Thursday, long day

     I told myself I was going to get up earlier this week, but so far it has not happened.  My bed just pulls me back in, what can I say?  I am having problems with my bathtub faucet.  I will need to have a plumber come and look at it.  It is not something that hubby or I can do.   This will  minimum be about $200.00.  I sew a lot for a woman whose husband owns a big plumbing outfit.  I had a credit with them of $80.00 and with what I sewed for her yesterday I now have a credit of $198.00.  So I will call and schedule a plumbers visit. I am so glad I was able to do this.  Trying to come up with that money right now would have been hard.

     Every year at this time I have the why do I have so much laundry melt down?  Hubs goes from a light short sleeve shirt and pants, socks and underwear to sock liners, long johns, extra t-shirt, heavy flannel shirt every day.  I go from cotton blouse and cotton shorts, no socks to socks, sweat pants, turtle neck, polar fleece vest or jacket every day.  Our clothes are heavier and there is more of them, so more loads.  Duh?  Why can't I figure that out.  I am slow.  I am slowly doing laundry.

     Need to get a little more organized around here with cooking, if I want to really save money on groceries I would pay more attention to this aspect of my life.  I will work on this and come up with a plan.  I am home until 4 or 5 at least 4 nights a week so I have no excuse not to have something ready for hubby, I am just lazy and shiftless.:)

     Saga cont:

     It took three months to close on our new home.  We waited until Dec 6th to move.  Because it was a owner contract we had to abide by the owner's rules.  Now we all know that I am not busy at this time, right?  Junior High musical, Nutcracker.  Nothing to do.  We were called on a Friday and told we had to be out Monday by 9 a.m.  Panic.  Call church and brother and sister in law.  Luckily, I had every room packed up and the kids and us living out of one laundry basket apiece.  Every box was labeled.  It was a fast easy move.  Beds taken down and each box went into the bedroom it was assigned.  We were completely out of the house except for Kitchen clean up Saturday evening.

     I will never forget that Sunday morning, I got up early and walked down the hall to the front room.  Boxes were stacked to the ceiling and a baby grand piano on its side.  Furniture every direction.  But I looked out the window of my living room and I cried.  I was just so grateful.  I could not believe I was living in this house.  I could not believe it was mine.  I cried all the way to church.  My husband thought I was nuts. I don't think he will ever understand what this move meant to me.  For the first time since I was a little girl I felt like I had finally made it.  This is a beautiful house.  It was way more than we could afford, but things just worked out.  I still love my home and I still can't believe sometimes it is mine.  I had been married 20 years before I had my dream home.  Almost everyone I knew moved into theirs right when they got married and then moved up.  I could not understand how they would ever want more than they had.  I really know now that I was meant to struggle and to do without and less than so I could learn to be grateful.  If I had been able to move into a really decent house immediately after Hubs and I were married, I would not have been satisfied.  I would have wanted more.  It is just my nature to want more. I struggle with this.

     It was a quiet Christmas.  Hub's folks came and helped us get things hung up and situated.  In the mean time Richard was fuming in ND.  I was so busy that winter and spring.  It was unusually warm and I was able to go outside and and work in the yard.  We had a full length tall (8ft)wooden fence across the back of our lot.  It was falling down and rotting.  Hubs and I had a friend come haul it away.  What we did not realize is that our lovely very wealthy neighbors had been using this steep burn down to the fence as a local dump.  When the fence was removed an avalanche of years of old Christmas trees and oil cans and garbage, descended.  We had motorcycles, bicycles, and  at the bottom and old boat on a trailer.  Yes, you could not see a boat because of the garbage.  Every morning I would go out and fill enough large black trash bags to fill the pickup and then go to the dump.  I used over 200, 33 gallon trash bags to clean up that mess.  I then attacked the over grown Junipers that surrounded the property.  Junipers smell like cat pee and harbor snakes.  We also had a huge tree of Heaven problem (I renamed them Tree of Hell) and blackberries out the wazoo.

