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Quest For A House Part 5: Or When Enough Is Enough

.. so it's no secret that finding a house to move to have been a hell of a whole lot harder then I thought it was going to be.

WAY harder.

And with time ticking away, I've developed every kind of intestinal problem known to medical science and some that I'm sure isn't.

It sucks.
The other morning, after a particularly bad night of tossing.. turning.. and hitting the bathroom, Tim wakes me up at an ungodly hour with the laptop screen in my face screaming YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!!

Before I was even mentally awake.. had my glasses on.. OR had a drip of coffee in me, he starts showing me this mobile home and his brilliant idea of buying a mobile home instead of renting a house and then we can get a lot and park it there and then have chickens and pigs and grown corn.. because, you know, corn is going to be worth more then gold.

Now, don't get me wrong. I've been in mobile homes before.. ones that were nicer then any place I ever lived before (except my house in Penrose Park which I loved so much it kept me in a bad marriage for 18 years) .. we just don't have the money for one of the "nice" ones.

Not to say that the ones he was showing me wasn't nice. There were. If you were HIM. He who could care less about anything materialistic or if there are curtains on the window or if the blinds are straight or if his furniture matches.

Please let's not get into that! HUGE can of worms there with no fishing pole.

Point is that he doesn't care where he lays his head. I do. It's not that I'M materialistic or have high standards *cough* or anything like that... I just want to be comfortable where I live.. want it to be presentable and clean.. and would rather not have to worry about falling through the floor.

It's a ME thing.

Plus, you know, I don't think I'm ready to knock out some teeth and start chewing tobacco to fit in to my surroundings.I mean, really .. my stilettos and concrete steps just don't seem to mix.

Then there are the kids to consider. If it was just the two of us then believe me, I would be a lot less selective but it isn't..

We found out that we have to give 60 days notice to our current landlord so we're going to have to pay another month's rent here which means we have to stay until the end of January.

We're at the point where we have to take a leap of faith. If we officially give notice, will we find something in time? Will we have to ship the kids off to their mother's and live in a tent somewhere? How the HELL did I find myself in this situation?

If you thought sleepless nights were bad before, well.. we're talking NO sleep AT all now.

The big difference between Tim and me is that I'm a planner and he flies by the seat of his pants. I like having a plan.. know what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. The ducks need to be in a row. Needless to say this situation is putting holes in my stomach.

But then yesterday we got an email that took a lot of pressure and stress off. I'm not going to go into detail but let's just say that regardless of what happens, we have a plan and a place.

When I woke up this morning, Tim was like, "... wow,  you look happy and well rested".

And I was like, ".. because we have a plan and a place, douchebag!"

'Cause that's really all it takes to give me a good nights sleep ... a plan and a place.

Quest For A House Part 4: .. Or How Everything Up There Is At Least 45 Minutes From Something Else

.. so in the week between weekends, we scoured the internet and came up with more houses to look at and even had THE best realtor in Pennsylvania (April) come up with two places to look at.

Total, there were 6 houses to look at:

1 in Sunbury
2 in Williamsport
1 in Jersey Shore
1 in Montgomery
1 in Coal Township

In that order.

The Sunbury property was a twin at 550.00 a month. On the drive over ( and just before you get on the bridge in the picture) we saw another twin for rent. We figured we'd catch the number on the way back.

Sundbury is a gorgeous town .. historic. Very Norman Rockwell-ish. We ooohed and ahhhhed driving through the whole town .. until we got to the place to rent. Obviously the ONLY part of the town that was left off the tourist brochure. It wasn't that it was bad, per se.. it's just the front door look out on the back of business' so we had a loveLY view of dumpsters.

As the Italians say .. FURGEDDABOUTIT!

So we drive back the way we came and got the phone number for the house we saw on the way in. Called the number and left a message.

On to Williamsport.

We met April, THE best realtor in Pennsylvania at her office (which happened to be a few business' down from the hotel we stayed at.) She had two properties for us to look at so we climbed into her little clown sized Jeep. Nimble Tim got in the back which was so small that being nimble was of no help. Good thing he stopped wanting more kids because his manly parts got kind of mangled getting in and out of that thing!

