TGIF

Found out some disturbing news yesterday afternoon. The guy who got arrested at the renter's house last week isn't who we thought got arrested. This guy was much worse. He is a felon, who had spent prison time (and certainly not near enough time!) for pulling a gun on a Walmart security guard, a little over a year ago. I'm not sure why/how the sheriff tracked him down at renter's to be arrested, but sounds like he had a warrant, most likely for violating his probation. VERY scary to know that someone that dangerous was staying at renter's place. DH had a quick conversation with landlord neighbor yesterday, who still says he is waiting to get his rent check from them any day and then he will be giving them a 3 day eviction notice.  If this does indeed happen things could get interesting around here for a bit. I'm sure they will not go quietly, that's for sure. And I'm sure they will blame everyone (including us) except themselves. We'll have to be on high alert if this happens. DH has already told our neighborhood deputy what might transpire.

Sad, one of my friends, who lives right downtown in a neighboring bigger city, just posted on Facebook that her nice little sidewalk/tree lined side street has become a drug dealing drive-thru street. She lives in a really nice apartment building with a nice view of the city and watched 3 drug deals in 10 minutes go down. Welcome to my world! I know she has been planning to move back to suburbia this summer/fall, but the sad part is it's out here too.  At least the residents in our unincorporated county just voted down allowing pot shops to open up in our area. I was kind of surprised the No votes actually won. The Yes folk (paid for by current pot shops that are actually operating illegally in the county) were sure pushing it.  Ad's and mailers from a state rep, who was a narcotics LEO for years - supporting it.  A first grade teacher, supporting it, in the ads! Just blew my mind. I cannot wait to get out of here.

On tap for today, since I only worked a half day, is meeting up with my Mom at Best Buy to pick her out a new computer (finally!) and then back to her house to set it up for her. She's so cute - she was like "do I need to bring anything with me? like my modem or anything for them to set it up?". I said "No, that won't work. They can't set up your internet connection from the store. I'll go back to your house and get it all set up for you."  I know the headache of all this will be trying to load up all her favorites and her trying to find all her log-in's and passwords on all her tiny little slips of paper!  If I end up staying with her for awhile, while we are building our home, I am going to re-do all those into one place/piece of paper! Drives me insane, every time I got over there and have to deal with it.

Hopefully it all won't take me too long and I'll still have some afternoon left to go find myself some new pj's (for my girl's weekend tomorrow) and a smaller overnight travel bag. I really don't want to take a full sized suit case, for just one night of stuff. Hopefully I can find something cheap at Ross or Walmart. I also just realized I need to swing by a store real quick on my way to meet her and get her a birthday present! It's in a few days. I think I'll just get her a Starbucks gift card and a card.

Hope everyone has a great weekend :)

This that and the other

The realtor emailed me the photo's yesterday. They turned out really nice (of course the editing helps haha!). I was at work and opened the first one, which was of our living room, and was like "wow! that's my house?" haha! Then my boss looked at a few of them with me and wanted to see our yard pictures. She was like "omg - that is amazing!". So, ya, pretty proud of our yard :)  Too bad they couldn't edit out our junkyard neighbor! Grrr....  oh speaking of the neighbors - there was an arrest made last week at the renters house - a felon with warrants was there and 4 cop cars came, found him and arrested him. Supposedly (and I say this ever so lightly) slumlandord is using that to get rid of the renters. He told DH early this week that he was just waiting for their rent check at the end of the month and then he was giving them 3 days notice to vacate. Said he talked to his attorney who said he can use that they were harboring a fugitive to kick them out with 3 days notice. We'll see. Like I said, not holding my breathe at all, but if they do move out we'll happily wave goodbye and good riddance to them.

Yesterday my boss told me she told the company owner (our upper management folks are also small part owners of the company, so she has a lot of weight in the decisions she makes) that she had given me the ok to work 100% remote, as I was moving out of state. She hoped he was ok with that and he said "I'm totally ok with it - she is amazing........and tell her I'm jealous". That sure made me feel good to hear that.  We are on track with our sales goal, so if we can keep it up 2 more months, we will have our mid year bonus payout in June.

We had a massage therapist as a treat at work yesterday. I haven't had a massage in years and that little 10-15 minute chair massage felt amazing. This morning I had a chiropractor appointment, so I'm feeling pretty well adjusted now.

This coming Saturday is my girls night with my 4 best high school friends. We are staying at a nice hotel/lodge about a 40 minute drive from my house. I'm so looking forward to it and we've been planning it for months. It kind of stinks that it will cost $20 to park there for the night though! Geez - you'd think for the price we are paying for the 2 rooms, they'd include parking.  Oh well, I'm just glad I can afford it and it's not a hardship on my budget to finally give myself a little treat. Anytime prior to several years ago, this would have been a real stretch for me and I probably wouldn't have even been able to do it. Plus, I got that $150 cash bonus at work a few weeks ago, so that's what I'm putting it toward.

