We Celebrate!

We are celebrating tonight. We woke up with a confirmed and acceptable offer on the house we own, the one that gave us all the problems with renters last year when the tenant skipped out without notice, breaking into our storage and stealing things, then pawning them, leaving water and electrical bills to the tune of around $1800; then the new tenants refused to pay rent after the first month (after us giving them a month prior to that for free), threatening us on the street outside our apartment, and not letting us enter the property after giving adequate warning, forcing us to attempt to serve them with eviction papers and take it to the tenants board in our previous city, and on, and on, and in the end costing us over $1500 in damages to the house that needed to be fixed before we put it on the market). But the offer is in and with very few conditions, so *fingers crossed* hopefully we can unload that soon, and get half of our insurance payment back - which incidentally they hiked this past late-summer, and then again increased when we declared the house vacant, all the while decreasing our coverage...causing me to almost lose my mind.

So, in case you were wondering one of the couple of reasons we're celebrating this sale...THAT.

"Shhhhhh....", The Mother says, "Don't speak it out loud, you'll jinx it".

I don't believe in jinxs, not in the literal manor, only in jest. So, if this sale doesn't go through then we'll simply chalk it up to "not meant to be", not because of some jinx, or bad luck, just because we mentioned it publicly, but because "not meant to be" is more logical than stars aligning, or karma (because bad things happen to everyone, no matter how unfair people might find it. Right? - though Cassandra would tell you differently), voodoo, or anything wacky like that.

However, we will request that you keep your fingers crossed, and pray, or chant, or whatever (ha, ha), that this goes through, because positive vibes never hurt anything.

Of course it still won't grant us the money we need for our trip back to England (we're leaving on Thursday) with James, as the possession date will not be until right before we come back to the United States, but it will provide the funds needed to start our USA Adventure. So it will still be quit the adventure while in England, but towards the end (late March) we will hopefully get to travel to other countries (besides Scotland and Ireland)...we're thinking France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and/or Italy, at least two of those. (which will make for a bit more interesting entries on our new travelogue)

So tonight we celebrate with good quality steak to throw on the BBQ grill, and some other tasty stuff - I'm thinking macaroni and cheese, from scratch, of course - AND I have authorized a bottle or two of wine for us, despite our sobriety kick...(because I can't ever tell how long I'm going to be around to enjoy the company of James, so I have to pre-authorize the purchase) which really, it's more of a moderation situation because Ivy had a bottle of wine last Saturday, so we haven't quit full stop.

~Frank

P.S. we did a recent podcast with Last Podcaster Standing, you can find the link here: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2012/01/airing-of-our-podcast-interview-with.html as well as a list of archived posts of interest on this blog, which, incidentally, are also accessible through the We Recommend You Read tab)