The hunt begins

Monday, October 1^st rather than starting her job TGF had her “official” interview. Since we were still down to only one car and rather than potentially go stir crazy I went along for the ride and hoped for hopping on some wireless at a close by café. I wouldn’t call where I went a café, not in the Northampton or Berkeley sense of the word but there was wireless to be jumped on. Well until my battery threatened to die out since there were no outlets by any of the seating. See? Not really a café like I’m used to hanging at. Also, yes this did mean that this little interview went on for quite sometime.

In an attempt to be proactive regarding our housing situation I wrote to Maureen to double check about the brick beauty we had driven past the day before. She wrote me back while I was still researching housing and surfing the net to say the house was available. In fact she give the name of the realtor, Holly. The house was bought by Michael, Holly’s husband, because he and Theresa were key people in this rehabbing of South Park. Later I called Holly leaving a message about the brick house on Hickory that we drooled over. Maureen, the SP head cheerleader actually called Holly so she was expecting my call. Wow.

TGF finally comes around to get me, seriously over 2 hours later, maybe it was closer to 3, who remembers anymore. All sounds good. The following Monday she goes to corporate training in Indiana for a couple of days and then they will put her in Boy Wonder’s store. This is good because the opening of the Springboro store had been pushed back again but they want her working for them ASAP. We want that to since income is always a good thing. We make an appointment to see Hickory and invite TGF’s mother along.

Tuesday finally arrives and we see two rental properties in the neighborhood before going to Hickory. I feel good about doing this because motel living is getting to me and we really need to get our lives in gear. The first rental is doable and kinda cute but it’s a shared, tiny yard which puts TGF off. “What if the neighbors suck? There isn’t room for Wyatt to run, no fence.” The second, eeww! We didn’t want to touch anything even though it had be “redone” it was all so hideous and badly done that we couldn’t wait to leave but the realtor was very nice.

Finally we approach the amazing house. It’s an older brick home, two stories, on a double lot and has a garage. It’s higher than we want to pay because funds are short for a down payment and there is a question about if I could get a mortgage for that amount though the monthly payments would be totally doable. My dear friend Jennie only buys yarn that makes her heart beat faster. My heart was beating so fast walking through this property I thought I might go into cardic arrest. All the wood work on the first floor had never been painted. Never! It had a beautiful pocket door. It was huge, beyond huge – like 3000 square feet. The bones on this place was just beyond compare. However there was mold, we were all bothered by it. There was no way I could live in this house and work on it in that state. Mold remediation can be a very expensive endeavor. We knew we had to walk away from the property. Holly said that she thought Michael had bitten off more than he could handle with this one but at least they would secure it to prevent vandalism until something more could be done.

Later we met up with The 'Rents to a Rat Pack type of restaurant to celebrate my birthday. Mostly all day I forgot it was my birthday. Seriously. There was so much to adjust do, errands to run, and potential housing to look at, a thing like a birthday was just far down in priority for me. The Pine Club is one of those places with a limited, but old fashioned high end menu. Translation: lots of meat. No windows, dark wood paneling everywhere. The waitress was lively and the food was tasty (I got fish).

On the way back "home" (aka Mot*l 6) we drove by two other properties I had scouted earlier. I had already emailed Holly about these and we wanted to scope them out a bit. I was on a mission!