Archive for the ‘Moving’ Category

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New Home Purchased

Wednesday, August 18th, 2004

Ick… I’m sorry to hear that, Theresa. I was hoping my bad luck had just passed, not passed on to someone else – especially not you. *hugs tight* After we’re hooked back up for internet and stuff, I’ll try to catch you on MSN. *super big hugs* Give everyone a hug from us!

Oh, and before I forget…. The ice-cream is Ben & Jerry’s “Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch”, Mom and Jass got “Brownie Batter.” ^_^

We purchased the manufactured house today! $22,000 later, we were given the rules for the community we’re moving to and were told the house should be ready to move into on Monday. ^___^ That includes Deposit, Lot Rent, and Pet Deposit so we should be all set for a least September. They have to finish a few repairs and get the Gas company in to connect the gas and it should be all set. We’re going to be calling Two Men & A Truck tomorrow and setting up the move for the 24th or 25th. Packing is almost complete, but I feel like we’ve reached an impasse. The prior owners here [not new house] left tons of junk around and we’re required to get rid of it before we leave. Fortunately, bright and early tomorrow morning the trash is being hauled away. Later tomorrow we’re also going to be looking for a new car. After that point, we should be just about set, aside from getting jobs when we get there.

I promised myself I wouldn’t begin the Lunaescence.com redesign until after the move was complete, we were well settled in, and I had a job. I’ve never been good at waiting. ^^;; I made out a rough sketch for each section (Main, FanFiction, FanArt, Forums, etc.), suddenly I was in Paint Shop Pro forming the images, and then I was in Notepad laying the dumb thing out.

I don’t think I’ll ever get positioning in CSS, though…. For the index, I have two menus on either side of the page and then the main content between them. I got the menus placed beautifully, but then the center section wouldn’t work. When I got it to work it didn’t want to move up where it belonged vertically, but when I fixed that, it was no longer where I wanted it horizontally. :-P Frustrated, I gave up and made a set of nested tables that I nudged down where it belonged using CSS. Now that solution worked. A few more hours more work and the layout should be ready to put up… only to be benched until I finish moving, have internet connected, and settle in. XD

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Posted in Housing, Moving, Web Design | 3 Comments »

The Ups and Downs

Saturday, August 7th, 2004

Well, over the past few days I’ve come to the conclusion that Theresa’s hugs are major good luck. ^_^ *super huge hugs back to her* We told the couple over in the trailer in Parkwood Green thanks, but no thanks. We’ve found a trailer with even more amenities than theirs for only $25,000. Now if only we could hurry up, get down there, and see it… probably even make an offer on it… we’d be all set. Apparently, this new park is HUGE and filled with trailers for sale by their owners. Mostly, they seem to be elderly people seeking to get out, move to a assisted living place, or are moving in with their kids / grandkids. The $25,000 one belongs to an elderly couple and the husband, sadly, has alzheimers. The Kids/Grandkids are building their own home and are planning to move them in as well to help take care of him. The lady seems very nice and I can’t imagine them putting the trailer up for sale if the house isn’t close to being finished. We’ve survived an entire summer in an 8×12 travel trailer and we can survive a few weeks at a friend’s house. (I doubt we’d be able to stay at Poppa’s, since Caroline is supposibly allergic to animals and I don’t think their condo allows animals.) So anyway.. that rocks our world.

Mom’s in a good mood today; she had nine hour shift today – so we’re going to be rolling in some nice money. She’s talking about – since Conrad is driving us down to GR on Tuesday anyway for closing here – seeing about how much a Taxi would cost to take us to the park and then see if Poppa would come pick us up and take us home.

Packing is going along nicely. I think a few more days and Jass and I will have much of the unnecessary things in the house all packed and ready to go. Mom still needs to contact Maryann and see if we can “borrow” her shed to store our crap in…. maybe Jodi too. Anyway, much love to everyone!

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Posted in Family, Housing, Moving | 1 Comment »

More Shit Hits the Fan

Wednesday, August 4th, 2004

We almost tried to see how/if we could back out of the sale on the house this morning. Like I said in the previous entry, the house up in Solon Twp. is really only worth burning down or demolishing so you can build something new on the property. Which really wasn’t an option for us. Everything else on that street didn’t look much better either; which makes me doubt how much any new structure built there would be worth. That left the trailer on Schultz in Sparta.

