Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Wild Ride
Twenty-two of the twenty-seven most-recent emails in my inbox are labeled with the name that Cyndie and I have chosen for the farm we are dreaming of acquiring. I have chosen to keep that name confidential, until we are able to close on the property, but I have been using it to categorize the email traffic related to the process that started back in February of this year.
There are 283 messages in that folder. The first one is from the person we chose as our realtor. Then there are messages with the drywall company and painter that fixed up our house while we were preparing to put it on the market.
In hind sight, it would be accurate to relabel email exchanges with our precious friend, Ian Rowcliffe, to be marked with that same identifier. Traveling to Portugal to meet Ian and his family, and spend time with their horses at the paradise that is their Forest Garden Estate, definitely deserves credit for inspiring this dream.
The current batch of 22 messages received in the last two days reveals a boost of activity that has come from our finally taking the step of visiting farms we have been marking as “favorites” on the list our realtor has been providing weekly. That step follows the milestone of having received an offer on our home.
The fact that our first offer was received only 3-days after Cyndie returned home brings a smile to my face.
Three days after that, we drove a lot of miles to visit 4 different properties. Yesterday, we finally had an opportunity to walk through the property that has been on the top of our favorites since we first received a list from our realtor.
There are a fair number of issues, all with contingencies, that are yet to be determined, but this flurry of messages coincides with our having signed our names on a lot of documents in an act of hope toward realizing a precious dream.
Will all the pending uncertainties resolve in our favor? Regular readers here should know how Cyndie is willing the universe to direct the outcome. I am doing everything I can to keep my feet and hands inside the cart at all times during this wild ride.
Finally Looking
Now that Cyndie is home, and because we have actually received an offer on our house, our realtor is finally allowing us to look at potential horse properties. We spent a lot of hours yesterday afternoon and evening, driving and exploring. We saw 4 very different possibilities. All of them had something good about them, but none of them are right for us.
At the property that was most enticing for me, we came around a corner of a building and found two bald eagles perched in the branches of a great big dead tree. It was very inspiring. This place had about 3-times more in the way of out-buildings than we could imagine being able to use. Cyndie says it will be nice if we can have some covered or indoor arena space to work with horses. This property had a HUGE indoor arena. Unfortunately, it had so many structures, they made the area near the house feel too closed in. I said, “We could knock some of it down.” But there was also a bit too many bodies of stagnant water bordering, or overlapping, the lot. The location was also too far from the airport. Access to the airport is still a priority, both for Cyndie traveling to
Today, I will be forced out of working at the day-job in order to drive to Wisconsin to finally get inside the buildings and walk on the property that remains our favorite out of all the listings that have been sent our way throughout the summer. I look forward to seeing how it compares to the places we toured yesterday.
Also, since we will already be in Wisconsin, our plan is to continue on after that, and head to the lake home paradise in Hayward for the weekend. Cyndie has already received an invitation to go riding with her niece up there this weekend.
Tough Decisions
Here is a view of Cyndie in her glory, enjoying the great outdoors in the company of horses. Now, imagine this poor girl stuck inside a public school office building, in a big city, dealing with bureaucratic foibles, facing impossible situations, operating among a crowd of people with mixed agendas (many of them hidden, and some of them hostile), for 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s the way her work sounded to me from her descriptions. I’m wishing that she would never have to go back to that type of environment.
At the very least, I’m hoping she could do it as an outside consultant, with control over the hours, to allow her opportunities to spend quality time working with horses.
We are at a crossroads now, with her between employment, and us on the cusp of our dream. We are trying to move forward toward our vision, but are wrestling with how to do that prudently, in order to minimize risk of being under-prepared, or getting in over our heads. It doesn’t make sense to us, to throw caution to the wind and go for it, if we do so in a way that will have too high a risk of failure, leaving us unable to take care of the animals and property for which we become responsible.
Our happy-go-lucky styles are coming face to face with a need to make some tough decisions.
Suddenly, time seems to be moving pretty fast for us. Nonetheless, I think we are both finding pleasure being on this wild ride.
