We did make quite a significant dent in it.  And we did get the garage mostly packed.  We just gave out at 2:00-ish this afternoon.  I'll still be doing some frantic packing before moving day, which is July 5th.  And the poor cat-children. They don't know it yet but they'll be spending moving day at the vet. 


After my sister and I had all the packing we could take today we came up here and looked the house over, and I stayed while my sister and my friend went about their businesses.  The tilers are determined to get the tile in all four areas laid today so tomorrow they can grout, so they'll be here awhile yet.  That means I'll be here awhile yet.  And currently I have no working toilets in the house.   They're laying the third area now.   It's going to look GOOD when it's done.


Too bad the new carpet won't be installed before I move in.  It's going to be kind of a pain to leave everything on the wood floor areas until they can get the carpet installed.  Can't be helped though.  If the carpet doesn't get here, it doesn't get here.  


So that's the latest house update.  Everything is coming together, even if it's in a slightly more disjointed manner than I would have liked.   I'll be so happy to have it all done.  

House Update

It's been awhile since I blogged and after this weekend it will probably be longer, so I figured I'd better get one in.  First of all the pictures in this blog have nothing to do with the blog itself.  They're just pretty pictures my sister sent from her place last Fall when the aspens changed color and then the first snow on October 9th.  They are also serious wishful thinking because I just mowed my lawn and the temperature on my thermometer is 98 degrees.

Anyway, today's blog post is a house update.

The closing on the new house is Tuesday.  Three days away.  I'm finally feeling like it's actually going to happen, so I've started trying to schedule things.  I met with a painter to measure the house and talk about having the entire interior painted.   I've set up to have a carpet and tile installer come next week after the closing and measure for and schedule the carpet and tile.  I've picked out carpet and tile and have a pretty good idea about the paint.  Things are moving.

My real estate agent almost gave me heart failure yesterday.   She left a message on my cell phone (I was drinking margaritas and floating in my friend's pool.)  The message started: " I'm sorry to have to tell you . . ".  My heart just stopped right there.  I just knew she was going to say the seller had decided not to sell.  Instead, it was that the seller wanted to be out of the house by 5:00 pm Tuesday instead of being out by the closing Tuesday morning.  *heart starts back up*  Before I could call her, she called me again saying, never mind, they've decided they can be out at closing.   Good thing I was mellow from margaritas or I might not have survived that initial jolt.

So even though the mortgage company is STILL dragging their feet, the title company has the closing scheduled for Tuesday morning.  Hopefully the mortgage company will finish up their end by early enough on Monday to give me time to get a cashier's check.  I don't want to push the closing back.  I have a refrigerator being delivered to that house on Wednesday.

*grinning*  Yes, I went and bought a refrigerator/freezer this morning.  It's just a small one, for in the garage.  I've been meaning to get a garage refrigerator ever since my house refrigerator died that time and left me without one.  So I figured I'd get one and put it at the new house.  The move won't be for another couple of weeks after closing so it will be nice to have a way to keep things cold for the workman, and for me or whoever hangs out there with the workman until my big refrigerator gets moved.

Lord, there's so many details involved in moving.  I had forgotten.  And I haven't even really started packing, though possibly I should get serious about that now.  I have another project for today.  Call moving companies and get some quotes and schedule the move.  Right now, I'm hoping to move the days right after July 4th.  Sometime between Wednesday July 4th and Sunday July 8th.  From talking to the painters - they can be done by then.  Hopefully the flooring people can be done by then also.  

This week I also met with the owner of a lease management company about leasing my current house when I move out.   That meeting went very well, and I was very favorably impressed by him.  I'm no longer worried about leasing this house.  I told him I'd want to start leasing it August 1st, so that's another thing that's moving right along.  

Anyway, that's what going on with me these days.  You can see why I might not get around to blogging for the next little while.  See ya on the far side!   

June?

Wow.  That's hard to believe.  It's actually June.   2012 is speeding by at the speed of light.  

