My first week in Brownwood

My first week back in Brownwood was hectic of course from trying to keep work flowing, school flowing, setting up the new house and of course it was Karen's birthday weekend!

Even with all the added stresses of a move, work, and school all things just seem to bother me less. I am so glad to be back home where my family and friends are. I have already reconnected with 2 "old" friends and that has been one of the best parts.

I spent the first weekend back home at Karen's with her and Johnny and my niece Railey, just playing! Railey and I wondered down the road and in the pastures so she could pick a bucket of wildflowers for Granny!

The only thing that did not go so smoothly happened on Monday of the first week. Of course it would happen on Monday would Monday be a Monday without some sort of crisis?  I received a phone call from my old neighbor in Stephenville.  The renter called me after signing the lease and giving me the deposit and first months rent and told me her husband had left her and that she would not be able to afford the house alone. Great! Well, the deposit of course was non refundable - thank goodness because I had canceled 5 appointments to show the house after she signed the lease and canceled the ad in the newspaper.  Of course she wanted to know why she couldn't have all her money back and she was crying on the phone. I explained to her why it wasn't refundable. I told her I would refund the 1st months rent.  We set up a time to meet.  Within a few minutes her mother called me. Her mother proceeded to yell and scream on the phone until I informed her that my agreement was not with her and I would not discuss the matter with her, especially since she was being so belligerent on the phone.  A few minutes later her father called me. I informed him of the law. Told him where he could look to read the law for himself and informed him I would not be discussing the matter any further with anyone who had not signed the legally binding contract.

The day I set up to meet the renter I went to the house first to inspect. After all she had the keys to the property and I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong before I refunded anything to her.  I walked in the house and was amazed. She had started repainting the kitchen in the house, had taken all the curtains in the house down and they were in a pile in the middle of the kitchen floor, there was some kind of powder sprinkled all over the floors (which confused me because there is no carpet in the house).   I called her immediately and asked her why she had left the house in such condition. She stated she had started to move in when her husband let her know he was leaving her. I asked her if she thought it was appropriate to ask for her deposit back after breaking the legal agreement with me, have her mother call and scream at me on the phone, then have her father call me again and leave the house in the condition she was leaving it.  She had no response. I think she got my point.  I met with her and got the keys back.

I returned home and put another ad in the paper to find another tenant.  I had about 15 calls over the next few days and I scheduled the viewings all for the following Saturday at the exact same time. about 10 of those callers showed up. It was crazy! I ended up getting a couple of applications. One checked out perfectly.  I met with them the following week to sign the lease and give them the keys.  I came home relieved.  2 days later my Stephenville neighbor called me telling me the people had come to his house that morning and gave him the keys.  They stated their mother had fallen in the kitchen on a throw rug and they decided they couldn't have her there. (Why not remove the throw rug?) Oh well. Another deposit that was mine.  Thank goodness the ad was still running.

I said a little prayer to God to send me the perfect tenant who was going take care of the house and stay there for a long period of time. About 5 minutes later my phone rang. I didn't want to answer it right at that moment so I let it go to voicemail.. I retrieved the voicemail and to my surprise it was an acquaintance that had purchased one of NaKoda and NaNook's puppies from me approximately 2 years before who I had stayed in touch with.  They were shocked to here my voicemail too! I returned her call immediately! We completed the paperwork via email and she went to the bank and deposited the funds for me. I had her pick the keys up from the neighbor as soon as the funds had cleared and she's been there for the last 2 weeks!

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. Henry Ford

My first day in my new home

Saturday morning Koda and I woke up early. It was nice. I was excited, a new day and a new house to set up! I had a tenant for the Stephenville house (a woman and her husband and their 2 boys). All was good.

I got up and got dressed because who knew what time the Direct TV people were coming. They say between 8 & 12 but we all know how that goes.  We immediately started unpacking and setting up all the tv's in the house (1 in office, 1 in living room and 1 in bedroom) to make things move along faster. I discovered that I was having issues with my internet service and I had to finish a paper for school and get it turned in that day so that meant I had to drive out to Karen's to use her  internet connection.  The Direct TV people finally showed up at about 11am (nothing like cutting it close to the deadline).  They went to work but were very chatty which was irritating to me because I just wanted them to focus on setting the service up and getting out of there. I continued to unpack things and the phone rang.  It was Karen! She asked me if I was hungry and of course I was - I realized at that point that I had not stopped to eat since Thursday evening and it was now lunch time on Saturday.  She came over with my niece Railey and a bucket of KFC. Mmmm Mmm good!  We ate and she helped me unpack a bit and we visited for a while and as the Direct TV people (now about 3pm) loaded up to leave I told her I would be at her house in a bit to work on my paper!

This was going to be Koda's first time by herself in the new house. I left the television in the living room on for her, made sure she had food and water (of course the dog has food but no human food in the house) and I told her I would be back in a couple of hours! I headed out to Karen's to work on my paper and get it turned in!  Of course since it was so late in the evening by the time I finished the paper Karen asked me to stay for dinner - of course I would. It was now about 7pm and I sure did not want to run to the store before going home for the night!  It was time to leave and I realized: I don't have to drive an hour now to get home! It's like 5 minutes away!

The second night at the new house was much better! I spent a couple of more hours unpacking the kitchen. One room down! Yippie! The kitchen was now completely unpacked and organized and I now I could work on another room but that was going to have to wait until Sunday. I was tired and the bathtub was calling my name again!

Taking a Breathe

I know that I have been away for awhile and I appreciate all my readers being patient while I was away. Let me catch you up on all my latest happenings!

