A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

Okay, I’m picking up where I left off in my home posts. The last one had me living with my in-laws (which was more fun than a barrel of monkeys… NOT!). Once Hubby found a new job, though, a new place followed soon after.

Had I had many options, this place certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice. But it was there, and it wasn’t my in-laws’ house, so we jumped on it. It was yet another mobile home, not in as good of shape as the one we had left, but better than our first.

We had to clean it up before we moved in, but the landlords knocked off some on the rent for that. I noticed that it was drafty, but I overlooked it. Then winter set in, and it really started to suck.

It had an oil furnace which seemed to work fine, yet the heat only came out decently in the master bedroom and bathroom. Pumpkin’s room, the living room and the other bathroom stayed ice cold. The kitchen was tolerable. We told the landlords about it, but they kept putting us off and saying there was nothing wrong with it. We made it through that winter with kerosene and electric heaters, and with Pumpkin sleeping with us.

Summer came, and we gave up on getting the heat fixed, hoping we would get moved by the next winter. We didn’t, and so the whole runaround started again. The landlord finally sent some people who hadn’t a clue what they were doing to look at the furnace, and they said it was fine (which it was- it was the ductwork that needed help). We kept after him, and he finally said someone else was coming. But we couldn’t be there that day, so the landlord had to come let him in. Of course he maintained that everything was fine, even though you could see your breath in Pumpkin’s room.

I ended up getting a good job, and we saved up and bought our own mobile home. I was so glad to get out of there. But as I’ll discuss further in my next home post, it was kind of like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

I’m still busting butt trying to get my articles done. So there will be no home theme post today. Lucky for me, writing posts that have to do with the NaBloPoMo theme is not a requirement for participation. I didn’t even have to write this since I’ve already done one post today, but I thought I would explain for those of you eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Back to work now… I’ll pick up where I left off tomorrow.

I have been holed up in my office all weekend. I’ve got to get caught up on my articles. I know I’m not going to get it done by blogging, but I just had to get away from them for a minute. If I don’t, I’ll drive myself crazy.

I spent way too much time on some articles about products I had to do yesterday, but it really couldn’t be helped. Some of them were easy, such as a couple of Amazon books with good descriptions and lots of reviews. But others were extremely hard to find information on, and besides that, were not things that I had much knowledge about in the first place. I did the best I could with them, and I hope that’s good enough.

Today I’ve got twenty-some-odd articles I need to get done. I’ve done that many in a day before, but I’m having a tough time with these. They’re not about subjects I can write about off the top of my head, so I’m having to do a lot of research. And for some of them, there’s just not much information to be found. So it looks like I’m going to have another rough day.

Here’s another in my series of posts about the various places I’ve called home. If you want to read the previous ones, go back a couple of posts from this one for a complete list. I’m too hot, tired and cranky right now to add links to this one.

Hubby, Pumpkin and I made our first move as a family when Pumpkin was about 6 months old. We left the dump we were living in and moved into a place on the other side of the county. It was another mobile home, and it wasn’t any larger, but it was much nicer.

It had a nice, big front porch, and not much of a yard. But that didn’t matter much, because Pumpkin wasn’t big enough to need a lot of space to play in. We did have to buy a lawnmower, but Hubby found a good deal on a used one that we could afford.

The place was in a nice, peaceful location. There was only one neighbor within shouting distance. I loved it out there- for a while. Then a few things happened.

The first thing that turned me off to the place was the night that Hubby’s Blazer mysteriously rolled off the hill and landed on its side in the road. It was a very windy night, and I didn’t even hear it. But Hubby said he heard something, and when he went to check it out, his Blazer was on its side. He didn’t even know it was his at first, but when he looked out the door, two cars that were sitting in the road ahead of it turned around and took off. Thinking it was a hit and run, he went out to investigate and found that it was his vehicle.

The cops tried to blame it on the wind, but we knew better. We later found out that it was a guy who lived about a quarter of a mile from us, although we couldn’t prove it because no one would admit to it. Long story, but his sister-in-law let something slip and then denied it.

Then, in the summer, we discovered that we had termites. I told the landlord, and he didn’t take me seriously. But we eventually ended up having to move anyway. Hubby lost his job and we couldn’t pay the rent. We moved in with his parents for a month or so, but I’m not even going to bother writing about that. We were miserable, and I never considered it home.