There are no other major expenses we should have to put towards our house, other than it looks like we might have to get a lawyer to get rid of this lien that didn't get taken care of during our bankruptcy. Bank of America at first acted like no, problem, we'll remove this. We show it written off with the bankruptcy. We keep following up with them about every 5-7 days and now are just getting the run around. Referring us to another collection agency, that again says they aren't pursuing it because of the bankruptcy, but they aren't the ones who put the lien on, BofA did, and BofA has to be the one to remove it. Our realtor said she knows of a good property attorney, so might have to pay to have that done. I have no desire to give our bankruptcy attorney (who should have taken care of this in the first place) any more of my money, to have her take care of it. Talking with her again, a couple of weeks ago, reminded me of how much I disliked her.  It will get resolved one way or the other, just a pain dealing with it and getting the run around.

A bit of a delay today

The realtor and photographer were supposed to be here at 1pm. It's been raining the past few days and the grass has been growing like crazy and today was the first day DH could mow it, though it's still pretty wet. Took him a lot longer to sweep up wet clippings....then the realtor calls and says the photographer had the appt as 4:30, so now they aren't coming until then.  It wasn't supposed to rain today, but now it says rain at 4pm....but it keeps changing every half hour or so. Now the sun is out again.

I don't think I can get my house much cleaner, but yet I still walk around and see stuff to clean or straighten up or move to a different spot. I'm sure it will look fine in pictures. Would it pass some OCD white glove test? Nope, but it's dusted, vacuumed, mopped, etc. Yesterday I finished filling in a few flower pots at the back french doors, so all that is done. I had two pots on each side of the door and a hanging pot from the small covered area.

I worked from home today, thinking I'd need to be here at 1pm. Oh well, gave me a little more time to straighten up this morning. Mostly I just put things in drawers (I have a dresser of empty drawers in DD's bedroom) that seemed cluttery around the house. - mostly from my office/desk - hah! I'm not a neat worker.

Our garbage can outside is completely full, because DH has been getting rid of stuff as he goes through the shop and shed. My inside, under the kitchen sink, garbage is full, so instead of throwing out our leftover meatloaf dinner from last last (because when I save it we never eat it) making it fit in the garbage and having it smell today, I wrapped it up and put it in the fridge. I just made DH and I some nice cold meatloaf sandwiches :) I also pulled out and finished up some leftover sliced watermelon. I have a feeling when we live in our new home we will eat more leftovers, because it won't be convenient to run to the store whenever I feel like it. There is a small grocery (and hardware combined!) store in town about 10 miles from where our home will be, but the main shopping (like Target and Walmart) will be a 40 min drive away. My plan is to make that trip every 2 weeks, on the days I only work half day Fridays. I'll have to get good at stocking up for 2 weeks or more. Good thing I'll have a nice big pantry.

Guess I'd better get used to having this place look spotless, as much as possible. Gosh I hope it sells quick, just for that reason LOL. It might get old trying to be that clean and neat after a couple of months :/ I guess it'll be really good practice for when we have our nice new house. I'll be in the routine of daily ocd cleaning by then, right? ;)

Need more weekend

We are having the photos of our home done tomorrow and the listing will go live Wednesday or Thursday. I took some things to Goodwill yesterday morning. The main thing I got rid of, hogging up space in our house, was an old student sized desk. DD had a twin sized comforter (in the plastic bag they come in) under her bed and she doesn't want it anymore, so I took that too, as well as a bag of stuff I had been adding to in my closet.

We took off all the window screens, many of them getting old and ratty looking. DH washed the outside windows and I did the inside. Oh my! what a difference to look out the (bottom) portion of the windows and just see clear glass. Looks so much better (not to mention they are clean now, haha). We bought DH the pallet jack he's been wanting. Making it much easier for him to move the stuff around the garage (and when it will be time to load to move). He has put all the crates he's packed so far on pallets and shrink wrapped. All nice and organized. To make the overfilled garage/shop look a little less crowded, we have moved my car out to park in front of the garage. He was then able to put our old t-bird, that has been literally stuffed in the back corner, sideways, to where my car parked and then put the pallets back in that corner. It has made it all look a little less crowded.

The foreclosed house that has been being fixed up (ie flipped) just went on the market, for $400k. There is an open house today. They fixed it up pretty nice, which is a big help to this neighborhood, that's for sure. They bought it 2 months ago for $240k. I know they pretty much had to re-do the entire insides, because of all the druggies/homeless damage that was done to it. They painted the outside and fixed up the yard. Most of all the flooring and walls got ruined because they left water running inside and it flooded and no one there. I'm not sure how, but the guy on the other side realized something was wrong and discovered the water on, but of course it had ruined everything and the bank didn't do anything, just let it sit there and continue to rot for another couple of years.

DD and her BF got the new car. They did get a good deal on it and she got a decent trade in on her broken car (the dealer is in a small town nearby and a good family friend of BF's). It's a super nice car, completely loaded, and very grown up (a 4 door sedan). It's a 2014, but still brand new. It was their decision, it's not costing me anything and hey, I get to save a little money by dropping her car off my insurance. I gave her all my advice on it before, the decisions she makes are up to her. And it's certainly not my place to tell her BF what to do with his money.

