Five People? In one bed?

On Friday evening, I actually did some reading.  I had been trying to get interested in a John Irving novel, but like the other novel that I read by him, I’m having trouble starting it.  He must have issues in getting his novels started. 

 

After a couple of weeks of trouble trying to read the thing, I threw it down and picked up another book.  I am now reading “Gentle Rain” by Deborah Smith.  It is a contemporary novel, written around ten years ago, I believe, and so far, it’s very good.  The storyline is about a wealthy young woman who loses her parents in an accident, and as she goes through their things after the funeral, she finds out she was adopted.  When she tries to find out more about her birth parents, she finds out that her parents were mentally challenged and they work on a cattle ranch in North Florida.  So far, the book is very interesting and a lot of fun to read.  I’ll let you know how the last half of the book is.

 

In the meantime, Hubby began nagging me to search for the car title on the 97 Nissan Altima. (Hubby is worse than any woman about nagging).  The vehicle was still broken down, still sitting in the driveway and still not sold.  Oh God, I would have rather been beaten with a stick than to search for the one little sheet of paper in my messy house. 

 

The next morning, Saturday, I realized that my prayers had not been answered (my car title had not magically appeared despite my prayers) so I had to spend literally the whole morning searching through a mountain of bills and papers in search of that title.  While I worked on that fun little task, I did separate the bills into dated boxes so that my future searches would not be as time consuming.  Two hours later, I still had not found that title.  Figuring that I was looking in the wrong place, I jumped in the truck and drove the 15 miles to work, downtown, to see if it was at work.  I didn’t find it though and returned home to pick up where I had left off in my search an hour earlier.  Believe it or not, I did find the darn document almost at the bottom of the mountain of papers.  I went ahead and completed the vast amount of receipts and invoices and bills, completed the separation of all paperwork and then put the boxes up.  I didn’t think I would ever finish.  But as mad as I had been, at least I had accomplished the monumental task and I can now give myself a pat on the back.  All I need to do now is go through some of the older papers again and weed them out again – it would give us more room. 

 

That afternoon, Hubby followed me over to No.1son’s so that I could leave my 2002 Nissan Altima with him.  My brakes had been sounding funny so he agreed to do a brakejob and check the air conditioning filter to see if it was clogged.  No.1son usually saves me a good bit of money.  I took the kids off of his hands so that he could work, and Hubby and I took the kids and No.2son to the property with us.  We didn’t do any work on the property this time, it was just too hot (97 degrees), we just wanted to check on the camper and make sure that all was well.  While we were there, we took a hike just to have something to do and the kids loved it.  We were eaten up by mosquitoes, but the little ones get such a kick of going through the woods like that, I imagine the woods seem larger than life to them.  We saw a snake while on our excursion, but I’m not sure if all of the kids saw it or not.  From my position, I could only see it’s head poking up from the other side of a log.  I think it was enough that there was a snake nearby.  Hubby tried to get as close as he could to it and confirmed that it was NON-poisonous and let it go, he predicted that it was a black-runner, I’m not sure if it really was or not but it was definitely a dark brown and black with a little round head, not a triangular-shaped head; Hubby got a hearty thank-you from me for a change. 

I did get a photo of a strange spider.  I knocked it’s web down so that I could get a good shot of it, and it slowly moved around giving me ample opportunity to get in focus.

red spider

The next shot is of a butterfly that I was lucky enough to capture on film.  They flutter around so quickly, that you don’t see how in the world you will get a shot.  Sometimes you feel so lucky.  Isn’t he great?

Butterfly

 

The last shot from the property is a reminder to always be careful and watch what you are doing in the country.

 

snake-skin

When we returned to the truck, the kids threw out some corn for the property critters, then we left.  It had been a nice afternoon.  When we returned home, Hubby inflated the kiddie pool in the backyard and the kids played in the water for more than an hour.  After getting all of the kids dressed for bed and teeth brushed and all of that fun stuff, I went on to bed, leaving Perry in the livingroom to watch TV with the kids.

