dragonflies in the sun

Just another reason why I love living in the country:

It turned hot and humid yesterday, which made the dragonflies come out in droves.  

They were EVERYWHERE! 

little things...

Small things that make it feel homey

Flowers on the deck and whimsical planters with spiky orange Celosia hair

Reminders in chalk written behind the door and cats who sleep comfortably in the most awkward positions

Ahhhh....summer

I slept so well last night! It was peaceful, it was quiet…I was comfortable; even the cats slept in this morning!  It was awesome!

The only not-so-awesome thing was that it was muggy as hell and it was only 6 AM.  Walking Sadie, I felt like I couldn’t breathe!  I heard that today was going to be hotter than yesterday.  Ugh!  So much for unpacking – the upstairs gets so hot, I’ll be pouring sweat within ten minutes! 

Maybe I’ll suck it up and just head back to the Lake today.  I should have just stayed the night.  Oh well, the sun is out now and I’m guessing the temperature is just going to start climbing.  I need to clear a space in the sewing room, so the cable guy can get to the outlets (which are covered by boxes) tomorrow.  I guess I better go do that now before I can’t breathe upstairs!

Happy Independence Day!

What a good day to start my first full day on my own, in my new house!

The cats woke me up at 5:00 AM – yay…I was thrilled to no end to have spent the entire day before on screech trying to move and direct everyone where to go to put stuff and to only get six hours of sleep…whoo-hoo, yippee. Oh well, new house, they were excited.

Good lord, I have a lot of stuff! And I’ve already unpacked some of it and moved some stuff to the basement!  I just didn’t realize how much stuff I’ve accumulated over the years!  I guess it’s time to figure out what I really just don’t need and ship it off to the free shed at the transfer station.

The move went well!  Thank god for Melissa and Darrell bringing over the trailer; that made it so much easier.  The washer and dryer are in the basement and set up…or almost set up. The plug for the dryer is about 2 inches shy of the outlet, so we’ll have to prop the dryer up on blocks.  Whoo-hoo for ghetto dryers!

My plan had been to unpack today, but it reached nearly 90 degrees and I said to hell with it, packed up the dog and headed to the Lake. The water was really refreshing! When I got back to the house, it was still 88!  Ugh!  But I unpacked some stuff in the living room, set the TV up on the floor, because it hangs about an inch or two over the lip of the armoire and makes the TV unstable…and since its front heavy, I don’t want to do that.  I’d like to buy a flat screen, but money is a little tight right now to be buying things that I don’t necessarily need. Dad’s going to create an insert to accommodate it.  I hooked up the DVD player and watched a movie until I fell asleep on the couch.  I won’t have cable or internet until Tuesday…so obviously, I’m writing these entries on the day, but 7/2 to 7/5 won’t be posted until Tuesday).

You could hear the fireworks from 9:00 till 9:30 and then someone (or maybe the neighboring town?) set off a bunch from 10 to 10:30.  Poor Sadie, she really doesn’t like fireworks, or gun shots, or trucks backfiring.

Oh, I also introduced the cats to the basement.  Nym was psyched that there was a whole new room that he had yet to explore!  He checked out the area under the stairs where the cat box is now located, then crawled under the furnace, behind the washer and dryer, under the oil tank and then under the bulkhead stairs.  He came out COVERED in cobwebs and dirt!  Ellie took a different approach; she pitty-patted around the shelves, where it was clean, checking everything out over there, then she checked out the water tank and walked UP the bulkhead stairs and avoided all the cobwebby spots.  Then she followed me upstairs to the kitchen.  Nymmy, on the other hand, didn’t want to leave the basement; he kept going up the stairs and then running back down, like he was making sure the room was still there!  Later, I think Ellie gave up on staying on the clean areas of the basement, because she came up with cobwebs all over her face.

Sometimes Me & a Hammer are a Dangerous Combination

+= 

STRESS RELIEF!!!