Last month I successfully closed on another house! (I posted pictures in a previous post) I moved back home to Brownwood to be closer to the woman I call mom - Karen. She has been fighting cancer since September. She completed her chemo treatments last month about the same time I was closing on and moving into my new house. Spring was here the weather was beautiful and I was going to be close to Karen, as well as, my sister, niece and various old friends I had not seen in years.

I accepted my bio dad's offer to help move me. We discussed it and decided to do the move early on a Saturday morning. However, about 5 days prior to the move date I received a call from his wife. She kept asking me questions about going ahead and starting the move on Thursday or Friday morning. I told her, "Debbie, I won't even have access to the house until Friday morning after the 10am closing appointment." She said, "oh I know but maybe you could borrow more than one trailer from someone and leave a load setting somewhere until you have the keys." What? That makes no sense to me. Why would I want to leave all of my belongings loaded on some trailer somewhere in Brownwood just to start moving a couple of days early? I told her no that wasn't an option especially since it was supposed to be raining all that week that the earliest I could start moving things would be Friday afternoon. She said ok, your dad will follow you to Stephenville to get a load on Friday instead of Saturday then. Hmmm weird. Why was she in such a rush? She made me feel like he really didn't want to help me. If that was the case I was going to be pissed off. This man had neglected and abandoned me my entire life. I had stayed away from him for years because I was sick of the feeling of neglect. After all these years I decided to give him one more try and if he backed out on me the one time he was supposed to help me (keep in mind - he volunteered, I did not ask) I would never speak to him again.

Well needless to say Friday rolled around. I had spent the previous day loading the trailer I borrowed from Karen. I was heading off to sign the closing papers on the new house and unload the first load. My friend Amber met me at the new house and we (including her 4 year old son Pierce) unloaded the first load! Whew! I was already getting tired. Now I needed to run to Debbie's store and meet Dad to head back to Stephenville. I arrived and guess what..........they were not there. They were out running errands together and now it was starting to rain. Ugh! I told him I would be there around noon. It was now 12:30pm. What was he doing. This was his idea! Ugh! I called him on his cell. They would be back in a minute. I told him hurry, it was raining and we needed to hurry. Finally around 1:15pm or so they showed up. Debbie was gonna go with us....why? She wasn't going to be able to help. She couldn't stand for more than 5 seconds at a time....blah blah blah......whatever let's get on the road.

They followed me up to Stephenville. Where we proceeded to load everything left at the house. We parked along the property on the side street in order to load both trailers at the same time. Psycho neighbor ( I have talked about him previously) comes driving down the road and then just sits there like they can't get by. We specifically parked so that people could drive by. We waved them to go on and continued to load the trailers. Not surprisingly, a police car pulls up. You have to be kidding me I tell the officer as he gets out of his car. He says have ya'll been blocking traffic? I say no! We have been parked liked this for the past hour and everyone has been able to drive thru. I tell him not to worry, I was loading the last bit of my belongings and would be out of that town for good! (I didn't want him to tell psycho neighbor I still owned the house and harass the new tenant). The officer leaves laughing.

We finish loading which I will admit it was a great help to have my dad there but I wish he could make a decision without having to be led around by his nose. Every time he picked something up he would ask me, "what trailer do you want this in?", "What do you want me to load next?", "what else goes?" I swear I said flatbed trailer, covered trailer, and everything goes more times in 2 hours than I had ever said in my life!

Finally, we were headed back on the road to Brownwood


So who was calling me? You might be wondering. My dad. He was calling to tell me that he and Debbie were calling her son to have him bring the 4 boys they had custody of (that's a long story for another day) to meet us at my new house (Great) to help unload the trailers in the rain. Ok, fine whatever. I was so exhausted at this point I just wanted his trailer unloaded so I could be alone at my new house. It was about 8pm by this time. It had been more than a long day. We arrived at the house and of course the first thing out of dad's mouth was, what do you want to do now? "Unload the trailers" is all I said. I opened the house and put Koda inside. Thank God for her or I might have lost my mind. We began carrying things in. Everything was labeled to make unloading easier. Debbie sat in a chair in the front yard pointing and ordering the 4 boys around (which drove me crazy because she was more in the way than anything). The boys would unload from the trailer bring to the door where I would take it and put in what room it was supposed to be in. Then dad and Beau would carry the furniture in putting in down in places where it was in the way, but at this point I didn't care. The 4 boys were rowdy and dad was being his obnoxious self making racial comments towards the 4 boys, and making comments to make them be afraid of Koda. I finally ended up shouting at dad, "Stop talking to the boys like that and stop trying to make them be afraid of Koda. It abusive to the boys to call them the names you are calling them and I won't have it and if you make them afraid of Koda she will sense it and then there might be an accident! Just STOP IT RIGHT NOW!"

Quickly, the rest of the trailers were unloaded and then it came out. The reason they wanted to move me all in one day. They had plans to go camping at the lake. Now, someone tell me why in the hell would you volunteer to do something and then make plans to do something else that same weekend? Whatever! Then dad said well what do you want to do now? I said, "Thank you for helping, but ya'll have to leave now and Koda and I are gonna bathe (I had had the plumber at the new house fixing a busted pipe in the bathroom while I was in Stephenville loading stuff) and then we are going to try and unpack some stuff and relax tonight. It was about 10pm by now.

Koda and I both took a nice hot bath (not together of course - that would be weird) and then I unpacked enough things to be able to lay down and read and relax for the night. Saturday was going to be a busy day because Direct Tv was coming to hook up service, I needed to unpack more so that Monday I could at least have all my work/class stuff to be able to function until the house was unpacked at set up and I still needed to get to the grocery store because I had nothing in the house to eat or drink.