We had an appointment to go look at four more houses on Friday.

Most of them were pretty quickly decided that they weren’t right for us. The one with the floors that weren’t even level, and with no finish work done; that one was an easy no.

The 70′s style decor of another one was hard to look past. Once we managed though, it was apparent that the bones of the place wouldn’t suit us. Too bad, as the yard was full of an old orchard and nicely cool, and it had a swimming pool that looked to be in great shape.

Another 70′s style house had a great new horse barn. I’d been watching this one from the street for a couple of years, but the interior was so dark and cave-like that it wouldn’t have done for us either, not without major renovations. We’re not prepared to dive into major remodeling.

The third one we saw though, was another story.

It has a smallish house, which was the original homestead site of one of the local farms, the rest of which had been subdivided up several years ago. It has a great old milking barn, with concrete floors and good stout beams. Next to that is the former milk shed, which is nice and cool and houses an air compressor for the lines that are run all over the property. It has a fifth-wheel carport, with hookups.

There is the original water tower building, even though the water tank itself has been removed. The bones of that building, now a three-story sort of hobby space, were also in very good shape for its age.

Next to that is another equipment shed, this one with tall doors for big equipment, more concrete floors, and 220v power. Near it is the original root cellar to the main house, which had been taken down several years before. We went down into it, and it was a good thirty degrees cooler than the heat of the day, and not at all dark and spidery, as I remember cellars from my childhood.

Off in a corner of the place is an orchard of mature fruit trees: several varieties of necatarine and peach, a couple of apples, some citrus, an apricot, some pistacio and a pecan, two pomegranates, a grape arbor, and others that I’ve forgotten.

The owners showed us this place themselves, which is somewhat unusual. At every stop on the outbuildings tour, either Junior or I would widen our grin a little. The man had the milk barn set up as a wood shop, and Junior is a woodworker too. The whole place is decorated with old farm equipment, some of it horse-drawn, and I’ve always loved that stuff. The woman said that they don’t use chemicals on their fruit trees, which is in accordance with how I was raised too.

They told us a lot about the history of the place. I love local history, and I think it would be the neatest thing to live somewhere oozing with it like that. The kids would have a ball there; did I mention the little clubhouse for their grandson?

But there’s always a but.

The house itself is small. A tiny kitchen. A small living room. Three bedrooms, and none of them are very big. And even though we don’t have the kids all the time, there are six of us to account for. We just didn’t see how we could shoehorn six people into that very small house.

And all of those beautiful, well-maintained outbuildings would require an awful lot of maintenance to keep them in that condition. It takes a lot of work to keep dirt and gravel roads free of weeds and holes, and to keep an orchard and garden up. It would take a huge effort to do something with all of that fruit the place would produce each year.

While all of those things are something that we would have liked to do, now is not the time for us to be committed to doing them. We both work too hard and have too little free time to take care of a place like that, and we recognized our limitations. Now, if the price was low enough that we could live in the house temporarily while we built another larger one on the lot, that might be feasible, but we think that’s fairly unlikely.

So we’re going to say no to this one, even though it drew me in emotionally. It’s us, it’s just not the right time, and I’m going to feel a little sad that it wasn’t every time I drive by it. It was a hard decision to make, but this is business and we have to be clear-headed about it.

So, onward to the next batch, possibly next week.

Growing up, my family had a long-standing tradition of camping every summer. We’d go on several trips a year, at least one to our regular spot and another one anywhere else in the summer. Then there were the oddball trips at other times of the year, like the year we went to the coast on Thanksgiving to have soup on the beach instead of a big turkey dinner.

I think there were two car trips throughout the southwest; I remember our dog standing in four states at Four Corners, and I took my very first photos at Mesa Verde. I remember riding in the big Pontiac through the Rocky Mountains, and I think that car was sold when I was about six.

The main trip was always to the same lake in the north state. We’d always go with another family, and there were regulars that would come some years too. My grandparents flew in to the local airport a few times. Sometimes we’d have a ski boat and sometimes only the other family would, but we’d always do a lot of water skiing and trips to the marina for ice cream. Besides that, it was a lot of playing on the rocky red beach, picking cicada shells off of trees, and general unstructured kid stuff. It was really good for us kids, and I’d hoped to continue the tradition with my own, although it seems that I’ve fallen down on the ball with that.