 

There were five people in my bed on Saturday night.  Around 11:00 p.m., I awoke when kids started piling in the bed.  Obviously, Hubby was too tired to pull out the air-mattress.  Sheesh, I could give that night up on getting any rest.  For the next hour, No.2GS talked and talked and talked (the kid never shuts up), while Baby Girl elbowed me and kicked me, Hubby snored on the other side of me, and No.1GS complained about his Paw-Paw snoring.  Then, around midnight, my stomach started hurting.  I don’t know what was wrong, but I couldn’t stay off of the toilet and I was up and down like a yo-yo.  Eventually, I just moved to the couch with my pillow and stayed there the rest of the night.  The couch is almost miserable to sleep on, it only looks squishy and comfy.  There is some sort of rod separating the couch into thirds, hitting me square in the ribs and again in the thigh bone.  Then I got hot and had to turn down the air-conditioning.  Then I was still hot and I had to get up to unplug the fan and move it to another location.  Then I decided the fan was too close to me and I got up to move it further away.  After I at last got comfortable, I’ll be darned if DD didn’t come home from work around 1:00 a.m., making racket as she made her way to her room.  I’m the type of person who likes a fairly quiet house when I sleep.  Several minutes later, she went to the kitchen and cooked something, rattling the pots and pans around noisily while the kitchen light nearly blinded me.  The last time I looked at the clock, it was 2:30 a.m.

 

At 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, No.2GS decided to get up.  Now, he had been yakking at midnight the night before, what the heck was he doing up at 7:00 a.m.?  He normally never gets up at 7.  He went to the bathroom and then got in the livingroom chair and just looked at me, waiting for what, I don’t know.  I told him it was too early to get up, and offered the end of my couch if he wanted to sit there quietly.  A few minutes later, I looked over at him, and he had fallen back to sleep.  I fell back to sleep also. 

 

At 9:30, the other two kids arose, so I had to get up.  I cooked a large breakfast then slowly began getting the kids ready to go home, searching for shoes and trying to get Hubby up so that he could take me over to No.1son’s so that I could get my car.  Hubby was none too happy about me waking him up and he gave me a piece of his small mind.  Anyway, I was happy to get my car back.  All four brakes had to be changed and the rotors turned.  He only charged me for the cost of the brakes, $200, but I gave him an extra $80, so I only had to put out $280 for all four wheels.  He had also cleaned the air-conditioning filter; there was definitely a noticeable difference.  The car also brakes beautifully now I’m happy to say. 

 

The only thing I have to do to the car now is wait on some more headlight kits to come in that No.1son has ordered for me, then he will change them out.  Ever since I got the car, the headlight bulbs blow out if you just look at them wrong.  And these particular headlight bulbs have to be one of the most difficult to change out than any other vehicle model.  All mechanics hate the 2002 Nissan Altima headlights.  We’ve been putting off getting new headlight kits (which hold the headlight bulb) for two years now because the pair of kits will be around $300.  Yeap, you read that right.  Terry found a set for $150 so he put in an order for them.  The set will be in soon and he’ll change it out and I hope I never have any more problems with headlights again.  Terry also volunteered to change out my spark plugs since the vehicle now has more than 100K miles.

 

On Sunday afternoon, I picked up my camera from the house, filled my car up with gas, then rode around looking at houses.  I specifically wanted to look at house exteriors to decide on brick colors and metal roof colors and things like that.  I took a lot of pictures of houses (receiving a lot of strange looks from home-owners, I’m sure), but it was such a nice outing just riding alone by myself.  (It’s so seldom that I get “alone” time.  I have been well-blessed with company.)  If I build a house, I’m considering a metal roof instead of composition shingles.  Salesmen say it’s energy efficient and lasts twice as long as shingles.  But it costs a good bit more too – one and a half times more – ouch!  I’m particularly interested in the forest green color.  I love forest green so much!  To me, it almost goes with everything and every color.  But I also know that forest green is dark and would absorb too much heat, so another color that I’m considering is a tan color roof or maybe champagne.  Hmm.  I have also been eyeballing a limestone rock that is light in color and goes very well with the green roof.  But limestone rock is very expensive so I could only put it on a small portion of the house.  The rest of the exterior of the house would have to be made of another product.  We could go hardyplank siding (hardyplank is made of a concrete product) which looks like wood.  Or we could go with brick which is what I would rather do.  It’s longer lasting and greener because brick is thicker than hardiplank.

