Last night after I posted, I asked
Chris to tweeze the grey hairs out of my eyebrows. Unfortunately
when I do it, I get brown hairs by mistake. I don't have much room
left for such mistakes.
Chris' alarm went off at 7. I heard it
but did not get up. The bed was too comfortable, or I was. But by
7:30 we were both up. I exercised, and then made my green drink in
the kitchen while talking to Joyce. Then I added fermented coconut
milk to my pre-made breakfast and ate it. Chris was ready to roll
before I was. We planned to meet our agent at the back of the
property at 8:30. We pulled up a few minutes late, and waited. Then
I called. She was already in the house, looking it over with the man
who she gets to fix things. She greeted us at the door, and then
showed us the house. It was in much better shape than I had
imagined. Of course my imagination was fueled by our agent, and she
was surprised too. There were plenty of little things to fix; some
normal wear and tear, and some not so normal. And a lot of deep
cleaning. Her repair man made a list so he could give us an
estimate. She had called the lock people to open the house because
no keys were turned in. However, when she got there, the doors were
all unlocked. So when the lock people arrived, they were instructed
to replace the locks on the three house doors and the garage door.
They did that and gave keys to her and us. She gave one to the
repair man. He gave me an invoice for some work he did two months
ago. I could not believe that she hadn't paid him. So I wrote him a
check. He wanted my name, address and e-mail so he could send me a
receipt. Then he left. We talked with her a little more, and then
she left. Chris opened the shed door and we started going through
stuff in there to weed out anything we did not want to ship to
Huntsville. Then he went to a store for lightbulbs, paper towels,
toilet paper, a flashlight, and batteries. I found a flashlight in
the shed, but it needed a lamp-type battery. I went through stuff I
hadn't seen in years. I marked several things with yellow tape, but
the yellow did not show up well, hardly better than masking tape. I
made piles of items to take right away, items to throw away, and
items to donate. Chris came back with his purchases. The light
bulbs helped a lot. I don't know if the tenants took a lot with
them, or they were burned out and hadn't been replaced. I called
Ralph, the gentleman who did some fixing up for us when we left back
in 2008. He came over to see what needed to be done. Everything he
saw, he said was a small job. We told him he could have the hottub
since it would be too expensive to haul it to Huntsville and we did
not know if it worked (the tenants drained it and turned it off.
Also, something happened when they moved out and the top was stove in
so it was full of pinestraw and dirty water). He seemed happy about
that. After he left, Hannah walked over to talk and say how happy
she was that they moved out and that she wished we could move back.
We went through stuff in the garage, moving to the shed the items we
wanted to ship. We came across items that belonged to Michele's
childhood which made us both cry. We found Grandma's grill, and
Chris' grandma's parrot. Parker called to say the tenant wanted to
come by and apologize, but lost his nerve so he called her. He
wanted to come over and get some more of their stuff. He also
offered to haul off everything else (theirs and ours) if we paid the
poundage fee charged by the dump. Durham drove over on his lawn
tractor. He likes to talk, and was also glad that the tenants had
left. After he left, we walked around the property finding items
left by kids, mostly full of water and probably growing mosquitoes.
The bushes were overgrown, but it could have been worse. Then we
finished up in the shed and garage because the daylight was fading.
I took some pics of holes behind the house. Our host called to say
that supper was almost ready. We hadn't known we were invited for
supper, but it was really nice since we hadn't stopped for lunch. We
drove back to her house. As we sat for supper, I realized just how
tired I was. Joyce served us chili that she made in her new
crockpot. It was good, especially with the cheese. We told them
about our day, and they told us about theirs. Then the conversation
turned to other topics, like previous employments. By nine we were
tired and ready for bed. But of course we had to check e-mail first
and I was surprised to see over 200 unread e-mail messages. I
deleted the ones I had no intention of reading. Then I wrote to my
blog, trying to remember what all had happened during the day. I
know I will have to tap for all the feelings that came up as we went
through our stuff, discarding things that triggered old memories, and
wondering if I would be sorry later for anything we left behind
today.
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