She had a phone interview, for a job, on Friday. She had been emailing with the company's HR guy a few times the past couple of months. He's also an alumni from her school and had just hired a winter graduate from their school. Another job just opened up last week and she emailed him about it. She graduates in 7 weeks, plus with classes only 2 days a week, she could work 2-3 days a week to start.  Right after she got an email from the dept. head, wanting to do the phone interview the next day. She thought it went well (there were 2 on the phone doing the interview) and at the end had asked what their time frame is for letting her know more, and he said she was their first interview, so it might be awhile. Then 2 hours later he emailed back and wants her to come in for an in-person interview in 2 weeks! She is so excited. Plus, the company is right next door to where her BF works, so would be super convenient for car pooling.

On tap today - just more house cleaning.

Lots of doing lately

The days are going by so quickly now, with so much to do. I feel like it's one email after another, between the realtors on both ends, our mortgage broker, the builder and the guy drafting up the plans (though DH is handling those, but I still have to make decisions with him).

We spent the weekend installing a new set of french doors in the family room and fixing the floor in front of the doors. It was a retrofit type of door, but DH still had to do some work on taking out some part of the old frame (darn!), probably because this is a mfg home and at least back when ours was built, not much was standard. The floor had gotten damaged when some water leaked in the bad doors. DH cut out the bad floor part and replaced with new plywood, cut out the carpet in front of the door and put in a nice little entryway of laminate. I think it turned out nice, as the room is paneled with similar colored oak wainscotting and it all ties in. All in all we had to put about $750 into this project.

The guy (set up through the builder) that is doing up our set of plans is a retired guy that does this as extra income. He does up one set of full plans. He is quick too! The builder met with him last week with DH's drawings, DH spent about on hour with him on the phone Saturday morning and by Monday morning he had emailed a first draft of the plans, including some 3-D photos, that really give us a feel of what a few of the main rooms look like inside. Very cool. Best of all, he only charges $750. He made a couple of small changes that we like better, then we made a couple of small changes, but other than that, I don't see us making much more.

We are scheduled for photos on our home to be done on Monday and the listing starting Wed or Thursday. The realtor is doing a dual listing. One, at a higher price, to the builders network (she said there are a 112 builders it will go out to) and then a regular listing, to sell as is.

In other news DD's car took a crap. She's been hoping it lasted just a couple more months, until she graduates and gets a job soon, and then she could buy a new car. She's put quite a bit of money into the engine already the past couple of years and just does not want to put more into it. She was going to buy a new car in a couple of months anyway, because once she starts working she will (pretty much no matter where you live around here) will have a commute and needs something reliable and good gas mileage. I guess she and her BF (who has been living with her in her apartment, since he got transferred to a job nearer her) have decided he will buy the new car and once she is working, she will get the financing for it, so it's all in her name and her credit. I did have a long discussion with her on it being a smarter plan to get a car she will be able to afford, just on her salary and not on her BF's salary. I also emphasized not financing it for more than 5 years at the most (as she mentioned the 6-7 year financing BF is going to do). I don't think I was too successful in getting my point across. It appears they are looking at a car that is more than I think she should be spending for a first new car and it appears that they are looking at their incomes (when she has hers) as a combined income, which will be at least $110,000 a year. She is looking for a job in the city he works and hopefully they will be able to commute together. They are also considering just staying at her apartment in college town (about an hours commute from where her BF works) as it's a nice little apartment and the rent is only $720 a month. I just gave her my .02 cents, based on experiences, and the decisions, at this point are up to her.

My mom was in a small parking lot picking up some pizza and a guy backed into the corner of her car. Apparently she was so frazzled by it, she only got his name and phone number (and I think the name of his insurance company). Then she got home and couldn't read the last name he wrote down. When she called me the next day to ask what she should do, because I guess she tried to call (I don't really know, she's so hard to talk to, as she jumps around in her conversations). I asked her well, did you get his license plate #? No.  Did you get his driver's license #? No. They didn't want to wait hours for the cops to show up. But then she says "I could tell he had been drinking, I could smell it on his breath". OMG, so you let him get back in his car and drive away? I didn't say this to her, but that's what went through my mind. If she had called and told the cops she got hit AND the guy appears to have been drinking, I'm sure they would have come right away.