Entering Negotiations
It finally happened. We received our first offer. It is a low one, which was not unexpected, especially after the prolonged period of hearing buyer’s dissatisfaction over the lack of a back yard. We have already provided our first response. Now it is their turn.
It has become apparent that the lot size, and lack of a back yard, are currently the determining factors on the value of our property. I still see it as a feature, and not a flaw, but it is hard to convince someone to pay more for less space.
The result is: negotiation.
You know the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for…”? You just might get it. Suddenly, this situation that I have been hoping for all summer is within reach of being realized. Yikes! What are we going to do? When people have asked that –and an awful lot of them (you) have posed that very question– I have flippantly tossed out the possible scenarios, as if I had full confidence in achieving any one of them.
Yesterday, the notion that I was close to needing to honestly choose one of those scenarios had me second-guessing our decisions, and doubting the logic of our course of action.
The listing on our previous favorite option for horse property has now expired. Our realtor has promised to contact them.
Cyndie just began moving the boxes she sent home from Boston, out of the garage and into the house. We don’t really have room for any of that right now, and we still have a showing appointment for today, so things are a little chaotic around here.
It’s probably just what we needed to happen to get things moving, in terms of receiving actual offers: some of Cyndie’s chaos. I’ve had my precise routine of keeping the place neat and tidy (read: cold and uninviting), and we see how much interest that has generated.
Cyndie has been home 3-days, and we have our first offer. What do you think of that?
Horse Visit
One of our first priorities, now that Cyndie is home, was to get out and visit her horse friends in Minnetrista. Cyndie is reading a book about communicating with animals that expands on what she has experienced from her training of the last couple years. It makes total sense to me that the process would require that she move her focus from her head-thoughts, and the distractions of me and other activity, so it is not surprising that little of that level of communication occurs during our brief joint visits. However, yesterday I witnessed two moments when the horses appeared to pause with her and activity seemed to be suspended.
In one, it happened after a horse made a very determined cross of some distance, pushing through two other horses in his path, to take a straight course to where Cyndie stood. Cyndie said the message was that she needs to come back and spend some extended time with them. They have some things to say, and they could tell she was currently distracted.
I take no offense.
Cyndie’s Home
I am a happy guy. My wife is home again, after a year of living in Boston. I timed things perfectly on my trip to pick Cyndie up at the airport. After sufficiently tending to immediate needs at the day-job, I grabbed a package to be delivered on the way, and dashed out the door. I had been following the progress of her flight online, and knew she was about a half-hour out. Traffic was slow, but moving, and the visit to our customer site didn’t take any extra time –the usual chatty person who I enjoy greatly was not there, so I was able to leave the parts with someone I didn’t know.
I navigated through more crazy drivers and, in a change from our usual routine, parked the car, so I could wait inside to meet her. It was as if I knew what I was doing. Seamlessly, my plan played out, and I found her flight on the arrivals display, located her baggage claim spot, and discovered the rest room I was hoping to find, just a few steps beyond.
When I came out, passengers were just beginning to arrive. I strolled toward the direction they were coming from and without a pause, spotted Cyndie gliding down an escalator. I stood at the bottom and soaked up the moment, anticipating her surprise. It was wonderful.
We both noticed a distinct difference in our perceptions this time, compared to the visits she had made throughout the year. It reminded me of the difference I noticed when she left a year before. I had been through a lot of her departures over the years that she traveled for her work, but when she left to live in Boston, it was very different. Almost scary different. Now she was arriving home to stay, not just visit.
Cyndie was getting watery eyes, and I was feeling everything opposite from that scare when she left a year before.
This morning, I can feel it in my soul. It continues to resonate today. It feels real, real good.
Like Thanks
Glory be! Yesterday the dew point temperature dropped into the 40s (F) and the air temperature into the mid 60s. It is about as pleasant as can possibly be around here. When the worst of summer heat and humidity arrives early and lingers long, with nary a break, it makes the eventual days of relief feel like miracles of refreshment.