 

In knitting news, I completed a cute pink baby sweater for my sister made in stockinette stitch, with yarn-overs at the bottom, creating a lacy feminine look.  I had fallen in love with the yarn, Caron Soft, in the loveliest shade of pink.  But my knitting is still so immature at times; at the edges, I forgot to garter stitch a row here and there and the completed project looked messy and immature to me.  Furthermore, I was almost finished with the darn thing when my sister e-mailed with the glad tidings that the ultra-sound picked up a little indication that the baby is a boy.  Well, bless my soul, this poor sweater was doomed from the beginning.  I finished the sweater as quickly as possible, then asked this poor woman at the local knitting club if she would take it off my hands.  She was kind enough to do so.  And now I am on to another sweater for my dear sister — in the proper color this time — blue!   Wish me luck with this one.

 

 

 

Run, Bertha, run!

My weekend was very busy with property cleanup and a gathering of family at the property. Fun was had by all with socializing and playing on the quads. But I believe our new visitor caused more interest than anything else. This is a wild hog — a sow — with her four or five piglets. She is a domestic breed. More than a 100 years ago, her ancestors were brought to Texas by farmers. During that day and time, pigs were allowed to run free. Over time, the pigs became wild and some of them evaded capture. Now, their descendants run wild all over East Texas.

Her cousins, the boar-hogs, run all over the Hill Country of Texas.

I believe I’ll call her Bertha. She just looks like a “Bertha” to me. I’ve enjoyed watching her run all over the property and area with her piglets. This photo was taken by a young lady named Nina, who was visiting at the moment and had her camera with her. My camera didn’t have a strong enough zoom to capture the image. Thank you Nina for the photo.

Last night, just before dark, Hubby and I hid in some bushes with my camera and waited on Bertha to appear with her little ones. As we waited, we saw a hunter and his kids drive up on four-wheelers. After catching a glimpse of Hubby and I, I heard the small group discuss the sow and what time she should appear in that particular area; they were specifically searching for the wild pig. The hunter again eyed Hubby and I warily before the group turned and left.

Bertha appeared just a few minutes later just like clockwork with her piglets and gorged on clover while I snapped photos at my leisure. A couple of photos turned out clear but I was so far away to get great shots. Bertha stood there next to the road and ate her fill while the mosquitos tore Hubby and I up as darkness descended. We left our hiding place in the bushes and she just watched us. Not wanting to get her too used to humans, Hubby barked at her, like a dog, to frighten her some. She slowly returned to the woods with her little ones and I returned home a happy woman, with numerous photos on my camera.

My happy mood didn’t last for long as Hubby reminded me of the hunter who had shown up earlier in the evening. The big great hunter would be back, that was for sure with his big rifle and passion for killing. And sadly, Bertha is an easy target, with her timed eating schedule and easy-to-follow trail. I’m saddened to think that I’ll probably never see her again but I’m not sure what I could do to stop her demise. I do not live on the property so I can’t sit outside and stand guard on the property against hunters. Furthermore, the wild hogs are causing problems in the area by rooting around in their search for food but in their search attempts, they are tearing up the lawns. Homeowners are becoming angry about their pretty lawns getting torn up, forgetting that they are in the country and that’s what wild hogs do. If you live in the country, you have to put up with critters and the problems associated therewith. But instead, the landowners are becoming angry and setting out hogtraps and pulling out their hunting rifles.

Bertha, I wish you well and hope that you wizen up quickly before the great hunter returns.

Hey, whose property is it anyway?

The above thumbnail (click on the image to see the full image) is an aerial view of the property.  The white line going down the middle of the property is a road.  At the bottom of the photo is another road, the major subdivision road, specifically.  To the left of the little road is my property.  It begins at the major road and ends at the end of the small road.  The green line going around the property is a small river, called “long pond”.  So, the property is between the small road and the river–it’s an acre wide and six acres long.

This shot is of the caterpillar sacs which I spoke of in “It’s raining caterpillars!” several weeks ago.  I guess the caterpillars develop in these sacs, then leave the sacs during the Spring season.  The host tree is then stripped of the tender vegetation that has just sprouted and when the caterpillar has eaten his fill, he falls out of the tree spinning a web as he falls to the ground below.  Thousands of the caterpillars eat and fall from the trees before either getting eaten by lizards, frogs, and birds or making their escape to another tree to strip its vegetation also. 

