Well, I was a chatty ol’ hag this weekend, eh?  Now it is time for house-buying advice…

Here’s our delimma;

There are 2 houses that we like, sort of….I haven’t looked at them yet, but they both have their downsides…

House #1; On 32 acres, the house is only 2 years old and is built in the manner of an old farmhouse, VERY charming.  It does need some serious landscaping, but that is no problem and I’d have a BLAST working with a blank canvas. The rooms are HUGE and it has 2 porches, one on the front and one in back, both BIG Southern Living Porches.  The master bedroom is about double what we have now.  It is at the top of our price range, The DH doesn’t like that aspect.  But the other aspect is this; It’s near railroad tracks.  When I did an aerial view of the address I saw that the house sits in the back of the 32 acres (I believe) and that about 1-2 acres away from the house, is a railroad.  Granted it’s ONE track and it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Of course there are a lot of houses surrounding the 32 acres, but hey with 32 acres, that’s pretty damn private.  Here are the aerial views; HOUSE and CITY Hopefully, you can get a better idea about what I’m talking about.

House #2; Costs a LOT less than #1, but is a little smaller.  Where #1 is one story with 3bdrms, #2 is 2 stories with 4 bdrms.  The master and the 2nd bdrm are upstairs then there are 2 bdrms in the basement, along with a large rec room.  Now this sounds great.  But I sort of have the feeling that I’m not really moving up housewise.  From the pictures, the kitchen, family room and dining room are all HUGE, MUCH bigger than what I have now…the bedrooms are what worry me.  I’m not overly concerned with the master bedroom…there is no way we’re going to find a master as large as what we have now without paying the price for it.  I have come to realize that the people out in the middle of nowhere, think that if they build a new home it’s automatically worth $400K…even on 3 acres.  It’s really just frustrating as all hell. So, back to House #2…There are 2 possibilities for screened in porches, one out front then 2 out back.  The house does need some minor cosmetic work, like paint and landscaping.  There aren’t a ton of trees right next to the house, but there are some about 1-2 acres away (like the railroad track to house #1, only with trees!).  Also, this house sits on 18 acres. AND has an above ground pool, complete with fence surrounding it and partial decking.  So far this house has the most possibility, but….It isn’t the big, stately, plantation that I had in mind.  Also, there is a house somewhat close to this house…not right next door and across the street, and everything like I have now…but still somewhat close. Here’s the Aerial and some other photos..HERE

Maybe I’m just in the suburbia mindset of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’…I need to get out of that, break free and live my life how I want…and unlike 99% of the Joneses that live around here…I don’t want to be house poor….I can make my house what I want, right?….ok, someone give me some moral support or SOMETHING!!!!

The Mom and I are headed out Weds to look at these two houses.  If neither work, then I’m just going to give up for a while…I’ll start back looking in the fall, when all the spring houses that didn’t sell are reduced and maybe I can finally buy a house for what it’s really worth and not some flim-flam’s inflated pricetag.

And hey, just to get an idea of what I’m moving FROM…here’s the view of our current house….HERE

I have spent most of my weekend surfing the net looking for houses.  I have found TWO out of the 3.9 bazillion that I’ve looked at.  And those two, well they’re kinda sorta possibilities, but nothing too flattering. 

My agent keeps asking us, “So what are you REALLY looking for?”  The only answer that I truly have is, “Our home.”  I will know when the house we find is really, truly OUR house…I don’t know how many bedrooms or bathrooms it will have, or how much acreage it’ll have either.  Hell, it’ll probably be some house that I find while driving to my dad’s or my sister’s or something.  It could be a house on 30 acres with no pool and only 3 bedrooms….or it could be a house on 2 acres with 5 bedrooms and a pool.  I don’t know.  When I will know is when I find it.  When I walk into a house and say, “OK This is it…where’s the contract?”  That’s how I’ll know exactly what I’m looking for.

I guess I’m just sort of ranting out my feelings about not being able to find what we want….but maybe one day I’ll walk into a house and proclaim, “THIS IS IT, IT’S MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Or, I’ll be stuck in suburbia until the day I die…either way, I’ll try to make the best of it.

Well the FIL update is that he’s home from the hospital, has hospice care and decided to stop fighting and just die peacfully in his home.  I can’t blame him, cancer is a horrible thing to deal with and I can understand why someone would want to just give up and die…when it’s time, it’s time…Some people know it. 

