Since moving to Jacksonville in April, my mother has been hospitalized four times - heart, heart, pneumonia/heart, and C-Dif (a horrible and potentially deadly hospital borne intestinal infection). Her 5'6" frame has gone from a slender 127 to 113. Hugging my mother is like hugging a chicken bone. She needs meat, but doesn't care for the taste or texture. Her appetite is minimal at best, and her energy comes in tiny spurts followed by exhaustion.
My two sisters and I met at Village Inn, calendars and opinions and ideas ready to share, to work out a care plan. I don't work and Kathie and Patty do. While Patty is on school vacation (she is a teacher), she will go daily to momma and daddy's house to do four or five hours of cooking, laundry, and doctor appointments. Kathie is the Sunday girl, and once school starts, Patty will take over on Saturdays. Momma loves the new calendar, knowing who will do what when and the comfort of knowing there will always be someone there to help keep their daily routine constant.
Mark and I have a two-week vacation planned for later this month, a celebration of leaving the job he has done since he was 28 years old, Snap-On Tools, which he closes out his inventory later this week. It has been a year since we last visited our mountain home together and he feels this break is needed before he begins the daunting task of finding another job. At almost 57, he is concerned about finding anything. Once home, I go back to my Monday through Friday daily visits to my parents' home. It's very pleasant to see Momma and Daddy regularly and I am so very thankful to share the same city now after being away for 26 years.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Parenting the Fearful Pooch
Storms have always been a welcome daily summer occurrence in Florida, leaving behind steaming asphalt, perkier flowers, happy little birds bathing in puddles, and cooler nights. My mother used to say, "Sunshine and shower, won't last half an hour!" And it's true. Try telling that to my dog!
Juliet became fearful after four brave puppy years of Florida weather, which includes tropical storms, tons of thunder, enough lightening to power the whole city for a year, buckets of rain, and all of this always results in mosquitoes galore. What happened? Who knows? Our once brave Juliet became five pounds of fear about a year ago. She starts pacing with she first whiff of a storm cloud. A rumble sends her wide eyed, shivering and panting to the closest human for safety. She shakes like a vibrating toy at my side. I never had much use for a miniature shivering dog and thought them to be wimps, and so for an entire year I have ignored her begs for protection, hoping it was just a passing thing. No. Hers is a deep seated problem.
My new mode of dog parenting now includes a kind lap to burrow into when thunder claps and rain pounds on the skylights. I don't say anything, don't pamper or encourage, but if she needs a safe haven, I will allow my dog the comfort of my lap. I'm not to the point of purchasing a thunder coat or doggie zanex...YET.
Juliet became fearful after four brave puppy years of Florida weather, which includes tropical storms, tons of thunder, enough lightening to power the whole city for a year, buckets of rain, and all of this always results in mosquitoes galore. What happened? Who knows? Our once brave Juliet became five pounds of fear about a year ago. She starts pacing with she first whiff of a storm cloud. A rumble sends her wide eyed, shivering and panting to the closest human for safety. She shakes like a vibrating toy at my side. I never had much use for a miniature shivering dog and thought them to be wimps, and so for an entire year I have ignored her begs for protection, hoping it was just a passing thing. No. Hers is a deep seated problem.
My new mode of dog parenting now includes a kind lap to burrow into when thunder claps and rain pounds on the skylights. I don't say anything, don't pamper or encourage, but if she needs a safe haven, I will allow my dog the comfort of my lap. I'm not to the point of purchasing a thunder coat or doggie zanex...YET.
Monday, March 25, 2013
SOLD! Now let's move...
How perfect is it that we close on the Jacksonville house on April 1 and then close on the Apopka house on April 12? IT IS MORE THAN PERFECT!!!
We are buying our new Jacksonville house was a great price, $35,000 below appraisal. It is a short sale, which typically takes 3-6 months to complete. I have a friend who has been waiting 9 months! They should really call this a long sale! "Short Sale" means the seller is in a financial dilemma and in order to avoid foreclosure, they ask the bank to intervene by reducing the principle they owe, allowing them to sell for less than they owe - they will be short of funds. Sometimes the bank makes the seller pay them back some of the difference, sometimes not. It all depends on their financial situation. Like us, most buyers rarely find out the whole story.