I went to check on the house yesterday at lunch, because a major thunderstorm blew through on Sunday (while I was visiting my folks) and friends of mine had a huge tree in their yard uproot and fall!  I hadn’t been out there since Saturday and I wanted to make sure that nothing happened out at the house…and nothing did.  It didn’t even look like we had a storm there (which is all of 10 minutes from my friends). 

But while I was out there, I thought that I would open up the windows upstairs and leave them open to circulate some air, since I was coming back in the evening.  I was just about to leave when I heard the bedroom door slam shut (gust of wind made it happen) and when I got upstairs to reopen it, it was locked!  I don’t ever remember locking that door!  I’ve shut and opened it a hundred times and now all of a sudden it’s locked?  And there is no key for the damn thing!  I was cranky, but I had to get back to work and I figured that if a credit card didn’t do it, I could figure out a way to secure one of the big ladders from the old house on my vehicle and climb through one of the bedroom windows.

When I got back out there at 6:00, the door mangled a credit card and it was just hot and humid enough to make me oh so much crankier, as the sweat poured off me and I wasn’t going to run back in town just to load up a ladder and run back out there to try to climb through a window…so I grab a hammer and beat the knob off.

Strangely, I felt so much better after that!  I went down and ate dinner, then started scrubbing the metal shelves to prepare them for spray paint.  I even got one of them painted a very bright blue!  I guess I just needed to get my aggressions out and the door knob bore the brunt.  The bedroom needed a new handle anyway…as does the basement, but I refrain from beating the crap out of that one!

View From My Deck

It was so nice when I left the house last night after continuing to paint. Sunset and the sky in general is just beautiful out there!  I took a wander around my yard and found pretty little spots here and there.

I'm growing more comfortable with every day that I go out to paint at the new house.  I'm getting used to the sounds, though whenever my tenants move, it sounds like they're in my part of the house and I think someone is there.  Thankfully Sadie is my personal alarm and if she doesn't bark like a maniac, I don't really have to worry.

I'm taking tonight off.  7 full days of painting and 3 days of painting after working 8 to 5 has caught up with me.  I shut my alarm off this morning while still asleep and woke up after 6:00, only because one of the cats knocked something over.

I'll be happy when the painting is done and I can move in.  No more of this back and forth stuff!

"Water Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Spare" or "There's a Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza Dear Liza"

Oh the joys of home ownership!  As I was painting the ceiling in the kitchen, my tenant came over to ask if I had water.  I checked the kitchen sink and sure enough, no water.  I tried calling my folks (cell phones not turned on); I tried my brother, the plumber (went to voicemail), so I run in town and thankfully, my parents are there, my brother calls to say that he’s on his way out and in the mean time, I am scrambling my butt down to the store for the biggest jugs of water I can buy while praying that it’s something simple that doesn’t require a ton of money to fix. 

 My brother announces, after he’s looked at the breaker box, the water filter and everything else inside the house, that it might be the pump IN the well.  So he, his friend Ricky, my dad and our tenant pull out the pump from the well (by the way, my well is about 200 feet deep and that pump sits down at the bottom…good to know).  Its pump – after 24 years, it just decided to die 4 days after we buy the place. Ugh!

Thankfully my brother can fix it for under $400 and by this afternoon, my tenants will have running water again!  And I am thankful that the pump decided to go now, in June, rather than in freezing cold February…in a snow storm…with 40 mph winds!  I’d rather it had not gone at all, but at least now I can rest assured that my well has a brand spanky new pump!

On the paint front, the basement is done and the kitchen is taped off.  I did do stain block paint on the ceiling, but I have a feeling that when I go out there this morning that it will be streaky and will need a real ceiling paint.

Sadie did get to go out for the first time.  She wandered all over, checked out upstairs and the basement, wandered around the yard and we went for a walk on the snowmobile trail (which is really nice!).  She was a little antsy, but I got her a marrow bone and she eventually settled down and gnawed on that for a while. 

