indecision

We've officially re-started our house hunt and went to see a cheap little house on 12 acres near the village of Oxford - blueberry capital of Nova Scotia!


The place was cluttered with junk, knick-knacks, garbage, and other refuse. This is the second place we've seen that has exposed sub-floor on the second floor. Wood paneling adorned many a wall, and the master bedroom boasted pink paint with a flowered wallpaper border. That's all easily fixed though - the real problems are the leaking roof and the 60-amp power.


I am torn. We knew that since the place was cheap it wouldn't be perfect. We are deliberately looking at cheap places, as a matter of fact. But is it good enough? We love the fact that it's 12 acres and borders on a beautiful river in a serene farming community. But the point is to buy a place we can re-sell again, and this place is nowhere near any sizable towns.


There's lots and lots to fix up, but once we sink money into fixing it, will we ever be able to sell it in the future once we build our perfect place?

...

or should we stick to our self-imposed rules?

Eeek!

We had a quiet drive home and then discussed the matter. And by discussing it, I really mean that we sat there silently, and every now and again one of us would say "Idunno, what do you think?" and then we'd stare at each other blankly.

We've decided that we need to look at a few more places in one of our "target" areas - the Annapolis Valley. If all goes well we'll see a few places there this weekend, in the midst of Hurricane Hannah. If we decide we do like the more isolated place on 12 acres more, we can only hope it doesn't get bought by someone else in the meantime. The agent mentioned numerous times that somebody was scheduled to look at it on Saturday but I refuse to be pressured into making a quick decision.

unattainable

As you can probably guess, we still haven't bought a house. The people who owned the last place kept stringing us along for a long time, promising to do what we asked, which was to get an occupancy permit - pretty basic stuff, folks. Despite the promises, there was little follow-through on any practical level.

Finally after we terminated the deal, they had a municipality inspector in and sent us a copy of a letter from the municipality talking about a few minor things that should be fixed. They then fixed one thing on the list and suggested that we fix the rest in order to get the permit, because they were too busy.

Problem is, the letter from the municipality had NOTHING TO DO with getting an occupancy permit. Slimy little weasels. We said no. They fixed most of the things on the list and sent us the exact same letter again, with a handwritten note on it saying all the stuff that had been done...

... and we were supposed to pretend that was an occupancy permit? Really? No, I mean, REALLY?

So yeah, we've started our search all over again. This time we're not going to try to buy exactly what we want. We're going to buy a cheap little place that's reasonably easy to sell again, and in a few years we will buy raw land and build our own house on it, and it will be exactly what we want.

With that having been said, we've already had another adventure. We found a place about an hour from where we are now that we wanted to look at. Our real estate agent is about two and a half hours from there and suggested that we view it with the listing agent to save him five hours of driving. I'm fine with that - if we like it, our agent will come up, and we'll also have him on our side for negotiations. We've looked at places like that before.

So we call the listing agent, who turns out to be sort of a nasty person. She is obviously annoyed that we want to view the house with her in light of the fact that we have an agent, and multiple phone calls from us AND from our agent don't convince her. She tersely promises to call our agent back to discuss the matter and nobody hears from her for the rest of the day. Our agent jokes that she is too greedy to share commission with another agent.

Magically, the next morning, there is suddenly an offer on the place, and the only agent involved is the nasty listing agent! This means that she deliberately avoided showing us the place before "her" people had a chance to look and submit an offer, so that she'd be guaranteed to get the entire commission instead of potentially splitting it with our agent if we made a better offer. That is sneaky and mean and NOT in the best interest of the sellers, who would have benefited from having more than one offer on their house.

Our house hunting skills are rapidly degenerating. We are now not even capable of looking at a house, let alone buying one.

Actually having our own place has turned into a sort of fantasy for me. It's this mythical, unattainable thing and seems so very far from reality at this point in time.

Nature Pie

First things first, the neighbour girl spontaneously drew a picture of Mark this week.


Now then.

After the blueberry pickers left the field down the road earlier this week, they kindly took down their "private property" sign. We took that as an obvious invitation and scrounged up some buckets. The boy next door was over and insisted that we should pick raspberries that were growing somewhere in the woods instead. Mark liked that idea, so the boy next door set off in the lead to show us where the secret raspberries were.

