Our little friend - August 28, 2007 -
Cory took off on his bike with my old c8080 camera and headed down the road to photograph the gator. I think he did a pretty amazing job, don’t you? I also think he got a little too close for my comfort. He swears it was the zoom lens.
Cruising gator
Approaching the edge of the pond
Ready to strike
Our little friend…..who my son swears is only 3 feet long.
It’s an alligator moon - August 27, 2007 -
Tonight my son went fishing and caught this:
………….right down the road from where we are living. Yes, that is an alligator.
He said he decided not to catch it with his bare hands because it might be too dangerous. I nodded agreement, and then he added:
“What I really needed was a top-jaw rope”.
Ahem.
I told you he had a good head on his shoulders.
Shine on, alligator moon.
Raw - August 22, 2007 -
We had the boat hauled a few weeks ago….dry docked and they sanded down the bottom and repainted it.
The above picture is right after the first sanding. The bottom is rough and raw.
That is how I am feeling.
Raw.
I can’t cry anymore because my eyes are so swollen, the tears won’t come.
For those in the computer who do not know me personally, my family is fine. Bill and the kids are fine.
Those who know me personally know exactly what I am talking about.
I am incredibly hurt.
I am hauling out and dry docking for a bit so I can work my way through the chaos. The chaos that is my life…..buying a house, selling a house, packing, changing schools, helping my kids make the adjustment, living in the trailer, charged emotions, hurt feelings, gossip, termites, broken arms, stolen cameras, police reports, cellulitis, pep rallies, hurricanes etc.
I will be back when we get settled in.
I am trying to find the silver lining of today - August 20, 2007 -
After spending 6 hours….yes, I said 6 HOURS….with the house inspector the people buying our home hired, I was thinking things could only get better from there.
They didn’t.
We went to a friends house for a birthday party, and at about 7p.m. Quinn fell from the jungle gym and hurt himself. After questioning him, and trying to see if he could move his arm, I decided that a hospital visit was in order. 2 xrays later, it is believed that he might have fractured his forearm, but the verdict will come from the radiologist in the morning.
He is now in a posterior splint cast, and sound asleep next to me. I love him so much. It was terrible to see him in such pain.**
Oh, and the grand finale? The cherry on the cake of my day? When we got out of the car at the hospital, my almost 13yo son left the sliding door to the van open after I TOLD HIM “CORY, SHUT THE DOOR TO THE VAN***…… and, and, and……………………..someone reached inside and stole my new Nikon D-80 camera. The f’ers were even congregating around the door to the hospital and took off to their cars rather quickly when I came out and headed to my van. I didn’t realize the camera was gone until I got home.
I am still holding out a small bit of hope that I left the camera at my friends, but a 10p.m. call to her house after we got out of the E.R. yielded no camera after she did a quick sweep of the kitchen.
I am just sick about it. Sick, sick, sick. I am hoping our car insurance will cover it, but I seriously doubt it.
Here are my wishes for tomorrow;
1) That the radiologist will say there is no break in Quinns arm.
2) That Kathy, Jamie and the kids remain safe from harm.
3) That the house inspection report is good.
4) That my camera was indeed in a chair, hiding at my friends
**He woke in night hurting very bad, poor little guy. Can’t imagine it is not broken..(sigh)
***This morning I am wondering if he did close the door, as he says, and someone opened it….I remember turning and seeing him reach for the bottom on the automatic slid.
Riding her bike into the eye - August 17, 2007 -
We lived through TS Erin. Rain, wind…. and the trailer? It was a rockin’ with the wind….among other things.
There were many relatives agitated with our decision, but come on, it was a tropical storm for Pete’s sake! I have no intention of leaving the semi-tropics for a whimpy tropical storm. Shesh.
We have lived at the coast for most of our lives, prior to moving to Mayberry, so it would take something really hairy to get us off our butts and evacuate. Evacuation is something we reserve for Cats 3 and above. Cat 1 or 2? We usually wait it out. maybe not in a trailer, but certainly in a brick house.
In Fall of 1989, I was in Ft. Worth visiting my parents and Bill was in Galveston waiting for my return. I remember my father waking me early in the morning and saying “Girl, you need to get up and get home. That hurricane took a turn and is going to make a direct hit on the west end of Galveston.”
