Another Day Closer to Full Timing

Yesterday was one of those days where we were busy all day but didn’t seem to get much accomplished.  We can’t be having many of those days because May 6th is coming up fast!

My first order of business was getting clothes washed.  Judy’s comment yesterday made me feel that maybe I was being “ugly” when I said I didn’t like to go to Laundromats because they were nasty and there were crummy people there.  I thought about how that sounded and decided I should go check them out.  We live in a small farming community. There are a lot of migrant workers here and they were the ones that appear to use the two Laundromats in town.  The crime level is very, very low here, so I wasn’t worried about getting mugged.  I just expected the facility to be dirty and nasty, and guess what?  I was right! It’s a shame people that some people have no other options and have to use these places.  The owners should be ashamed of themselves.  There are two laundromats in town and the other one was much better (but still not good) and very busy.  Again, I don’t mine laundromats at the campgrounds and have found them very clean and nice, but my experience yesterday convinced me I need a new/used washer.

We debated whether to fix, get a used one or rent.  We stopped at a rental place, but they just do “rent to own.” 

We finally decided to go to the repair facility Al had checked out and buy one of their used ones with a 30 day guarantee.  I know it will give me something else to sell, but at least I’ll have a machine while we’re here.  If I take a loss on it, it’ll be okay if I can avoid those dirty laundromats.  So today I’ll be doing some laundry and loving it!

We spent a lot of the day cleaning up the yard and it’s looking pretty good.  At least good enough for the buyers agent to inspect in Saturday. 

I took some pictures of some furniture and items we will be selling and today I’m going to start getting them posted on Craig's list.  I guess I’ll put some price tags on these items and if anyone at the garage sale is interested we can take them down to the house for a look.  We really need to make this and each garage sale count because we will only 5 garage sale week-ends before closing.  Scary!

Over the 5 years that we lived here we cultivated a lot of birds.  We fed them every day at least once.  We kept water for them and did our best to protect them from predators.  When we left in December Al filled the bird feeders as full as he could, but we felt very, very guilty leaving them with no food to face a cold winter.  Our house sitter would put some food out when she came by, but that wasn’t too often.  I especially felt bad for our very large family of Cardinals. 

The first thing we did when we got back was put some bird food out.  We see some birds but not nearly as many as we used to.   Our family of Cardinals by the front porch have moved on.   Al has seen some down in the woods and we’ve heard some, but I think they’re mad at us and we feel real bad.  I sure hope the new owners are bird lovers and will take care of our friends.  I will sure miss our bird friends when we leave.  I will also miss this beautiful piece of land where we can look out any window and see beauty.  Yes, I think there will be tears when we pull out of the drive-way the last time.  No regrets though.

2 House Showings Yesterday

I ended up having two house showings yesterday.  That's the way to go...get them all done at once while everything looks good!

Unfortunately I didn't get good vibes on either of the people.  As normal, I left the house while they looked around, and then offered them a tour of the property if they wanted one.  The first lady was probably in her mid 60's.  She lives in Tennessee with her 88 year old mother.  She's thinking about moving here because she has a brother in town and her mother doesn' t like Tennessee.  She has mini donkeys,  horses, and dogs, so this would be a good place for her.  I just don't know how a woman that age could manage this place.  Honestly,  it's a lot of work for us.  Of course we goof off a lot :)

The second showing was another woman.  She was younger, but came without a man/husband.  She had a horse also.  I think she may have had a husband at home, but I'm not sure.  I just don't see how a woman alone could handle this place.   After I showed her around outside, she went back and looked inside again.  Maybe that was a good sign.

My plan for today was supposed to be working on purging more stuff from the kitchen, but that didn't happen.  Maybe today?

Surprise House Showing (#3)

We got back home from lunch yesterday, and had a phone message from our Realtor saying another Realtor wanted to "drive by."  I  took that to mean they just wanted to look at the property, but we neatened up things anyway and it was a good thing we did.  A few minutes later a car drove up with the Realtor and two ladies.  She apologized and wondered if we could show the house.  It seems she didn't realize our property was in their price range.  No problem...come on in!

We showed them around the property but I really don't think this older lady could handle this much property...Al and I barely can ourselves.  She is moving from Atlanta and wanted to live in the country, but didn't realize we had Foxes, or Armadillos.  She asked if we had bears?  No. I don't think she had a clue what was involved to maintain this much land.   I think it was more of an afternoon drive in the country and wasted the Realtors time as well as ours.  She liked the house and property real well though.  Oh well, at least now another Realtor has seen our place!