Well… that’s going to pot too. It apparently belongs to an eldery couple with health problems. They want $40,000 – $42,000 exactly for it, nothing less. They offered to give us a $3000 personal loan, only we had to have it paid back within 3 months. Since we don’t know what kind of jobs we’d be getting, that really made us nervous to even attempt. Even if we got them to extend it to a year, between lot rent and that loan – we’d have over $500 we’d have to somehow come up with every month. Not only that, Parkwood Green only allows two total “large” pets – which includes cats and dogs, no matter if they’re indoor animals. If they ever came by, we’d have to come up with a way to hide the fact we had two cats. Brad Baker told their Realtor the offer was $36,000, with no loan – take it or leave it. So far no reply, but since Brad works from his house, he could honestly call back anytime up to 11pm. He told us to wait until morning.

So as you can imagine, that led to a very panic filled, stressful, and tearful night last night and then this morning. I called Conrad bright and early and told him we were having second thoughts and that we wanted to know what the penalties would be if we backed out of the sale. For once, he called us back post haste. And then took his sweet time getting back to us on it, but did stop over during lunch. However, during that time, I located a Trailer up in Belmont Twp, near the Plainfield section of Grand Rapids that was a For Sale by Owner for $32,000. Unfortunately, that park doesn’t allow for any dogs taller than 18 inches at the shoulder. Luna is a good 24 inches at the shoulder, which ruled us out there. Then, at about 10am, Lisa from HomeVestors called to see what was going on with us wanting to back out. We explained we had paniced but were now looking at other options. She offered to check on another Trailer Park over on Fruit Ridge near Sparta. Apparently there’s a lot of vacant trailers up for Rent, Sale, and Rent-To-Own. Luna and the kittens would be fine there, but it’s going to be $385 per month there for lot rent – possibly more if we have to rent a trailer. But they also have a few there that are being sold by their owners.

All day today, we’ve waxing and waning between calm, anxiety, morose depression, and psychosis. Tell you how low we got, we all mentioned that in the past few days we’ve thought about suicide more than once. We also took a lot of our anger out on poor little Kaze. Echo and Luna both know how to act during our weird bipolor episodes, but Kaze doesn’t have a clue. I even went so far as to inform her, after one destro-kitten rush, that she could be loosing her happy home. Poor thing. We really shouldn’t take it out on her; Echo had a whole month longer to get to know us – plus she thinks she’s Luna’s baby…. So when we start getting weird, she looks to Luna and then either keeps her distance or settles in to purr us back to sanity. Kaze, goes berserk.

Right now, I’ve gone back into a mood where I’m feeling very dubious about the whole thing – especially the part about being forced to move to a trailer park – and my thoughts are turning back to canceling the sale. There’s just something that weirds me out about it. The idea of having to move into a Trailer Park after having lived in an actual house my entire life is deeply disturbing to me. Intelletually, I know these parks are very good places, but I suppose it’s memories of Parkwood Green back from when I was a kid. We used to live right across the street from them, between the two drives. Once some teens came out of the park and aimed a gun at Mom and I when I was a baby… and then there were lots of drugs and violence, and the types of people you didn’t want to have anything to do with. Since then, the park has changed hands and it’s a very nice Trailer Park, but I suppose the memories are going to persist. I can barely remember what park Alpine Meadows is and Mom keeps assuring me it’s a really nice one, but my stomach is still in freefall.

I wish the parachute would open soon.

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Posted in Drama, Family, Housing, Moving | 1 Comment »

Trailers and Trashed Houses

Monday, August 2nd, 2004

Went to go look at houses today. The only two in our price range were a tiny house in Solon Twp., Kent County MI and a nice trailer in a Trailer park in Sparta.

Lets just say it wasn’t a hard choice.

Solon was utterly trashed. The poor house had been run litterly into the ground. There was moss and fungus growing on the roof, the roof overall was sagging, the back step was simply a piece of half-rotter plywood. It was ugly. It really was. About the most you could do with it in terms of rennovation was to torch it.

The trailer, on the other hand, was really nice. I mean really nice. It was a touch on the older side, but no older than 10 years maybe. It had two bathrooms, and a good 1500 sq. feet of living space.

Yeah. Real hard choice.

We made an offer on it, of $35,000 which is a good $7,900 down from their asking price. After closing we have bills, taxes, etc. that need to be paid so we won’t have much more after that point to barter with. Not only are we asking for $7,900 less than what they’re asking… we’ve set close on August 12 with only 10 days after close for them to get out. And let me tell you, I am utterly terrified. I am scared out of my fucking mind. They have until 9pm EST tomorrow to respond and I’m really frightened that they won’t take it… or that the people coming through to look at it after we went through will offer something juicier. *shakes her head* Only other option I can think of is to back out of the sale with HomeVestors, fire Conrad, and relist with a more competent agent for $50,000 – $63,000. Either way, we’re running out of time, patience, and hope.