So next time I’ll be discussing the next place we lived. It was a real doozy.

Pumpkin and I had a scary experience today. She was in the bathroom, getting ready to go with me to meet Hubby, and I was in my office working. I heard her come out of the bathroom, and she yelled, “Mommy, I keep hearing something in here.” So I went to see what she was talking about, and she said she heard noises coming from a little closet across from the bathroom. Not really a closet per se, but a small area that houses the chimney, the furnace, and a couple of shelves. I opened it, expecting to see a mouse scurry away. If only.

On the shelf was a long, black object that was kind of curled up and had a bag on top of it. The bag moved, and I slammed the door. I proceeded to round up Pumpkin, grab the phone, and head out the front door.

I called Hubby and told him that I wasn’t 100% sure, but I believed that there was a snake in the house. I told him the details, and he said, “Are you sure it was a snake?” I told him that I couldn’t guarantee it, but I wasn’t going to go back in to look. I guess he expected me to go open the door back up and take a good close look, smell it to see if it smelled like a snake, and maybe ask the possible snake if it knew where one could buy some cheap Phentermine. Um, no. Not gonna happen. I’m not phobic about snakes or anything, but I don’t like to get up close and personal with them.

He said he would come on home and check it out. Pumpkin and I waited on the porch. When he got here, he went in armed with Pumpkin’s t-ball bat.

We followed him in, and he opened the door and quickly closed it back. He told me to bring him his shovel, and stay outside with Pumpkin. Not a good sign.

When we went back in, there was a HUGE dead snake on the floor. He said it jumped out of the closet at him. Holy cow!

After some investigation, he found several possible points where they could be entering from the attic. So tomorrow he is going to try to patch everything up so they can’t get in. It’s pretty much impossible to get into the attic, so we can’t go up there and catch however many more there may be or run them out. I guess the best thing we can do is make sure they can’t get in the main part of the house.

Now, I’m well aware that non-poisonous snakes are not such a bad thing. But Hubby says that one was in fact poisonous. And at any rate, if one comes in my house, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later, so to speak. If they’re outside and not threatening me or anyone else, I’ll let them be.

If anyone has any tips for keeping snakes away from a dwelling, I would love to hear them in the comments. I’m hoping that we won’t have any more problems with them, but when there’s one around, there’s a good chance that there are more.

Day 6 of my NaBloPoMo home posts, and still going strong! Yeah, I know I’ve got 24 more days to go, but hey, it’s a start.

For those of you who haven’t been reading regularly, I’m writing about the various places I’ve called home over the years to start out (and in effect writing a highly condensed version of my life story in the process). Here are the previous posts in chronological order if you care to catch up:

• I Must Be Crazy
• The Early Years
• My Bachelorette Pad
• Into the Mountains
• Living With the Parents the Second Time Around

So now I’m at the point where my life completely changed. I was living with my parents again, and was trying to pick up the pieces of my life and make a fresh start. I befriended a guy who lived in the town where I was working, and started spending a whole lot of time with him. Eventually we kissed, and before I knew it we were moving in together, getting married, and expecting a little one. All of this actually took place over the course of about a year, but it seemed much shorter than that. At any rate, that guy turned out to be Hubby.

Going back to the home theme, our first place was a real dump. It was a tiny trailer at the top of a steep hill, with lots of very strange neighbors. We lived right next to our landladies, and they kept their goats in our yard. (At least we didn’t have to buy a lawnmower, because we certainly couldn’t afford it then.) You could look out the window across the fence and see huge rats running back and forth from a barn to a pond. Yuck.

As cruddy as that place was, I was happy to be there. I can’t say that the year we lived there was a bed of roses, but there was lots of love in that little place. Pumpkin arrived, and things were that much sweeter.

We eventually found a place without critters included that we could afford, and we moved. But that’s a story for another post.

I’m going to be cutting it really close this time, but so far I’ve managed to post every day this time around in NaBloPoMo. Yay me!

So I left off in the saga of the various homes I’ve had where I was moving back in with my parents. I would have preferred to bite copper nails in two, but that’s the one place I’ve always been welcome, no matter how at odds we were. Seeing how I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I bit the bullet and went back.

