Where's My Battleship?

With the possible exception of thermonuclear devices, I think a free person's arsenal should be limited only by their checkbook and mental health status. Though I would not be opposed to variation on the Swiss system of encouraging responsible gun ownership and marksmanship proficiency.

FREEDOM!!!!

Well...not complete freedom, but freedom from a mortgage at least. As of last Friday, The Queen and I closed on the sale of Castle Erickson closing out 10 years of residency there (with an interlude in Houston thrown in there as well). We are now officially and blissfully homeless (temporarily and figuratively of course).

We've needed a change for sometime now. The Queen has had her hands full taking care of M&M and trying to recover from her ongoing health challenges. Working full time allowed me very little time to keep up with home improvements and maintenance much less attempt to clean out the shop and get any kind of use out of it. We had been working on tiling floors forever with very little progress. Other projects had been started and then put on the back burner after priorities changed.

Despite our intentions to the contrary, we were moving, cleaning, repairing and purging right up to the day of closing. Literally. I left the house with the last trailer load of stuff at about 11:00 PM Thursday night before closing, and did not finish unloading until 1:30 AM the day of closing. The Queen was cleaning until about 11:30 PM. She made it to the hotel where we planned to stay the night a little after midnight. I finally made it there and crawled into bed around 3:00 AM. The Queen's 7:30AM alarm to wake us up to get to closing sucked horribly.

Closing was not without its hiccups. The first came on Thursday when the title company called to say that the buyer's lender had screwed up on the rate lock and was looking to stick The Queen and I with an additional $608 in closing costs AND move the closing date back AND move the closing to another title company. I allowed as how that I was not in favor of any of those developments. I further explained that I had no intention of paying extra for their screw up nor could I move the closing date because of other commitments. After several phone calls, the buyer's agent and the buyer worked it out with the lender and closing proceeded according to schedule.

If only it had gone according to plan, all would have been golden. Well...nickel at least. The next snag was The Queen's driver's license. You have to bring your DL to closing to prove to the title company that you are who you say you are so that they can notarize the closing papers affirming that you really are who you say you are. Well, The Queen's DL had been left at the hotel because the reservation was under my name and not hers and the front desk held her DL for some reason that still escapes me.

We tried having the hotel fax a copy, but they only succeeded in sending a blank page. So, after signing a mercifully short stack of paper, we trudged back to the hotel, took a picture of The Queen's DL and emailed that to the title company. Apparently, a photo of your DL is perfectly acceptable as a form of ID to prove that you are who you say you are.

While we left behind a neighborhood full of nice people that we've gotten to know over the years, both The Queen and I feel no nostalgia for the old neighborhood. There are certainly no regrets in selling the house. For the first time since we have been married, we are truly free to take a step back and make a thoughtful, unpressured decision about what direction to take. Our initial plan is to look for a rental in late fall/early winter after my busy travel/work season is over. We will likely rent for at least a year perhaps more while we decide where/if we would want to buy/build. Our current thought is to save up cash and buy a piece of land not in town but not too far out in the sticks on the 100% down payment plan. From my little bit of research in the last few weeks, that is doable in 2-3 years depending on how aggressively we save money.

Once that is done, I want to design and build a house of our own suited to our needs and desires. Nothing too fancy. Nothing too big. 1500 square foot max (if I could get away with 1000, I'd probably do it...The Queen won't let me do a tiny house except maybe as a guest cottage). Open floor plan. Architecturally, The Queen and I lean towards "modern rustic" (I think that's the term). We'd be happy in anything from Craftsman Period style bungalos to a cabin though. No carpet. Wood floors and/or tile. Just enough room to host a few friends or family from time to time but not so much that we will have wasted space that we don't use 99% of the time and would just accumulate junk.

I'm still waiting for a chance to actually relax. The weekend was mostly spent running here, there and everywhere at warp speed taking care of one thing or another. I may actually get to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. That'll be a shock.

The Purge Has Begun

Let me preface this post by stating, for the record, I love my inlaws. I really do. I could have done a LOT worse in the inlaw department. They are very kind, faithful people who are easy to get along with.

They are also hoarders.

Now, let me back up the story a bit to give you the full effect.

Around about the end of 2003 when I was preparing to propose to The Queen, The Queen Mum's Mum (who was in her 80s at the time) was living by herself in a modest apartment in California. She was also beginning to have some health problems which was impacting her ability to care for herself. We received calls from the people in her church who were concerned and weren't sure the family was aware.

We weren't.

Discussions were had, and a plot was hatched to kidnap Grandma. She had already been planning to come to Texas to visit the family for Thanksgiving. Little did she know, she would not be going back to California. I proposed to The Queen (making her The Queen To Be at the time) shortly after Thanksgiving, and The Queen To Be made it clear she wanted her Grandma at the wedding.

Okay. Can do.

A wedding was planned in under 4 weeks. I use the term "planned" in loosest sense of the word. Most of our planning consisted of telling our friends "Handle it."

They did. Did I mention we have awesome friends?

Meanwhile, back in California, the church folks were coordinating with my inlaws the packing and loading of Grandma's worldly possessions (all of them) for moving to Texas. Grandma had been "convinced" to stay with us in Texas after the wedding. And by "convinced", I mean my inlaws told her she was in no shape to go home and was staying and that was that. Other people in the family have other ideas about what happened. They would be misinformed. So, shhhh...no talking.