It brings to mind how refreshing is the treat of discovering surprises in my email indicating someone I have never met has offered a token of appreciation. Here’s to you all!
My Love
Last night I had all the images on our computer randomly displaying on the television screen again, and when this one appeared, I felt an overwhelming excitement for the fact that my baby love is coming home soon! Look at this and imagine how it might feel to be me this week! I bet the horses she cares for here are even excited about it, and no one has even told them yet. Cyndie’s coming home to stay!
Bad Dream
It was like a dream sequence right out of my current anxiety about showing our house, but it was hilariously real.
Yesterday, shortly after lunch, I received a call requesting a showing for the hour that lands right at my preferred dinner time, just after I would generally be arriving home from work. I’m flexible, and showing the house is my priority, so I didn’t hesitate to accept the appointment.
I considered taking in a movie, as an alternative to going home after work. Instead, enough tasks materialized at the end of the day to keep me stuck at my desk right past the showtimes of the movie options. It reached the nebulous point of being past the time I wanted to still be at the workplace, but a bit too early to arrive home. At that time of the day, my lack of decision-making prowess is as obvious as ever.
I just started the car and headed south, pondering options. I could stop someplace for dinner. I could drop in unannounced on a friend. I could go shopping. Ha! That was a funny one. Shopping. Yeah, I let that pass through my head… for a second. Nah.
Delay with the decisions long enough, and you will arrive right where you are aiming. There were only 15 minutes left of the hour appointment when I reached our house, and there were no cars around, so I pulled in. The last time I talked to my neighbor about visitors looking at our house, he reported they were there less than 5 minutes, so I figured I was probably in the clear this day.
Inside, there was no evidence of anyone having been there, but that has happened before. It is a courtesy for the realtor to leave their card on the counter to acknowledge their visit, but I am getting used to finding nothing, after a handful of such incidences thus far.
I was upstairs, checking things out when I discovered a car in our driveway. Time for me to go for a walk!
I met them at the door and announced I was just headed out. The realtor was gruff and seemed unusually focused on an obvious agenda. He brushed past me, walked straight to the back door and was out on the deck before I finished getting my shoes on to step out the front door. He called out something I didn’t quite hear, so I stepped toward him to respond to his query.
He wanted to know where the back yard ended. Really! This guy cut right to the jugular. I felt an urge that I was supposed to apologize.
Then he walked over to the side and asked where that ended. He said something to the effect of, “That’s all there is then.” Yep. That’s it. I went for my walk. Hope they liked the house. I know they went both upstairs and down by all the lights they left on.
No feedback has been submitted yet, but I’m not holding my breath on this one. However, that little optimist hiding deep within me points out the delicious irony possible if that couple turns out to be our interested buyers!
Counting Days
I am counting the days. This coming Friday, my wife is scheduled to return home. Best of all, she is doing it on a one-way ticket. Hoo. Ray!
Thus will end the grand experiment of living apart from each other while she worked in Boston, and I stayed in Minnesota. It wasn’t easy for me, but it was possible, and that possibility has been realized. I am pleased to be reaching the culmination of this effort, and am looking forward to re-combining our energies to breath new life into our dream of getting our house sold and fulfilling our vision to find the perfect property to have horses.
We received what I am claiming to be, a glimpse of progress on the home sale plan yesterday. For the first time, the feedback from a showing has offered a glimmer of hope with this message: “Client is keeping it on their list.”
Interior: Above Avg (4 of 5)
Exterior: Above Avg (4 of 5)
Floor Plan: Average (3 of 5)
Pricing: At Market Value
Future Possibility: Still Looking
Comments: Nicely staged and attractive home.
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Having Cyndie home again can only make our home gain appeal, as she will undoubtedly unleash her knack for doing the things she does so well. I have mostly put in effort to live minimally and always leave the home clean and prepared for a showing. She will add life energy that has be missing.
That’s an energy that I will cherish personally, well beyond the benefit it will bring to our house showings.