I know the first thing you are thinking is, “Why was he telling her to get home?”. Well, my Dad was an engineer, very logical, and the logical thing to do was to get home and help Bill pack the house up quickly so we both could then evacuate.
I loaded my car and took off. The weather reports were predicting landfall at 11pm, so I had plenty of time to make the 5-6 hour drive home, load the car with valuables, and turn around and head inland with Bill.
Problem was, when I stopped off at a friends house in Houston (that’s pronounces “Youston”, not “Hugh-ston” ;*)) at 4p.m., I was told the hurricane was making land fall in less than an hour. If I had not stopped in Youston, I would have been on the Galveston causeway when it hit. Not a good place to be with a Toyota single cab pick-up.
I called Bill at home and he said “No! Stay put, it is hitting right now. It is unreal right now, and the water is coming up the back pasture towards the house.” I asked him if he could still leave and he said, no, he was staying.
I have to back up a bit and let you all know what he had been doing earlier in the day. Can you guess? Go on, try.
My husband…..the born on the island (BOI) Galvestonian, was sailing in a sail boat race. In pre-hurricane winds. In the Galveston shipping channel. 3 hours before the storm hit.
Yes, they were that insane and that good at what they did. The guy knows how to sail a boat, that is for sure. Those balls will come in handy next spring when we load up in the boat with 4 kids and head a bit closer to the equator. But I am getting ahead of myself. Have I mentioned our new home might be just a launching pad for something even cooler? Oh, Ahem. More on that later.
The eye of that storm went directly over our house…..the house with my husband in it.
When I was finally allowed back on the island in the wee hours of the morning, there were dead animals all over the road and live electrical wires everywhere…..and it was a very small hurricane. Imagine what a beastie Cat 5 can do.
Hurricanes are the price for living in a beach town.
How does this make me feel?
It is with xhilaration that I welcome the routine of plotting, tracking and obsessively watching those spinning, wild, raw beasts
march across the waters toward the Gulf and back into our lives.
Call me crazy, or call me Jody.
It is six of one, half dozen of the other.
But most importantly, we have been christened and are home.
Hurricane Dean - August 16, 2007 -
Head thee north, dudes
Prayers and positive thoughts for safe travel for the Hell’s Half Acre family as they dodge Dean.
Sold - August 14, 2007 -
We went home to get the house ready for sale this weekend.
Have I ever told you how much I hate to pack? well, I do. It is a suckie job, but has to be done.
We cleaned and cleaned and I signed a listing agreement with our local real estate agent on Sunday. He said he had 3 people he wanted to show it to before he put the sign in the yard.
He brought the first couple at 2pm yesterday, and at 5pm he called and said “I have a contract on your house. They are offering full asking price. Come on up and sign the contract.”
In my mind I thought, “This is too good to be true. Certainly there are a buttload of contingencies and a closing date 8 years from today.”
No contingencies. A closing date in September.
Now we just have to get through the inspection. The time between a contract and the closing is always so very stressful.
In other news, I had to put our cat to sleep yesterday. Very, very sad. For years now she has been having recurrent bladder infections. We tried everything. Antibiotics, special food, new litter, Holy water to cast out demons ;*). Nothing worked. We would find cat pee in hidden little corners, and can I tell you how gross that is?
The cat went downhill this summer. To the point that she was loosing hair and was in pain on her back. I took her in to the vet and had her put to sleep. The vet felt that she probably had feline leukemia, or kidney/bladder cancer.
I cried a river. I had her for 10 years, and she was a very sweet, loving cat. She used to steal my shirts and socks out of the laundry hamper and sleep with them.
Every single pregnancy I have had, all 9 of them, the cat knew before I did. She would climb on me and sleep on my belly when I was pregnant. She never did it any other time during the 10 years I had her.
Except for the night before I put her down. In the middle of the night, I was asleep on my back, and she quietly crawled up, curled up on my stomach and lay her head on my chest. She slept there the rest of the night.
I will miss her.
Throw off the bowlines - August 13, 2007 -
” Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain
It is official - August 8, 2007 -
We are doing it. In less than 30 days we will be coasties again.
This morning we made the final decision…the decision to move to the coast.
It was agonizing, as you all know. After all, you have been dragged along during the process, and at times probably wanted to strangle me.