As you might expect, things that should have been disposed of in California were instead boxed up and loaded along with everything else. The vast majority of those items are still in the same boxes they were packed in to this day.

Now, at the time of the Royal Wedding, the then proto Daddy Hawk was living in a modest 1200 square foot house with a two car garage. One side of the garage held a 1973 Datsun 240Z project that never got off the ground. The other side held a motorcycle and other stuff bachelors accumulate. To this disorganized mess was added a significant portion of Grandma's possessions the remainder of which were stored elsewhere. These possessions made the move with The Queen and I when we purchased the Castle in July 2004.

This state of affairs continued until October 2004. That was when the inlaws including Grandma moved in with us. This was necessitated by the sale of The Queen's pre-marital bacherlotte pad (a nice one bedroom condo) which was taken over by the inlaws after the ink was dry on the marriage certificate.

Now, picture for a moment, the Castle in all its glory. 2230 square feet of living space and the EPIC 1600 square foot man cave/workshop not including the "chicken coop" which is another 300 to 400 square feet of storage (in the "there's a roof...sort of" kind of way). It was a spacious palace to The Queen and I with more room than our respective pre-marriage abodes combined.

Now, picture for a moment, not one, not two, not even three, but four (FOUR!!!...mine, The Queen's, The Inlaws' and Grandma's) households worth of stuff being crammed into every nook and cranny available.

My shop, where I had great plans of building things (especially an airplane), was full. Not just full mind you but "stuffed to the gills with somewhat passable paths through the stacks" full. To make matters worse (from my perspective at least), no thought was given by those responsible nor input sought from me as to how things should be stored.

As you might imagine, this has been a sore spot for me for a long time now.

As a result, I have largely stayed out of the shop since. The rats; however, have made themselves right at home. Which, inevitably, led to the vast majority of the items in the shops being destroyed in one manner or another.

So, the sale of the house has finally led to necessity becoming the mother of disposal. Acquiescence was obtained, and this was the initial result:

That's roughly 20 to 25 feet in length, 4 to 5 feet high at the tallest and 5 to 6 feet wide at the widest. Most of it is covered in rat excretions.

Apparently, that was NOT acceptable to the trash service. They allowed as how all debris has to be in bags not to exceed 50 pounds and all boxes have to be broken down for recycling. So, guess what I did last night for three hours. That became this:

The cardboard boxes are being held down by boxes full of recyclables lest we pollinate the neighborhood with cardboard descecrated by rodents. It was interesting, however, to see some of the things that were boxed up. The empty glass juice jars were a little odd. The potato peeler in the middle of a box of sweaters (that were long out of style when they were boxed) was definitely note worthy. Phone books. Old junk mail. Electronics that were obsolete when they were boxed up. Broken glass. The meat clever in the box with the spices was a nice touch.

We did find a box full of old baseball cards. Maybe there's a Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth rookie card in there, and I won't have to work anymore.

I will say this though...it was very cathartic to dispose of all this despite the risk of vermin borne disease (yes, mask and gloves were used; and, yes, I took a long, hot shower after I was done). The scary part is that there is still stuff in the shop and the house to be dealt with.

If All Goes According to Plan,...

...Castle Erickson will have a new owner on July 11. Acceptable terms were reached late yesterday evening, and contracts were signed this morning.

The funny thing about that is my colleague in the next office has had his house on the market for months with a realtor and no nibbles. I posted my house on Zillow under their "Make Me Move" option not too long ago and have sold it ahead of him. Ain't technology great?

It wasn't all peaches and roses though. I had a few realtors email me wanting to list it for us. Thanks, but no thanks. Back in March, we had a family come look at it. They apparently lost interest. Then, a week and a half ago, a realtor emails me and tells me he was a buyer who wants to see the house "right now". Right now turned into a few days because of family commitments (Niece Juju's college graduation and departure to a foreign land) and my business travel. The buyer and his girlfriend/fiance saw it, loved it and gave us an offer over the holiday weekend. A little back and forth over sales price, and we finalized the deal.

The good news for us is that this is an "as is" deal. In other words, we are giving up a little on the sales price in exchange for not having to finish painting, flooring, etc. and spending the money associated with those tasks. On his end, he gets a smoking deal on a house in a good neighborhood that he plans on redoing anyway.

The Queen and I are excited and looking forward to our adventures as temporarily homeless people. The plan is to sell what we can, trash what we must and donate what we can't sell and don't want to keep. Those things we will be keeping will go into climate controlled storage while we decompress from paying for our own prison home ownership, pay off some debts, hoard some cash and generally enjoy life for a while.

In the near term, we will be camping out with family while we scope out locations for rental property in the general vicinity of my office. Chances are good that we will wind up somewhere in Collin county since we both agree that we have no desire to live in Dallas county or on the other side of downtown Dallas from my office. The current search area is roughly bounded by I-35E to the west, 190/George Bush Turnpike on the south, Texas 78 on the east and US 380 on the north. We may fudge a little on the northern and eastern boundaries a little, but I refuse to go further south or west.

Renting will be a temporary solution while we decide whether we want to buy land and build or just chuck it all and become nomads living out of a yurt or a fifth wheel.

Right now...that yurt is mighty tempting.

In the meantime, anyone who wants to go dumpster diving through a few households worth of stuff...feel free to drop me a line.