    

Wooded areas of the property.

Hubby on the 4-wheeler

A magnolia tree we found on the property, approximately ten to twelve years old, planted by the previous owners.

  

GS1 is learning to drive a 4-wheeler.  I had never seen a more serious student, if only he would pay as close attention to his homework.

 

This little guy nearly scared me to death as I followed a trail on the four-wheeler; he was on a branch of a tree, approximately eye level.  When I ran to the truck to grab the camera, I was supprised to find him in the same place.  After the racket I made with the 4-wheeler, most little creatures would run, he didn’t try to strike at us or act aggressive in any way.  Hubby thought he was digesting food which kept him from running away from me.  He was nonpoisonous and as far as I could tell, he was a Garter Snake.  After taking some horrible photos with a camera that I wasn’t used to yet, we left him alone to slither off into the brush several minutes later.  “Nice to meet you little guy, also thank you for staying still for the photo-ops, but you know we’re moving here eventually don’t you?”  I’m wondering how harmonious our relationship will be when that time comes.

It’s rainin’ caterpillars!

All I can say about this past weekend is “Wild!” Everything about it was rip-roaring, frustrating, chaotic, dizzying, exciting, yet I would do it again if I could.

Most of our weekend was spent at Planter’s Point where we did a small amount of cleanup work, but mostly played on the four-wheelers with the kids. Those kids would have ridden the whole day and a half we were there if they could have — they loved riding! Hubby and No.1son cut new trails in the woods, then would take the bikes through the new trails. We rode so much that our hands hurt from holding the handlebars and pressing the gas.

There were only a couple of problems with the weekend. First of all, I didn’t feel the best in the world — I didn’t feel bad enough to stay home, just headachy, a little dizzy, tired, lethargic — probably a sinus infection coming on since the oak pollen is so high. All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep but I entertained the kids on the four-wheeler some and did some knitting on the poncho for Baby-Girl. The poncho’s main front and back portions were completed in a denim-blue color. I added a hood to the poncho in a light-mauve which went well with the blue. I think the poncho is absolutely precious! The blue color is the poncho portion, the light mauve is the hood, I almost knitted a light mauve pocket on the front of the poncho.

The second problem with the weekend was the lack of supplies. We forgot the charcoal to cook with. Luckily, there’s a Wal-Mart just a few miles down the road. We also forgot the sleeping bags, cook-stove, syrup. I don’t know what our problem was with packing for this past weekend, it’s not like we’ve never camped before — we have camped before plenty of times. We just couldn’t get our acts together and didn’t remember to ask each other if we remembered to pack “such-and-such.” That night, we paid for our sins memory-lapses — we nearly froze to death with only sheets to keep us warm. Hubby had towed the popup camper to the property the day before and being up off the ground protected us some. We wouldn’t have lasted the night on the ground. Hubby and I were in the queen-size bed on one end of the camper with a sheet and a lap-throw that was found in the SUV. GS2 and Baby Girl were on a bed in the middle of the camper with coats and thick clothing that we had with us. No.2son and GS1 slept on the full-size bed on the other end of the camper with a sheet covering them and a new tarp. You might laugh at that idea but the plastic tarp held the body heat in. Those boys were the warmest of the whole group.

An environmental event occurred which surprised Hubby and me. Caterpillars were in the trees by the thousands and I guess the caterpillars had just hatched and were gorging themselves in the lush green tender leaves that had just sprouted before falling by their silken threads to within a few feet from the ground before plopping to the ground.

Poor Baby Girl was almost traumatized by the “snakes” she called them. The fuzzy little colorful worms were everywhere — on the chairs, on the tables, plopping from overhead on to your shoulder while Baby Girl was crying “snake, snake” in every breath. I don’t think she’ll ever recover; we’ll probably have to drag her on to the property from now on.

This is a cocoon that the caterpillars came from. The cocoons were in the trees by the hundreds.

And for home-building purposes, we now have a drive-way in.

We are so excited.  We have completed the next step towards building a home on this property.

My photos are here!

At last — my photos have arrived.

You can tell they are having a great time!