I don't have much to talk about today, but I figured I'd blog anyway.   I'm about as motivated today as the cat-kids.    I'm still waiting to hear from the mortgage company about the appraisal and loan.   I suspect they're not in a huge hurry since the closing date isn't until June 19th.   Still, I really wish they'd let me know something.


Last weekend I went browsing.   Not shopping, because I was looking for stuff for the new house.   I'm not going to actually buy anything until I know for sure I'm buying that house.   Buying things now felt like a good way to jinx everything and have it fall through.   But I did visit six furniture stores and the furniture departments in four department stores.   I didn't find anything that just said, yes! I need this for the new house, but I got a lot of ideas for how I can arrange furniture in there and what type of furniture I want in there.  


Besides the furniture browsing, I also went and made decisions about paint colors, carpet and tile.   I really do want to have some fix-up done before I move in, and although again I didn't buy anything, I figured it would save time later to have already decided on colors and styles.   So I spent a lot of time driving around and looking around and almost no time buying anything.  That's actually highly unusual for me since I love to buy stuff.   I did buy more packing boxes but that was all.


Nope, haven't done any more packing, but I'm ready to!   I now have a good stock of different size packing boxes, but again the only thing worse than packing them, would be unpacking them here if the house falls through.


So I guess I'm ready and poised to go forward.   Which is probably why I'm not being very patient about waiting to hear from the mortgage company.  


We got some rain this last week, so my lawn will need mowing soon.   It also cooled it off a bit.  We haven't officially hit 100 this year (yet!) but we've come darn close and May was DRY!!  This week's inch+ of rain was all we had in May, which is considerably below the monthly average for May.   Luckily we were very wet in December, January and February, so we're still above normal for this area for the year, but I really hate extended periods without rain.   Brown is not my favorite color when it comes to growing things.


I realized that if I don't sell this house, I'm going to have to come over here and maintain the yard - water and mow, etc.   Which means either buying another mower or lugging mine between the two houses.   And if it's a dry year, that also means coming over twice a week to water the yard.  Okay, I'm kind of slow, but I didn't think about it before.   Guess I need to see if a rental management company will also do that kind of thing, or make sure the renters do.


Anyway, I'll worry about that later.  That's about all I have to say today.   

Lake Tahoe

Amidst all the house stuff I've been dealing with lately, I had a board of directors (BOD) meeting last weekend.  The last one I went to, which was at the end of February, was in Palm Springs, and I never actually got to see Palm Springs.  We have a new CEO and we spent two 9-hour days in a hotel basement conference room doing strategic planning.  We worked HARD.  They did feed us well and we had receptions the three evenings, but we never saw the sun or Palm Springs.  So I wasn't that excited about going to Lake Tahoe for this BOD meeting because I figured I'd miss seeing Tahoe too.  But this first picture is the view out my hotel window.   The place is simply unbelievably beautiful.

On top of that, luckily we managed to finish mid-afternoon on Saturday and all took a sailboat cruise on Lake Tahoe. This little picture is the back end of the boat.  The cruise was awesome.  Beyond doubt, Lake Tahoe is some of the most beautiful country in the world.  As pretty as my pictures are, the reality is much more amazing.  And the water is so clear.  They say they measure it, and you can see a white dinner plate that's 70 feet deep in the water.  Really, I am not equal to the task of describing the place.

It was funny too.  I didn't take any warm clothes with me.  According to my agenda and schedule, I should have been outside exactly 5 minutes, walking across the street to the restaurant.  Who needs warm clothes for that?  But if the daily high temperature is 65, and you're going sailing out on a BIG lake with a pretty good wind - well let's just say, I knew it would be too cold for this Texas girl.  Luckily for us, the hotel gift shop was having an end-of-season sale on their hooded sweatshirts - two for $40.00.  So about 2/3rds of the BOD went in pairs and bought sweatshirts.  We were all so cute in our Lake Tahoe sweatshirts, but they were warm and make a nice souvenir of the trip. 