The two houses that we had called her about the week earlier were already rented and she was overly apologetic for it. She explained that because of all the gas workers flooding the area because of the shale finds, not only have rental prices doubled but they get scooped up as fast as they are listed

Figures.. I'm always a day late and dollar short.

First house was in Williamsport. Nice size house.. but even though they were doing remodeling, it really wasn't much better then the shit hole we had seen the week before. But it did have nice large bedrooms and a full sized walk in attic. Color choices were a little bizarre but it seemed like the hunt was going a little better. Wasn't crazy about the yard (shared with a neighbor that apparently bought every Fisher Price toy for her kid) because there wasn't a fence but it did have a balcony off the master bedroom. The only thing was the owner wanted 1000.00 but April said he would negotiate.

Eh.

Next stop was Jersey Shore, located about 12 miles outside of Williamsport.

This house was GORGEOUS!!

Recently remodeled, it has an updated kitchen with granite counter tops, a double sink with the new old-fashioned Kohler spigots and tin back splash.

OMG.. I get goose bumps just thinking about this house.

As Tim said, this would be a house I would have my mother visit .. because right now, she's not allowed anywhere near where I live! Ghetto Chateau that it is!

But this house.. OMG is all I can say

While I was still picking up my chin in the kitchen to stop drooling on the ceramic tile floor, Tim checked out the basement and was all giddy about the new furnace.

What can I say .. it was the whole Mars / Venus thing. I was giddy over the asthetics and he was more concerned about furnaces.

He's the ying to my yang.

Me and April were still in the kitchen looking at pantry sizes and cabinet space when Tim walked into the next room which was the dining room and loudly exclaimed YOU CANNOT COME IN HERE!

Pay no attention to the fridge and the gym equipment. Just look at the refinished original hardwood floors.. the built in hutch! The light fixture!!

But what you don't see is what really knocked the socks I didn't have on off.

See that doorway to the left?

That's a bathroom. A HUGE bathroom. A FULL BATHROOM!! Big enough even to have the washer and dryer in it.

Can you say SOLD!!!!!

The living room was a nice size.. LOVED the stair way and was completely enamored by the light fixture hanging in the foyer.

The whole downstairs was really tastefully decorated.. there wasn't one thing that I would change. Tim neither.. and that's a big thing because we have completely different tastes when it comes to decorating.

The upstairs had three bedrooms.. all nice sized except for the third one. That was a little small and had the stairs that led to the attic. The attic could be remodeled to make it a room so I really wasn't that concerned about the size. I mean, right now both boys are in one room anyway and the whole upstairs isn't being use at all. Paying for a house that I'm only using half of sucks. Big time.

The other selling point is that the house sits on a nice piece of ground and has a detached two car garage at the other end of the lot.

No fence, but that wouldn't really be a big deal. I've built fences before and until one could go up, there's this thing called leashes for the dogs.

The stickler is that the owners want 1000.00 a month. Way more then we wanted to pay however, Tim and April started talking and he said that he was willing to pay 800.00 a month is there was a lease / purchase deal.
The house has apparently been on the market for sometime and even though it's 89.9 price tag is considerably cheap where I come from, I guess it's a lot for Jersey Shore. But April said that she would talk to the owners and see if she could negotiate some kind of deal.

Reluctantly, it was back to Williamsport to see another twin that we found on Craigslist. April drove us buy it and we didn't even have to pull over or slow down. Not for us.

We returned to April's office to get our car and I told Tim that while we were driving back from see the house that I would give all my eyelashes to live in, I had seen another house for rent on the main street going through town.

So back to Jersey Shore it was.. found the house.. got the number.. called it and left a message.

Back on the highway now to Montgomery, PA. About 20 miles outside Williamsport. I had found this house online.. had sent an email to the owner and also made a phone call. She sent me the address but no pictures. I checked it out on Google Earth and it seemed like a cute little town. But just like Sunbury, we were all stoked driving through the town until we got to the actual house. And like Sunbury it was a nooooooo!! A bunch of houses squeezed together in what would have been a cul de sac if the road didn't cut right through it.