This day just keeps getting better

In addition to the sellers signing off this afternoon on the offer (my realtor texted me it was completed) the awesome realtor we met with yesterday just called. When she was here she mentioned she was really interested in double checking into the zoning, because her initial checking indicated it was zoned where 5 homes could be put on this acre and a quarter. She checked into it further today and was excited to call and tell me about.  The guy that lives in front of us has 2 duplexes on his property. We also have crackerbox housing developments starting to surround us, within just acres of our lot now. She is really thinking a developer or someone that might want to put in some duplexes might want this property (it really is prime location). She thinks this marketing option is something definitely worth checking into more and at least trying to sell that way, if that is the case. She is going to talk to an engineer friend on Monday, show him our layout and see if he could draw out where additional homes or duplexes would go (also for marketing purposes). Then she made me fall out of my chair.............she said she thinks if we could sell it that way we could get $450,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG! THAT would be freaking amazing! So, then I asked her, what do you think it can sell for, just as is, if a developer doesn't want it, and she said around $300,000.......and that is awesome too. Way better than the $250,000 we were told last October. We'd be happy with $275,000. Either way - both numbers were very good news to us. But if we could get $450,000 we be literally in heaven.

I think this is finally our year for good things to come our way.

Offer accepted

We put our offer in for the property yesterday afternoon. This morning they contacted our realtor and countered (we assumed they would). They countered for $3,000 more than what we offered. We expected them to counter $5,000 more (the mid point between their asking price and our offer), so we actually came out $2,000 ahead of what we anticipated. LOL. Works for us! We signed the revised offer and then our realtor sent it back to them to sign. Well, realtor just called. Sellers (who weren't using a realtor) decided to have a realtor look it over (the people that live on the lot next door had told us one of the lady's brother was a realtor in town, so most likely they contacted him) and he wanted to make two minor changes, that really didn't make any difference, according to our realtor. One was that we split costs of any transfer fees related to the water. Well, there is no water/well, so our realtor said it's a moot point. We said, sure change it. So he revised it again and we re-signed it and now waiting for them to sign, hopefully this final offer.

Once they sign it I have to send $1000 earnest money to a title company. I also just had to send $375 to the drafter guy who is doing up our set of plans. That's a 50% deposit, so it was more than the builder said, he thought it would be like $500 total, but we also have a separate shop plans needing drawn up. Hopefully there isn't a lot more that I need to do out of pocket after this. DH also wants to repair the floor in front of our family room french doors and put in new french doors. I have priced those out at Lowes, and for what appears to be pretty much the same kind as we currently have, is $400.  I do have a Lowe's credit card, too, so I plan to put it on that. I don't want to totally drain my savings, unless I have to. The drafter took PayPal, so I paid him that way, using my papal credit account, which gave me 6 months no interest. Hopefully, our place will be sold before that and then I can use our proceeds from the sale to pay these selling/purchasing costs.

Snooty realtor came back this morning. She wasn't quite as snobby, but pretty much. DH said she just seems kind of creepy to him. She did a bunch of comps - as near as she could. There really aren't many places with this acreage and this close in to everything. Everything around us is housing developments where the houses are 5 feet apart and little postage stamp sized lots.  Then she just kind of left all the different comp amounts hanging there (the low was $70,000 lower than her high) and never gave us her opinion on what we should list at. I thought that was really strange, so I said "well, what is your opinion on what we should list at?" and she was still kind of vague, but pretty much said she thinks we'd be ok asking towards the higher end.

I'm really looking forward to meeting again with the one who came yesterday. She will be here on Monday afternoon. She's already sent me links to photo examples of the photographer she uses. Of the 3 realtors we've "interviewed", she's the one who actually acts like she wants to sell our place, acts like she wants the job. She even has a little positive quote as a tagline on her emails. I just like her whole attitude.

Here's another weird thing that came up in all this process. My mortgage broker told me a week or so ago that we should have the inspection done now, before we list. She had a guy call me, and it was like $450.  DH and I talked and just decided that we'd wait and the inspection can be done when we have a buyer make an offer. None of the realtors said this needed to be done first. The realtor from yesterday even mentioned that usually the buyer picks the inspector, because it might not seem as impartial if the seller is picking their own. Makes sense to me, plus in my research it appears that this is usually a buyer paid cost anyway! We could have forked out this money and a buyer could have said, no - we want our own inspection done. I'm really glad we didn't have it done.

Snacks anyone?

Does anyone else have this problem in their house - where the kitchen is full of stuff to eat, but the residents complain there is nothing to eat?! I have that issue with my DH about snacks. Most evenings he wants a snack and inevitably what I have on hand he doesn't want. I usually have several different chips available, a couple kind of cookies, and ice cream. There are also granola bars, popcorn, peanuts, pudding snacks, etc - none of which he likes. I usually buy some donut holes, but those don't last long. So, what is left to get to have on hand?! I need some ideas. The past month I got lucky with a box of corndogs I bought, but now he's tired of those. If I buy fruit or veggies, most of it ends up spoiling.

Found her!

Found the realtor we are going to use. Loved her! I had a good feeling about her when I talked to her on the phone the other day and in person was even better. The first thing she said when I opened the door was "is there even a blade of grass out of place?" LOL. I said well, it's not as good as it should be - those dead spots are killing my husband. She thought our place was great. Loved the landscaping and how nice and neat everything is inside and out. She kept saying you take such good care of everything. She liked the floor plan. She was just an all around positive person about everything. I don't even have her price estimate yet (she's coming back on Monday) but I know she's the one. That feels good to have that decided.