The boat we were on was a catamaran.  We weren't the only people on it because the thing was big enough to easily hold 50 people, but we made up the majority of the people on board.  The crew served us wine or beer or non-alcoholic drinks if you were so inclined.  And they served fruit and cheese and crackers.  And the sun was brilliant, the sky was clear blue, the lake was deeper blue, and the pines were a deep green.  Really just so lovely it almost makes your heart hurt to see it.

We looked at the houses along the shore when we were close enough to see them.  The local people say that a high end house at Lake Tahoe runs between $10 million and $100 million!  I cannot even imagine.  Below $1 million is considered low end.  It's pretty likely that I will not ever be owning a house there.  On the other hand 45 minutes away in Reno, the housing market has crashed about the worst of anywhere in the country.  A shuttle driver told me his friend bought a house there for about $800,000 at the height of the market and sold it after the crash for $350,000.  I can't imagine having to sell my house for less than half of what I paid for it.   

 Anyway it was a fun trip, and it was nice to get away from my own housing stuff, if only for a few days.       

House Hunting

Actually, I suppose I'm past the 'hunting' stage now - I hope.  After looking at houses since the first weekend in March, I have a contract on a house.  I'm currently going through all the inspection, appraisal, survey, etc, etc, processes involved in buying a house so of course nothing is final until all the paperwork is signed at closing.  Still, I'm somewhat hopeful that things will work out.

So what's it like?  Cool.  It's bigger than my current house and sits at a great location.  It's 10 miles closer to work than I am now and less than 5 miles from a light rail station.  It's 1 story, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, with lots of nice features.  Floors are wood with carpet in the bedrooms and in one of the living areas.  The outside is nicely landscaped, so we'll have to see how well I do at keeping that up.  The lot is smaller than my current one, but not a lot smaller.

I'm seriously excited about it, but then I look around me and the thought of packing and moving all my stuff is kind of depressing.  Poor cat kids are going to be seriously traumatized.  My old lady kids don't like changes in their lives.  And I have a list longer than my arm of new furniture I want to get.  Of course, I don't want to take some of my cat-clawed, late-graduate-student furniture to a new house.  I need at least one new sofa set (2 living areas), at least one more recliner, a new bed, a new computer desk and chair, new bookshelves, an flat screen HD TV, a small dining table and chairs - to name some of the things I want.  It's a good thing I worked my credit card balances down so low to qualify for good financing.  Shopping!!  Just the thought lifts my spirits.

So I'm good as long as I pretend I don't have to pack this place up.   I haven't decided what to do with this place actually.  I don't know whether to sell it or rent it out.  If I rent it out I'll hire a management company to do that.  Either way I need to have some work done on the place once it's empty.  Painting at the very least.  And the shrubbery in front is badly overgrown, thanks to recent rain. 

I also have somehow accumulated plants that will need to be moved.  5 pots of aloe vera, 5 pots of small cacti and 7 pots of peach seedlings.  That's actually kind of amazing for someone who doesn't grow things, as a rule.  I did lose one of the little cacti I transplanted, but one out of 13 isn't too bad.  The others seem to be doing well so far.  

Now you know what I'll be doing with any and all my free time between now and closing in mid-June.  Packing!  I have plenty of lead time to pack, although I'll be out of town next Thursday through Sunday for a meeting.  I should probably not procrastinate too long on it, though.   It will be better to do it over time than rush it at the last minute. 

So I'll let you know how things go.  That's all for today.

Mighty Huntress

I just had to share this.  I've been outside this afternoon, mowing the lawn and watering stuff and trimming a few things.  And of course, when I'm outside the cat-kids are outside.  That black tom cat has been back around so they don't stay out there much when I'm not outside, but they've been out this afternoon.

Anyway, I came inside to clean up and glanced outside and started laughing at what I saw.  A couple of years ago when my peach tree was full and overgrown, Zoe used to LOVE to lay out under the dragging branches and pretend to stalk birds.  She was actually pretty visible, being mostly white, even when "hidden" in the thick branches, but she so thought she was a mighty huntress.  One of the regrets I had about that tree dying was she really had no place to hide and play outside any more.  Today when I looked out I saw this scene and had to take a picture of it.