Call me whatever.. but I really don't want to live in an area where all the neighbors have cruddy houses.

We still had one more house to look at in Coal Township.

Now.. the only picture I could find of Coal Township was of the prison. Traveling through there I can tell you there's a reason for that.

I don't know whether it was the weather, put the place looked dark and dingy. I half expected to see people walking around with coal dust on their faces and head lamps.

The house we were going to look at was being rented for 410.00. Three bedroom, one and a half baths and from the pictures that were sent, looked well kept and nice. I do have pictures of it but out of respect for the owner, I'm not going to post them. I will post one of the outside because she included it on the ad.

When we saw the pavement, we realized that the house was on a street but it was a single and looked like it was something that I wouldn't mind inviting my mother to. The other good side is that it was only 2.5 hours out instead of 3.5.

But the drive to the house gave me the same feeling I had the weekend before when we went to see the shit hole house. This seemed like a step back.. not forward but the rent amount was attractive enough to get out of the car and we had already said we would see the house and I wasn't about to stick anybody.

I wish I could show you the inside of the house.. it was ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS! Stained glass windows.. wood trim.. three really nice size bedrooms.. really cute bathroom... balcony off the master bedroom.. back deck.. really nice size fenced yard. The current tenant had to move for personal reasons and she had a dog and cat so the pet issue wasn't really going to be an issue at all.

We met the owner's mother who lived next door and she reminded me so much of my grandmother that it was almost frightening.

I loved it .. and didn't think going back to a house on a street of row homes would be that bad. It's been over 20 years since I lived in South Philly but yknow.. I would deal.

It started getting dark so we left .. and I'm not even going to go into just how dark it got.. just how many winding roads we had to drive down and just how many times I almost got us killed because I have a really difficult time driving in the dark on roads I'm not familiar with.

Let's just say our next trip will include Depends.. just in case.

This particular tirp was EXHAUSTING .. other then being out of the car for a total of 45 minutes.. it was all driving. We started out at 7am and didn't get home until almost 9pm. That's 14 hours.

14 hours of fighting with your bladder.. and dealing with asshole drivers.. and running out of coffee when you really NEED coffee.. and willing your digestive system not to revolt because of the Egg McMuffin you had eaten earlier.

As soon as I got home, I emailed the owner of the Coal Township house and told her that we loved it and would be more then happy to rent it. She said that although we were the first to look at it, there were still a few more people that were lined up to see it. She sent an application and I filled it out and emailed it back. She then asked if my current landlord knew we were moving and I said that he didn't. She was concerned because she wanted to contact him for a reference but didn't want to jeopardize our situation here. I told her that I would call the landlord and tell him that we were looking but wasn't going to give an offical notice yet.

I did call and talked to the property manager.. she said that she understood our situation and that she would give us a good referral. I then shot another email off to the Coal Township owner telling her that she can go ahead and call.

I had had a really good feeling about this place.. but then later on in the night, we saw that she reposted her ad. Nice. What a let down. The current tenant was vacating at the end of December and we told her we'd pick right up on the lease on the first so she wasn't going to be losing any income. So I don't know. Not so much of a good feeling now.

April, THE best realtor in Pennsylvania, did email me on Monday and say that she's negotating for the house that we really loved in Jersey Shore and that she should have an answer soon so there's still that.

It's just getting harder and harder and I'm really not looking forward to putting out another month's rent here. That's 1400.00 that could be used on another property but the pieces don't seem to be falling together.

But I have to walk on faith and not by sight and we'll end up where we're suppose to end up.

It's just getting harder and harder to afford going up there just to look and coming back empty handed.

Quest For A House Part 3: .. Or How Some Home Owners Are COMPLETELY Delusional

... so I apologize for being MIA. There's been a lot going on.. a lot of roads traveled.. and a lot of coffee consumed in this quest for a house.