My feeble attempt doesn’t even get pulled off every year. M’s family and mine try to get out to camp yearly, but it’s hard to get schedules to line up. One year I took the boys by myself, and that was a whinefest. We always have plans to include as many families with kids as we can, but those almost always fall through.

This year, things got rearranged a lot. My usual camp site was out, since Junior’s trailer can’t get down that road without scraping things off the top. M suggested a spot down near her house, by the river, and we thought that would at least save fuel. So we loaded up both trailers, one for us and one for them, and headed out. No sooner had we hit the edge of town though, than they called, saying that the campground wasn’t set up for trailers after all. We didn’t much feel like setting up in a parking lot and getting a ticket, so we changed plans on the fly.

This time, we headed for a local lake where Junior knew the trailers would fit and reservations weren’t required. But when we got there, there was a sign saying, “No Dogs.” Since M hadn’t had time to arrange for care for hers, she was now stuck. We were already in and both trailers paid for by the time we realized this trip just wasn’t going to make it, which kind of sucked. But still, we were there with three kids (John’s working at camp for the summer) and it was hot, so we might as well stay.

We set up by the lake and turned the kids loose to play in the water. Since we hadn’t planned on being at a lake, we hadn’t brought appropriate lake shoes for them. We made the girls wear their tennis shoes, but Seamus got away with nothing, since his flip-flops kept flopping off. Junior’s folks came up in time for dinner and threw a few poles in the water, and once the temperature dropped to slightly below the surface of the sun, we had a nice time hanging out.

Until the corollary of our family tradition kicked in, that is.

See, not only do we camp, but we have a history of visiting emergency rooms all over the West while camping. I remember a trip in Colorado, I think for strep throat. And there was the infamous eye-sticking incident, in which my mom still has a speck of marshmallow stick in her iris (sorry Mom.) It seemed like every summer, someone was trucked in to a hospital for something or other, and I’m dubiously proud to report that my younger son has carried on that tradition.

The kids were out playing on a shallow island, and suddenly, the girls towed Seamus back in, hollering that he was bleeding. He sure as hell was; we could see it from up at the trailer. I piggy-backed him up to the truck, leaving a blood trail you could track a wounded bear by. He’d neatly sliced open the ball of his foot on something sharp. We cleaned him up and wrapped him temporarily, but I wasn’t happy about dirty lake mud and water. The folks took the girls and we took Seamus down to the ER.

After a shockingly fast ER trip of only about three hours, Seamus didn’t come out with stitches. In another spot, he would have, but that’s a really awkward place to sew up. He got a lot of tape instead, and instructions to treat it like stitches, and a flat shoe to keep him from bending it, and crutches to keep his weight off it for ten days. He was an amazingly good sport about it all, rolling his eyes at us when we joked at him and getting very interested in the medical mechanics of the place.

So the next morning, we all went back up to retrieve our camping gear and went home for the weekend. We got some bonus time to work on the jeep and the girls got to swim a little in the pool, and poor Seamus got waited on hand and foot, which he kind of ate up. But I think the camping trip can be counted as a big flop this year.

Next year: more planning.

After I left a message with Agent Fiasco and she chewed out my loan officer, I was hoping we were done with it all. I told the woman who referred me to her, who happens to work in my office, that I wouldn’t be continuing that business relationship, in case she wondered, and I did tell her why.

I figured that would be the end of it. After all, when my customers sever a relationship with my business, I shrug my shoulders and move on.

We’d found a new agent, since we still wanted to own a house, and she arranged another look at the original one for us. After that, we toured another place in the area, more expensive than we wanted, but to give us an idea of what was available in the neighborhood. That one reinforced how right the original one was for us. This new agent was outstanding. She was patient with all of our questions; didn’t rush us or push us at all, and what should be obvious; didn’t yell at us.

So Junior and I discussed it, and decided to make an offer. While our new agent was spending hours with us on paperwork, my cell phone started ringing off the hook. I’m on call, so I at least have to look at it, although I’d much prefer to turn it off to conduct business. Four times in ten minutes it rang; twice with the caller ID blocked and then twice more with Agent Fiasco’s cell number coming up. This was getting ridiculous, so I answered it. I tried to tell this woman that I was in a meeting, but she didn’t draw enough breath from yelling at me to hear anything. She must have been a tuba player once upon a time, because woman had some lungs on her. Everyone in the conference room could hear her through my phone.