Thursday this and that

Just continuing to work on things towards selling/buying. Our agent first contacted the sellers to let them know there is an offer and since they aren't listing through an agent would they be agreeable to his 2.5% fee. They were and had to go through the day of getting them the paperwork  to sign and agree. Then yesterday our offer was worked up and was submitted this morning. The seller (it's owned by 2 ladies) got back to our realtor and said they would discuss it together this evening and get back to him tonight or tomorrow morning.

I talked with a mortgage lender in the area, recommended by our builder. She said builder is wrong (as I had a feeling LOL) and it takes them 45 days to close, also. Apparently it's a federally mandated thing or something. Plus, they require 20% down, which the bank I've already gotten pre-approved with, only requires 10% down. I'm estimating we'll end up with about 15-16% to put down, but most likely (unless our home value has gone up a lot in the last 6 months) won't have 20%. In the end it might end up appraising for more than our costs into it, but who knows.

A third realtor is coming to take a look and give us her estimate this afternoon. The snooty realtor that came on Tuesday is coming back by tomorrow to give us her analysis. I want the comparison, even if I probably won't use her. Who knows, maybe we'll get a different feeling from her at the second meeting. I've basically still got the first realtor on hold. I thought I was being nice calling her up on Monday to let her know we'd be ready in two weeks. Just give her a heads up, etc. The pushy attitude of listing next week and the price might change in 5 days, etc. just really put me off. I guess I should have just waited and called her when we were totally ready.

DH spent 5 hours yesterday pressure washing our sidewalks and in front of the garage. It looks so nice and clean. Of course he is feeling miserable now and in a totally crabby mood. This morning he is trying (again) to fix the squeaks in our living room floor. I bought this kit at Home Depot that has special screws you screw into the floor joists...it's not helping at all, so not sure what we are going to do there. I say just hire someone to come fix it, but of course DH isn't agreeable (is that a man thing?).

We have some dead patches of lawn, leftover from that terrible drought from last summer. Everything else filled back in nicely but these spots. We've weed and feeded a couple of weeks ago and the lawn looks really great, but those spots.  A few days ago I sent DH a link and a video of this spray on grass seed for bare spots and asked him if maybe we need to try something like this. He said yes and I had even mentioned that when I watched the video it said raking up the spots before to loosen the soil helps. So, I get the stuff for him and he's reading the package just now and bitching that if he knew he had to loosen up the soil he could have just planted seed himself. Oh good grief! That's why I sent him the info to look at and see if it was something he wanted, not complain to me about it after he said ok and I went and bought it.

The builder has been good about calling and emailing DH this week, so that is good. He met with his guy that does up the building plans yesterday and that guy is working on it now and said it would take about a week. He will call DH if he has any questions. It's working out good to let DH be the one doing the design of the floor plan (though of course I have input) and I'll handle the interior design and interior finish decisions. I'm good with the overall floor plan and little tweaks here and there that DH has thought of don't really make a huge difference to me, though I think his ideas are good ones. I even had a good idea on the guest bathroom with the 2 upstairs bedrooms, that he changed it to. With the open layout floor plan the kitchen is pretty large and we tweaked it a bit where we don't have to put in so much cabinets (expensive they are!) and can leave a blank wall/corner in one area for a small 2 person table and chairs and put a hutch (I'm thinking farmhouse style hutch) along the wall. Hopefully find something second cheap hand that I can fix up. It would be much cheaper than adding cabinets and countertop there, I'm sure, plus give me the more personal touches I am looking for.

Old issue still haunting us

What a hectic day. I had decided to work from home today because we were having another realtor come over to give us an estimate on our home value and to see if we liked her better than the first one. I had called back the original realtor we spoke with (and did like) last Fall to let her know we would be ready to list in 2 weeks, that we needed the next couple of weekends to finish the things we were fixing. Then she's trying to push me to have photo's done next Wed and listing to start the next day. I said well, we'll try to get it all done this weekend, if not I'll let you know next Monday we need to push it out another week She was "well, you don't want to wait any longer, the market can change overnight" blah blah.  Oh good grief - like 5 days is really going to make that much of a difference in what our listing price will be! She just rubbed me wrong. It's more like she just wants to price it as low as possible to sell as quickly as possible.

So, yesterday I set up for 2 other realtors to come. One today and one Thursday. When we had filed our bankruptcy I had to get 3 realtor's comps (we didn't tell them it was for bankruptcy, just that we were thinking of selling) and the high and low of the 3 were like $100,000 apart, something crazy like that. I recall it was a huge number and I remember thinking how could they be so far apart. So, I think it would be good to get some other opinions, as well as maybe someone we feel more of a connection with.