Hubby

Baby Girl

Clean up work at the property

The property from the roadway

Scratch, scratch, itch, itch

After so much angst about the property, the property details seem to be flowing beautifully.  It was just like the property was put there just for us.  Hubby and I both love it so much, that we’ve almost forgiven the property for giving us such a bad case of poison ivy.  Of course it wasn’t the property’s fault, we knew the vines were there and worked around it anyway. 

Hubby and I had celebrated the buying of the property two weekends ago by doing some cleanup work on vines.  We knew we were getting into poison ivy, I mean any idiot could see the three-leaved vines tangled into anything that grew in our jungle.  But the stuff had to be cleared so we jumped on in.  Boy, did we pay for our efforts. 

I seemed to get the worst of the poison.  I had worn work-gloves but had on no sleeves – my arms were eaten up with the poison.  I clawed at my skin so much last week that I thought I would go insane.  I didn’t miss any work because of it but that was only because there were too many important things going on at work to miss any time.  I bought the drug store shelves out of poison ivy meds though.  Anything you could think of was bought.  Of course I bought caladryl/calamine lotion and it brought almost no relief.  It just wouldn’t clear it up.  Benedryl was swallowed by the doubles but I could only take them at night because they knocked me out.  Cortaid, a cortisome creme, was tried next, which was only slightly better.  We had heard about a wash that washes away the poison and went shopping for that.  It was called Zanfel poison-ivy wash and I was itching so badly that I was happy to deal out $40 for that stuff.  It felt like a scrub paste with a very salty-grainy texture.  And it was only too tempting to nearly scrub away with the paste at the itchy skin, nearly taking your skin with it.  At last, we felt better, as we rinsed the paste off of our arms.  We tried soothing it next with a calamine product called Avyrest.  By golly that stuff didn’t work either.  By Thursday, we were using Epson Salts, trying to dry the skin on our arms.  I think we were just too impatient for the miracle drug to rid us of that pesty itching, but you have to suffer through it I guess because it just wouldn’t go away. 

By Friday, I was a raving lunatic and called my doctor.  Yes, I was wimping out but I couldn’t handle it any more.  Could you believe my doctor’s office was closed?  Yes, closed!  I had to go to one of these “Minute-clinics” in CVS pharmacies now.  I gladly did it too, they took my insurance and I paid my little co-pay and answered the physician-assistant’s million questions, and nearly snatched the prescription out of his hands as I raced for the drug counter.  I was prescribed some tablets to take internally and a cream for the rash which I began taking and applying right away.  It’s now Tuesday and the rashes are quickly drying up.  When Hubby saw how well I was doing, he made an appointment with a physician assistant at his jobsite for this morning.  Yes, he gave in to medical help.

Even after all of the suffering though, we still love our property.  We actually returned this past weekend to the property to do some more suffering clearing – with sleeves on our arms this time.  I nearly burned up in those long sleeves, but I wore them anyway.  I want no more of that poison ivy.  We’ve cleared more than half an acre of the property over the weekend.  I can say that Saturday was the most enjoyable day we have ever spent there.  We worked hard, Well Hubby and No.1.son worked hard, I raked and tugged at a few vines; otherwise, we played on the four-wheelers all over the place, probably frightened the animals out of their wits because of the loud noise. 

The grandchildren played in the clearing that we enlarged, enjoyed riding on the four-wheelers, and watched small critters in the woods.  They were specifically enthralled with a beautiful bright green tree frog with white markings on his little face.  GS1, my little warrior grandson fears nothing and grabbed him up while his little brother, GS2, screamed for a turn to hold him.  And we all watched as the frog jumped up Cody’s arm to his shoulder, then to his head where the boy’s father proclaimed that the frog “pee’d”.  Now, I didn’t see the frog pee on the boy but we’re all looking for warts to appear any time now.  Just kidding.  It was fun to watch the kids play with that silly little frog and get so much enjoyment from it.

We have proudly marked off the place where our driveway will be with stakes.  The barbwire was cut to where the driveway is, and the driveway area cleared.  The county engineer was called last week and an order was put in for them to look at the driveway to tell us what size concrete pipe we need.  Their office just called me a few minutes ago to tell us the size to order.  Right away, I looked up phone numbers with no idea who to call and found out that hardware companies sell concrete pipes for culverts and deliver them.  I just called a hardware company in the area and ordered the pipes and asked for them to be delivered.  So it looks like we may have a driveway in a few days.  Yes!