Finally, I talked right over her, saying firmly, “I am busy and this is not the time or the place. We can discuss it later,” and I hung up on her. Since I was being excessively rude to the agent who was working so well for us, I was not about to get into it right then and there. Immediately after, a voice mail popped up on my system, and when I was able to listen to it, it was Fiasco, with that sickly sweet voice that frenetic women get when they think they’re being dangerous. I wish I’d saved the message, but it pissed me off so bad that I immediately deleted it.

Junior heard it though, so I have a witness, and I’m starting to suspect that I may need one. In this voice mail message, Fiasco threatened to come down to my office on Monday to speak to me in person.

Well, I’m not having any of that, so when our business concluded, I stepped outside. I called Fiasco back, as requested, and told her that she was not going to come to my office, that any business relationship we had was terminated and that any further contact from her would be considered harrassment. Of course, she didn’t hear any of this, as she was too busy yelling at the top of her lungs about how I was being rude for hanging up on her and that if I were going to “talk trash” about her, she would come to my office and do the same thing to me.

Now, that part I’m not really worried about. It’s a public office, but if she shows up with one word to or about me, I will have the deputies remove her from the premises. I’m also not worried about any claims she may make on me; the only things that I did were to stop doing business with her and discuss it with two people, one of whom had the right to know. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it in front of the other one, but there sure isn’t a law against office gossip. Fiasco and I did not have any sort of contract; it had never even been mentioned on the phone. In fact, I still have no idea what she looks like, as it was her husband who showed us the house.

But I’m mad. I would never dream of treating a customer in such a way, even if they didn’t like my work. I’ve had one or two in my time discontinue my services, one even after I’d laid out some money and done some work for them. It never occurred to me to scream at them, or in fact, contact them in any way. In business, you write a certain amount of work off now and then.

I will not stand for being treated this way, however. I was hoping that it was just over, at which point I would not have pursued any action against her. If she chooses to escalate further, however, I am fully capable of taking her down. I have already contacted the local Board of Realtors to see about filing a formal complaint, and I will stand as witness in any proceedings they require.

She may be able to get away with this sort of behavior with some people, but not me. If I don’t stand up against it, who will? Some poor shlub who has no resources and gets bilked out of their life savings by being pushed into buying a house that they can’t afford? Not if someone speaking up sooner could have stopped it, and not if I can be that person. As willing as I was to walk away from that house on principle, I suspect that that would be a walk in the park compared to what this could turn into.  It’s not right to let people be pushed around, and I especially will not stand for it on my own behalf.

So think again, stupid bitch. You have no idea what kind of woman you just tried to run your scam on, and it’s going to bite you in the ass.

Agent Fiasco to the white courtesy phone please…

After some late-night talking (Junior currently gets off work at midnight), we’d decided to make an offer on that house. So the next day I called the agent with some more questions about it and some questions about how one goes about making an offer. Somehow, she jumped on my procedural questions into a committment to making an offer, and at our very maximum qualification amount too. She got so excited that she drew up the paperwork; I figured, whatever. We’re sure not signing anything in such a hurry, but if she wants to have to do things several times, that’s her lookout.

I gave her the number of our financial lady, since I didn’t have the copy of our approval letter in hand. Now mind you, our loan officer is a long-time friend of Junior’s family. She’s our behind-the-scenes advisor, as she’s done a bunch of loans from the lender side.

So when Junior got out of his class, he called our lady, as I’d asked him to do, to pick up a copy of our letter while he was near there. And wasn’t he surprised to hear a “Congratulations!” Apparently, the real estate agent had promised the loan officer that it was a done-deal, that we had made an offer on the house. Now, our lady knew better, and was trying to talk to the agent about some of the things that she’s seen hold up loans. Things like required repairs, and no leins on the property, need to be in the contract, or the lender is going to kick it back.