The DH has decided not to go back down there to see his dad, but he’s calling down there as much as he can (my phone bill will be OUTRAGEOUS this month).  I’m just trying to absorb myself into house hunting and to finding the perfect place to live for the rest of my life.  Every once in a while though, I start thinking about the funeral and start making arrangements for the kids.  Hoping that my mom could watch them while we’re down there.  I really don’t want to go, but I know that I need to be there for The DH.  I hate funerals, people don’t handle death very well and I hate being in those situations.  I wish we just sort of took the dead on a boat said some words and threw ‘em over the side….be easier on all of us.  But, we have to bury them in big pretty boxes that no one will see, and have some sort of ‘civil’ ceremony and all sorts of stupid shit….And, I have to wear a dress.  I don’t even own a dress.

Ok, LT wants me to read to him, so I must go…I’ll be back later on, hopefully Monday with some COOL scanner stories…it’s the weekend you know!

Why I don’t want neighbors, a subdivision or anyone around me….This is the entire reason why I’m moving out to the middle of NO-FUCKING-WHERE…..and if ANYONE approaches me out there and asks “Would you consider starting a Home Owner’s Association with us?” I’ll simply reply, “Get the fuck off my land…you come back, I’ll shoot.”  I am PMSing and fed the fuck up with the general population…fuck ‘em all….(this doesn’t include my Xanga folks, y’all are the only people that I would want around me, if I had neighbors…well maybe…)

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0603/26housepaint.html

Not much House-Hunting Success…

We looked at 5, I took pictures of 3.  There wasn’t much to take any pictures of, with the other 2.  The last house we looked at, I forgot to take pictures of the front of it….I’m not sure how in the hell I forgot to take one of the most important pictures, but we had been looking for 4 hours straight and this was house #5…so I’m sure I was a bit sick of taking house pictures and looking at gawddamn log cabins, that are DARK, poorly laid-out, and just chock full of JUNK!!! These people really need to be told that most people don’t care about your little crocheted dolls that fit over toilet paper rolls…really.

So here are the houses.  I’ll just post one picture for each and a little explination as to why we didn’t really like it.  If you want more pictures, just leave me a comment and I’ll try to arrange a photo album. 

This was house #2….I liked the land, but it was right off the road, granted it was a country road, but still…we want a long driveway.  The house its self was a little small.

This was #3….BEAUTIFUL house, inside and out.  But it had 3 strikes against it…1. No pool; 2. Only 9ac; 3. NO FUCKING SHOWERS!!!! All they had were 2 bathtubs, and NO stand up shower ANYWHERE!!!! The couple were rather up there in age, so I’m trying to figure out how the man took a sitdown bath EVERYDAY!?!?!? Or the woman washed her hair? (in the kitchen sink?)…It was such a great house, until The DH said, “There aren’t any showers.” I ran around checking, thinking “OH NO! There have GOT to be showers, it’s PERFECT!”  But sure enough, not one freakin’ shower….there was a natural spring out back, maybe that’s where they bathed?

This is house #5…the one with no front picture. This is standing next to the front of the house and looking down the driveway it’s going towards your left…there is an automatic gate at the end, you can sort of see it on the far left..little grey triangle.  It was nice, but the rooms were somewhat small, the house was a log house and dark as night.  The windows weren’t evenly placed on the walls.  And we couldn’t find a laundry room..well there was one, in the guest house.  Yeah, it had a separate guest house (complete with kitchenette and bathroom/laundry room and bedroom)..a LARGE garage with a HUGE apartment, also detatched from the main house. All the room was great, but the bedrooms were somewhat small, the kitchen was ODDLY laid out….and the best part…there was JUNK EVERYWHERE…

Like this, throughout the ENTIRE HOUSE & Guest house…man I will have to make an album just of ‘Junky House’….

Honestly, that last house…there was so much JUNK that I couldn’t see the house through all the junk piled everywhere.  I really think the house was REALLY nice, but I couldn’t tell and I didn’t want to think too hard.  If they don’t care enough to clean it the fuck up, I don’t care enough to buy it.

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There is bad news on the FIL front, I’ll post about it this weekend, if I get a chance…which I probably will because my children are driving me insane, and I’m sure the phsyco-ward will let me log on…why wouldn’t they?

THE MYSTERY IS SOLVED!!!

We finally figured out what type of terrier Iris is….She’s an Irish Terrier…SEE:

  
Purebred Irish Terrier……………..OUR IRIS TERRIER (yeah, I said Iris not Irish)

We’re pretty sure she has something else with the Irish, but we don’t know what…she’s VERY much Irish Terrier.  But no matter what she is, WE LOVE HER!!!

We’re going to look at more houses today.  I’ll post pictures hopefully on Friday, look for them this weekend and on Monday.

And for your reading pleasure;

SCANNER STORIES!!

Father beat 8yr old so hard had 2″ raised welts on her back and buttocks, pattern of belt was imprinted in the flesh.  Girl’s mother took a swing at the father and officer had to restrain the mother before she beat up the father.  Girl brought home a school paper with a frowny face on it and the father’s punishment was to beat the girl for disrespecting her teacher.