Believe me.. I'll be glad when this is all over with!

But back to last weekend.

To bring you up to speed, we decided to spend the weekend in the Williamsport area to give us a leg up on finding a house to rent. The internet is all finThe.. well.. and good but we figured that spending the night, combing through the local paper and then having Sunday to check out whatever we find would probably be the most responsible thing to do.

So we found two properties listed in the paper so I called. The first one answered and he said that he was going to have a kind of open house on Sunday after 12:30 and I had to leave a voice mail for the second. I stressed that we were only in town until Sunday afternoon and if at all possible, would like to see the house before we left. I went on the whole spiel about living 3.5 hours away .. blah blah blah.

The hotel had a free continental breakfast thing going on and so Sunday morning Tim was trying to use his mental man skills to wake me up early. I was NOT going to be woken early .. I used my mental woman skills to subvert his. He tried making noises.. turning on lights.. putting his face two inches from mine and staring at me but nope.. wasn't going to happen. There's nothing I hate more then waking up early.

I was up in plenty of time to get the free breakfast .. which basically consisted of eggs from a carton.. Jimmy Dean sausage links.. make-your-own waffles.. and cereal from this weird container. No bacon though. How the hell do you have breakfast without bacon.

I'm a really, really picky eater so the only thing I can say about that breakfast is that they had good toast.

My cell rang when we got back to the room and it was about the house that I had left a message for the night before. The woman was all "hun" this and "hun" that and told me that we could see the property after 1pm because her and her husband were going to church.

So we felt very optimistic.

We had to check out of the hotel by 11 and so we figured we'd drive by the houses prior to our appointments just to get the feel of the neighborhood and where they were at.. what was surrounding them and what they looked like.

The first house was.. well.. I want to say "ghetto" but not sure if that would be a compliment or not. We didn't even get out of the car and look in the windows.

Disappointed, we drove to the second house and I literally wanted to cry. I remember saying, "... the power of words" and Tim was like, ".. I didn't say anything." and I was like, ".. No, I meant that they worded the ad like they were renting something beyond spectacular."

They didn't lie about the size of the house.. it was huge. We got out and walked around.. looking in the windows. They were obviously painting it and cleaning it but there's only so much you can do with "bad". The little alley way was covered with pigeon shit and feather.. there was no fence so there was full view of  the back of the houses on the street that ran perpendicular and all their lovely piles of trash. Most not in trash bags.

The street itself looked like run down and anyone who knows me well knows that I have this thing about blinds and curtains. I don't understand how people can NOT keep their blinds straight or knot their curtains. I moved once when the people who moved in across the street from me doing that.

To me, moving into that house would be a step back and I may only make baby steps going forward but at least it's in the right direction. Plus, neighborhood don't usually frighten me.. this one kinda did.

Tim had a different point of view. We could stick it out for a year, he said. It's not THAT bad, he said. He said some other things that made me thing that he was doing his best to put a round peg into a square hole and I had to tell him that, look.. I don't think this is going to work. I'm not moving to someplace like THIS. And it was kind of like he thought that I was saying I was too good to live in a place like that and that wasn't it at all and if I wasn't in the middle of driving in an area that I wasn't familiar with, I would have punched his bald head. He should know me by now. If it was just me and him then that would be a whole different thing but I wasn't comfortable bringing the kids into that area.

We went in search of the Sunday edition of the newspaper thinking that there may be more ads. We stopped at this little deli and when we walked it, it looked exactly like ours did.. except everything was behind the counters. The behind the counter said he didn't sell the paper and I forget who mentioned our deli first but it was brought up and the guy was like, ".. you want to buy this one? It's only 125gs and you get the apartments upstairs!"

Apparently this guy opened this place 7 months ago.. ONLY had 2 problems that he took care of (read into that what you will) but now he want out. Honestly, I would have considered renting it from him if he didn't seem so damn desperate.

We wound up finding a paper but there was nothing new in it .. and with a bladder that was stretched from here to Arizona, we found a McDonald's and lamented on what our next move was.