Things were a little better that time. Mom quit waiting up on me or insisting that I wake her up when I came in, something that drove me nuts when I was there before. I didn’t mind it when I was in high school, but I was in my twenties when I moved out the first time. Come on.

They did want to know if I wasn’t coming home at all, but at least they didn’t raise cane and demand to know where I was so they could come get me (like they had frequently done before). So while things were less than ideal, it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be.

My job was in the area where I now live, about an hour and a half from the parents. The pay was horrible, but I was gaining some management experience and decided to keep it until I found something else. But I ended up meeting a sweet young man, and started spending much of my time on this side of the state line. I wasn’t even remotely looking for a relationship, but we clicked and became good friends. I started spending a few nights a week with a mutual friend of ours (whom he was also staying with) to save gas and give me somewhere to hang out that I could stay out of trouble.

That eventually led to me moving yet again, and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Here is another post for the NaBloPoMo home theme. This one’s a little difficult to write about for a few reasons, so bear with me.

In my last “home” post, I wrote about the only place I’ve ever lived by myself. I moved out from my parents’ house to there, because I was partying and coming home late and they weren’t happy about it. Right around the time things started getting unbearable between us, I started seeing an older man who I had met a few months prior. He asked me to move in with him, but I opted for my own place.

Things were rocky for us from the start, but I continued to see him intermittently the whole time I had my apartment. Then one month I didn’t have the money to pay the rent, and I finally relented and moved in with him.

His place was in a tiny town in the mountains, about 45 minutes from actual civilization. It was beautiful country, but it seemed like everyone there was crazy. Must have been something in the water.

I lived up there full-time for about 3 or 4 months, until we finally pushed one another to the limit and couldn’t take it any more. By then I was working a low-paying part-time job, and I couldn’t afford another place of my own. As much as I hated to, I packed up and moved back in with my parents.

In hindsight, that place wasn’t really a home to me at all. I lay my head there every night for a while, but that’s not what makes a home. It’s feeling welcome, being with people you care about (and who care about you), and having some amount of peace inside those walls. I had 2 out of 3 of those things when I lived alone, which wasn’t bad. But when you have none of those things, it’s no way to live.

That’s it for this installment. Next up: Living With the Parents the Second Time Around.

I tried to get into the CPanel of my hosting account earlier, only to be greeted with a Page Not Found message. I tried again and got the same thing. So I decided to check on my blog and make sure it was okay.

I typed in the domain name, and a page bearing my template came up after a longer-than-usual wait. But what it said where my post should have been chilled me to the bone: “Sorry, but you’re looking for something that is not here.”

I proceeded to freak out. Had my all of my blogs and my website been wiped out by some mysterious, unknown force? I checked my web host’s forums, and that only freaked me out even further. There had been a fire at one of their data centers. Noooo!!!

As it turns out, the fire only affected dedicated hosting customers. My problem was just a hiccup, my sites are operational, and my blog didn’t get eaten by the Web Monster. Whew.

Still, I’m planning on doing some backups. That was scary.

The second place I called home was my only bachelorette pad. It wasn’t much, but I’ll never forget it.

I lived with my parents until I was 21. I had planned on getting my Bachelor’s degree, but by the time I earned my Associate’s I was more interested in partying than school. That, and I really didn’t see the point. I wanted to own my own business one day, and I didn’t feel that I needed a four-year degree to do it.

Anyway, once I got out of school, I just kind of floated through life for a while. I worked full-time, but I also partied full-time. My parents didn’t like that, and once I got a job that paid substantially more than minimum wage, I found myself an efficiency apartment and moved out.

The apartment was in the heart of the nearest small city, where I was working, and which was about 45 minutes away from the parents. Actually, the apartment had at one time been a hotel room. It was tiny, but I had room for all of my earthly possessions. And most importantly of all, I had freedom.

I didn’t stay there much. There were times when I was there during the week and gone for the weekend, but other times I would stay gone for weeks at a time. I rarely had anyone over due to lack of space. But I did hang out with the landlords on occasion. They would send me out to get drinks after work in exchange for sharing with me.

I kept that place for about a year. By that time I was practically living somewhere else anyway. More on that tomorrow.