I wish you could see a photo of the hard work that we’ve done.  But my camera is still not working.  I did take some photos with a 35 mm disposable, but when I searched for it on Sunday morning to develop the film, I couldn’t find the thing.  I eventually saw a disposable camera on the livingroom end table and snatched it up to take to the discount store for developing.  But when I picked the photos up later on that evening, the photos were from Easter, a year ago.  Chaos and confusion are the norm in my life I’m afraid.  And cluttered scenarios like this play out almost daily.

I at last found the darn disposable camera in the SUV last night, but when I tried to get it processed at the discount store, I’ll just be darned if the film processor at the store didn’t break down.  So I had to send the film off to be processed, just like in the good old days.  It’ll be the end of the week before I’ll get the photos back.

It’s now official . . .

We are now property-owners of six acres of undeveloped jungle and Hubby and I haven’t been this excited in a long time.  We are both nuts!  But the property is absolutely gorgeous and on high ground (which is saying something for that neck of the woods).  The closing on the property was yesterday and the first thing we did to celebrate was to do some clean-up work. 

With yard implements and chain-saw in hand, we braved the jungle with smiles on our faces,  capturing the excitement with my trustee Kodak (which has still not been sent in to Wal-Marts for printout (I lost my UBC cord to download to computer), don’t you just love the digital world?) and returned to the truck several hours later whipped and chain-saw-less and broken by a mere jungle.  I have never been so exhausted in my entire life.  My work began in long sleeves in 65 degree (fahrenheit) weather but I came out of that longsleeve shirt just 30 minutes later and put on a t-shirt — I was already sweating.

I am sure that every vine known to mankind is in that jungle – I found all of them, honeysuckle, morning glories, and plenty of poison ivy/oak.  I have pulled at vines, trimmed, chopped, dragged, sawed, lopped, and raked until every muscle in my body was screaming in protest, especially my back.  And then on the way to the vehicle, I found myself scratching my arms and remembered the poison ivy/oak that I had been cutting and pulling.  I’ve been clawing at my skin ever since.  And then I watched Hubby tear up the chain-saw.  It was a brand-new “Poulan” chainsaw.  But if anyone can figure out a way to tear one up, it will be my Hubby (I’m so proud).  He at last figured out how to start the darn thing with the pull thingy, but the chain will not stay on.  He had to rechain the saw three times (while I slaved away at the jungle) and at last threw up his hands in defeat and declared it needed a new chain. 

To add to my frustration, my trustee Kodak camera quit working.  It powers up but will not take the picture — instead, the camera turns itself off.  I’ll do some research online to see if the camera can be fixed or not.  But it looks like I’m going to be cameraless for a while.  I’ll have to beg, borrow, and steal to get any photos from now on. 

At the end of the day, although exhausted and broken, we had to smile at the accomplishments that we made.  It had nearly killed us, but we had cleared a whole 17 by 18 feet of jungle.  Only 3,240,000 square feet to go!  You go girl!  Ouch, I need a back message, manicure, pedicure, and a drink.

I just can’t wait!

The excitement is more than I can stand — we are trying to buy the property in the Planter’s Point Subdivision and I can’t wait to have the title in hand so that we can get to work on the property.  The septic engineer returned my numerous calls and told us there was no need for him to visit the property because with 6 acres of land, we’re bound to find a spot to plop down a septic tank somewhere. 

Another milestone that has occurred is my financing has gone through to buy the property.  So we’re ready to close on the property sale.  I’ve called my real estate agent to move the closing date up because now that the financing has gone through, we can close now. 

Hubby and I have also revisited the property (for the 25th time) and have come to realize that we really need a survey.  Neither of us are sure what surveys are good for, but we really felt funny when we walked over the property and were not sure where the boundary lines were.  And at that point, we both agreed that the survey was needed.  Today I called a company to work up an estimate.  We should have looked into the matter days ago, but the property is going to be bought as a cash sale, and we really didn’t have the extra funds so . . .  Let’s hope the survey company isn’t too outrageous in price.

