No TV, No Internet, and My Cell Service Sucks....And How are YOU doing?

I’m sorry I’ve been absent from Blogger for awhile. This past week has been CRAZY! We arrived back in Illinois on Saturday, April 7th. We barely got the truck and U-haul unloaded, and the next day was Easter Sunday. We gathered at my sister’s house, and I had a chance to see most of my siblings. My son, Jason,  came over the night before to help us unload. My daughter and family came to our place on Sunday to give us a ride to my sister’s since we still had the U-haul attached to our truck!

It was so great to see everyone, especially Lily! I bought her a "fairy" outfit. She told me that purple was her favorite color. Papa is showing her the purple flower with the "diamond" in the middle.

I know I am biased, but isn't she just so darn cute?

I am just LOVING our new home. I’m thinking the square footage is around 900, which seems GINORMOUS to me, coming from the trailer! It’s a condo/town home that has 2 bedrooms/2 bathrooms, laundry room, living room, dining room, eat-in kitchen, and what I call my “magic room”. It is a walk in pantry off of the kitchen which has a light that automatically turns on when you walk in. How cool is that? The pantry reminds me of  my grandmother’s house. Between that and the laundry room, I am in HEAVEN. Doing laundry whenever I want? No quarters needed? No money card? Sigh!

Things that make me smile:

Not knowing where Jim is EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY! (I know he’s SOMEWHERE in the house, but not necessary within 10 feet of me!)

Knowing that Jim and I can go to the bathroom at the same time. WAIT! Hear me out! Hearing  Jim in the one bathroom, while I’m doing my duty in the other bathroom just puts a smile on my face. I know, crazy, isn’t it? But for 7 years we’ve lived with the one bathroom syndrome where there was always one of us standing outside the door tapping our foot waiting patiently (or not) for the other person to finish up. I don’t know about you, but I can’t “go” on demand. NOW? I can go at my leisure! Sigh!

There are SO MANY THINGS I have missed by not having a home. Now it’s nice to putter around from room to room, putting things here and there. Opening the blinds to let the morning sun in. Our sliding glass doors to the patio face a somewhat busy road. There is also a walking path before the busy street.

This is looking out our patio doors.

This crab apple tree was at it's peak just a few days ago, but it still looked beautiful against that blue sky. This is right next to our patio. You can see part of the walking path in front of the tree.

This is looking down the walking path away from our home.

 
There is always activity happening just outside our windows.

This is a view of our place taken from the walking path. We are the townhome on the bottom level.

I lugged my pot of cacti home, much to Jim’s chagrin. There was NO WAY IN HELL I was throwing that puppy away! We’ve dragged that pot around for SEVEN YEARS. Now that we were getting off the road? I was taking that HOME! So I have a little section on the patio that I have dedicated to Arizona. It will always hold a special place in my heart and I hope and pray that we will get back there; if not next year, then the following year. (I think the duck belonged to the lady who previously owned the place.)

Life hasn’t been all grand since we’ve been home. There has been a few snags. The place we are in is currently for sale. It has been on the market for THREE YEARS. It belongs to my friend’s deceased mother-in-law. I had suggested that we rent the place. Since last week, there has been 10 showings on the place! Jim and I would love to buy this place, and we are scrambling to get our ducks in a row to do so. But everything takes time and things aren’t falling into place as easily as we would like. Something as simple as a form that we need - Jim’s password has expired and he can not get a new one either by phone or e-mail. They must MAIL it to him - which of course takes 7-10 days. We didn’t even DARE tell them that we moved. That would be another fiasco. So then we have to have the mail forwarded to our new address. This is so frustrating.

We have been waiting for over 5 days for TV/internet/cable to be installed. There was a big mix-up over that. The company said that we already had service to the unit. Uh, no, sorry, we don’t. Turns out that they had us confused with the neighbor across the hall. After several calls and a few different customer reps, we are SUPPOSEDLY getting the service on Monday. So hopefully things will get back to normal as far as blog posting and commenting goes. (As of right now, I have NO internet service. I am typing this at the local library, which is WONDERFUL. The second largest in the State. YAHOO!)

We are still living with barely any furniture: a blow up bed, two kitchen tables (one small one that was left in the place and our table from storage), a rocking chair, desk, and two small living room chairs that were left here that I swear were made for “little people”, as in the p/c word for midgets. The chairs are really low to the ground so it’s hard for either Jim or me to get out of them. It’s actually comical.

We have been to our storage unit, which is about an hour’s drive away from our house. We grabbed a few things, but want to leave the majority in there until we can firm up that we can buy this place and wait for them to clean out the garage so we can have a place to put all of our stuff. But we don’t have any other furniture in storage.

Time to go shopping!

I hope the next posting will be filled with the news that we are in the process of buying our humble little abode. Please say a prayer that things will work out for us.

While you are praying, please remember two of my siblings who have recently lost their jobs: my twin sister who lives alone; and my brother who has a wife who lives on disability. Lots of things are happening in our family right now and we are all gathered together to give each other strength and praying together.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.