158 - Dinner is serv-ed

So, we may not be swimming in money but I'm pretty tired of eating in restaurants anyway, so I've been cooking up a storm lately (as dad might say). Tonight I decided to grill, and I just beat the rainstorm. I've come to realize that rain out here comes fast and hard, and it may last ten minutes or it may last all night. This was a ten minute storm.

For tonight's meal I made Chicken-Apricot Skewers... Well, the skewers were actually in the RV, smashed between the slides, so it was just grilled chicken and apricots. Sort of a Thai recipe with coconut milk, peanut butter, cilantro, jalapeno and a few other things in the marinade. Turned out deeelicious. Mike, oddly, doesn't like moist chicken so I tried to leave his on the grill longer... but with Greek yogurt in the marinade I figured I was fighting a losing battle. He snarfed it down anyway.

I am getting better at plating. Isn't my rice pretty?

Yesterday we had New Orleans BBQ Shrimp. I made the bread that I turned into toast, which was topped with goat's cheese that I mixed with mayo and homemade pesto.

Yesterday we made our first pickup from the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). For $25 we got 1 lb bacon, 1 lb sausage and a 3 lb pork roast, all hormone free and locally raised. Also got some raw goat's milk, the aforementioned goat cheese, some soup bones, and a bag of lettuce. Looking forward to fresher non-GMO food that is much, much better for us. So far, so good.

We've been having sandwiches and/or salads for lunch. I have finally found the ultimate salad that tops the one I've loved for years. It has a bunch of veggies in it, and the homemade ranch is far superior to that crap in a bottle. And the sandwich was amazing too... whipped feta for the condiment, topped with pesto (that I made), roasted peppers (that I roasted), some lettuce, and Cajun chicken (I bought that in the sandwich meat section). So... between the exercise we've been getting from the move and our walks to the creek, and eating better, I'm hoping we are losing weight.

Also made some strawberry sherbet. First time I've used the ice cream maker and I was pleasantly surprised. It's a simple recipe that starts with mixing strawberries with sugar and vanilla extract, then roasting them before pureeing with buttermilk and sour cream. Roasting strawberries makes them smell so good and they are so sweet, almost like jam. I liked it so much I decided to try a grapefruit version. It has an odd texture, like snow until it starts warming up, but it's good. Since I have apricots leftover I might try an apricot version as well. And we bought cherries that were on sale so... I have options.

Mike will be returning to AL to help Jason with concrete soon so I'll be here at the house by myself for the first time. Figure I'll get a lot of boxes emptied out, there is still a lot to do and we've been focusing on other things. Monday our tankless water heater will be hooked up so we will have actual hot water (right now we can just turn the hot water knob all the way up and it's about right... it's not heating up much). The washer and dryer are hooked up so I washed clothes last night. I have missed having a full sized washer and dryer... the one in the RV just doesn't clean the same and takes a loooooong time because you're washing and drying all at once. Well... not at once, but it's tied up for both cycles, holds a whole lost less clothes and doesn't do as good a job. Not nearly. And the mailbox is almost up. The concrete was curing this afernoon and the post just needs to be screwed in.

We've come up with some ideas that we think will help Jason with some of the difficulties he's been having lately, and if he's amenable, we've worked ourselves into his equation. Since it was his idea anyway I think it'll be fine, we just have to agree on the details. So that may end up being our jobs, which we would much prefer to having to work for someone else. We know we are all like-minded and get along, and this job would be something I can do from home. Hopefully he will be moving out here soon so Mike will also be closer to home when they're working. Nothing is for sure, but we can hope and try our best o get there.

Mike found a puppy he wants to go see. It's close to Jason's house, so if he likes her, he will bring her back with him when he comes home. She looks a lot like the other puppy we were supposed to get, and at $200 (she's also AKC certified), she is much less expensive as well. This morning we found three dogs we wanted to go see and all of them had been adopted, one was a Catahoula... gorgeous girl... and two were German Shorthaired Pointer pups. We'll see. I would love for him to finally have a dog, his eyes light up and you can see the weight of the world start to lift from his shoulders. Makes me a little jealous, hahaha... but seriously I have Gracie so I understand how it feels to have the right animal around and how they can brighten your day just by being there. She's been very lovey dovey with both of us today. Some day I would love to get a Great Dane. I never would have thought that, but there is one at the hardware store down the street that I'm in love with. His name is Ludiwig and I call him horse-puppy because he's so tall that I don't have to lean down to pet him. He's pretty calm, but if you want to play he's ready to do that too, and when I pet him he sort of leans into me. I don't seem to sneeze around him, so you never know. We do know that as soon as we can manage it we want goats, chickens, rabbits and then we'll go from there, but it's going to be a while before we can afford them, much less the fencing or feed to keep them.

In the meantime, this made me smile... the evil of baby goats:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganm15/baby-goats-are-jerks

Other than that it's same old, same old. We live, we go on living, and we're making the best of it.

157 - Settling like a foundation in the Houston swamps

So we're here finally.

In a case of really bad planning it seems that all the nuts and bolts with which to put our dining room table, bed frame, and a shelving unit were somehow packed in one box and that box is apparently in Austin. Same with the power cords for all of our tv's. Seriously?

