A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

As much as I hate the changing of the weather to nice and warm to cold and, eventually, snowy, there’s no denying that fall in the mountains is beautiful. I need to get out and enjoy it while I can, before the leaves all fall off. They’re at their peak right about now, I think.

There is something about the crisp fall air and the bright colors that clears the mind and calms the spirit. I’ve got to quit hating on fall and start savoring the beauty that precedes the dreaded season that starts with W. That’s not to say if someone offered to pay for one of those fancy Outer Banks rentals for me I wouldn’t jump at it, but there’s plenty to enjoy right in my own backyard right now.

I’m going to try to get out and take some fall photos today or tomorrow, before we get the rain we’re supposed to be getting later this week. If I do, I’ll be sure to share them.

Our second-closest neighbor is a real piece of work. He’s the only neighbor we’ve talked to at length since we moved here. Hubby and I were out loading up some stuff to haul off one morning back when we first moved in, and he was walking down the road and stopped to chat. And boy, could he chat.

I believe he said he was around 70 years old, and from the way he talked, he seems rather contrary. But we were amicable, because we had no reason not to be. He hasn’t stopped to talk since then, and only waved while walking by every now and then.

Well, we didn’t see him walking for a while, which wasn’t all that surprising considering that he doesn’t get out at the same time every morning. Then we saw a “For Sale” sign at the end of his driveway last week. We haven’t seen any vehicles there since, so we’re wondering just what the deal is.

I thought maybe he had already moved out, but I haven’t seen any moving trucks coming or going. Then I thought maybe he had passed on, but I haven’t seen any funeral signs, either. I suppose he could have ended up in a nursing home, but he seemed to have his wits about him and had no trouble whatsoever getting around. Hmm.

I’m not really all that concerned about it, just curious is all. After all, by his own account, he hadn’t lived there much longer than we have lived in our new place. And this isn’t a very good time to be selling a house. Oh well. It’s his business, and none of ours.

We had some company over the weekend. A young friend of mine and Hubby’s came over, and he brought some of his friends with him. One of them was a guy who lived across the road from us at our old place.

He mentioned that our former landlords’ son, the one who we were kicked out so he could move his trailer in there, said that someone had broken into his place. I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure, but I call B.S.

Why, you ask? For one thing, I know these people’s track record. The landlady (and I use the term “lady” loosely here) said that the reason she was asking us to move was because they needed their son up there to help them out. Said that her husband was in poor health, and he needed someone to look after him and do the outdoor work. To hear her tell it, he should have been in a bed 24/7 wearing adult diapers. Yet I am all the time seeing him out driving around by himself. Fancy that.

Also, in the two and a half years that we lived there, no one ever bothered us except them. Their punk grandson set off my truck alarm once, and they were constantly trying to cause trouble. But other than the crap we had to put up with from them, we had no problems.

If someone did break in there, I’m betting it was the guy’s brother. He is in and out of jail all the time. And if someone didn’t, they’re probably just saying that in an attempt to get someone they are angry with in trouble. Maybe things went sour with their other renters? Who knows. And I know I shouldn’t care. But I must admit I’m still bitter about everything that went down. I don’t let them know it, though. Any time I talk to anyone who I think might talk to them, I keep my chin up and try to look and act like the happiest darn person in the world. That’s the best way to get under their skin.

I was out running some errands this morning and saw our former landlord driving down the road. I see him pretty often, and almost every time he’s by himself. Strange for someone who’s supposedly in such bad health that he had to make us move so his son could put in a trailer where ours was…

In case I haven’t mentioned it, it is in fact his son who moved in there. But the BS about his health was a total lie. Obviously his son’s girlfriend either didn’t want to pay lot rent where she was any more or they couldn’t afford it. He always said he would never move back in up there, but you can’t believe a word that comes out of anyone in that family’s mouth. If they told me the sky was blue and the grass was green, I’d have to look and make sure they hadn’t changed colors.

One reason I say that is because his son is not helping mow the bank between their places, as they said was one of the main reasons they wanted him to move in there. He is paying someone else to do it. Hubby used to help free of charge, but it got to the point where he was doing it by himself rather than helping with it. That went on for a while, until the landlords started acting hateful toward us. That, and for a while Hubby was really in too poor of health to do it.

As you may have noticed, I’m still rather bitter over the whole thing. I talked to the old man during the transition from there to our new house, and he acted like he had done us a favor or something. Said we would be happier in a house than we were in that trailer. I quickly told him that we were perfectly content in our trailer, which we were. It was just the land it was sitting on and the idiots surrounding us that were driving us nuts, but I somehow found the tact to leave that part out. I did go on and on about how peaceful it is at our new place, though.

It’s true that I am much happier here. I can walk out the front door without being stared down or hearing a bunch of squawking from their screwed up family. If you’ve never had to deal with that, you have no idea what wonders it has done for my stress levels. Sure, we have been seriously scraping to come up with the house payments. But we’re managing, and things should be getting much better on that front.

If I never speak to those people again, or see them for that matter, it will be too soon.

Last night Hubby, Pumpkin and I camped out for the first time this year. We weren’t exactly roughing it- we set our tent up in his grandpa’s yard. Some of his family was up and they were sleeping in the house, so we had a cookout and set up camp.

