Nane’s really been into the pics I’ve been posting of the house and even the rats too, LOL.

I didn’t do as much journaling yesterday and still haven’t caught up on my reading, but I’m determined to make myself take it easier today, even though there are still some things piled in the living room. I hate looking at piles of clutter but we’re about 95% moved in now. We’ve basically gone from dealing with what’s critical to fine-tuning. Over the years we’ll slowly get this place how we want it to be. We could do it all right now but don’t want to drain the savings.

We have plenty of things planned for the weekend, like spraying outdoors. The webs and spiders around here are a bit much, especially at this time of year. They’re all over the bushes and railings.

I took some pictures around the outside of the house but didn’t get to the pink flowers by next door's place yet on the left side of the house due to all the creepy webs. Tom still hasn’t had time to spray and I hate the way the damn things stick to me. There are azaleas in front and roses in back (American Beauty?) but I don’t know what the lovely pink flowers on the left are. Love how I can see them from the kitchen window.

Someone was doing loud yard work yesterday morning at the end of the side street but I could barely hear it in here.

Tammy left a message saying she was happy for us, we deserve this, she’s sent a housewarming present, and she and Mark are looking forward to chatting. Me too, and from a phone that doesn’t break up.

Ok, here’s a little more about what they left. They left a hideous old, ugly lamp in the bedroom, but since it’s got a short in it, It’s not Goodwillable. We’ll just dump it.

They also left a semi-hideous wall clock but that was because its hands would get hung up on each other. There were a couple of other wall hangings. I kept the one of cherries. Once the place is fully set up I’ll take more pics, then again after the walls are done, and again once the new carpet is laid down. If you’re not a Facebook friend, you won’t see most of these pics.

They must’ve really been into Halloween because they had Halloween napkins (plus some Christmas ones) and a heavy Jack-o-lantern that will go to Goodwill. The napkins we’ll keep, though, since they hadn’t been taken out of their packages and look decent enough.

They also left an assortment of kitchen and bath towels, a few of which I’ve kept. Two of the kitchen towels are button towels that you secure around cabinet handles. Love those things! There were some mugs, glasses, pots, pans, silverware and Tupperware, some of which I kept.

She had a couple of small rotating trays under the sink which is handy for keeping cleaning supplies visible and easy to reach, but the best thing she left was a crockpot. Always wanted one of those even though I’m not big on cooking.

I’ll describe appliances and the ins and outs of the house in my next entry.

Later…

The swelling in my feet is going down and so is my weight. Last night I dreamed I got into a bathtub but forgot to undress first cuz I was so tired. When I looked down at myself and noticed I still had my clothes on, I saw that I was thin. A future dream premonition? Well, 1 dream and 4 pounds aren’t enough to tell me anything yet.

Gene and Audrey were already 75 years old when they moved in here, but since they made it to 90, they were able to stay a while. The house’s 30th birthday was July 8th.

They left books as well as manuals for all the appliances. Decided not to bother Goodwilling the books for now and to just throw them on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. They’re big heavy hardcovers and I didn’t feel like boxing them all up. I’ve got enough to do. I also thought that shelf would look better with something on it than nothing at all, and that’s something I don’t care if the rats come in contact with. Some of the books are old and date back to 1910, but I doubt I could get much money for them. Maybe in 500 years, but not now. It seems nothing has much value these days but gold.

They left some little things too, I forgot to say, like pens, clips, magnets, and even some body butter that smells nice.

I love running up and down the long hall, which happened to be a great spot for my plug-in air freshener. I love the whole house! There are a few imperfections, of course, as with any house. The only thing I might change is I might make the living room and master bath/bed a little smaller, and I’d prefer to enter the second bath from the hallway. I never liked having to go through other rooms to get to bathrooms unless it was off a master bedroom. You have to either go through the second bedroom or the laundry room to get to the second bath.

Going room by room, the living room is like a massive canyon. This is the room I’m now working on, setting up the collectibles and other knickknacks. I still have to do the laundry room, too. I think I’m going to stick with drapes rather than go back to blinds. I don’t want to have to remove and dump those super long drapery rods, and I like how the inner drapes still let light in. What I don’t like is how little privacy I feel I have when the inner drapes are open, but the sheer inner ones sure let in a lot of sunlight. We just may get new drapes in a different color on motorized tracks.