Multiple vehicle accident..all injuries seem to be minor.  7 Total patients, 2 pediatrics (children) with mother on the side.  Sending additional engines out for the vehicle fluids.

Man wanted on parole violations ran from police, was hiding behind the Red Roof Inn.  Half of the County Sheriff’s Deputies were looking for suspect.Wearing blue jeans no shirt, black hair, mustache, tattoos. Officers were out of breath and searching through wooded area, crossed 2 creeks. K-9 unit dispatched to the scene. Other county’s public safety dept offers help, are told to watch hotels in their area.  Search has lasted for 20 minutes now…..suspect has been spotted within those 20 mins…Officers covering on-ramp to Interstate. Ok, that should say he’s a ‘one-shoed’ man…he lost his tennis shoe, the cops have it…if he’d like to go get it back…I’m sure they’d be more than happy to return it..REALLY! (search has lasted 40 minutes, now)

**As you can tell, I take notes while I’m listening, so these aren’t ‘stories’ so much as just listening notes. Either way they’re cool as HELL!!!!!!

Ok, I’ll be back to tell you all the house-hunting stories…oh my life is never dull, nosiree…..

Police Scanner Fun!

So far, we’ve heard a TON of traffic stops, a few people jumped off buildings, that was on Monday… I guess it was just a jumping kind of day.  Some people do say that Mondays are depressing…no one was hurt, BTW.

Just a few things I’ve heard;

Brother smacks sister in the face with a shovel, possible broken nose.

Bank robber near where my dad lives, APB broadcasted.

Mom (not MY mom) caught with crack pipe in her bra, and 2 nickle bags of crack.  Dumped a nickle bag in backseat of police cruiser.  Cop will have to charge her with a felony and isn’t happy about “Doing paperwork for the next 3 months.”  But ended conversation with “The daughter is glad her mom’s being locked up, said mom needs to get off that crap.  Hey, as long as I can help out a family.”

Woman was assaulted and raped just north of our area.  Perps left the scene. 

That last one is just scary.  Thankfully I don’t walk around at night.  She was out walking around and was approached by 3 males and attacked, they said she’s still at the scene, so the cops are to just go straight to her.  It’s still scary as hell that there are people around here that would do that to someone….I need to get a gun. (Don’t even dare email me and tell me how guns kill people and all that jazz, I grew up in a bedroom that had 2 closets, one was mine the other was my dad’s it was loaded with down with enough guns to arm a small army.  You’d open the closet door and shotgun shells would fall out.  Boxes of ammo were everywhere..I have never shot anyone, the only gun I’ve ever used regularly was a pellet pistol and that was when I was 21…I shot my first real gun when I was 23….I knew not to go near that closet, and even when my mom asked me to get something out of there I was terrified of getting shot.  There was no lock, I was just told not to touch it….Hell, I was brought home from the hospital to that room.  I have never even seen the actual guns that were in that closet, only the cases they were kept in, to this day I don’t know what they look like.  I firmly believe that children should be taught to respect firearms, not avoid them out of fear.  That just leads to curiosity, and didn’t that kill a cat or something? EDUCATION! thankyouverymuch..*hops off soapbox*)

We put in a bunch more frequencies of the neighboring counties/cities….so hopefully I’ll hear a lot more.  I did pick up some of Atlanta city broadcasts, although I don’t have them programmed so that was sort of weird.  But cool none the less!

We also picked up a cordless phone, some chick needed addresses for her wedding invitations, it was pretty boring, so we went back to the cop frequencies.

In other news, Iris came back from the vet’s today.  She finally got spayed and all is well.  I hate spaying my puppies, I just don’t like the fact they have to be cut open and all that, but I don’t want puppies either…where’s the puppy pill??  Oh, and Iris…well she’s a bit bigger now…She had a growth spurt about 2 weeks after we got her…here are some before and after pics.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Let me Clarify; Saturday’s entry, where I said I was cleaning up the moving boxes, meant that we had brought so much crap back, we actually had 3 big moving boxes full and a few smaller ones.  We actually rented a 5X8′ U-Haul trailer to bring it all back…so it was like moving, sort of.

We aren’t actually moving yet, we’re still looking for the perfect house, we are looking at some on Thursday and possibly next week sometime.  We found a few that we sort of like, one that I’m REALLY interested in seeing.  But, nothing that we’re dying to go look at.

I am really hoping that it takes a while to find our perfect house.  We want to move, but we want to make sure we buy a house that we’ll want to stay in for the next 30+ years.  So, we’re being a little picky and a little snobbish about it all.  But, we’ll end up with something we’ll be happy with forever and can make our own.  I don’t want to move the kids anymore than we have to.