So this darling little house in an established neighborhood (nice mature trees, clean streets, no ratty houses...) went up for sale for the ridiculously low price of $86,000, and this attracted a lot of buyers, including us. We bid, and there was a bidding war with two other buyers, but we won our little trophy home with $96,000, gave a deposit and signed the contract with the seller to buy the Jax house in early February. Although our bid was accepted with the sellers, the bank has the power to request more money from us or the sellers. We would have paid more, but were hoping not to. We were delighted to find out only a month later that the bank had accepted our bid and the paperwork was starting. We were even more astounded to find out that the closing would be April 1, only two months* from the day we placed the winning bid. Unheard of!
Our Apopka house went onto the market on a Saturday. We had a lot of lookers (10 appointments in 7 days) and a contract was accepted on day 12 for 97% of our asking price**. That's a really good offer and we were happy to accept it.
So the buyers could imagine their own stuff in our home, I boxed up most of the "extras" in our house, which we stacked in a storage unit. I culled a lot of stuff from overflowing closets, but now realize that I don't miss most of the stuff, so when I unpack, I plan to get rid of at least half of what I thought was oh so important.
We close on the Jax house next Monday. Mark and I will tow a rental trailer filled with the contents of the storage unit on Saturday when we head up to stay with my parents to celebrate Easter and to close on the Jax house the next day. We will go straight to our new house, unpack the boxes, drop the trailer off at a UHaul place in Jax and then head back to Apopka to face the overwhelming task of moving away from the place we have called home for over 25 years.
How lucky are we that we can move our belongings straight from our current house to our new house without having to deal with storage worries? We originally thought we'd have to go the POD rental route, but now we can back the big moving van up to the garage, shove everything in, drive it to Jax, back up to the new garage and shove it all out. Gosh, that sounds so easy!
*Update: Probably because we paid cash for our short sale house - less paperwork for the bank.
**Update: We actually got our entire 100% asking price due to a buyer's agent faux pas on wording in their contract.
We are buying our new Jacksonville house was a great price, $35,000 below appraisal. It is a short sale, which typically takes 3-6 months to complete. I have a friend who has been waiting 9 months! They should really call this a long sale! "Short Sale" means the seller is in a financial dilemma and in order to avoid foreclosure, they ask the bank to intervene by reducing the principle they owe, allowing them to sell for less than they owe - they will be short of funds. Sometimes the bank makes the seller pay them back some of the difference, sometimes not. It all depends on their financial situation. Like us, most buyers rarely find out the whole story.
So this darling little house in an established neighborhood (nice mature trees, clean streets, no ratty houses...) went up for sale for the ridiculously low price of $86,000, and this attracted a lot of buyers, including us. We bid, and there was a bidding war with two other buyers, but we won our little trophy home with $96,000, gave a deposit and signed the contract with the seller to buy the Jax house in early February. Although our bid was accepted with the sellers, the bank has the power to request more money from us or the sellers. We would have paid more, but were hoping not to. We were delighted to find out only a month later that the bank had accepted our bid and the paperwork was starting. We were even more astounded to find out that the closing would be April 1, only two months* from the day we placed the winning bid. Unheard of!
Our Apopka house went onto the market on a Saturday. We had a lot of lookers (10 appointments in 7 days) and a contract was accepted on day 12 for 97% of our asking price**. That's a really good offer and we were happy to accept it.
So the buyers could imagine their own stuff in our home, I boxed up most of the "extras" in our house, which we stacked in a storage unit. I culled a lot of stuff from overflowing closets, but now realize that I don't miss most of the stuff, so when I unpack, I plan to get rid of at least half of what I thought was oh so important.
We close on the Jax house next Monday. Mark and I will tow a rental trailer filled with the contents of the storage unit on Saturday when we head up to stay with my parents to celebrate Easter and to close on the Jax house the next day. We will go straight to our new house, unpack the boxes, drop the trailer off at a UHaul place in Jax and then head back to Apopka to face the overwhelming task of moving away from the place we have called home for over 25 years.
How lucky are we that we can move our belongings straight from our current house to our new house without having to deal with storage worries? We originally thought we'd have to go the POD rental route, but now we can back the big moving van up to the garage, shove everything in, drive it to Jax, back up to the new garage and shove it all out. Gosh, that sounds so easy!
*Update: Probably because we paid cash for our short sale house - less paperwork for the bank.
**Update: We actually got our entire 100% asking price due to a buyer's agent faux pas on wording in their contract.
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