Mum and I will be back at the painting today, hopefully getting some color on the walls!

Painting Painting Painting

I feel better.  I went to the house yesterday and the trash was gone, the keys were there and I met the tenants.  They are very nice people.  He’s in the Reserves and will be shipping out in a year for a year stint in Afghanistan; she’s a stay at home mom to 2 adorable little boys. I feel better about the neighbors now.

Mum & I wire brushed the basement walls and will start painting today.  Dad secured my water pipe (as it was loose and wobbling all over the place).  I washed down the walls in the kitchen and cleaned out the fridge.   I picked up all the little things that you need right away that you don’t realize you need until you’re out there, like the cordless drill, paper towels and toilet paper, hand soap, a radio, a trash can and trash bags, ceiling paint and KILZ, the paint stirrer that attaches to the drill.  I made about 3 trips back in town for forgotten items.

There are a million things I’d like to do right away, like wash the windows, but those can be done some weekend AFTER the place is painted; that needs to get done first!  I had to clean out the fridge because it disgusted me.  And knowing that my fridge is clean makes me feel better about putting my food in there.  I cleaned the bathroom first thing…before anything else, because that grossed me out too.

My deck gets the best direct sunlight from about 11:00 am till the sun sets – it’s wonderful!  It’ll be nice to have the patio table with the umbrella set up out there…granted it’s supposed to rain all day today, so it won’t be so nice today out on the deck.  Oh well, good day to paint the basement…and maybe the bathroom. 

Since I slept so terrible the night before last, I didn’t get half of what I had hoped to finished last night.  By 6:30, I was toast and stumbling tired.  I came home, walked the dog, ate dinner and crashed out at 8:00.  But I woke up at 5:45 this morning, feeling good!  Today, I will get a lot more done and stay later.  If I can get a good 12 hours out there, I’m sure I can put a good dent in my to-do list!

Home?

The sellers finally moved out last night…I know, it’s only been 2 days, but it’s felt like forever!  They still have to pick up trash this morning, but they’re done.

I went out last night, just to check things out and I was disappointed.  It didn’t feel like home.  It still felt like someone else’s house.  I know I have to give it time, but I didn’t feel well yesterday and my annoyance level was on high, so everything irritated me…the fact that I never checked the light in the bedroom to make sure that it worked during the inspection (it doesn’t); the freezer wasn’t washed, so there is spilled crud inside; the tenants on the other side have a child and their every movement can be heard through the walls; the sellers were supposed to leave the keys on the counter for everything, except there was one key and it didn’t turn the lock, so I had to leave the place unlocked last night.  Thank god it’s in the country.

I just didn’t feel at home and it bothered me.  I know it will be different once I get my own stuff out there.  And I know that much of the sound will be absorbed when I get furniture in, a couple of decorative quilts on the wall, etc. etc.  I know that I was only hearing EVERYTHING because my side was empty.

Today will be different.  I will get out there and start painting the basement.  My annoyance level is still up there because I still don’t feel well and I didn’t sleep well (it smelled like someone was burning trash and plastic all night – it’s still hanging heavy in the air here at the old house).  But I got up at 6:00, walked the dog and am having my coffee now.  Once the naproxen kicks in, I’ll feel better, Mum & Dad will be up to head out to the house with me and I’ll get the painting process started.

It’ll feel like home soon enough.  I know I just need to be patient, but patience isn’t always one of my strong points.

(oh, the burning smell is coming from the wildfires in Quebec…all the way down into Central Maine – crazy!)