The agent got all huffy with our loan officer, saying that she and I had gone over an extensive list and that she didn’t have to put repairs into a contract because she “never has any problem” getting repairs done. The agent, who is the daughter-in-law of someone I vaguely know from work and whom I haven’t actually met in person yet, was trying to claim to our lady that she and I had a long-standing relationship and that she considered me family. Now, spouting this to someone who’s known the family since Junior was in diapers made us snort. And I went over a list, did I? No, I asked two questions, and she ran right over me before I could open my mouth to ask any more. I know this, even though she did her best to spin me around, because I am a compulsive note-taker when I’m on the phone, and I had a grand total of two things on my notes.

This was the last straw. This agent, besides being almost intolerably hyper, has been extremely pushy. She hasn’t listened to our concerns at all, and was now lying and exaggerating to our personal financial consultant. I had had enough.

I texted Junior with a quick, “mind if I fire our agent?” Once I told him what was going on, he agreed with me. I know he’d have backed me up even if I’d done it without asking first, but it’s polite to tell him before I drop bombs like this.

I called Agent Fiasco’s office, and she happened to be out. I told her secretary that we had decided to go in a different direction, and that she didn’t need to do any further work on our account. I figured that was only polite, so she didn’t waste her time. We had never met, except for the showing her husband walked us through, so we had no agent contract.

While I was on the phone with another agent explaining the situation and trying to wrangle another shot at that same house, she called back. Fine, but I was busy, and I don’t answer my cell phone when I’m busy. Then our lady called. Hmm.

I got off the phone and called our lady back first, because she doesn’t make me grind my teeth. Turns out that Agent Fiasco had called her, without bothering to indentify herself, and chewed her out. She claimed that I was all for it before she talked to her and that she must have changed our minds and it was her fault that she wasn’t getting the commission from us (easy money, by the way. I figure she had us pegged for suckers. While we may be quiet and polite most of the time, we are decidedly not suckers.)

I apologized to our lady , and I think we’re done with it. The new agent didn’t have that house in her listings, but she looked around for it and it is still available. She can’t make an offer on it without seeing it, so we’re going back out there with her this afternoon. And she’s got some others for us to see, and by her tone, is very willing to work for us, not scrape up all the money she can for herself at the expense of her client.

Junior once told me a story of how he walked away from a truck purchase over principles and a dollar. I knew he’d back me for walking away from this on principles alone. I told him we were peas in a pod, but I don’t think he’d seen me in action quite like this before. Now he knows; we are very well suited for each other in this department too.

So we may yet make an offer on this house today. Seamus figured out for me at the game last night that one of the kids on his team lives next door to it, so I pumped the neighbor for information. Seems it’s been on the market for a year, which gives us a pretty strong purchasing position. We’ll talk to our new agent, Agent Reasonable, and see how it goes. There are always more out there.

Junior and I have been slowly getting into the house-shopping thing for a couple of months now. We started small, cruising the internet. Window shopping through Windows. Getting into the groove of what we both want in a house, and adjusting to the concept of making it real and permanent between us at the same time.

About a month ago, we graduated to window shopping through actual windows. We’d print out a list of likely addresses and cruise on by. Most of them we could eliminate without even slowing down, like the fairly nice house surrounded by falling-down shacks on all sides. Yeah, not that one; moving on. Every once in a while we’d pull into a vacant driveway and peek into the front windows of a house, and that eliminated some more.

We found a couple that were worthy of calling a realtor about, but invariably, those ones were already under contract. One guy said we were welcome to have our own realtor show us the place in case we wanted to make a backup offer. That house was a little out of our price range anyway, and needed too much work to boot.

But the looking process helped us resolve what qualities we’re both looking for in a place to live for the next 20 or 30 years. We both wanted something fairly rural, although we were just not finding rural and livable and in our price range all in the same address. Junior wanted a shop, or at the very least, room to build a shop, for his woodworking tools. I thought I’d like a place where we could have a couple of horses, or where Seamus could raise a 4-H animal. We both wanted a little room to breathe, where the next-door-neighbor’s dog isn’t barking in your ear at 5 AM, and where the train doesn’t rattle the dishes out of the cupboards. Since we have four kids, it would be nice not to have to double them all up too much. And a pool would be cool, for child-entertainment purposes.

We had another list going, this time of places we’d like to actually go inside, so we finally bit the bullet and called a realtor this week. I explained to the lady what our basic wants were, and she got all excited. Well, of course she did; she’s a realtor. But she said she had the perfect house for us, and had to call another realtor to schedule a showing. We figured out which one she was talking about, and it turned out to be on our short list already.