We have also realized we have too much stuff for not enough house. We figured as much, but it's blatantly obvious in the schizophrenic furniture arrangement we have going on. It doesn't quite feel like home yet because there is still stuff everywhere, still boxes to unpack but no place to put their contents.

I did manage to find curtains... curtain rods are in Austin, but the Dollar General down the road had $1 rods, so that wasn't bad. Most of the windows are covered and I only had to buy five for the front room. They were cheap but they look really good. Mike did an awesome job hanging them, which is actually saying a lot because we had to get creative.

The basement is damp so no paper, no furniture, nothing that would be destroyed by dampness can go down there. We bought some extensions for the downspouts and Mike is going to clean the gutters tomorrow, hopefully that will help dry it out a bit. Right now the rain just sheets off the roof because the gutters are full of debris, and all that water runs into the ground by the basement wall. We've been getting a lot of torrential rainstorms lately, but we are lucky that we are high on a hill and far enough away from the creek that it shouldn't affect us much. There seems to be a leak somewhere around the chimney, found that out when we had an attic ladder installed (need one for the a/c we're eventually getting, although we are reconsidering and may put it in the basement after all). The former owner sent a crew to tar it up, and that did help a lot, but tomorrow Mike is going to go up there and put some flex seal around it on the underside of the roof because there is still a small leak. I think it is appropriate to say that when it rains, it pours.

There is no level spot for the RV to sit, so we can't open it up and get the rest of our things out. All my cooking utensils are sandwiched between the slides and some of my clothing as well. We've got most of what we need, but there is more to unpack. We are pretty much all hill here. So eventually we will have to level a spot, and Jason and Mike will pour a pad, but that costs money so it will have to wait.

A lot of things have to wait.

Like a/c. My now ex-friend screwed me over big time. She and her fiance found the home buying process too stressful for their delicate dispositions and backed out. We closed on this house on a Friday and I was supposed to go from that closing to another closing where I would sign the documents so that they could be overnighted to their closing on Monday. At 11 am that Friday I called the title company and was told closing may not happen on Monday. I took that to mean we'd close on Tuesday. Then on Sunday I saw a cryptic Facebook post by Beverly talking about how going into business with friends is a bad idea. That's how I found out that things weren't as solid as they seemed. Monday when I called the title company is when I found out that they decided not to close. They were more concerned with the wedding they didn't end up having. They don't know what stress is. We literally had a day or two and the deal would have been done. So I'm assuming he's keeping his options open and wasn't as ready to commit as he wants her to think. In my opinion, that's probably going to be a good thing, I have suspicions about him that I will keep to myself.

So I wrote an email telling them they had five days to get out of my house, because yes, I let them start moving in early. If they weren't out by then I'd have the sheriff put locks on the doors. I said if there was any damage, they would be responsible. If I had to re-key any locks they would pay for that. And if I didn't have the rent they agreed to and had not yet paid, despite me asking about it three times, I would see them in small claims court. I got a long-winded response explaining shit I didn't care to know and it ended with the hope that we could still be friends, but if not, it was on me. Yeah... because I'm the asshole.

Luckily a high school friend happens to be a realtor and she is listing the house for us. She's been a godsend. I owe her big time when we get back on our feet because she's gone above and beyond for us. It's moments like that that restore the faith other people have destroyed.

So other than that, neither of us have jobs. The one I was supposed to have seems to have fallen through. The one Mike was supposed to have had... ditto. I've applied for a few jobs but there's not a lot out here. Mike has done the same. I am toying with the idea of a burger shack. If I can find a cheap rental in a good spot I think I can make it work. I've already blown a few minds with one of my burgers and I have a few more ideas that I think would also be amazing. Burgers are fairly simple to do. Food around here kinda sucks unless you go down the road a few miles. There are a few places here and there that are good, but no burger places at all except for fast food chains. Closest mom and pop is about an hour away, Granville or Cookeville. Problem is the same as ever... no capital and no credit... but that's why I'm hoping there is something out there ready to go that I can rent, and maybe get for cheap. I have a couple of ideas for that too, but nothing I'm sure of.

As far as the house goes, we have a breaker box now instead of fuses. Our water purification system has been installed. Monday or Tuesday the tankless water heater will be hooked up. Thankfully, we have been given a couple of window units to use for a/c... that and the ceiling fans are working fairly well but it still gets hot. I can't wait for central air and heat, but it probably won't happen until August/September since I have to get the money out of the Texas house first.

People used to be trustworthy. Handshakes and promises used to mean something. Hell, friendship used to mean something. It's times like these when I wish I had asked for a much larger earnest deposit. And some other kind of default fee. It just makes me ill because they knew our situation and they still did it. They even painted a few walls, thankfully a neutral color so I really believed they wanted the house. Anyway, enough about that, I already ranted about it on Facebook.

Hopefully our steel building will sell and we can use that money to get a mower and pay some bills, maybe get the a/c before the house sells. There has been some interest in it, but no firm deals yet. I'm ready for shit to start falling into place instead of falling apart. I remember a time when I didn't think about money 24/7. I remember a time when things were much, much easier. We didn't realize how good we had it, and now we know. We still find happiness in things, but moving in wasn't quite the joyful experience I expected. We were ecstatic right after we closed, and then shortly afterward the rug was pulled out from underneath us so that now all we can do is worry about how we're going to manage to keep it. But I'm sure we'll find a way. Surely there is an end to all this bullshit.