May 13, 2004 FINALLY! It didn't feel like I was EVER going to get to write! Joe and Sandra came to visit on Saturday and we had such a wonderful visit. They left out yesterday morning and are at Disneyland as we speak, lucky dogs. :o) Then I spent all of yesterday dealing with the Darcy situation, which was tough, but meh, we've weathered worse. I was so excited when the solution just presented itself spontaneously! Talk about being blessed! It's been such a crazy time. Let me lay all this out for you and you can live in my world for a while: FRIDAY Scary stuff. Can't buy the house because the bank has a $16,000 lien on the house and refuses to release it. The sellers are behind two payments and got hit with a massive early pay off penalty for having the loan for less than a year. They couldn't cover it and no one knew what to do. Later Friday, after much praying and holding of the breath. The mortgage broker and realtor decide to buy the 20% note that the sellers were going to carry for us. That would pay off what they owe and the sellers will walk away from the house with nothing, but the sale can go through. This house has been a horrible experience for them. We can refinance the second note in just a few months, greatly lowering our payments. The loan goes through and we know for the weekend that it's just a matter of a couple of days before we sign. SATURDAY MORNING Joe and Sandra are on the way and Eric had to work. Eric working kept us from being able to meet them in Sacramento for an early Mother's Day dinner. : ( At 10:40am, Valerie (my son, Josh's girlfriend) called to tell me that while on his way to work on his bicycle, Josh was hit by a car and in the Emergency Room. She had no idea how badly he was hurt. After a tense fifteen minutes or so, I found out that he had a badly bruised leg and was in a lot of pain, but it wasn't broken. An old man hit him from the back, knocked him clear about 5 feet, tried to flea the scene, overturned and hit a phone pole. At noon, Eric was at WalMart in Diamond Springs (30 minutes from here) picking up some things and gave me a call. The conversation went like this: E: They have PUPPIES HERE! They're so cute and they're FREE. K: and...? E: Do you want one? K: Is it a wienie dog? Is it a Jack Russell Terrier? Is it a min pin like Roxy? E: No, they are - hey buddy, what breed are these? - they are Chinese shar pei, Dalmatian and black lab. K: You're kidding, right? E: Nope, but they're really cute. Should I get one? K: What do you think? E: That's why I'm asking. K: So you're asking, "Katrina, do you want to spend your time housebreaking a puppy, having the carpets of your new house peed and pooped on, your stuff chewed up and your ankles bitten? Um, no." E: Yeah, I guess that'd be hard, wouldn't it? K: You think? E: So do you want one? K: >:< E: (not hearing my frowny face) Well? There's only one left. K: Listen. If you are feeling some kind of soul connection with this dog, if he's your familiar and it's worth more to you to have the dog than to deal with me not wanting the dog, then get it.
Mmm hmmm. So Joe and Sandra arrived and the first thing he said was "Only my mom and Sasquatches would live in this godforsaken place." :) This was the first Bigfoot comment or thought I'd had, but I went to the Ranch message board and found this link provided by my buddy, JenJen: http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_county_reports.asp?state=ca&county=El+Dorado Evidently, I'm squarely situated in Sasquatch Central. SUNDAY Fairly quiet day. Joe, Sandra and I went into town and had a nice lunch. I didn't get sick in their car, so I think my car sickness MIGHT be from the winding roads in our big boat (1989 Caprice), which pretty well throws you around. MONDAY Joe went through his 40 boxes of storage in our shed and was a real trouper. There were things he was happy to see. Since he was only able to take luggage to Canada when he moved there, he had to leave almost everything he owned behind. It's been years since he was able to see it. He took some things back, threw out a lot of stuff and got it down to only about 20 boxes, so we were thrilled. Around 8pm, we went inside and the guys grilled steaks (London Broil was only $1.99 a pound a few weeks ago at Albertsons, yo!) and they were so yummy. Around 10pm, I went in to see how Dixie, the 100 year old dog was doing and to take her out to pee for the night. SHE WAS GONE!! She has one room that is hers (the only one with no carpet) and her little fleece bed (on a heating pad because she gets so very cold) and food and water are back there. She lets me know when she has to pee and seems happy there. But she was GONE! The last time anyone remembered seeing her was around 4pm, which isn't unusual because she sleeps so long. We've had her for 18 years and she's around 19. WTF?? She ate about twice as much as usual that day and was really restless, prowling around the whole house instead of staying in her room. Around 4pm, she was being bugged by the puppy (she's very frail and totally blind in both eyes), so we put her in her room. We first looked all through the house since she has been unable to negotiate stairs for a long time due to owie hips. No sign of her. We took the search outside with big flashlights, looked under the house, under the porch, under the shed, all through the woods, at the neighbors, down the road on all sides and she was just nowhere to be found. We still haven't found her. Of course, we are accepting that she has died. She's long overdue. We have no idea where she went, how she got