Fortunately, I had my iPod on me and with the free WiFi at Mickey Dee's I was able to pull up an email attachment that a realtor had sent me during the week. It was a list of properties that were for rent and even though it was kind of old, we found ones in our price range. We also checked Craigslist and called a few that were a little further out from where we were originally looking.

There was hope.

Well, there's always hope but sometimes it's more obvious then not.

Since the two houses from the realtor's list was in the general vicinity of the pigeon shit house we had an appointment to see, we went to look at them. Both were in neighborhoods that looked a hell of a whole lot better then the one's we saw from the paper and both had fireplaces.

Yes, there was hope.

Tim being Tim said to screw the pigeon shit house all together but I couldn't do that. I made an appointment and I was going to keep it.

So I call the woman and she said she was sending her husband over to meet us. We got there first and parked a little ways down from the house. While we were waiting, we happened to see a cat sitting on a front porch. To entertain himself, Tim was psst psst psst to it and the damn thing got off the porch and came over to the car.. stretching his paws up to the window's edge.

We were laughing hard and then the damn cat jumped into the car. Literally. Jumped right into the damn car.

I had a better picture where the damn thing had just plopped himself on its back and wanted Tim to rub it's stomach but it didn't save on my camera phone.

Now, I could make a witty, sarcastic comment about Tim's ability to attract dirty, back alley pussy but I'm going to refrain.

Anyway.. there were these two guys in their early 20's that were walking by and Tim asked them if they owned the cat. One dude said that it was just the neighborhood cat named Smokey .. will refrain from a witty, sarcastic comment again .. and that he's always siding up to people.

I happened to ask the guys if they lived in the neighborhood. They said they did and that it really wasn't as bad as it looked. They've been living there for about 3 years.. each had young children.. and that basically people did their thing and were into whatever they were into but it didn't spill out into the street or anything like that.

For some reason, that made me feel better and that maybe I would be able to deal with this. I can deal with a lot for 650.00 a month.

The husband shows up and we go into the house.

Let me just say this... the house was not without it's charm. Unfortunately, the owners didn't do anything to improve ANYTHING from when the house was first built .. probably around 1920 .. the previous tenets had been college kids and they trashed the place. Instead of properly fixing the holes in the wall, the owners tried to hide them.. and honestly believe that a coat of paint will hide a lot of sins. There had been a leak in the roof and you could still smell the wet lathe.

But the most RIDICULOUS thing was the kitchen. I wish I had taken pictures of it. It was seriously that bad.

It was big. Big enough for a washer and dryer but apparently, not big enough for a sink. Yep.. there was no sink in the kitchen.

The sink was located in what I guess they would call a mud room. Why the hell they didn't just put the sink where the washer and dryer was is beyond me. Beyond Tim too.. and when he asked the husband why they didn't do that the husband (who reeked of whiskey, btw) was like "... oh!! You're going to have to take to me wife. This is her property, I'm just the handy man."

So the wife shows up and at this point, I'm thinking that maybe this is kind of do-able. Not by dream house but I felt a little bit more comfortable about the area and like Tim had said, it was only going to be for a year. Tim asks her if she would consider switching the sink with the washer and dryer if we moved in and she said that she would rather he didn't.

Tim and the husband go outside and I'm talking to the wife inside.. spilling out about how much charm the place has (barf) .. but really, what was I going to say? If I was TIM, I would say that the place was a shit hole. I know that's what he would say because that's what he DID say to the husband outside.

Have I mentioned that I'm the nicer one of the two?

At any rate.. we had to get out of there because we still had a 3 hour ride ahead of us so we told them that we would make a decision and get back to them.

So we left feeling a little deflated.. but a little elated because we had found the two houses on the realtor's list AND we found a drive in movie theater that was still in operation! Fun times. We definitely have our priorities straight, huh?

But what it all meant is that we would have to make yet another trip up.. but this time it was going to have to be a one day trip because we had a catering order that had to go out on Saturday.

The novelty is definitely wearing off...