Then the first realtor calls me this morning. She had a few questions and also - did we know there was a lien on our property from 2010? Umm....no we didn't. We filed our Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2010, everything should have been discharged then.  So, she gives me the name and phone number of the lady at the title company. She gives me the lien info and emails me a copy of the court document (which says absolutely nothing about it being a lien on our real estate property - just says we owe Bank of America the money). I called our bankruptcy attorney - who was just as unhelpful as she was when we filed. She said it would be our problem if we didn't tell her about the lien (we didn't know about it!) and if the bank filed it before we filed for bankruptcy then we would still be liable for it. I checked on the dates and the bank filed it in April, while we filed in Sept of the same year. I remember that during April we were still waiting on our dang attorney to file - we had gotten her everything, she just kept putting it off, month after month. So, in April of that year we had already started working with her (actually started in November the previous year) and if I had gotten that in the mail or served, I would have sent her the copy of it. Now that I think about it I remember contacting her that we got this from BofA and what to do with it (though we didn't realize it was a lien). We definitely did include this debt on our bankruptcy listing, just didn't know it had gone to a lien.

So, DH calls up the attorney that is on the court document, that filed for the bank. They told him they are not trying to collect on it - they show it written off with bankruptcy. So then DH called Bank of America. Talks to a couple different people, who also say they show it was written off with the bankruptcy. So, no one ever removed the lien. Finally, he ended up with the legal department and that guy also confirmed it was written off with our bankruptcy, so he just needs a few days to get the authorization to file the release of the lien.  Let's hope that's all it take and this is fixed quickly! DH did awesome. He stayed totally calm, when I was about to flip out and took care of all those phone calls where he kept having to repeat the situation each new person he talked to.

While we are dealing with all that realtor #2 comes for her appointment. What a snooty lady! I mean, I know we live in a manufactured house, but geez! It's nice and well taken care of. The acre and a quarter looks like a park. It has a really nice 3 car garage/shop. She couldn't get out of here fast enough, LOL. Oh well, hopefully the lady coming Thursday is better. In the past we probably would have just put up with realtor #1, but we are tired of being taken advantage of. The realtor is working for us - we are the one's paying the realtor. I'm going to try not to settle for someone who is "just ok".

Offer time

Well, it was a busy weekend. We made a quick trip over to the area we want to move to meet with a builder (same one's our friends over there used to build their beautiful new home). We both liked him and he said he can work up the details within our budget, based on what we had already given him. We spent some more time at the piece of property, taking measurements, so DH could make sure his house and shop plans will work.

Today is a big day for us! We are putting on offer in on the land! We decided to offer $10,000 less than the asking price. If the owners had listed with a realtor they would have had to pay the 6% realtor fees, plus the other 2 lots for sale have been for sale for a year or two. Nothing much is selling in that county. One of the (7) lots has a house built on it (the only lot in the 10 years since they were subdivided)  On one side of them is the lot we were first considering (before they told us the owners of the lot on the other side of them wanted to sell) and really, the best spot to put a house on that lot would make their view out the back be partially blocked by a house. We didn't really want to do that to them and so that's why we talked to them. Glad we did because that's how we found out about the other lot, and it's a much better lot in the sense that you can put the house back even with their house and not block their view, plus still have a view of the river. Nothing much else is around the 7 lots. State forest land on 3 sides, the river and across the river is state and railroad land. It's all very quiet and peaceful. The main road that runs past the property is a back road, not used much.

These folks got to thinking, after talking with us, that someone might eventually come in and buy that first lot and not be so considerate as we are. So, they have put an offer in for the other lot - at $18,000 less than asking price.  That also kind of made us decide to make our offer for less than asking.  Let's hope they accept it.  To be honest, I'd pay their asking price (that's what we've worked into out total budget) but if we can get it for less, we might as well try. Even if we get it for $5k less than asking price, that pays for the well or septic we have to put in.

We pretty much have our home plan figured out, just making a few tweaks here and there. DH has done the drawings himself, based on a floor plan he found online. The builder has a guy who will do up the drawings for $500. We don't need to spend thousands of dollars for a set of plans. (our friend drew his own and that's all the builder used) The builder suggested contacting a local mortgage lender he works with a lot - especially after I told him our lender, from here, takes 45 days to close, once the specs and budget is done. He said over there it takes less than a week, usually. With building and all that entails, an extra month would make a big difference to us. So, I'll have to go through that application process again, but will probably be worth it. They are local and familiar with him, so most likely it would all go smoother, than using a lender from out of state.

Next up (while we wait to see if our offer is accepted!) - getting the final things done so we can list our place for sale in a couple of weeks. DD painted our master bedroom for me while she was here watching the house and taking care of the animals. One more thing off the list to do! Spring has sprung, leaves are back and some of the flowering plants are blooming. It's all starting to look good again.

I really don't want to get old

I finished up my mom's tax return in about 15-20 minutes. Then I had to call her up to get her bank routing and account number so she could get her small return direct deposited. I knew she would not want to give me that info via email. Oh my goodness! I think it took her longer to figure out what her account number (that she's probably had for like 40 or more years!) than it took me to do the whole return. She wasn't even sure what it was by looking at her bank statement. Then I tried "what number do you always write on the back of checks when you deposit them?" Then I realized that the info was on the copy of her last years return and I could have just gotten if off there, LOL. I told my DD....see what you have to look forward to when I am old? ;)  I'll probably be worse, haha!

