Details Pending
I don’t mean to tease this along on you, but there remain some details to be hashed out that are holding me back from any official announcements. I can report that things moved very fast for us over a period of a few days, and we have made great strides toward realizing our dreams. Offers are in play going both directions: for the sale of our house, and the purchase of our dream property. The details that remain to be signed off all appear manageable to Cyndie and me.
The unfolding events truly feel like a culmination of lessons we have been given over our lifetimes. Most recently, the odd “interruption” to our plans, when Cyndie accepted a job offer in Boston. It all paved the way for the place we are at now.
I will reveal one critical detail, to demonstrate how close we have come. On Saturday, we learned from our realtor, that the offer for the property we have wanted from the beginning, that we submitted to the sellers on Friday, was accepted.
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.
Not Sure
I wish I had some of the horse sense right now that this guy possesses, to help with the negotiation process in which we are engaged.
I like the mysteriousness of having the eyes out of view in this image. There is still a lot conveyed by the rest of the face and muzzle.
Is this view destined to be a daily experience in my future? It’s quite possible, yet how near a future remains uncertain.
I’ve waited this long, I can wait some more. I’ve said many times that we aren’t in a situation where we really need to sell our house and move. If we can’t get an offer that we are satisfied with, we are still more than happy to stay where we are and continue to enjoy the luxury of a house we are very lucky to have.
For the time being, Cyndie can take advantage of the open invitation to visit the horses she has worked with in the recent past. I’m okay where we are at. I’m still trying to get used to having a housemate again. It’s almost like living in a new place.
One thing that has potential to change our mind about how much we want to be paid for our house is, if the place we are most interested in became available for a similar discount to what we are being asked to give. It can’t hurt to inquire.
This is one of those times when my propensity for not easily making decisions becomes most evident. A right or wrong decision? I wish. It’s all in how you frame it. If I wait long enough, either an answer materializes, or the question goes away. That is my usual modus operandi.
It’s a good thing I am pretty proficient at waiting. Time will tell all.
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.