I'm Getting Closer and Closer to Home

At the end of March/beginning of April, I had this brilliant idea to take Memorial Day weekend off and head to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I’ve never been and I just felt this need to get out of Maine, to go away and relax for a while. My friend Nicky and I were going to book a hotel room as soon as we got our next paycheck and drive down at the end of May. I put in a request for time off (we have a 4 day weekend, but I asked for an extra two days before and after the weekend just for packing and down time after the drive home). That weekend (after I had made this decision), my parents came to visit and out of the blue said, “There’s a duplex we want to go look at it. We’re thinking about buying it and wanted to know if you wanted to buy it with us?” My folks own two houses, the one they live in now and the one that I rent with my brother (that my folks have been wanting to sell for ages), but they’re looking for some place to retire to, to be closer to the family and the amenities that they don’t really have where they are now. I was looking for someplace to call my own that was out of town, where the neighbors weren’t right on top of you, police and fire sirens weren’t an hourly occurrence and strange people didn’t walk the streets at night making so much noise that they wake you from a sound sleep.

So I held off on getting a hotel room in NC, but I kept my request for time off in, in case this fell through and I could still make those reservations. Mum & I looked at the place and thought it was cute. Built in 1984, it had been on the market since September of 2009 and sat on 1.75 acres; it had two bedrooms, kitchen, living room, bathroom and a full basement on each side and independent heat systems. It sat on a dead end with 2 other duplexes, off a camp road and was backed by a Central Maine Power right-of-way (so no one would ever be building back there – a big change from the nursing home that currently backs my house.). Mum wanted Dad to look at it and he liked it. If we bought it, I would live on one side and we’d rent the other until Mum & Dad were ready to sell their current house (which would greatly help pay the mortgage).

Mum started calling banks and kept encountering negative loan officers who said things like, “Now is a bad time to get a loan, no one is lending,” “You don’t have 20% to put down? Oh, our bank won’t even consider it,” and “You already own two houses, that won’t work to your advantage.” It was rather disappointing. But after finishing my budget one day, feeling particularly discouraged that we couldn’t come up with a 20% down payment, I started praying for the perfect bank to come to us, one that would work with us (I’m not Christian, but I’m spiritual and I believe in the power of positive thought). I kept repeating “the perfect bank will come to us at the perfect time and offer us a loan for this duplex” like it was a life saving mantra. Suddenly, an email popped into my inbox with the daily news headlines (when I say “suddenly”, I mean as soon as I saved my budget and closed the file…it was just that quick). The subject of the email was about a bank merger and expansion. I don’t believe in coincidences, everything happens for a reason. So I called my mother and told her to call this bank. They were great – the woman said things like, “Oh, now is a great time to buy a house,” “You have two houses that are paid off, that can only work to your advantage,” and “You don’t have the 20%, don’t worry, we work with our people…we’ll figure something out.” And they did! They’ve been phenomenal!

We started looking into the house & property and come to find out, it was sitting on less than an acre…but that was okay and we put in our bid.

After several days of back and forth with the owners, we were at a stalemate. They didn’t want to go any lower than their last counter and we weren’t going to go any higher than our last one. It was looking like it wasn’t going to happen…but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like the story wasn’t over and that we were supposed to get this house. But we knew that we couldn’t justify going any higher and we thanked the real estate agent for his time anyway, and said that if the owners wanted to reconsider a month or two down the road to call us. The agent told us to hang tight and he’d see what he could do. A day later, he called and said that he would drop his commission by $6,000 to ensure that we got the house for the amount that we wanted and the sellers wouldn’t have to drop their asking price any lower.

From there it was a whirlwind; sign these, meet with the bank, sign more, get the inspection, test this, check on that, send this in…now wait…and wait…and wait some more. Now all of a sudden, it’s back to hurry hurry hurry! And the closing is scheduled for next Friday. The process has only taken about a month, but it has felt like longer. And I have to say, hearing house buying stories from friends and coworkers, this process has been smooth and positive!

Now, with closing just over a week away, I’ve got to start focusing on packing; on what’s staying, what’s going and what needs to be bought new…and how I’m going to afford those things. It’s more than a little nerve wracking, to say the least! I managed to pack a box last night – whoo hoo, one box – hey, it’s a start.

Since today is raining, I thought I would take the day to go through closets and really delve into the process of what goes to the new house and what goes to Goodwill.

~:: Wish me luck! ::~