It’s really happening. I’m still sort of in shock, moving ahead one step at a time and juggling a gazillion details at once, but it’s happening.
How many more sunsets will we have with this view after seven-plus years of this?
Not many, at least, not with these trees. Which way is the new house oriented? Which way is west? Ah, yes, the lots behind us are still empty, it should be clear.
The sunsets will be spectacular. And there will be snow on the mountains in winter.
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
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!
Filed under Forever Home, Photography
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!
Filed under Forever Home, Photography
We’re up in Apple Valley and Hesperia looking at open houses. There’s also a large brush fire (currently at 478 acres with zero containment) about a dozen miles south of us. We’re fine, no significant danger, it’s burning in a wilderness area, but the smell is STRONG and there are literal TONS of particulates in the air.
At the left, above the palm trees, is the crescent Moon.
In the wide view, over on the right, is a windmill with neon all over, a part of a minigolf course & some rides next ti the hotel.
MARVELOUS! Now if we could just find a house, get through escrow, and get moved!
Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
Time moves on. The work week ends (-ish), The Long Suffering Wife finishes yet another trip around the Sun, and we’re prepping to head up to Apple Valley and Hesperia for the weekend to look at houses (not feeling super excited about any of these, but you have to start somewhere), and where there was a full moon out there a couple weeks ago, tonight we have a four-day old crescent moon setting just after sunset.
Beautiful! I’m glad that Newtonian physics and orbital mechanics are keeping track of what’s going on, ’cause I’m lost!
Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
Dare we hope that there’s light at the end of the tunnel which is not, in fact, an oncoming, runaway freight train?
Is there enough slack in my schedule and deadlines for us to make a trip up to Victor Valley to look at houses for our Forever Home this weekend? Or do we just MAKE the time to do it, one way or the other, because there will always be plenty of excuses to put it off another week?
Part of the new urgency is doing the Zillow Dance, finding houses that we really like, seeing that they have open houses that we can’t get to, and then seeing them sold. There’s a long, long list of houses that were “pretty good” that we never got to see at all that are now gone. Worse, there’s a shorter list of houses that we absolutely fell in love with online, some of which we actually DID go see and walk through and kick the tires, all of which are now gone.
What are the words in that song from “Wicked?”
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap.
I’ll probably try to keep my eyes open, safer that way, but it’s leaping time.
Yesterday I noted that we were halfway to Christmas. I’ve also mentioned that I would love to find a Forever Home with LOTS of opportunities to display MORE lights. And then even MORE!
Unfortunately, one really nice house that we’ve had on our radar which would have been SPECTACULAR for displaying Christmas lights (right on a main road, tons of roofline and bushes and trees and fence in front) appears to be in the process of sorting through multiple offers, none of which is ours. I guess if the gods want it to be ours so I can put up all of those lights, we’ll need some divine intervention. Isn’t Santa Clause a god? At least a demigod? An elf? Something?
HEY! *whistles shrilly* A LITTLE HELP?! 🎅🤶🧑🎄
Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Photography
It feels like I’m on a roller coaster at the top of the first lift hill – you know, that moment where it pauses for a second and lets you look over the edge, and while you’re not accelerating downward just yet, you know it’s coming, coming soon, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it?
May was like a month of setting up a huge set of dominos. Big picture, from an impartial, outside view, most of these upcoming adventures are good things. The search for the Forever Home. Starting to pack and think about the logistics of moving one final time. The annual audit at work. A bunch of other projects at work. Making some deliberate changes to my daily routines and habits (exercise, a trainer, more discipline in self care) to deal with some of the aging and stress issues. Mostly good, just change, and change is always stressful, even when (or perhaps “especially when”) it’s necessary and desireable.
Maybe it’s more like standing in the doorway of an airplane, waiting to do your first jump. You know that you want to do it, you know that it’s going to be a good thing, but it’s still terrifying.
It’s sure looking a lot like after months and months of prep and setting the stage, June is going to be when all of those dominos start to fall, when the roller coaster dives into its first loop, and when I really, really need to see if all of that planning and prep pays off and the parachute opens.
Exciting.
Exhausting.
Terrifying.
So here’s a picture of the DWP building and sunset from the Music Center last night.
As for Robert O’Hara’s new vision of “Hamlet” from yesterday? Someone who’s much more of a student of Shakespeare will need to weigh in. I’m just going to sit here and mutter “WT actual F??!!” over and over a lot.
Filed under Forever Home, Paul, Photography
Still looking at clouds. I’m usually not that good about seeing shapes in them (for example, some of my finest work is pretty basic, at best) but this one just leapt out at me this evening.
It’s running from left to right, and its head is turned to look at me. See it? Tail, hooves, ears, butt?
Wait, aren’t horse butts called “withers?” Eeeehhhh! 🚨🚨🚨Wrong! 🚨🚨🚨 The shoulders, or highest point on the back, are the withers. So what is the back end called? Just horse butts?
If we’re going to buy a horse property for our Forever Home (we’re NOT!) I’m going to have to learn the lingo.
(It’s apparently “hindquarters,” and the high point of the hindquarters is called the “croup.”)
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets, Weather
Looking at houses in the Apple Valley, Hesperia, Victorville area (“high desert” or “Victor Valley”) there are quite a few houses that are advertised as “horse properties.” At least, they’re zoned to allow horses. Most don’t have any equipment, stalls, barns, or other necessities, but if you want to invest a few tens or hundreds of thousand dollars in building it, you too can have horses!
Of course, there’s also the place that had all of that, along with at least two mules. We thought about it, especially if the mules could be included in the sale price. (Didn’t happen – probably dodged a bullet there!)
I am not completely ignorant of the ways of the equine critters – just 99.9999% ignorant. When I was a kid growing up in Kansas City we lived on the edge of the housing tract, with a farm over the back fence. Shetland ponies were always there to feed and pet and play with.
And I have been on a horse more recently than 1967. 2005, twenty years ago, to be exact.
Thank goodness we found a slow, old, swayback nag that was safe for me to get on.
God knows what happens if our fantasy forever home has two acres, a barn, a watering trough, and more horse stuff. Of course, I’ll have to learn the real words for all of that horse stuff.
Adventures await!
Filed under Critters, Forever Home, Photography
We had a drought a couple years ago which resulted in there being significant restrictions imposed on water useage, especially things like yard irrigation. We managed to keep some/most of the front yard green-ish, but the back yard got abandoned. Even though we’ve gotten some rain again in the last year or two and the restrictions are gone, the back yard has never come back and is pretty much just hard-packed dirt and bird seed.
The sprinkler system is still there, and even though it doesn’t get used it’s still pressurized, and the sprinkler heads still drip or leak the tiniest little bit. This has led to tiny little oases surrounding the sprinkler heads, where hearty little weeds have managed to eke out an existence. Now they’re blooming.
This makes me think that the back yard could be re-planted with some work – breaking up the hard-packed topsoil, fertilizing, getting some grass seed (or sod if we wanted to be fancy fancy), watering it, and so on. But all of those steps come with dollar signs attached and I would rather save my dollars to spend on The Forever Home and getting out of here and into it. If the landlord doesn’t care, then I’m going to pass as well.
Filed under Castle Willett, Forever Home, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 