We love our home. We love our friends. It will hurt so very bad to sell the house and move away from all the comforts and love of our little town.
I made some phone calls to my friends this morning and told them our decision. I can’t say anymore about that as my heart will probably break. I cried and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Sad as leaving is, we are still very excited and happy about this move. We did settle on a house, and it was not the one with a pool inside of it. As predicted, Bill didn’t even want to go inside to see it.
Instead we bought a sweet home in a small secluded neighborhood. It is brand new…..a first for us. I am not sure how it will feel to live in a house without any history to it at all. It will have no stories of past inhabitants drifting down the hall. It will not feel drenched in memories. It will lack the depth of an old home.
But I will also not have floors that could swallow small children in the cracks, my toilet will flush without a plunger, and when I drain the bathtub, the shower will not burp.
It will also have this
…my very own bathroom. People, I will no longer sit down on the toilet seat and find that some small, male creature sprinkled when he tinkled. 2 bathrooms! I marvel at such a thing.
House aside, we will be moments from this
and we will be together, having finally found our way back to the sand, the surf and the sea.
One request, please pray for a smooth transition for our children, and for the friends they love so much and are having to leave behind. There are some hearts breaking tonight…..including mine.
I aim to please - August 6, 2007 -
I switched the colors around for fonts and background. Is this easier to read?
And added more posts per page.
I aim to please.
On the house front, we are in the middle of finding a lender who will not charge us $8700 in closing costs. Someone quoted us that and I swear I felt angina at the exact moment that I scrolled down to the “Total estimate of settling costs”. I then went straight into coronary arrest when I read the “Estimated Total Monthy Payment”, which was exactly 4 times what we are paying for our current house.
Taxes were estimated at 3 times what we are paying now, and insurance was almost triple.
THIS IS TEXAS WE ARE TALKING ABOUT Wells Fargo, not California.
We are meeting with someone else tomorrow to see if we can get some accurate numbers. The ones we got today are from Mars, I swear. Or maybe I am from Mars. Or Mayberry. Or maybe the town we are moving from has been in some kind of a time warp and I am just stepping into 2007 and the realities that most people face.
I mean, it is not like we are trying to buy a house with a pool in it, right? ;*)
If you were wondering….. - August 6, 2007 -
If you were wondering why I have not been reading your site, it is not because I don’t like you anymore. It is not because I don’t have time. It is not because I am a snob.
It is probably because you have the Blogging Chicks blogroll on your front page, and everytime I try and visit you, my computer freezes up and I have to turn it off and reboot……if I can even turn it off due to the blogroll. Arh!!
I don’t know if anyone else is having this issue, but I am and can only read your sites via Bloglines. Do you know how frustrating it is to read something really cool, like the birth of someones long awaited miracle baby, and since they are like me and do not publish full content via RSS (because I do not like finding my posts stolen and read elsewhere), I click to go see a picture of the little miracle and leave a comment, only to find that their site will not load because…dum, da da, dum…they are a BLOGGING CHICK.
If you are a Blogging Chick, I can’t read your lovely sites. And I want to. But I can’t. I experienced the same thing on my blog when I tried to include the BC blogroll. I promptly removed it. I even tried it on its very own page, and still had loading issues.
So, I love you. Really I do. But the agony of rebooting has me afraid to click on anyones site…..so I am hiding in Bloglines until all of those little blue, pink, green and yellow chicks find their way to their own special place in hell.
**P.S. I have nothing against Blogging Chicks. I think it is a great idea etc., and I would love to have the roll on my Blogroll page, but there seems to be a glitch in the code on some peoples sites, and it is frustrating when my computer locks up. Is it just me?
Bingo - August 2, 2007 -
We found a house.
Photos and details to come.
I know, boooooring. Pfft. Tease. And all that.
But!
Right now I am busy watching “Barbie: Magic of the Rainbow” and eating popcorn in bed while my sweet daughter puts every clip she owns in my hair. I am going to go bald taking them out, but what the heck. We are having a blast sharing 4 days together, one on one, doing girlie things and such (the boys are with their grandparents for the week).
Muey importante stuff!
Hey, you know what happened to the girl who found her way back to the coast?
She turned off her computer.
Imagine that!