No call from that home builder yet, so we are still in limbo. He said he was waiting on some estimates, but apparently he's still waiting. I'd just like to get the info, so we can make some decisions and get an offer made on the land.  My mom's boyfriend (in his early 80's) just moved into an assisted living place and his beautiful home was listed yesterday - for a cool $500k. It'll probably sell fast, just like everything in the area is lately. A lady I am friends with on facebook just listed her home and in 4 days had an offer more than their listing price.  Let's hope, even with our situation, we can sell in a reasonable amount of time.

I totally forgot that my cousin's son was getting married (out of state) last weekend. I got the invitation quite awhile ago and set it aside (somewhere in a pile of papers) so I'd remember to send a gift as it got closer to the date. Oh well....too much on my mind lately, I guess. I got something ordered from one of their gift registries list yesterday, and it was through Amazon and free 2 day shipping, so they'll have it by the time they return from their honeymoon. Better a few days late than not at all.

DD has been busy getting her last quarter of school started and getting her graduation announcements. She doesn't really need that many and designed her own online (with a nice photo her BF took of her on campus last weekend) for less than half what it would have cost to order through the college. Graduation Day will be here before we know it. She's started applying for jobs but no real nibbles on her resume yet, other than possibly one company who did at least email her back and told her to check back with them the first of June. The guy said he just hired a winter quarter graduate and he himself went to her college, so maybe she will stand out to him if another opening comes up. I told her to ask him if she could stop by for a few minutes sometime and introduce herself. Put a face/personality with the resume.

I just finished my work day. It's still a bit of time before I'll need to get dinner started. I'm feeling a nap coming on.

Ready for the week ahead

While I was running around Saturday, looking for spray paint, I noticed one of the stores that has a nice garden center had some "wave petunias" in. I used those last year in my hanging baskets and in the wishing well. I don't normally plant my annual flowers until mid-May, sometimes even Memorial Day weekend, if I'm really lazy. But, with the pending home sale, I need to get these planted as soon as they are available and so I was really happy to see they are! I didn't go inside the garden center, so I wasn't sure if the rest of what I normally plant (regular petunias, alyssum, lobelia, marigolds) would also be in yet. I decided to go back Sunday morning, first thing, when it wasn't so crowded.

They had all the flowers in stock, so I did my estimate (I usually buy too much) and loaded up my cart. $119, including a big bag of potting soil. That's about what I spent last year too. It was sunny and 70 again yesterday, so perfect day for planting them all. DH was working on the lighting for his trailer, so thank goodness! He decided to help me last year (first time ever) and had to tell me how to plant every flower LOL. While all the planting is excruciating on my back, I still enjoy the process. I cannot stand to wear garden gloves. Gotta feel that dirt :)

I got all the front planters and baskets filled, and the two baskets that hang on the back arbor. I was short 3 petunias for the last window box. So close! But I still have a few other containers for the back that need to be planted with flowers, so I will get the rest on another trip later this week. Hopefully the flowers will start filling out some, by the time we list the house for sale. I see the trees are starting to see leaf buds and hopefully those will be filled out too.The clematis on my front arbor has turned all green and leafy in just a matter of a couple of weeks, and looks like it will be flowering soon. Plus, since it got to grow last summer, it's already up to the top of the arbor.

My trips on Saturday to pick up supplies for repair stuff came to $139, but DH passed on his monthly "allowance" of $140 this month, so it didn't end up being extra that came out of my budget. Plus we saved a bunch just painting the range hood, instead of buying a new one.

We are still waiting to hear back from the builder to nail down the cost to build a house. He left a message on Friday that he was still waiting on a couple of estimates from subs, and would call Sunday afternoon/evening, but he didn't call, so he must not have gotten all he needed yet. I'm sure we'll hear something back this week. In the meantime I keep watching zillow to see any new houses that go on the market, in case we see something we really like. There hasn't been much new added and nothing of what we are looking for.

Busy bees

oooh, what a busy day getting stuff done. I am so pooped! We started out by removing the flickering ballast in one of our kitchen lights, so I could take it to store and find a replacement. We also took down our range hood. It's almond color and we never bought a stainless steel one to match the stove (and other appliances). A new one would have been about $100. Instead we decided to try a $5 can of stainless steel finish spray paint and see how it turned out! I'm ok with it!

While I was out at just about every store trying to find the dang spray paint, DH replaced the ballast and no more annoying flickering fluorescent light. I finally found the paint at Lowes and he fairly quickly got that painted.  He tried to fix the squeaky living room floor but not much luck with that. I went online and found they actually make a special screw kit just for that at Lowes for $20 bucks, so we'll have to give that a try.

Other than painting our bedroom (and DD is coming to help me with that next Saturday) the only other project (and the biggest one) is to fix the floor in front of our family room french doors. I think DH is just going to take out part of the carpet in front of the doors and put a little entryway of laminate. We had some leaking from our french doors several years back and it made the floor near the doorway a bit soft underneath.