Quest For A House Part 2... Or How The TomTom Is Out To Kill Me

Seriously.. does this LOOK like a road?

Ok..

So you know we're on a quest to move 200 miles away into the mountains of north central Pennsylvania.

BEAUTIFUL area far, far away from the city and all the crap that it is and will fast become.

200 miles ONE WAY is a long way to drive.. about 3.5 hours if you stick to the highways .. more if you take local roads .. so after making the round trip in one day last week, we decided that this weekend we were going to stay over night.
It's HARD trying to rent a house and a store from far away.. Craigslist only has so much and driving aimlessly around an area that your not familiar with is even worse. Like, the PERFECT house could be one road over and you'd never know it ..

So the King and Queen of Idiocy decided it was best to grab a local paper, stay over night and spend Sunday checking out places.

We did have an appointment to see one house.. the blue one on the right. It was advertised on Craigslist as a four bedroom farmhouse with an assumable mortgage currently at 527.00 a month.

This was located near Rt 87, and according to the Tom Tom, we just had to take the road that ran parallel to Rt 87 on the other side of the creek.

At first, the road wasn't bad. Wasn't paved.. but wasn't really what I would call a "dirt" road. I've since learned that what I consider a dirt road is a what locals call a damn super highway! What I didn't know is that the damn TomTom was taking us UP and AROUND the outside of a damn mountain. I mean that literally. There were some place that were no wider then  my car with a 300 foot drop to nothing and no guard rail. It didn't help that there was a local driving right on my bumper because OBVIOUSLY he knew where he was going and what to expect and was really, really pissed off that I didn't.

When we got to the house, the owner explained that someone had already looked at it and looks like a deal was cut. He felt horrible because we have drove so far and honestly, I felt a little let down but after we saw the inside, it wasn't going to work for us anyway. It used to be a duplex that was re-converted into a single home but all the bedrooms were open and there wasn't any kind of privacy. The dude was a trip. This was actually his vacation home (he lived in florida) and looked like he could have been cast in an old episode of the Soprano's.. complete with gold 9mm Glock earring, pinkie ring, 4th wife and coiffed hair. It was ridiculous that he lived there but he had a great personality and I did like him.

So with no other prospects yet and time on our hands, Tim wanted to show me the mountain house that his father built in Shunk, Pa. So I punch that in the TomTom and start following the.. This time, instead of taking us AROUND it took us THROUGH the mountain in what I can only call a secondary access road or a damn fire road.

If I thought the other road was bad.. OMG!!! This one was sooooooooo much worse. Only as wide as  my car but filled with pot holes and rocks sticking up and the HUGE drop into nothing.

No.. I'm sorry.. THIS ISN'T A ROAD!!

It was getting late.. I didn't have cell service because I was IN a damn mountain .. my back driver side tire has a habit of leaking air and all you heard from underneath the car was SCRAAAAP!! BANNNNG!!! BAMMMM!!!

All that and trying to avoid the pot holes and sticking up rocks? Yea.. I was more nervous then a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

I kept on having to swerve to avoid the holes and rocks and at one point when Tim was looking over the 300ft drop, I swerved and his sphincter immediately cramped.

WTF!!!!! he yelled. And started screaming that he was going to drive .. he made it seem like I didn't know what I was doing or.. worse, that I was SCARED (because, yknow, I don't "get" scared) .. and so I did what every badass city girl does when she's disappointed in house she didn't get and is driving on a PATH through a mountain with pot holes, jutting rocks and a car she doesn't trust ... I stated to cry.

If I was a devious or malicious person, I would SO use that to my advantage because me crying just makes Tim feel horrible.. worse when he causes it! But I think I only had to  let out some emotion and then we were as fine as we were going to be.

We had to be on this semblance of road for 8 miles and at around the almost 6 miles mark, guess what?

Only Me

Yep.. Road Block.

Now to be fair, we DID see home made signs saying that the road was closed but y'know.. nothing official and we really didn't know when they were posted because they looked kind of worn.

Now we knew.

