Author Archives: momdude

Happy 249th Birthday, America! (Girl, you’re in danger!)

Despite my comments yesterday about not having nearly as much to cull and toss as we did seven years ago when we moved here from a house that was twice the size, when it is time to cull, there’s no mercy shown.

We’ve had this fridge for something like 20+ years, but in the last eight to ten weeks or so it’s gotten flakey and unreliable. It’s the one that’s out on the back porch and the right side is kept full of beer, wine, water, sodas, Gatordade, and the “spare” milk and OJ when we buy in bulk. The freezer side on the left is where the leftovers go when The Long Suffering Wife cooks up a big pot of chili, stew, jambalaya, or whatever, and where the bulk beef & chicken & ice cream go when we hit Costco. We were lucky that I caught the first big defrosting failure event early and we didn’t lose anything, but it’s been an adventure trying to fit everything from here into the “regular” refrigerator inside, which is usually pretty full to begin with.

What was really weird was how it would re-freeze and work fine for another day or two, then fail again for a couple of days. We’ve gone through two or three cycles a week, which gave me some hope that it could be repaired. But after getting a quote on the cost of repairs, seeing how much a new one would cost, and then having it seem to die completely for the last seven or eight days, the moving calendar was the final straw. We’re going to be busy enough for the rest of this month, I don’t have time to spend getting some sort of service tech in. Out this one goes, we’ll buy a new “spare” fridge next month when we get to Hesperia.

We definitely got our money’s worth out of it. The LA City Waste Management folks do large item pickup and wanted to schedule us for the middle of August – um, we’ll be long gone by then, so pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease can it be sooner? Okay, since I cried and begged…

Being the 4th of July, the street is packed up and down the hill with folks coming to BBQs and parties (not at our place, not this year, enough chaos, thanks!) and I didn’t want it to be blocking the sidewalk, so on the grass it is. But I didn’t want it to tip over on anyone either, so we’re going with the rather ignominious attitude on its side. Whatever works!

I hope everyone enjoyed your Fourth! Stay safe!

Shock is being replaced with exhaustion. Sooooooo much paperwork to fill out and sign. While starting to do all of those little things that got put off forever, like making a couple of trips to the recycling place with full cars of aluminum cans and plasic bottles to recycle. And putting together shelving sets. And getting rid of the old “spare” refrigerator that’s gotten flakey. And more paperwork and questions and DocuSign rounds.

And packing. Soooo much packing.

The good news is that there’s relatively little “throwing out” to do. In 30+ years at the old house, and moving from a 3,300 square foot house to a 1,600 square foot house, a LOT of stuff simply got chucked out or donated seven years ago. Since then there’s been relatively little new stuff accumulated, and very little of it is of the disposable nature. And the new house is back to 3,821 square feet with three garage spaces and room in the back for an RV, or in our case, a storage bin if needed. (I suspect not needed, but it will be nice to have the capacity if we get stuck.) So relatively little need to cull, but a strong desire to label well and stay semi-organized to minimize the chaos on the unpacking and getting settled in side during August and September.

But with a really tight schedule, shove everything into an unlabeled box or bin and shove it into the truck to move it 100 miles ***NOW*** may end up being the default, winning strategy. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it will definitely be the last, at least for us.

A little over seven years ago we sold the house I and the kids had lived in for nearly 30 years, and moved into a much smaller rental house. It was an ordeal, to say the least. Look for posts in April and May of 2018, many of them named “Moving Out & Moving On.” There was more than a little bit of panic at times since we were in escrow and ***HAD*** to be out by a certain date, and we didn’t have a new place to live or move into until we stumbled on our current home by accident, and we had so much “stuff” that, even with massive amounts of throwing stuff out and culling (a lot of which pains me to this day), we ended up with several storage spaces.

I hate renting. It’s just burning money every month, paying for someone else’s tax breaks and property value appreciation and mortgage. I remember at the time that I was hoping we could buy a house and get back into our own home in “a couple of years.”

Obviously that didn’t happen. But over the last three years or so I’ve been actively looking for that “forever home,” where we can make one last move, then live for the rest of our lives in our own little paradise. At first I wasn’t even limiting the search to LA, or even to just California. Online (Zillow, primarily) I’ve looked at properties in Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Virginia, central Illinois, and many other places. Hundreds of online listings, if not thousands.

Eventually we focused our search on California. Even then it’s been wide ranging, since CA is not a small state. San Diego, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, the Central Valley areas of Fresno, Stockton, Bakersfield, the coastal areas of Ventura, Santa Barbara, Lompoc, Santa Maria, the desert and Inland Empire areas… Again, easily 1000+ listings got reviewed, many saved for future reference.

Recently we’ve again narrowed our focus to the “High Desert” area at the top of the Cajon Pass, on the I-15 about halfway between LA and Las Vegas. Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley. I had a pilot and NASA friend who lived there, and one of the Virtual Railcam webcams that I like is set up there. I was intrigued. Last May we actually spent a weekend there, and we’ve looked at a LOT of houses virtually.

Having decided that THIS was the year we needed to get off the dime and actually make it happen, my pace of searching and reviewing has picked up. We’ve been talking to a realtor, and we’ve gone as far as to get prequalified. We’re ready!

There have been a couple of extremely nice houses that had open houses, but I couldn’t afford the time off to go up for a weekend (it’s 2-3 hours each way, about 100 miles) due to my work deadlines. A couple of those properties that were particularly inviting and promising got sold in the last two weeks before we ever even got a chance to look at them. That was a big disappointment.

Moving on, and with the worst of the work deadlines almost met, I thought we had time to go back up this weekend. We had 8-9 homes that had open houses and while all of them seemed to have at least a couple of “yellow flags” at least (HOA, too small, too expensive, too little land, out on a dirt road, etc) we figured it would be a good data collection exercise. Then the first house we looked at caught us like a thunderbolt. It was magnificent.

Not perfect. It’s at the top end of our price range, I was hoping for a little bit more land, and I was sort of hoping for something in a different part of town so that it would be closer to stores, the Post Office, restaurants, and so on. Still, these were inconveniences, not deal killers.

When we got back home yesterday, we asked our agent to make an offer. This morning the Seller counter offered, and we knew that there were other offers on the table. We counter-counter offered, figuring if it wasn’t meant to be, as much as we had “house lust,” we could walk away and keep looking.

To my amazement and surprise, they accepted our offer. We open escrow tomorrow with an EXTREMELY AGGRESSIVE 21-day escrow.

Now the fun begins. We don’t have to be out of this house until September 1st, but if we’re paying the mortgage on the Forever Home starting in late July, I really don’t want to also be paying rent here any longer than we have to. We need to be packing and getting ready to move out in three weeks like all of the demons of Hell were whipping us onward.

Assuming no surprises or disasters, in three weeks we need to be ready to start living out of the new house, get all of our utilities and services set up, get movers in here and get all of our stuff up there, and on and on and on.

July may have just started, but it just got a LOT more busy and exciting than it was 48 hours ago.

Still a number of things that can go wrong, but I’m confident. It’s going to be madness and chaos up to our eyeballs, but when it’s done we’re going to be in a lovely place for the rest of our lives. It’ll be a slice!

Home again, even as we search for a new home.

More houses looked at, some amazing, some droll, some full of red flags, some full of hope.

This is the Lake Fire from yesterday, south of Hesperia a dozen miles, which ended up burning 485 acres before being stopped. It’s still only 15% contained, but forward progress has been stopped, and the winds today were much milder, which helps a ton. We smelled the smoke all night, but when we left Hesperia this afternoon it was almost clear and the smoke was gone.

And now, for our dining and dancing pleasure… MONDAY!