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The Move

Thursday, July 29th, 2004

During the month of August, I will be preparing to move. On or around the week of August 22nd, I will be in the middle of moving. I have no idea how long I will be away, but I will be trying to keep up my blog and e-mail via libraries or internet cafe’s. If you need to contact me, please click here for my contact information.

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Update

Friday, July 23rd, 2004

Okay, here’s the deal. We’re probably not going to be renting after all. Poppa advised me to advise mom not to do that. At the rate those go, we’d never be able to keep our heads above water. So, that leaves that house in Solon Twp OR the Trailor we were originally looking at; both are around $40,000 and both fit our usual thing.

“Our Usual Thing” is just a pattern we’ve noticed from all of our home buying. The way it ends up working out is: The first house we find, but say “No” to is the one we end up taking anyway and really liking. It happened when we moved up to Mt. Pleasant but didn’t happen here. So, since the Trailor and the house up in Solon Twp were the two we originally looked at and have said “No” to – one of them is probably it. Might as well not break a good pattern. ^_^ Afterall, the last time we broke it – we ended up in this hell-hole.

We walked down to the Ionia Free Fair yesterday. Not very impressive. Then again, most everything has lost it’s ability to impress us. The only thing we really had a good laugh about was some storage sheds, outbuildings, etc. We’re so fed up, living in one of those doesn’t seem too bad!!
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Eek! We’re moving!

Tuesday, July 20th, 2004

For the love of all that’s Holy: Damn. That was not what we were expecting.

That company we called finally came through with an offer. They only want to pay us $37,000 for the house with us out at close on August 20th, though they said they’d work with us if we needed more time after close. Once the closing costs, etc. were paid we’d only have about $33,000 to work with. We countered, asking for $45,000, which would give us about $37,000 to work with and also close on September 20th.

Needless to say, no matter what – that doesn’t give us much to work with. At first all of us were shaky; Mom dropped a bombshell that neither Jass or I knew about – that we’re only about a month or less away from foreclosure on our house. Once we all stopped screaming at each other, we went and got a paper and started looking at rental properties. We found one 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house in Cascade Twp in Grand Rapids for $1,300 per month that we’re having our Realtor, Conrad Campbell, check on… and then we have about 42 other rentals to call on tomorrow. I think we’re open to any idea – so long as we can get jobs, good healthcare, etc. Nice thing about Cascade is that it’s not far from 28th street, which is darn near the entire width of the county and is nothing but a mass of stores, Malls, strip malls, and more. (I even suddenly smirked and asked Mom what Sheba [See Jasson's Blog] would do if I turned around and became a waitress in Hooters since she wanted me to get a restaurant job so badly! *eg*) If we can’t find a job there, we’re in serious trouble.

I’m probably not going to be renewing our Internet Service, since it runs out on or about August 15th and we would probably have to be out on the 20th. We’re even thinking, since now we know just how deep the rabbit hole runs, about pushing closing up to the 28th of July with us being allowed to stay until September 1st.

Only problem is the animals. Echo and Kaze have finally entered their destructive phases, but they seem to be more welcome than Luna. A vast majority of entries say “Only cats” or “Cats Welcome, no dogs”, etc. She hasn’t been destructive since she was a puppy, preferring to play with her toys than damage the house. She’s also becoming more and more well-mannered, which should work for us to prove that she’s not a problem or anything. Fortunately or unfortunately, Luna has finally stopped being so insanely neurotic – only to have a move coming up this quickly. We’re already packing and we’re going to have a moving sale to end all moving sales, to get rid of everything we can. I suggested selling the car for the $700 we owe for property taxes, but Mom was pretty unresponsive to that suggestion. (She keeps going into these funks where she acts like a sullen teenager. *whaps head!*) We want to buy a new car with insurance anyway, so I don’t understand what the big deal is. I think with three of us working religously, we can survive loosing the old car for a bit. It’s not like we can afford to fix it up, gas it up, and pay for insurance – basically we can’t afford to drive, period.
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Ring-A-Ding-Ding!

Tuesday, June 8th, 2004

It’s a beautiful thing!

Ding!!!! Our house is going to finally sell!

We received an offer for $75,000 today, less comission will take us to about $65,000. We get 15 days after close and we already have an eye on a wee hunting cabin on an acre of land that’s going for only about $39,000. So long as it’s not dangerous, we’re taking it. ^____^ *happy dances* Tht’ll leave us plenty of money for moving expenses, etc.

Then we apparently have another party interested in coming through. Pretty sad that it took offering up $500 to whoever managed to get a sale on this house. Feels a bit like extortion to me, but ah well: We’re moving!!

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