It didn't work out so well. We went tromping through the woods for a few minutes, and then the kid pointed to a particularly dense clump of underbrush and said "they're there". Yeah. Everyone stood around staring at the underbrush for a minute, and then I announced that I wasn't going in there if there were no raspberries. The boy next door hesitated, then waded in, and came back a minute later empty-handed.

No raspberries!

We reverted to our original plan and took a short-cut through the woods toward the blueberry field. We found blackberries along the way, and then some poisonous-looking mystery berries, and the boys got giggly and started suggesting all sorts of woodland things to throw in the bucket. Sticks. Weeds. Deer poop.

We could make NATURE PIE!!

The blueberry pickers had missed a large section of berries along the edge of the field so it was easy pickings. I kept half an eye out for the local black bear while we filled our buckets, and I soon found myself thinking about my grandparents' house on the easternmost edge of Cape Breton Island. There was (and still is) a large wild blueberry field behind their house, and as a child I'd spent many summer days picking berries and catching frogs in that field with a neighbour child that my sister and I had nick-named "Dirty-Face". I haven't picked blueberries in years!

It's such a quintessentially Nova-Scotian thing to do - I'm glad we found some berries on our first summer back and actually got off our lazy butts to pick them.

THEN, my dad trumped us by bringing home almost 30 pounds of wild blueberries that he'd bought for an astoundingly low price from someone he works with. Only catch: They needed to be cleaned.

Ever cleaned 30 pounds of blueberries? It took HOURS. And now we have more blueberries than anyone knows what to do with. Yay for country summers!

Speaking of which, the Exhibition came to Truro. We went and it was too ridiculous for words. Mark and I and our friend Kim went to see some sort of contests that turned out to be very rodeo-ish. It mostly involved mixing hyper children with bewildered barnyard animals in as dangerous a way as possible.

At one point they placed small children on the backs of sheep and sent the sheep running around in the dirt. The kids invariably flew off in a cloud of dust and the audience went wild. There were contests of this nature for, like, FOUR HOURS. Words cannot describe it. Here are some pictures intead:





Yee haw!

a post about you!

So there's been a new trend that involves some of you people and this blog. I'm not sure if I should be disturbed by this, but when I meet up with you guys in person, I can't really finish a sentence any more without you knowing what I'm going to say.

I'll start to talk about the latest news on our house hunt, and you'll be all like "I know!" because you read it here first. Or I'll bring up a story about our road trip, and you'll be all like "I know!" cuz, well, you read it here. Some of you even elaborate on my stories, and it's strange (and kinda neat) to hear my own writing repeated back to me, sometimes by someone who I didn't even know was aware of the blog.

so....

HI THERE! Glad you guys could come.

The only drawback to this new trend is that I suspect there are a few people who would have emailed/called to catch up on things, who are not emailing/calling because they already know what we're up to. But, but, but - I don't know what YOU'RE up to!

Ah well.

Life in Truro, Nova Scotia goes on. The corn across the road is growing to impressive heights and the pickers are harvesting wild blueberries down the road. The Truro Exhibition is in full swing and earlier this week Mark went into town to behold the NEW BREED WRESTLING!! I didn't go because at the time it was pouring rain and we'd heard that the wrestling was an outdoor event. Well, it moved indoors and Mark met up with a few of our friends who were passing through town.

I guess it was a spectacle of the sort that you really don't see outside of country exhibitions. Mark and the crew re-named a few of the wrestlers - you can guess what was on "Fat Lightening's" unitard, and our friend's brother got the whole crowd to chant "Fire Pants! Fire Pants!" at one guy who - that's right - had flames on his wrestling pants. There was apparently a little girl there who was screaming obscenities at a wrestler and got him so mad that he spit on her. Also, organizers had to quiet the show down because they were "disturbing the cows". Oh yeah, and there was an announcement that those people who were throwing sawdust at other people needed to stop it.

Am I sorry I missed it? I'm really not sure.

