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.

Well, that was embarrassing . . .

Well, I was so embarrassed after writing yesterday’s blog — Yesterday, I uploaded two photos of the knitted baby layette that I made and couldn’t edit the darn things to save my life (or anyone else’s for that matter). The photos were just huge and took up a whole screen. Any editing I tried to do to the photos just turned them into a little dots on the screen after my blog-text. At last, in a fit of frustration, in the middle of cooking dinner, returning grandchildren to their parents, washing clothes, and all of that fun stuff, I at last lost my temper and tried to delete the things, but just like an inkstain on a white shirt, the photos were still there taunting me at my attempt to do such a simple process as upload photos. This morning, I was able to delete the photos after tampering around with them for an hour. Thank goodness. We all have to live and learn I guess.

I have a photo of my teen below.  Isn’t he great?  He’s absolutely the best kid.

On to other topics. What I am working on at home now is a knitted scarf, it’s not very sexy though. I don’t know if I’ll even take a picture of the darn thing. My 3-year-old grandson asked for a scarf a couple of weeks ago and selected pastel-green baby-yarn to make the scarf out of. I’m sure I turned up my nose, but what the kid wants, the kid gets, so I’ve been knitting away at it now and then when I plop down in front of the TV. Since it’s a scarf, it’s a quick knit across the short rows, but since I’m not that enthusiastic about the project, it’s almost torturous to work on it — it’s not a beautiful bright color to catch someone’s attention, so I’ve been plodding along, forcing myself to pick up the darn thing and trying to remember his sweet little smiling face when he had asked for it a couple of weeks ago. God, I pray his sweet little face in my mind can keep me knitting on that scarf, because I’m bored, Bored, BORED.

My first post — Hello World!

I’m so excited. I am actually writing my first blog. Squeal!

Now, where do I begin? I’m a working wife and mother to three marvelous children — my daughter is the oldest and is smart and beautiful and 28 years old. My m

iddle child is a son and is a 26 year old father of 3 beautiful children. My youngest son is 16 years and is an outstanding teenager. Unusual to hear that about a teen, huh? But he is — he’s really wonderful — he’s sensitive, good-looking, has a wonderful smile, a great babysitter to his nephews and niece, loves animals, and likes to read.

I’m a “craftster” and can manage most crochet stitches well although I’ve taken a break from crocheting for a while. My new study is knitting. I began knitting a couple of months ago to make baby hats for hospitals (for newborns) during the fall of 2007 and I’ve been knitting ever since.