Remember my brand new Maytag fridge? The one I raved and raved about? Well it’s a fire hazard or something…the freezer is fucking up, I need to call Maytag tomorrow…the front frame of the freezer will literally burn your hand, the kids could get hurt (then I could sue…hmmmmmmm)

Also, I got a Police scanner and OH YEAH!!!! It ROCKS!!!!!!! I can hear our county and our city and a bunch of other crap, like the local mall and shit…man, it’s neat to know what’s going on in your area and not have to leave your house!

FIL is leaving the hospital today.  He’s finally getting a little better.  He still can’t walk very well but he can sit up and that’s a major accomplishment.  And, he can eat, that in its self is reason for celebration!  We actually saw the Neurosurgeon while we were visitng him and he got his results of his MRI…no new cell growth! Which is awesome because the tumor he has is VERY aggressive and after they cut it all out, a month later it was back full force…so it’s great that they at least have stopped the growth.  I really hope his body can outlast the poison they’re pumping into him.  I want him to come to our new house and get down on the floor with the kids and play with them…they should know what a cool guy their Granddad is.

TURTLE RIVER
Honest to Gawd, that’s the name!

We were headed home, when I took this picture.

BEACH PICTURES!! are here.

I have a ton of other pictures, but I haven’t gotten around to uploading them yet.  I’ll do that later…I have a TON and most of them need captions and that takes a LONG LONG LONG time.

I do have one little photo that I took Weds evening after getting back from the hospital and telling FIL that we were leaving for home in the morning…I hope this was a good sign;

We were surrounded by trees so it isn’t the best picture in the world, but you get the gist…right?

FOOTNOTE: Reese’s White chocolate peanut butter cups, rock every which way since Sunday…go buy them by the box full…now, go! hurry up!

I’m working on the album of our beach pictures.  Hopefully by Monday it’ll be up.

So today (Saturday) I went to B.J.’s and picked up some stuff.  While I was gone The DH was cutting the grass and trimming hedges, etc.  As he was cutting part of the yard a man walked up.  The DH stopped cutting the grass and walked over to the man and the man introduced himself as the Home Owner’s Association President (or Representative, the guy was mumbling).  The guy then proceeded to tell The DH that he needs to keep the grass cut, because of property values, etc… The DH then blew up and said, “Well, my father is in the hospital, terminally ill with a brain tumor, we were just in Florida to see him.  If you want to cut my fucking grass be my guest.”  The guy just turned and walked away.

Now here’s the ‘HOA’ history..Someone approached me and asked if we wanted a HOA and that it would be $25 and it was JUST FOR the front entrance to the subdivision, for a landscaping company to keep the grass cut, flowers planted, etc.. I told them that if it was JUST FOR the front entrance then fine I would be happy to contribute $25 a year.  Well then we get a letter saying it’ll be $160/yr.  Well, of course, hardly anyone paid them $160 just for landscaping.  We don’t have a pool or tennis courts or even a ‘clubhouse’ in this neighborhood.  What we do have is a park that the city maintains, and not very well.  So as I was going through the mail when we got back from FL I notice a letter from the President of the HOA saying that we’ll all have to pay $170 for this year then $70/yr after that.  Just to maintain the entrance…yeah RIGHT!

My mother lives in a MUCH better neighborhood complete with pool, tennis courts and a clubhouse, they pay $40/yr…if you want to use the pool then you pay $120/yr.  Like hell I’ll be giving some guy I don’t even know $170 of our hard earned dollars, fuck that.

I told The DH that the guy will probably try to talk to me and I’m just going to tell him; “You know, my daddy has a saying…Go to Hell.” And then close the door in his face.  Fuck them and their poorly organized attempt at a HOA.  Fuck them up one side and down the other.

I’m moving to the country I couldn’t care less about the property values of these morons, whom, when we were selling our house and it was the best on the block, NO ONE kept their yard up or their houses painted…it looked like the fucking slum.  Didn’t seem to matter to them back then, now though..we miss one weekend and a week of cutting the grass and they start harassing us about it?  Besides, it rained 5-10 inches IN ONE DAY while we were gone, you can’t cut a soggy yard.  And all the runoff from the road goes through our yard, so it is literally like a swamp.  But, The DH cut it.  Not to mention DH was CUTTING THE FUCKING GRASS when this guy came up and told him to cut the grass.  I told DH he should have just looked around and then asked, “WHAT IN THE FUCK DOES IT LOOK LIKE I’M DOING ASSHOLE?!?!?!”

I hate these people, I really do.  I like being anti-social….grrrrrrrr

Ok, I’m off to clean up the house of our moving boxes…Have a great last half of the weekend!!!