     I was so happy, I had plenty to do,and a list of never ending projects.  Our oldest was graduating from high school and I had finally decided that I would no longer coach the early morning dance team.  It would mean a $500.00 cut a month in our income but the University had been on me to give up that job so I could teach more for them.  (note to self, get a contract before you believe anyone about a future salary)  Our oldest had a full ride scholarship for four years and I was on cloud nine.  My mom and step dad were taking her to Europe for the summer.  Things were good.  I spent January-April working hard in the yard.  It was free except for trash bags and gas. 

     We did not tell Richard our new address.  Things were still very tense.  He missed the kids and they missed him.  I don't really remember how his first trip back here came to be, but it was shortly after Christmas.  We let him take the girls out for breakfast as he was passing through.  I never felt that Richard was a threat or that he was dangerous, I just had refused to read the signs of his feeling for me.  I am very good at ignoring things that I don't want to see.  I am an extremely moral reason and just don't think along those terms.  This will get me into serious trouble later on.  I am too trusting and naive in so many ways, but so worldly in others.  Strange?  What I do remember was that Richard told me he had already been through the house before we closed.  Sneaky and disturbing.  Like he was going find out where we lived and go through the place in spite of us.  I chose to ignore this.

     My father knew all about Richard and was quite upset.  He didn't really know how to handle Richard moving to his town.  Small towns are rife with gossip and he did not want Richard black balled before he even moved into town.  So between dad and I we kept it quiet.  Richard was charming, helpful in all the things he was here but now in a very small town.  Everyone loved him and he made good friends.  He and my dad and cousins fished a lot together.  He just fit in.  Hub's parents were upset that Richard was allowed access to our family.  But we felt for the sake of the girls we had to forgive him.  People make mistakes.  Richards behavior was just not normal for his already established personality.  My dad's only sister Aunt Ann, (I could write a book on Aunt Ann) called me and told me I had to forgive Richard.  Ann lived between Fargo and Bemidji  Minnesota.  We as a family with Richard had visited her several times.  She said Richard had cried at her place he missed his little girls so much.  We just learned to mend fences but I was very careful.

     Even thought we had a big beautiful house (by my standards) we did not have a big beautiful bank account.  If this house had been on a bank loan we would not have qualified for it.  Only the owner contract allowed us to get in.  We had a 10 year balloon on a thirty year note.  I was paying $901.00 a month on the mortgage at 6.75 which was really good interest at that time.  I noticed that the principle was not going down at all so I bumped our payments up to $1000.00 a month.  Probably not the smartest financial move since we had taken all of our debt with us and were struggling to make ends meet.  I had my dream home but no money to fix it up and remember this house would not take a bank loan, it definitely had problems. Serious big problems that cost lots of money to fix.  Money we didn't have.

      I became very savvy at bringing in extra for a project.  I always figured out how to get what we wanted or needed.  I would do it by trade or by contract.  I tried to be careful and to only have one project that cost money at a time.  I would then work toward making sure that it was paid for before starting another.  I still use this system and it works if nothing goes wrong and you have a good emergency fund.  As we all know something always goes wrong and I had a CC.  I had also lost my right hand man when my oldest left for college.  Remember she was born with the neat gene and she was very helpful.  The other two girls were 6 and 11.  I was left with a big house two young very messy, busy daughters and a husband that trails pine needles and mud every where he goes.  A recipe for disaster.
    
     Enter the exchange students.  The local college was asking for families to house students that did not speak English who were coming here to learn at the Intensive language institute.  They would pay $400.00 a month to house a student.  This sounded like a dream come true.  We had an extra room with D#1 at school and we needed the money.  Why did I think this was the answer?  Why?

     Saga cont:

     Okay the laundry is calling and I have military uniforms that need to be done before I leave for the studio.

Out My Window:  Sunny, cool and I just went out to the chicken coop and picked up a warm egg.  My chicken is much happier now that she is laying.

Have a great and productive day!

Kim