Home Showing Today

We spent Thursday day working around the house preparing for another house showing.  We can always find things that need doing.

These two showings have really gotten us thinking.  What if it sells quickly?  We still have too much stuff!  Where will we go?  We've been thinking of options and "plan b's."  Of course we realize a quick sale would be very unlikely in this economy, but we do need to think about the possibility.

Since we plan on leaving for the winter, we have a lot to do and sell in the next few months and maybe our plan to spend the winter in Florida is not the best one.  I guess we'd better get this stuff gone!

This upcoming full time rv lifestyle is so hard to explain to non rv'ing people.  My dear friend Carol,  just doesn't get it.  She says she wouldn't like to do what we're planning because she gets homesick and is always anxious  return home after a short vacation.  Of course I tried to explain that is why we like rv'ing, because our home is always with us along with all the comforts of home and all of our stuff is with us.  We always have our home, but our back yard changes whenever we like.  She still doesn't get it though.

I think it takes a certain type of person to live full time in an rv, but I don't know what makes a good candidate.  For us, I think being raised in military families helped us to realize that you can move and change your life around.  There is a big old world out there and we are not limited to living in just one place. We have no grand children to tie us anywhere.

Al and I have always enjoyed exploring new areas.  We frequently get in the car and just drive to explore what's out there.  We've always done that all of our married life.

Shortly after we got married, we decided to move from Omaha, Nebraska, to Tampa, Florida.  Neither of us had even been to Florida, but we just knew we would like it.  So we left our parents in the midwest, and headed to Tampa in the spring of 1974.  It never occurred to us that we might not like Florida, or that it might not work out for us.  We were very happy there for over 30 years before we got the urge to try something new.

I read on some blog last week about a couple that went "home" after being away traveling a while.  They found they no longer had much  in common  with all of their old friends.  They had seen and explored so many wonderful places and all their friends wanted to talk about was their health problems, or home projects.  None of their friends showed any interest in their travels and never even asked them about where they had been!  They had changed but their friends hadn't.  I don't want to be one of those people who vegetate in retirement and never see or learn anything new.  I think living and traveling in an Rv is the answer for us, but I realize everyone has different reasons for how they choose to live out their retirement years.

I guess I've just been thinking too much lately!  After the 10:30 showing this morning we need to gather more stuff for our weekly garage sale.

Wish us luck with our showing today!

Our 1st Home Showing

Al and I have always known that we work better under pressure.  We proved it again when we had to about kill ourselves getting the house ready for it’s first showing.

It’s not that we haven’t been working, but we just hadn’t gotten it all pulled together.   We actually listed the house before it was ready, thinking here in this rural area with the bad housing market, buyers would be scarce. Well, I can tell you, we  got it pulled together very quickly  when we got “the call.”

On Monday night about 9 pm we were preparing to start watching season 3 of Dexter, when the phone rang.  I jumped up to get the phone and jokingly, said,  “it’s probably Lorraine”  (our Realtor)  Well it was!  There was another Realtor that wanted to bring someone by on Tuesday at noon.  NOON?  You’ve got to be kidding?    I asked if they could do it later in the day, but since it was getting late, we would know nothing until the next morning.  So we had to prepare for a showing at noon. 

This one phone call made me start to think.   We could be homeless in a month and have nowhere to go.  Are we ready for this next step in our lives? 
Are we sure we want to do this?  How will we manage with the cats?  How will we get rid of all this stuff?    Well of course those were only brief thoughts….I didn’t have time to contemplate them any further. 

Fortunately, I had a long nap Monday afternoon and wasn’t tired, but Al didn’t get much of a nap and was tired from not sleeping the night before. 

Let me tell you a brief story  about why Al didn’t get much sleep the night before. 

I’ve learned through the years that when Al is overly tired, he gets extremely grumpy.  When he gets like that everything offends him and he thinks I’m picking on him.  I try to ride it out until he gets rested up.  He came back from his trip to Tampa extremely tired.  He works really hard while he’s there so that he can get home sooner, (so that I can pick on him?)   Sunday night we had a little argument and Al  decided I needed to be “punished.”  

I know some men who punish their wives by beating them, or by leaving home or something like that.  Well how Al punishes me is …… he sleeps on the couch!

Okay, picture Karen in the middle of her  big old king sized bed stretched out all nice and comfortable, while Al (the punisher) is sleeping on the couch with no blanket or pillows!   I thought about covering him up and giving him a pillow but decided to let him suffer!  He had been being such a grouch, I was not very happy with him at that point!

