Where was I? Oh yes, I remember – out of all the options we had for our winter living situation, the winner was…
*drum roll*
… none of the above! *grin*
The night I posted the blog entry, Winter of our dis-is-contentment, hubby came home and told me he’d stumbled upon a really nice rental house smack dab in the center of his work territory. We talked about it briefly, and dismissed it as a step backwards – the idea of getting locked into a long term lease seemed counter-intuitive to our plans.
Four days later, the camper water heater blew, and we discovered it would be at least $200 to fix, or around $400 to buy and install a new one ourselves. We resigned ourselves to using the campground showers and pondered which direction to go in – replace or repair.
Two days after that, the black water pipe (sewer) backed up almost into the camper. We trudged up to the campground bathroom for a few days until hubby had time off from work to examine the situation (and thankfully fix it).
At that point, I told hubby we should consider the rental before the Universe gave me any more rather obvious messages. Two phone calls and two days passed, then we made the trek to the house.
As we drove up the steep, wooded driveway past the owner’s house, I got a tingly feeling in my belly – you know, like when you’re walking down the steps Christmas morning, and you’re just about to round the corner to the living room and you can see the tree coming into view. We crested the hill and saw this –
One of the owners met us in the driveway, and took us on the grand tour. The last tenants lived there for about seven years, and it needed a decent amount of maintenance/repair work, but the owners hadn’t had the time to do it. After the tour, we went over to the owner’s house, and spent the better part of two hours discussing the possibilities. When it came time to leave, they essentially said the place was ours if we wanted it, we’d be tenants at will (no lease) and we could do the work in exchange for a discount on the rent.
I think we floated home instead of driving – the kids were as excited about this place as they were when we first got the camper. We had a brief family meeting, but it was clear we were all on the same page (granted, some of us had a tiny lump in their throat at the thought of staying put in NH… *grin*). The next day we called, and made arrangements to finalize everything that Saturday.
We’ve now been here for a little over a month – our storage unit has been emptied, the camper has been winterized and is still parked at our former campground, and we are picking away at the rather long “to do” list at the house. It’s been an extremely serendipitous series of events, in more ways than I have the time (or inclination) to elaborate upon. Suffice to say, I’ll be spending this NaNoWriMo at the beautiful desk hubby bought for me five years ago (one of the few pieces of furniture we kept), sitting in the far-too-comfortable office chair he purchased a few days after moving in, staring alternately at my computer screen and at the view I have in our room –
Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I have a sequel to start, and here I am procrastinating with a blog entry. Happy writing to all my fellow/sister NaNo’ers!