Yes, Zoe was "hiding" among the mini-peach trees in the growing mini-peach orchard!   There were three doves in the yard under the bird feeder (picture down below), and she was absolutely fixated on them, while "hiding" among the peach trees.  I just had to laugh.

Those doves absolutely dis poor Zoe.  She's so fat and slow, she can be laying on the edge of the porch, three feet from them, and they'll be foraging seeds there on the ground, completely unconcerned about her presence.  They don't even leave if she gets up and starts stalking them.  If she gets much inside the three foot range they'll fly away, but they certainly don't care if she's out laying on the patio.  Still, she keeps trying to stalk them.   And now apparently she has a new hiding place to stalk them from.

I really like my lawn when it's newly mowed.  I wish the front yard was as thick and healthy as the back.  My poor front yard is mostly weeds.  Really the yard doesn't stand a chance despite TruGreen's best efforts.  The neighbors on both sides make no attempt to grow grass, just let the weeds grow as they will, so everything blows into my yard.  The back yard is behind a privacy fence, so it's a little easier to control.

Anyway, that's all today.  Just had to share the pics of Zoe hunting.

Brown thumb

There really is a reason why I shouldn't be allowed near growing things.  I either kill them with too much attention, or kill them with too little attention.  It's sad really because I love to grow things.  I'm just not good at it.  Which is kind of amazing considering I have sisters that could grow a rock if they wanted to.  I must have missed out on that gene.

You know those little cacti I've been growing from seeds?  I tried to drown them.  Not intentionally.  I was concerned that they weren't getting enough water because there were so many of them in that plastic pot.  They didn't seem like they were plumping out when I watered them, so I kept watering them more and more.  This week I watered them again on Thursday, and the water rose above the level of the dirt and stayed there!!  Those baby cacti were sitting in a lake!    I realized that the plastic pot had no holes in the bottom, so I bored a few through and the poor thing was still draining water into my sink on Saturday.

Yesterday was so beautiful out that I decided to "potter" around (instead of "putter").  I bought more pots and potting soil and transferred 15 of the cacti in that red plastic pot to three new pots.  I left 13 cacti in their original home.  Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they survive the transplant.  They look okay so far, but some of them didn't seem to have much root . . . or I didn't manage to take the root when I dug them up.  Luckily it seems like cacti are pretty hardy because, as I said, they looked pretty good so far.  I'll see how they do. 

I also discovered that the tall stringy succulents (which I think will grow up to be aloe - kind of hard to tell at this point) have impressive roots.  I transplanted one of those and it's roots almost circled the pot.  I thought I wouldn't get it out without uprooting everything else in the pot, so I know I broke that root somewhat.  So far it seems unfazed by that.

The other re-potting I did yesterday was one of the peach seedlings.  When I was salvaging them from the yard I didn't have enough pots so two of them ended up in the same big pot. They're growing so fast though that I didn't want to leave two of them together. Yesterday I moved one to a separate pot. It looks like it survived that move just fine.

At any rate I keep trying to grow things despite my obvious lack of skill. I really hope the cacti survive. The mini peach orchard is doing extrememly well, but then they aren't counting on me to supply their water needs. So far I've only watered them when I transplanted them. The rest they've gotten from the rain we've been having.

Addy's being very needy this morning.  She's sitting on my lap as I type this and uses her claws to let me know when I need to stop typing and supply strokes for awhile.   Both cat kids were out in the yard while I was potting stuff yesterday.  I also took the opportunity to dead-head the roses . . . or anyway start removing some of the more blown blooms.  That at least allowed that bent branch to raise up off the ground so I won't have to move it to mow today.  There are still a fair number of blooms on the red and the yellow is also blooming well.  I'll have to plant roses at my new place if there are none there.  I love roses.  Of course I'll be planting a mini orchard of peaches too, unless I can give away little peach trees to relatives.