So the appointment was made for yesterday morning, and we walked through the place. And we really liked it. It definitely feels like a place we can live for a long time. It’s got five bedrooms, although their definition of “bedroom” might be a little stretched for the two small ones without closets. It’s got a two-car garage attached to the house and another finished detached garage that they were billing as a shop. It’s got a pool; kind of a boring shape, but at least it will hold water.

I like the kitchen quite a bit; it has a huge amount of storage space. Since the place is a repo, it’s both within our price range and below market value for the neighborhood. It hasn’t been treated quite as badly as some repossessions we’ve seen; at least most of the fixtures are still there and there aren’t any holes knocked in the walls. There are a few odd things missing, like the dishwasher and the range hood and most of the shelves in the closets and pantry, but it’s fixable.

 

It sits on a little more than an acre, in the same neighborhood, more or less, that the boys live in at their father’s house. I’ve been familiar with that area for even longer than they’ve lived there, as I used to ride my horse in those undeveloped lots. The houses there hold their value, it’s full of kids without a ton of traffic, and it’s the best school district in the county. The boys would be able to take the bus; the girls go to school in another county.

 

On the downside is the location. We’d really hoped to split the difference between our commutes. I have to be pretty close to my job, so it was going to slide my way anyway, which is too bad, as I’m the one who doesn’t mind driving like that. But with all of the looking we did, we just didn’t find anything even close to suitable located between our jobs. This neighborhood is by far the best one that we’ve seen to live in and to raise a family in, so Junior chose the family over the driving time, and we’re settling down this way, most likely, whether in this house or not.

 

It also backs up to a highway, but it’s not a very noisy one. I drive it every time I take the boys to school, and it’s just not that busy. The previous owner put up an additional privacy fence delineating the usable backyard from the rest of the acreage out back, so with the developer’s fence, that’s two, and they cut down on the noise pretty well. On the upside of that is the gate cut into the back fence so we can get the trailers or equipment into the backyard. It’s a triangular lot, so nothing big is coming in through the front.

I’d planned to start off the actual with-realtor shopping events by taking photos of each house we looked at, so we could go back and remember which house had which features. Even by looking online and at the street views, they were all starting to run together. So I snapped away at this one, taking such memorable shots as the well pressure tank and the brand of pool filter.

But I don’t think we’re going to have a big collection of house pictures. We’re going to make an offer on this one.

At a routine physical last week, I hopped on the scale and gasped. I was as heavy as I’ve ever been.

We both knew we’d been gaining weight; apparently being happy brings that on for both of us. Not doing our usual eating like crap thing, but going out a lot and cooking for each other is fun but has inevitable side effects. We’ve been talking about eating healthier for a while now, and making slow changes.

This was a shock for me though, so I jumped right in to full-on diet mode. And I know I get cranky when I’m hungry, and I warned him so. So neither of us really should have been surprised when I was a touchy bitch all weekend. I really tried to maintain some level of composure, but between all of the kids getting on my nerves, being hungry all the time, and the stress of the house-buying thing, I just was cranky.

I hate to lay it on him, and he’s so good about being patient with me. He had a headache all weekend himself, and I just don’t know that I could have taken my partner’s bitchiness on top of that very well at all, but he did it, somehow.

Since it was my birthday and we had a little family barbecue, I at least called off the diet for a little while. I like my pie, after all, and I needed to just stop obsessing about it for a while. Of course, now I’m a little mad at myself for probably losing whatever progress I’d made. Dieting is a vicious circle for me, and I’m not sure I should be doing it at the same time as buying a house.

The house thing is huge to me too. I have not a doubt in my mind that it’s not only the right thing to do, but the right time to do it, but it scares me to death to think about signing my name away to the biggest amount of money ever. I’ve been without a mortgage for almost a decade, after all, and it’s going to be a shock. We’d planned to do it a little later in the year, but the stagnant house market is starting to move around here, which means the prices will go back up, and the interest rates are still down. Since we can do it, now is the time.

We sat down with a lender on Friday, and should know exactly what we’re qualified for later today. I’m confident that it will be for much more than we actually want to spend. After we have the letter in hand, we’ll go find a real estate agent and start actually looing inside houses, not peering into windows like we’ve been doing.