I’m kind of in a quandary about how to clean the property up after we buy it.  There are some beautiful huge oak trees on the property, a few red-bud trees, and I’m hoping there will be a pecan tree or two, and more than a million shrubs, thorn bushes, small trees, broken trees, wild-mustang grapevines, honeysuckle, poison-ivy/oak.  Hubby wants to burn the brush, but I want to use a woodchipper.  It seems to be the greenest/most environmental thing to do.  When you compare burning to woodchipping, it seems to me that burning brush would be bad for the environment compared to the gas you would use in running the chipper/shreadder.  Of course, the cost of burning versus woodchipper is zero for burning versus $125 and upwards for just one day to rent the woodchipper.  It kind of made me mad when I found out that the woodchipper cost around $1,000 to buy and around $150 to rent.  It’s like — it’s no wonder people have to burn the brush.  I’m hoping I’ll have funds left to rent the chipper — I certainly want to do the responsible thing. 

Hope to have pics of the property up soon!

Property search

Another event is weighing heavily on my mind here lately — my hubby and I are trying to buy a few acres of property out in the country.  Hubby and I have been searching for property for more than a year but the surrounding Houston area has skyrocketing property prices.  And since Hubby and I are not well-off financially and are also cheapskates, we can’t afford to plop $100K on just a few acres of land.  Now, we found a couple of good land deals here and there, but the acreage was either low-lying with floodwaters covering every inch of the place or a piece of property on the back of a ranch with no “right-of-way access” (I could see nothing but attorneys’ fees in our futures if we even considered something like that).  As the old saying goes — “you get what you paid for.” 

Other factors in our property search included whether there were trees on the property (which Hubby and I gently argued over), the number of acres that we should purchase (which we also argued over), the number of miles from our children and grandchildren (which we did NOT argue over because we want to be near the kids (now watch them move just because I want to be near them, the little monsters)), and whether the property was located in a subdivision (which we did argue vehemently over because I want to live in a nice subdivision of 2000-plus square feet homes and he wants to live in the sticks with nothing around but snakes and deer and squirrels. 

Anyway, to get my mind off of that particular argument, months a year later, we at last agreed on a small piece of property out in the country but still close enough to the kids / grandkids in a beautiful area.  The property is in a subdivision, but it’s in the country with plenty of deer, squirrels, and snakes to make Hubby happy and me unhappy.  We weren’t jumping up and down with excitement over the acreage but it was an affordable little 3-acre tract.  We were still trying to decide whether to buy the property when the area received a torrential rain; we went out to check on the property and found it under several inches of water (it was a foot under water in certain places).  By golly, we had to start all over in our search.  On one hand, I just wanted to throw up my hands and say “it’s over, I won’t ever search for property again,” but on the other hand, I had to also say “what if we had not researched the property and had already bought it?”  We’d now be stuck with three acres of flood-plain property which is no good to build on.  Maybe we were lucky after all or either very smart for checking the property after torrential rains. 

After Hubby and I moaned and groaned a little bit about the property that we saw under water, we returned to our search and found another small acreage in the same neighborhood.  We thought the property was too expensive and the seller would never consider our lower bid .  Hubby and I decided to throw all of our money on the table (a little more than half of their asking price) and you could have knocked me over with a feather when the sellers took our offer.  I could not believe that they would sell to us for that price, they had lost some money on the deal as a matter of fact, and I felt badly about it, but it was all we could afford.  All they had to do was say no, but I think they were sick and tired of waiting for the market to rise in that area, the property had been up for sale for a couple of years, they just cut their losses and decided to walk away from it.  Here’s the entrance to the subdivision.  I hope to get a couple of photos of my property added soon.

 

So, now we are doing the waiting game — wait for the fax to go through, wait for my loan officer to return my calls now numbering into nearly a dozen, plead with my mortgage company to send me a payoff statement and roll my eyes as they try to charge me $30, receive the statement and then forward it on to the loan officer, wait for the money to come in, wait for the well/septic engineers to return my now numerous calls, wait for the survey engineer to return my calls.  I tell you it’s just one thing after another and I don’t think I’ll ever close on the property.  But of course I will; it’s just another wrinkle to add to my face and I’ll get through it, just add some grey to my hair in the process.