I was way too tired to make dinner, as we didn't even get done with everything until 5pm, so I ordered pizza. Turns out the delivery driver lives right on the other side of the fence from the main road that comes back into our neighborhood. He said we sure do have a nice place back here. He was also happy to see the foreclosed house getting all fixed up. What a nice man, but it always kind of makes me sad to see people that should be retired and relaxing having to work.....and these stupid young adults down the street can't do a dang thing with their lives.

Friday highlights

I'm not working in the office today, but just got an email from my boss that we had a record sales month, for March. The owners are giving everyone $150 cash bonus today. NICE! That will be great for my upcoming "girl's night" at the end of this month. Myself and 4 high school girlfriends are re-creating a night we had 34 years ago :)  But we are upgrading our hotel experience (LOL) so it's going to cost me about $75 for my share, plus whatever we do for dinner. Normally, spending that wouldn't be a problem to fit into my budget, but with all the selling/moving/etc costs coming up, I was really going to have to do a bit a tweaking. We've been planning this for months, and there is no way I am not going. Now, I do not have to tweak the budget (and should have some left over).

We had to call the sheriff again last night on our white trash neighbors. Ever since the 2 boys cleared their warrants, they have been out of hiding and back to their normal drug dealing activities. And since none of them have a car, they use a friend (it rotates who does it) to run the drugs. So a car will end up going in and out over and over. So, last night about 8pm this car comes in fast, gets down to the culdesac (it's gravel) and starts doing spin outs. About 80% of the culdesac is on our good neighbors property. He (finally) got a bit ticked and tried to call slumlandord, but got same response from him DH got earlier yesterday when he called to complain about the traffic ("my phones not working right, I'll have to call you back"). The car left and about 10 minutes later returned again (had gone to make a delivery, of course). Good neighbor finally got off his passive butt and walked over and knocked on their door! The dad answered and good neighbor told him to have his visitors knock off the doing donuts in the culdesac (as well as spitting rocks into his yard). The dad just waved his hand over towards their shed, like he could care less and went back in the house. The kids came out and neighbor told them to knock it off and as he's walking away they start yelling at him and so he's arguing back. DH was standing on our property and heard it and got a bit nervous for good neighbor, so ran inside and called 911. By the time they got here (about 10-15 min) it was over. Pretty sad that the sheriff feels unsafe enough coming here that they have to send 3 cars! They did go down and talk a few minutes to them. Plus it helped that it wasn't the usual "one neighbor (us) against their BS story". Now the sheriff had 2 neighbors corroborating what happened. That dad is a wimp (though that's not the word I used) - no wonder his kids are a complete waste of space and air.

I guess slumlandord did end up calling good neighbor back later last night. At least slumlandord got an earful about his crappy renters from someone besides us for a change. He gave our good neighbor the same crap he feeds us. I guess he brought up the condition of the corner or our road, all torn up these past 2 1/2 years by his renter bringing his truck and trailer in. He said that didn't cause it (gee...it was fine 20 years before that) and he's not fixing it. SMH.

Coming up  next week are some pre-trial hearings for some of the ones currently in jail (4 from our neighborhood/nearby neighborhood). Slumlandord told good neighbor last night that he's going down to the court today to try to work out getting his son re-hab, so he doesn't have to go to prison for 4 -5 years. This is the guy recently caught with drugs and a gun (he's already a felon). If he get's off for rehab, I am going to be so mad. He's already had lots of chances. Time to be punished for his choices.

DH was talking last night with one of the guys from the nearby neighborhood.  He called up the councilman and said "listen. it's now been a year since I contacted you. Nothing has changed and in fact it's worse. Summer is coming up. I want to be able to enjoy my property (they have 5 acres and horses) and my neighborhood this summer".  Councilman said that there are 2 pretty liberal judges up for re-election and they have been asking him for their support. Neighborhood guy said - "well then why don't you bring them out here and show them what is going on and what their liberal sentencing is doing to my neighborhood" . Councilman thought that was a great idea.

My daughter just sold a very expensive camera lens she has on ebay. For $800. The buyer doesn't appear to have any ebay history, so I told her to be VERY cautious and make sure the money is 100% completed and verified through her paypal account before she ships it out. Now the guy sent her extra money because he wants it overnighted to his son as a gift...but she apparently can't verify the funds with ebay/paypal until she does a postage label (apparently due to the high dollar amount of the sale). From what I remember of DH selling all that stuff for his friends widow, on ebay, if he's not verified with Paypal then his funds can take a couple of days to clear from "pending" status to completed and be available to transfer to our bank account. I just told her to print label, I guess, but if it's showing in paypal as pending funds, then the guy isn't getting it sent out until is clears. I hope she doesn't get scammed on this. It's a lot of money, so she needs to be 100% sure. I feel better that she sold it through ebay, but she still needs to be careful.