So we had to turn around and do this again for another six miles. I wasn't a happy camper but there was nothing else that could be done.

The ride back wasn't AS bad because I knew what to expect and I there weren't that many holes or jutting rocks on what had become the driver's side.

But I did see the view.. and which I hadn't. It's hard driving with a cramped sphincter!!

We finally made it back to a real, honest to God highway. Rt 14. And it only took me one more time to follow the TomTom directions and it told me to go over a bridge THAT WASN'T THERE ANY LONGER.. that I said, "Screw it .. " and just stayed on the highway. After about 20 minutes of the damn thing telling me to turn around when possible, I won that battle of wills and it recalculated. Made me drive 20 miles out of my way and through southern Tioga county but at least we got to Shunk with both me and the car in tacked.

Tim was going down memory lane.. pointing out this to me and that to me .. Him, his brothers and my BFF Pam (their cousin) had spent a lot of time there when they were young so it was fun for me to see him that animated and full of childhood stories.

He told me about hauling stones as a kid .. and the pool table they had and the pond that used to be on the side of the house that has since been drained.

He told me how the place was actually two houses since his uncle wanted his own kitchen and entrance and whatever .. so the house has two of everything on different levels.

They spent a lot of time up there being boys.. hunting, fishing, etc. and it's a shame that circumstances were what they became and his dad had to sell the property.

You might not be able to see it, but in the middle window there's a wooden sign.

Apparently, it's tradition to "name" your hunting cabins in those parts and so this became "Lazy Acre" because it's located right outside of Lazytown.

Tim's dad had made the sign and it was kind of awesome to see it still there.. it used to hang but for whatever reason, it's now in a window.

Kinda cool, huh?

Okay .. so now that the trip down memory lane was over we had to get back down to business we keyed Williamsport into the TomTom to make our way back to semi-civilization by nightfall.

You  know.. I'm pretty good with directions and landmarks. Once I find my way to someplace, I always remember the way out so after all the previous attempts on my life with the TomTom why I didn't follow my instincts if WAY beyond me.

Maybe I was drive-crazy .. which is exactly like being stir crazy except your in a car for 7 hours driving.

And so, once again, I let the TomTom guide us and ONCE AGAIN the TomTom put us on a damned fire road on a mountain. If I didn't think that we would need the TomTom to help the rescue people find us in the event of an emergency then I would have chucked that thing right down the 300ft drop.

I had a fear that this road was the SAME road that was blocked on our way up and we would have to turn back around but my REAL fear was the bunch of campers that we saw when we had to make a turn. Say I watch too many scary movies but I'm not going to lie and say that being on that road, in that car, at that time of almost-night got me thinking that maybe one or more of them were weekenders that might want to find out if they could murder people in the woods and get away with it.

Fortunately, it wasn't the same road and after six torturous miles, we got back to the highway and made our way to lights, fast food joints and a Dunkin' Donuts!

How Cool Is It That The Quality Inn Gives You
Free All You Can Eat Popcorn?

We check into the Quality and start combing the classifieds.

Found two places listed and made appointments for Sunday to go see them.

I wasn't really that into spending the money to stay over night but it was the best decision and gave us the opportunity to explore more of the area.

And sleep in a King size bed..

Without the dog or the cats stealing the blankets.

Tim, though, was a whole other story and it's amazing to me that no matter how big a bed is, his skinny ass has to take up 90% of it.

I'll post about what happened on Sunday a little later .. you won't want to miss that!!

Our New Digs????

Ok..

So you know from my last post that we think we found a business.. that's Tim's concern.

Mine? Where we're going to live!!

Now, after living in Chateau Ghetto the last three years, I have MY opportunity to make the decision on where we're going to live.

And believe me.. I am not limiting the boys to one stainless steel room with milk crate furniture.
Oh.. you have no idea how serious I am about that. All the people in my house that do not have a vagina are pigs. The damn dogs are neater then they are!

At any rate...