I love the kitchen overall but don’t like how the light switches are scattered. I wish they were all by the entryway as opposed to by the stove and at the sides of the sink. The oven’s taking some getting used to but works well. The dishwasher’s soap door doesn’t spring open and why they neglected to tell us this, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the “pops” we’ve been using and they block the door from springing open. They shouldn’t, though. That’s what they were made for. I’ll test it with some liquid soap later. Either way, the dishwasher is on our list of things to replace.

The refrigerator was the only thing that was clean when we got here because it is new. It’s huge and has all glass shelves, see-through drawers, and even humidity control.

We first thought the AC came out of the ceiling and the heat out of the floor, but we think the floor vents are actually the return. We can feel the air being sucked through it when the AC is running, and there are no slats to adjust the airflow either. Love the digital thermostat. The fact that the AC cycles on and off during the hottest part of the day, unlike the cooler at the trailer that would run steadily for hours, shows how well insulated and how much thicker these walls are.

The drapes in the master bathroom will definitely be replaced with blackout drapes in a solid color so comforters won’t clash with them.

The back wall of the master bathroom is white. I don’t know why that one wall doesn’t have the design on it the rest of the walls in there have but other than smoothing out any walls they simply painted to white-out the brown paneling, I’m going to leave the wall designs as they are in the kitchen and the baths. I’ll be sure to take pics of the original carpet, flooring and walls at some point so others can see how much they’ll change.

I love that the tub and showers have all plastic surrounds and no tile and grout to have to deal with that’s a bitch to clean and a magnet for mildew.

Got a few runaway doors, but nothing like we had in the trailer even though the trailer only had two inner doors. One of the bedrooms stays open only part way and the laundry room door swings shut.

Later…

Since I have no use for my tea candles now that I don’t burn scented oil anymore, which gives off some smoke, I scattered a bunch of them throughout the place and cut the lights. They look cool and give off just enough light to walk around in here, but I need the regular light for cooking and things like that.

Still quiet here save for a 1-hour “blow job” from the guy next door who went around his place with a blower just before 9:00. What could possibly take an hour to blow over there? It was green waste day, so that’s probably why he blew his place at that time. Regardless, I figured landscaping sounds would be regular enough here. You can’t keep a neighborhood looking this good just by wishing, thinking or praying about it.

The overall quietness of the place proves Andy and I were right and Tom was wrong, LOL. I had asked Tom if he thought there really was a neighbor noise curse on us for so damn long (as I suspected) or if there were just that many “extremes” out there. He said he thought there were that many extremes. Oh, I know there are a lot of loud, rude, obnoxious and inconsiderate people out there, so don’t get me wrong. But the peacefulness around here goes to show that people really can be civilized if they only wanted to and if they only cared enough to. I still think we got one extreme after another that was no coincidence. What are the odds of ending up next to a mother and daughter residing in the neighboring duplex right outside your bedroom wall that goes back and forth and back and forth at all hours of the day and night between the two sides? What are the odds of hearing your landlord nearly every single day that’s hundreds of feet away? What are the odds of getting the welfare bums AND the large Mormon family with a million screaming kids AND the college animals? How about the nut with the barking dog that promised to be quiet, then blasted her TV and left her dog outside alone all day? A few bad neighbors are to be expected in life, but one after another?

What I love about next door is that they have an attached garage. This really muffles any car/house doors. Also, the only window of theirs on this side is a round frosted window that’s probably a bathroom. So this gives us a little bit more privacy. If they’ve been having company, they’ve been parking in the street and going to their front door on the other side of their house.

Tom’s got to work today, but hopefully we’ll make it to the pool tomorrow after we do our shopping for groceries and more things for the house. We plan to replace the bathroom faucets and pick up a few more things. We replaced the master bath’s broken flap and all that, but I don’t like the push-button handle. You have to really push it hard and that can be tough with long nails, so we’re going to swap it with the other toilet so we can have a traditional push-down handle in there since I use that toilet most.