Well despite Al being very tired, we did get the house ready for it’s first showing.  We were able to change the showing until 4 pm, so we had more time and we needed every bit of it. 

When they arrived at 4pm, we left the house, but stayed on the property.  Our property is large and hard to figure out exactly where the boundary lines are, so we told them if they wanted us to, we would be glad to show them around outside once they looked inside.   They were interested enough to want to know exactly where our property is and I took the male half of the couple on a tour on the golf cart.  He is an older man, maybe in his 70’s.  Al was wondering why someone that age would be looking for such a big property because it’s really a lot of work.  Anyway, they didn’t say much, about whether or not they liked the place, but did ask some questions.    After the tour, they stood outside and talked  to their Realtor at least 20 minutes.  We took that as a good sign.  The man told me that he had 2 properties up for sale, one on a lake and another in the country he was worried about selling.  I don’t know if that means he had to sell them before he bought anything else or not.

We hadn’t heard anything back from our Realtor last night, so I’ll send her an email this morning to see if she had heard from the other Realtor. 

Another Garage Sale

Yesterday, we had our 4th garage sale.  We did okay, got rid of some stuff and made about $170.  We started at 8am and left at 11am.  It was hot and humid and by 11am we were hot, tired and thirsty.  We closed up shop and headed to Zaxby's for an ice cold lemonade.  


We found out a little more about the garage sale rules. Al finally decided to just call city hall and get the facts.  You are allowed 2 garage sales per year.  I understand they don't want people making a living by having garage sales all the time, but two a year.  Come on!  If you want to have more than the two per year, you need to get an occupational license for $50.  Or you can go have it at the little "flea market" building in town and pay them for a booth rental ($14)  We don't want to do that because we'd have to pick up and move our stuff each week.  With our storage shed, we just close the door and go.  Much easier.  We may look into getting the commercial license.  Or we may just wait and see if we have any problems with the city and then look into getting the license.  It may be worth it if we can put more signs out and also advertise in the newspaper without fear of getting a citation.

It got up to 98 degrees today and it was just too hot to do anything outside so we hung around inside, took a nap and watched tv.   This evening Al got the new batteries installed into our electric bikes. He took a test run and his bike runs fine.  Unfortunately, he pulled a "Karen" and fell down while trying to get off the bike.  I can't tell you how many times I've done that.  When we first started riding bikes again, I fell twice and cracked a rib.  What they say about never forgetting how to ride a bike, is wrong!    There are no good  bike trails nearby, but we are anxious to take them for a ride...once the temperature cools down.  We like the fact that we can peddle when we want, and use the "gas" if we get tired.  It's nice when you come to a hill to get a little help!  We really did ride more with these bikes and actually got some exercise.  You can build up your endurance easily with that little extra boost you get.  We'll definitely take them with us in December when we head south.

I Need to Quit Watching HGTV

It just gets me in trouble.  They have quite a few shows telling you how to get your house ready to sell, and they make it look very easy.  What they don't tell you is that they have a whole team of pro's that can build, fix, and install just about anything.  They also "stage" the houses so that they look very nice, but aren't really livable. For instance, how  many of these show's have a television? 

Anyway after watching too many of these programs and talking to my best friend Carol, we decided I needed (I means Al and I) should repaint the living room.  Al said I am not allowed to talk to her again.  She would have helped me, but she lives in Arkansas.

I painted this room a few years ago, but never quite got the color right.  I knew what I wanted in my mind, but it never came out right on the wall.  I have the worst trouble picking a paint sample that turns out the way I want it.  Those little samples look very different when they are on the wall.  Carol said I needed a beige.  Okay, I went to the local Benjamin Moore and got a few swatches.  There are 12 trillion different colors of beige!  I got them home and still couldn't make up my mind, so off we went back to Benjamin Moore.  This time I ended up with two little jars of beige paint.  I went home, slathered some paint on the wall and guess what.  I still wasn't sure which color beige I wanted. Al says, whatever you want dear.  This morning we headed back to the paint store, and I still was unsure, but when we got there I made the decision, we bought it, and hoped from the best.

Benjamin Moore paint has a low odor, and is supposed to be one of the best paints.  I had never used any, but since there was a dealer in town, I decided to give it a try.  I gotta tell you, this is very good paint.  It covered well and with minimum effort.  It spread easily, didn't splatter and didn't smell too bad.  It was a little expensive @ $35 a gallon, but I think in the long run it was cheaper because I only needed one coat.  It's done, Al is cleaning the brushes and I am contemplating putting everything away.  Mind you, I am only contemplating!

Oh, and I like the color!