0084 - So tired

Mike's first day was a long, long day. He left the house around 9:30 Tuesday morning, and didn't come home until 3'ish the next morning. After a partial night's sleep, it was off to a remote part of New Mexico this morning. If I understand correctly, they pay mileage, and time starts when you leave the house until you either return home or get to the hotel if you're away from home. So yesterday's day was 15 hours or so, and mileage is going to add up nicely. Still... that's a long, grueling day. Thank goodness he's not climbing or it would be even more taxing.

My day was far less exciting... my time was spent cooking, cleaning, updating our budget, following up on loose ends, doing some data entry, and drooling over a house I found. It's an older home, the farm house style I love and it's on nine acres with a guest house, detached garage, and horse barn. They say it needs some TLC and a full restoration, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's out of the question. Remember that what we are looking for is a place to put our stuff, and something that we can renovate over time. At less than $500/mo with P+I+Escrow, it saves us about $120/mo on storage fees and puts all our stuff in one spot. Plus it gives us a project and we build equity and have a home so we can claim citizenship and start doing all that stuff. The guest house can be just that, or we can rent it out, or we can open the restaurant we keep threatening to open. At the start I think it would become a mancave/guesthouse. We're both really excited about it's potential, but yeah, we're cautiously optimistic.

Our realtors said once we qualify for a loan, they will take video for us and look around to give their impressions of the place. We're thinking that when we head to Florida to retrieve the RV (hopefully in the next week or two), we will stop by and look at the two houses ourselves. We learned from the property we purchased... we will not buy anything sight unseen ever again. Things can look great in pictures and not so great in person. We're not expecting perfection, we just need to know how labor intensive it's going to be. Is it just a matter of updating things, or is there a major overhaul required?

Apparently there are five interested parties for our land. One couple in particular seems to want to make an effort to go out and see it pretty quickly. We're hoping we can sell it soon and use a portion of that money as a downpayment, the rest would help us catch up a little. We have money tied up in several things right now, and any one of them working out would make our situation markedly better, all of them combined would be wonderful. All of them would probably be so overwhelming that I might faint.

I also lost 8 lbs since I weighed myself in Houston. I think a combo of eating home cooked meals and the medication I'm on is finally starting to work. Hopefully that loss continues and I can begin to see a real difference. Right now I feel like I'm imagining any improvements because I still look the same. My shorts were less snug yesterday, so that helps, but until I look in the mirror and see me again, I'm not jumping for joy.

Going to start painting tomorrow. I had an infection in my right ear that went away, but now my left one is infected and it is kind of painful... so I don't know how far I'll get before I'll need a nap. If it doesn't get better I'll try to find a Redi-Clinic, but I don't want to. Anyway, I'm aiming for half a wall a day... get the purple up, then go back and do the white. Should definitely change the look of the room for the better. I hate plain white walls, blech.

Anyway, it's nice to have a positive post for a change huh? I miss Mike, but other than than (and my earache) I can't complain. Things seem to be getting better and I'm going to believe that trend is going to continue. :)