The Simple Life at Home

Sorry to have been AWOL for so long. We've been a mite busy around here.

I had to get Emily ready for a youth group retreat. She's off having a great time at a camp a few hours from here. She returns tomorrow - exhausted and dirty and overjoyed, I'm sure.

Since it was just Daniel and I, I asked him what special thing he wanted to do. So, of course, he said he wanted to go to DisneyWorld. Uh, no.

So he decided to visit the Everglades and I happily agreed. We took his best friend along with and headed out this morning. This is the perfect time of year to visit. The weather is cool enough for there to be lots of wildlife out and about. We've gone in the summer time and been miserably hot and not seen even a bug to reward our efforts. But this morning we saw at least 100 alligators and tons and tons of birds and fish and turtles. Anhingas, cormorants, herons, galinules, storks, etc. It was so nice and relaxing.

Upon returning home I got to work. I realized last night that I am, in effect, moving in a week. At least, my belongings are. One week. This Monday someone is coming to do a pre-move survey and the following Monday, everything goes into a container and gets shipped off, out of our lives for up to 8 weeks.

So I've gone through the house trying to make "isolation areas" (my phrase). My thought is that I've got to keep some stuff here for us to live on for the next two months, so I've got to make sure that the movers don't take all of that. A friend suggested that I put huge strips of masking tape over closets and cabinets that I want left alone. So I've been sorting things from "stay" to "go" or "go" to "stay" all day. After I finished all the closets, I set to work on the garage.

Ugh.

It took about 2 hours, but I think I've finished. I sorted out the tools we would want to have in Qatar, decided on what Christmas decorations should go, went through Hubby's engineering magazines and pulled out the pages that he asked me to rip out and save, went through all of our chemical products (pesticides, paints, car maintenance, cleaning, etc.), and every thing else. Now, everything that is to go is lining one wall and nicely stacked up. Everything else in the garage is either to be used while we are still here or sold/donated.

The only areas left to tackle are the kids' rooms. I've been saving those for last since I'm going to have to ask them to part with almost everything they own. Not fun.

Amongst all this, I've also been dealing with the tenant from...well, you know. She's making me crazy and refuses to accept the law and is insisting I return her entire security deposit when they haven't paid rent for this month and are breaking the lease 4 months early. She won't answer my calls or read my emails, but when we do eventually connect, she spends the whole time screaming at me that I broke the lease because "I let" her boyfriend moved out and...I don't know. I don't know what she expected me to do. Chain him to the house? She wanted him to move out and wanted to find a new roommate and finish the lease. All of a sudden, she's asked for a transfer to Georgia and has to be there in 3 days. So her viewpoint is that since she is staying one week longer than the boyfriend, she's entitled to the entire deposit, because we told her whoever stayed would get the deposit back. Um, hello? That means stays to the end of the lease. Duh! (Sorry, I hate that word, but it's the only thing appropriate here.)

So, my advice to the blogosphere, don't get into rental properties. Now I'm dreading the condition she'll leave the house in.

So, hopefully within the next week and half life will slow down considerably. The movers will have come and gone, the tenants will have gone, I'll be sleeping on a couch and life will be much smoother! Thanks for hanging in there with me!!