We had a good time, but unfortunately we didn’t sleep worth a hoot. There was a street light pretty close to where we set up our tent, so it was rather bright in there. There might as well have been digital signage covering the inside walls. Add to that the in-laws’ dogs barking their heads off all night, and it wasn’t a very favorable environment for sleeping. Pumpkin slept fairly well until about 4:00 this morning, I got an hour of sleep, and Hubby got none.

We finally got up a little after 5:00. Hubby’s aunt and grandpa were up, so we went in and talked to them for a little while and came home to get some sleep. I figured I would conk out and not wake up until about noon, but surprisingly I didn’t sleep well. I might have gotten three or four hours in, broken up into increments of one to two hours. But Hubby and Pumpkin slept like babies.

We went back over there for a while to visit, then packed up and came home. And every since then, it’s been a lazy summer day. It was fun and all, but I’m glad to be back home.

Here’s the last of my posts about the places I’ve called home over the years. If you’ve missed any of the previous ones and would like to read them, here’s the list:

• I Must Be Crazy
• The Early Years
• My Bachelorette Pad
• Into the Mountains
• Living With the Parents the Second Time Around
• Movin’ on Up… Sort of
• Another Dump
• A Home of Our Own… Sorta

Once we found out we could no longer keep our mobile home on the rented lot we had, we started looking at our options. I put it in the paper right away, but I also put an ad in there looking for lots for rent. We didn’t have the money to have it moved, but we were just sort of hoping for a miracle.

The miracle of being able to move it didn’t happen, but another one did. We found a fixer-upper house for sale, and to make a really long story short, we got it. And now we’re calling it home.

There’s plenty to find fault with here, for sure. It could stand to be completely replumbed, the floors in some rooms need to be redone, the dishwasher that I was so glad to see turned out to be broken, and we will need to put in another heat source before winter rolls back around. Oh yeah, and did I mention that we have a slight snake problem? (Hubby fixed the place where that one got in, so I hope we won’t see any more!) And yet I’m still quite happy here.

My favorite thing about this place is that it’s so peaceful. I don’t mind having neighbors somewhat close by if they’re good ones, but living as close as we did to our landlady at the old place was hellish. When she wasn’t being hateful to us, she was staring as we walked from the driveway to the house, and when she couldn’t find anything to do to try and get under our skin, she was bickering very loudly with her family. Compared to that, having not another house in sight is pure bliss.

There is still some of our stuff that I need to find a permanent place for, especially in my office. But this place is already feeling very much like home. I hope there comes a time when we will be doing well enough that we can sell this place and buy a newer and larger one, but I think I’ll be content where I’m at until that time comes.

Here’s the next (and next to last) in my series about the places I’ve called home throughout the years. It’s kind of bittersweet, so again, bear with me.

Hubby and I had been wanting a place of our own every since we got married. We had saved up a little money, and I picked up the local trading post publication just to see what I could find. It was something that I didn’t do often, but I just took a notion to look one day. I saw a listing for a used mobile home, as well as one for a private lot for rent. I took it as a sign and called about both.

Hubby and I looked at the mobile home first, and it was in pretty good shape. It was an older model, but it had been well taken care of. So we went to look at the lot. We talked to the man who owned it, and he seemed pretty reasonable. It was a little close to his house and another that he was renting, but I liked it. It symbolized freedom from having to deal with landlords who didn’t want to fix anything (except that we would have to depend on them to keep the water and septic up). I talked Hubby into going for it. If I hadn’t, we never would have gotten the mobile home, because the only other lots we could find were in trailer parks. And Hubby refuses to live anywhere that he would be that close to the neighbors.

We ended up having to fight for both home and land, but eventually it all came together. But no sooner than they pulled the trailer onto the lot, the landlady’s evil side began to show. Her husband had told us that we could use a bunch of cinderblocks that were piled up on the lot, and when Hubby mentioned using it, she started cussing up a storm. But it was too late to back out by then.

We got along with them for about a year, at the expense of their other renters. When we first moved in they kept telling us how great the landlords were, but they quit getting along shortly thereafter. But things were pretty good for us, until a few months after the other renters moved out.

The landlady was hateful to the new renters from the get-go, but still got along with us. Until, that is, we started hanging out with those new renters. It was like she only rented those places out so she could have her own personal war going on between the inhabitants. She started being a little nicer to them, and was downright nasty to us. I guess she thought that would cause a rift between us, but much to her dismay, it didn’t. So she resumed hatefulness toward them as well.

They moved, some other people moved in, and it all started over (with us still the bad guys). We just kept to ourselves as much as possible, and ignored them (which further infuriated her). She finally told us that we would have to move our mobile home.

We were devastated. We were going through a very rough time financially, and we knew there was no way we could move it. And even though it wasn’t much, it was the first place that had truly belonged to us (even though the ground beneath it didn’t). We had been trying to save up enough money to buy some land to put it on, and that might have happened if we had had more time after Hubby went back to work. But we were broke. So with heavy hearts, we put it in the “For Sale” section of the paper and started looking for a place to rent.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to rent again. We found a place to buy. If you’re a regular reader you already know about that, but I’ll discuss what makes it home tomorrow.

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.

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.