House to Home

Please excuse the long absence once again.. We have been in the process of house-hunting, finding "The One", losing it, and then miraculously stumbling across an even better "ONE"! Yay, finally!!!!!

We found a lovely, large home to rent for the next year. (The thing is - I'm already loving this place big time and looking for a much longer, if not permanent stay!) It has a big fenced yard that is perfect for the dogs and the gardening. We had a great surprise this morning when we were informed by the farm foreman (our house is a lot on a 90 acre farm) that we actually have access to the 10 acres surrounding the house - it's included with our rent!!!!!!! I was so excited. He said we could do whatever we'd like - run cattle, bring our horses, FARM it! He will even bring over his big tractor and disc it up if we need him to.. I was excited about the house and the big yard - what a bonus!!!! (Sorry about all of the exclamations - did I mention I'm excited?)

We've been packing boxes and moving them to the new house. Then, it is unpacking things so I have empty boxes to do it all over again the next day! This has been ongoing since the 11th! I'm sure "normal" people don't have this much stuff (as in crap) to move from one place to another. (Thank goodness we're only about 5 miles from our old place.) It makes it harder that we're packing and moving Mom's house in at the same time as ours, plus two very large storage rooms/barns. We are going to have the yard sale of the century folks!

Mom's health hasn't been improving as we'd hoped. The doctor has decided to move her to a more aggressive treatment/clinical trial that she is very optimistic about. Mom and I are reading everything we can on this protocol and it seems to be a good option for her situation. She has beat this monster twice and we're working on the third win for her.

In the meantime, we are turning this new house into HOME for all of us. We have all the critters except for Mom's dogs settled. Her dogs Muttley and Xena will be home here with us in the next few days. Michael is building a temporary dividing fence so that those two and our two beasties can get used to each other before sharing both the front and back yards. We don't want any of them to get hurt while they become acquainted!

The Mooncat kitties are loving the new house. It has a lovely, long hallway that is perfect for 2am hockey games using whatever trinket makes LOTS of thundering noise. Poor Mom had to get used to living with cats again after many years of peace & quiet. Michael & I tend to sleep right through their shenanigans. They make up to Mom during the day though as they spend a lot of time loving on her and following her around the house.

My little herbie babies are suffering a little from the move and the lack of attention they've been getting. I've lost several plants this last week. I'm hoping to get the time this weekend to get them sorted out and actually find some of them a new home - my poor aunt is gonna love that! She will be the receipient of many little plantlings, whether she's ready or not..

I am really bummed about leaving the lovely garden that Michael slaved over this summer, but we'll soon be mapping out an even better, bigger one. (He's already dreaming of a new garden tractor, he's thinking that ACREAGE equals good excuse... I just might have to indulge him on that one..)


So, amidst all of the boxes and chaos, we're all adjusting quite well to our new HOME!

Manic Monday

Six o'clock already
I was just in the middle of a dream,
I was kissing Valentino
By a crystal blue Italian stream.......

Well, maybe not Valentino (perhaps Clive Owen or of course, my beloved husband) and not an Italian stream as much as a Scottish loch?

The above lyrics from the Bangles' song "Manic Monday" are fitting today, except that I've been up since about 3:30 - major insomnia has hit and I can't get back to my good dreams. My mind is spinning.

The hubby has scheduled us to look at a minimum of four houses today, it will probably be closer to six by the time we're done. I HATE HOUSE HUNTING. It used to be fun to go to open houses and get ideas of what we'd like when we finally build our own place. We'd come home and jot down features that we want and make notes on stuff we don't. That joy is now gone since we are fast approaching a deadline for the new owners to take over this one.

We were going to go ahead and buy a place instead of renting again. But with everything being up in the air with my mom's health and my dad now talking about selling the ranch, we're sorta in limbo. So we decided to rent again for at least the next 6 months to a year.

We made the mistake of finding the PERFECT property on our first foray into serious home shopping. It fit all of our needs for us, the mama, the critters, and the herb babies. The first problem is that the place is next to a railroad track which wouldn't have bothered us so much (but kills the resale value of course); second issue was the idiot (sorry, gentleman) upped his price during our negotiations - we bailed quickly. The place has been on the market for over a year anyway and I'm not so keen on being stuck with a house that we can't sell when we're finally ready to move up North with the whole family.

So, wish us luck today as we venture yet again into the realm of rental houses. Our perfect (for now) place must be out there somewhere....