and now.... three and a half MORE months pass by!!! in shiny things

I have no idea how that’s even possible, but I am making several determined attempts in several assorted areas of my life to Improve My Lazy Annoying Self, and doing more writing is one of them. At this point, “more” would be any at all, so that shouldn’t be difficult. And I’ve been additionally spurred on by re-reading OD entries from fourteen years ago, which was when I started writing in OD. October 2001. And it’s reminded me of how much I loved it way back then and how much I miss writing regularly and keeping up with my journaling friends.

I’m also finding it kind of depressing to re-read entries from 14 years ago. My mom was still alive and well and only a little forgetful sometimes; we still had Stella and Colfax; Baker B’s dad was also still with us, and he and my dad would come up and help us work on DisasterHouse. We rescued Simon and Maddy right after I’d started writing, and they were teeny little things. At least Maddy is healthy and still going strong. Anyhow, it’s kind of a downer so it occurred to me that perhaps it’s time to resurface in Prosebox, in Current Time.

SO. What was going on last entry?? WELL, our Instant House Sell didn’t pan out. The neighbor’s mother decided, very abruptly, that she wasn’t interested in it, after we gave her a starting price (a LOW starting price, incidentally, with the assumption that she’d offer an even lower one and we’d haggle from there. And we probably wouldn’t have haggled too much, either. We were so excited to escape!)

But she saw our very low price and said she was “withdrawing her interest”, and that was that. Which as it turns out is probably for the best. Especially since we made a horrifying discovery in our downstairs, never-used bathroom. I won’t even go into why we’ve never used it - it involves crushed pipes that the house settled on which have been long since fixed but there were all these other things wrong so we ended up shutting the door and pretending it’s not there. Not a great idea, as it turns out, since apparently there was a leak at some point and the walls around the shower rotted, and the ceiling is sagging because it seems the leak was from the upstairs, directly-overhead bathroom, and now the floors are damaged.

So YIPPIE!!!! Major bathroom renovations in store!!! We already knew we’d have to do some major repairs in the outside wall of the upstairs one, also suffering from rotting wood. Now they both get to have major repairs done. On the plus side, both bathrooms are tiny - you can stand in the middle of the upstairs one and touch all the walls. Well, you have to take a step into the tub to touch the outside wall, but it is a microscopic bathroom.

We didn’t realize this when we were thinking Neighbor’s Mom was going to buy it. We’d have had to drop the price so far that we couldn’t have afforded New House (New Very Old House That Has To Be Rewired). So in light of this issue we’ve decided to just get what we can fixed and put it on the market in the spring.

And we’ve already got new gutters, so that’s a start. I don’t know what we’ll do with the bathroom renovations but we’ve discovered that Lowes does that now so we’ll go have a word with them at some point and see how awful it will be.

Here’s the REALLY great thing, though - the House We Love has not sold, and not only has it not sold, they dropped the price. Not just a bit – they dropped it TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Which puts it at about where it ought to be for a 90 year old house whose wiring has to be replaced. And has flooring issues (hopefully that leak is fixed and it’s not getting worse as it sits on the market). And doubtless will need a new furnace. I’m thinking with some repairs on ours we’ll be able to sell it for a reasonable price and have extra money to fix the new one. The New Old One.

Unless of course it has worse problems than we’re aware of. We are being sensible about this, and will get our own inspection done. Dropping the price so radially is kind of weird, although it was very overpriced to begin with.

Well, that’s where we are currently. Hemorrhaging money and hoping to hemorrhage even more!! We got new gutters a few weeks ago, put in the new furnace in September… oh and just bought a new stove!! Because the control panel in the stove we bought 7 years ago quit working and would cost $400 to fix, which was about what a new equivalent stove costs. At least we’ll have some appealing new stuff when we do put this house on the market.

And of course I’ve gone on and on as I always do when I wait months between entries. Maybe I can actually catch up on reading everyone else....