We'll be venturing out to the Exhibition a few more times this week, and I'll keep you posted if anything else interesting happens. So that pretty much guarantees a post, doesn't it?

(... on again?)

Now that Mark works from "home", he gets to spend lunchtime like this:

... and Oliver often joins him out on the deck, along with the rest of the pack.

We've had some nice weather lately.

In other news, the house deal that we terminated MIGHT come back to life. I'm not scrambling to revive it - it's time for other people to do a bit of work. The sellers met with the municipality in order to fix their occupancy permit issue, and the municipality sent an inspector to look at the house earlier this week. If they come up with an occupancy permit and there are no catches associated with it, we've told them we'll consider reviving our offer. Would you believe me if I told you that when we first discovered this glitch, the listing agent told us that, in that county, they didn't need occupancy permits??! What a horrid woman.

If problems arise with this permit that the sellers are trying to get, they're not my problem and I'm happy to start looking for another place to buy.

One day, we'll have our own house on our own land!

One day...

(I hope it's soon.)

opposite of awesome

Well, the permit issue with the house we are trying to buy has not been resolved, and our closing date is TOMORROW. We terminated the deal - it was either do that or be prepared for the the possibility of being forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars ripping the house apart for it to be inspected, and then fixing any deficiencies found by the inspector.

WELL.

Once everyone found out we were walking away, they all sprang into action! After a month of doing nothing! The lawyers are going crazy, the sellers are meeting with everyone that can be met with, and our real estate agent is nipping at everyone's heels.

I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, the deal is over. If they can come back to us with proof that the house was built in compliance with the applicable codes and with ALL the proper permits in place, we'll consider it again, but until then I consider this to be done with. These issues are not my problem and I'm not about to make them my problem.

For now we will take a break from our house/property buying agenda and relax while others scramble to track down enough documentation to make us happy. If that doesn't happen, we'll start looking again with a whole new set of goals and criteria.

Ring of Fire

I think I've mentioned before that there are a couple of kids that live next door to my parents out here in the country. They're always hanging around over here - I guess it's more exciting than their own house, and there aren't any other kids their age nearby.


A month or two ago the eleven-year old girl shyly asked Mark for a guitar lesson. He complied, and the kid seems to actually have some natural aptitude for it. Through the wonders of the internet Mark tracked down a free guitar in "the city" and gave it to her. (For those of you who are not from Nova Scotia, "the city" means Halifax, no matter where you are in the province. People often say they are going to "the city", or their friend lives in "the city". Everyone knows what city they're talking about. After all, we've only got the one.)

Anyway, so he gave her this free guitar from the city. At first she didn't believe him, and then she was very quiet for a while and sat across the room from the guitar, staring at it. Soon it was time for her to go home, and she looked at my mom and very hesitantly asked her if she was allowed to take that guitar to her house. It was so cute!

Anyway she's been practicing hard, and she had another lesson with Mark the other day. She wanted to learn another easy song - Mark's already taught her the chords for "Louie Louie" and "horse with no name". She had never heard either song before, but she likes them. She claimed her parents didn't know those songs either, which kind of scares me.

They were at an impasse during the lesson, though. Mark tried to teach her "smoke on the water" but she thought it was a stupid song. She wants to learn a Hannah Montana song, but they're too hard. (And also stupid manufactured pop.) Mark kept suggesting songs but she didn't know any of them, and he wanted to teach her something she was familiar with so she would enjoy learning it. Between the two of them, they finally figured out that they had to go down a dangerous road: COUNTRY MUSIC.

We are not country music people.

Mark made the sacrifice and agreed to find an easy country song for her to learn. Suddenly, the wonder that is Johnny Cash saved the day! I forgot that even country music has a narrow window of cool. It was pretty cute to see Mark sitting there jamming on guitars with an eleven year old girl.

... and it burns, burns, burns

the ring of fire

the ring of fire!

tick tick tick

Julie: Should I write a blog post about Arlo puking?

Mark: No.

Julie: I need to post.

Mark: Do something about our road trip.

Julie: I did that last time. I need to put something current!

Mark pauses and gives me a long look.

Mark: ... there's nothing.

He continues to stare. I retreat, defeated.