So one of the houses that I'm looking at is pictured above and is in Lock Haven, Pa. .. Take a peek and let me know what you think:

The house isn't too far away from the business that we're looking to start but not that close either.. between 30 minutes to 45 minutes depending on which internet map you use. But up there is not like down here .. you have to drive between towns anyway so I'm no so sure it'll be a huge deal.

Another option is to concentrate on moving first and then focus on the business.. mainly because it's costs us around 60 bucks in gas when we drove up there Monday and we don't have 60 bucks to 12 hours to keep tossing around.. so if we move first then we'll have the opportunity to comb the area in and around without busting our savings.

But this house is one of a few so I'm trying not to be so quick to jump the shark .. just keep prayers flowing our way that we make the right decisions!

Quest For A House Part 1: We Are ... the ROAD WARRIORS!!

This COULD be my new backyard!

No... we are the King and Queen of Idiocy, remember?

The ones that drive 4.5 hours northeast .. tool around for another few hours and THEN drive BACK another 4.5  hours??

Yea.. that happened. And believe me, I think I'd much rather make that trip in Alaska when they're on their 6 months of daylight because driving at night sucks. Big time!

Note to PennDot: The reflectors make things worse!

Over the weekend we went on line and found a few place upstate that might work out .. could work out .. was hoping would work out and so knowing that Tim would be literally bouncing off the walls if we didn't.. I told him we could take a ride out there early Monday morning .. sort of to get the wheels in motion and be pro-active.

We took all the back roads because you never know what you're going to come across and trust me, I have never seen such gorgeous countryside in my  life.

After a number of bathroom stops and coffee refills, we finally reached Eagle's Mere, PA up in Sullivan County. Definitely a vacation spot for people who like to blow a lot of money on their vacations. Because the address was a "plaza", my bitch of a GSP wouldn't locate it so we basically ended up in the middle of town and drove around until we THOUGHT we found it and tried all the doors only to realize later that the doors that were locked actually belonged to a private house that was for sale.

Remember, we are the King and Queen of Idiocy!

We finally did find it and the women in the office couldn't have been more gracious and really helpful. They were more then excited to find out that we would be bringing good food to the area! The funniest was when one of the Realtors said, "... rental prices have skyrocketed. I remember when it was 3 - 4 hundred a month for a house and now it's more 800.00".

We were like, LADY!! WE'RE PAYING 1400.00 NOW!

She almost choked on her coffee.

So armed with a bunch of places to look out, we trekked out again. First landing in the center of Montoursville, The place is quintessential Norman Rockwell small town right outside the Williamsport Airport.

Driving around the town, everything was well kept and neat.. Just a cute little town surrounded by mountains and trees. The store we looked at was dead in the middle of the main street. Possibility.

We then decided to drive down Rt 87 and look at a little roadside restaurant that had been up for rent but because there were no bites, the front part had been rented to an attorney. The ad should have been taken down from the website but for some reason it wasn't .. the Realtor thought that maybe the owners would still want to rent the restaurant since there was interest in it so she gave us the name of the woman handling the property.

What she didn't give us.. and what we didn't realize at the time.. was the actual address.

So thinking that we'll call the following day, we just drove down Rt 87 and looked for it. The funny thing is, we found it!

And it's perfect.

It was exactly what Tim thought it was going to be and for what he wants to do with it... I'm not going to say that prayers were definitely answered.. but it looks like we're on the way to where we're suppose to be.

By this time is was almost 5 o'clock and I didn't care if he wanted to spend the $6 for the Turnpike Tolls or not, I was taking the Turnpike home and shaving an hour off the drive. Plus we were STARVING and you know, the King and Queen of Idiocy over here WITH A DELI ON THE FRONT PORCH didn't bring anything with us to eat!

Don't tell the kids but we grabbed Mickey D's before getting on the Turnpike!

We already have scouts out for a house and looks like we may have found two perfect ones .. each 500.00 lower then what we're paying now and a HELL of a lot nicer ... Nice enough to have my mother visit!! LOL!!

So it looks like things are moving in the right direction .. but keep those prayers and crossed fingers pointed our way .. this will be a HUGE move with no do-overs or oops room!