We were hoping to split our commutes, but it’s looking more and more like he’ll have the brunt of it. The nicest neighborhood, with the kind of places we want, is down close to me. Since I’m the one who’s on-call, it’s important to stay close to my job. Too bad it worked out that way, as I’m actually the one who doesn’t mind the driving, but either way, fuel prices are going to hurt us. He’ll be taking whichever vehicle gets the best mileage, and at least he’ll be driving at odd times, since he’s going to be working third shift here pretty quickly.

It’s been a hell of a ride this year, stress-wise. Two new contracts for me, becoming my own boss, meeting the man of my dreams, doubling the size of my family, and now buying a house and moving. No wonder I’m not handling dieting well.

Once I stepped back and looked at all of that, I decided to go a little easier on myself. I’m still going to work at being healthier; more walking, less eating of junk; but I’m not going to starve myself. My sanity is more important than my spare tire, for now.

This last weekend being one of the only ones lately when we were entirely free and clear to go do something fun, without the kids, without the jobs, without anything else hanging over our heads, we took ourselves up to the mountains for some good clean fun. It’s not quite my birthday yet, but we like to stretch these things out, and a birthday week and a half is just fine with me.

So when I came home on Friday, Junior had a little something for me. I’d asked for a trailer brake controller, since the last one burned up. He presented a gift bag with a very nice trailer brake controller in it, and when I asked if he could install it for me, he asked me to go show him where on the truck I wanted it. So we walked outside and opened the truck door, and there it was, already installed. I love having a handy man around the house.

We’d already decided to go shooting the next day, so we were packing up guns and making sure of ammo and things, and he started pulling rifles out to show me. He’d brought some from home, and a new shotgun he’d recently bought, and I’m never sure what guns he has anyway. So he handed me a lever action Marlin and I looked at him funny. I knew his 30-30 was a Winchester, and we’d just been talking about buying me a Marlin 30-30 that had popped up on the grapevine, but decided it was going for too much. Besides, I’d just got my birthday present, so I was thoroughly confused.

But no, the Marlin he’d handed me was a .357 lever action of his dad’s. Junior said it was one of his favorite guns to play with.

So then he handed me another lever action. I assumed this time that it was his 30-30, but I turned it over and looked at it, and it was a Marlin too. I looked back at him, and he just grinned and said, “Happy Birthday.” Yeah, he’d picked up the Marlin after all, and I really should have guessed based on a slip in the conversation earlier in the week, but I might be a little oblivious. So I’m delighted to have one too, and I might do a little hunting with it this fall.

It came with a low-power scope, but I like the traditional iron sights on a 30-30, so we took it off, and will probably give it to Seamus for his deer rifle. It was a ton of fun to shoot and really not that expensive to feed, compared with some of our others.

 

Speaking of others, it was also a trip to finish sighting in my 30-06. I’d bought it from his Dad earlier in the year, and Junior mounted my Christmas scope on it. He’d started sighting it, but I had to also, to make sure it fit me correctly. I was a little afraid of the kick, as I usually shoot a .243, but it wasn’t bad at all. By the time we were done, I was regretting wearing a bra, as the strap was sort of embedded in my shoulder.

I didn’t know what kick was though, until Junior brought out the muzzleloader. I’ve always wanted to shoot one, so we played with that a bit. It’s a modern rifle for hunting, not a historical-type model.

It uses pressed powder in premeasured charges and shoots a .50 caliber bullet. And it kicks in a different way than the regular rifles, more of a pushing than a sharp movement. But when you have the butt just slightly out of the pocket of your shoulder, you end up with a numb arm and a spectacular bruise, and I might be just a little bit afraid of that gun now, even though it was my own fault.

It was a lot of fun to see the giant cloud of smoke erupt, and it sure reaches out and touches the target.

This wasn’t all of the weekend; we wandered around the wintering area, but didn’t find any shed antlers. We went out to dinner on the way home. We stopped by my folks to show Junior their house. And we spent a good chunk of day yesterday looking at houses ourselves. The shooting was one of the best parts though; good, clean, stress-relieving fun. But then, I always have a lot of fun with this man, and I expect to keep having more for the rest of our lives.