there or what became of her. Our fantasy is that she knew it was time and went away to do it on her own. My nightmare is that she was torn apart by wild cats or froze to death (it was really cold and she has no resistance to cold and shivers like mad). So Dixie is gone. An era has ended. I miss her, but I'm glad she's OK now, where ever she is. Joe and I were very sad. Everyone else was relatively unaffected. She has just disappeared. I think if she is anywhere in, under, around the house, I'd know by now (3 days later and it's been warm). Somehow, I thought I'd get up some morning and find that she'd passed in the night, curled up in her bed. The next day, the puppy pulled her fleece bed out of the room and chewed on it. Yeah, I had a good cry. TUESDAY I have almost no memory of what we did on Tuesday. We learned that the house signing would be on Thursday (today) and we went into Placerville and had lunch with Joe and Sandra. They got ready for their trip to LA the next day and we played "Facts in Five" until time for bed. WEDNESDAY Eric worked in the morning and Joe and Sandra left out just before 8am. I started trying to post columns. Took almost 3 hours to post Coggie and Carolyn's columns. Our mortgage broker called and told Eric we would need an additional $270 for closing cost. He told him it wasn't happening. Mortgage broker said, "Um... OK. Just bring what you've got." >:< I got some info that confirmed that I needed to make some changes at Eye on Soaps and subsequently, found out that one of my new columnists is a crazy, psycho, insane person. I dealt with some pretty strong abuse from him and was glad in the end that he was gone. His actions told me exactly what I needed to know. The rest of the day was fielding e-mails from people reacting to the fallout of him leaving. Most were congratulatory and supportive. A few people were upset about him leaving, most mistakenly under the impression that I had fired him (he quit) or ratcheted up from his insane spin on what happened. Most of those didn't care to know the truth and I wasn't interested in being drawn into his insane slug fest. Overall, the input was extremely positive and I feel like it had a clarifying effect on our site. It was like having a good enema. I feel better about the site than I have in a while. Especially since I called a friend of mine who is in the biz to ask for advice and he actually offered to write the gossip column for me! The readers are going to LOVE him! I'm so very excited for Monday to come so I can read his column! Hurray! I am so very blessed and I'm tremendously grateful that such a splendid result came from this ugly situation. THURSDAY (TODAY) Got up early to get do e-mails and play with the computer. The connection was being stupid and when I downloaded a PC-Cillin update, it promptly found both a new worm and a Trojan horse that had not been detected before. PC-Cillin couldn't clean or delete them, so Super Katrina remembered some advice given by a friend and used the task manager to stop the processes that were the baddies, then go in and delete them. Since then, I've not had a problem. I'm still only connected at 28.8 (even after Eric replaced out the outside wiring with new line), but I'm staying connected. That was my 5am success story. Got the kids out the door to the bus and thought they missed it. It was actually running about 10 minutes late, so thankfully, they were packed away to school. Eric, Nathan and I headed out for the paper signing. After an hour and fifteen minutes of signing a stack of paper that was literally about 4 inches thick, we'd done our part of the sale. There were a few glitches, like a form that made its way in stating that we would pay rent until today (not happening) to the sellers. I'll pay up until the date of the original signing schedule (until their issue with the bank delayed it), but that's it. We had a quick lunch, I stopped for leis for Dylan's Hawaiian Day at school tomorrow and went to the thrift shop where Josh works. He was back at work, hobbling around on crutches. He gave me my mothers day present, a GIANT pig gravy boat that is gorgeous. Pics later. I also picked up an awesome island type shirt for Dyl for tomorrow. Eric got his contacts and a seal for the power steering fluid gushing car. Came home and found out that Dylan has been suspended from the school bus on Monday for getting up out of his seat. What a pain. Dylan is supposedly a wild man on the bus. Who knew? He's totally docile every other moment of his life. The school bus is his Mr Hyde elixir (Kathy, I am so sorry for my kid and all like him!) He's grounded off of video games and computer games until Saturday morning, which is like grounding him off of air. Thankfully, Eric is home that day and can take them to school. So yes, it's been an eventful week. I missed writing here very much. I feel as if the winds have changed and things are going to get better. In theory, Eric gets paid the last week of this month. The kids are out of school on the 28th. Life is changing. Today is the 13th, so I'm almost halfway there. It's been such a long stretch. Eric seems much calmer and happier now that we've signed our part of the papers for the house. Our sellers were to sign at 5pm tonight and it should be finalized on Monday. Knowing we've done all we can do and it's out of our hands is something of a relief. New moon is coming and I'm going to welcome a new life with it. For now, Spooky (the new dog) seems to have some business for me to take are of on the living room carpet. How often is it that the owner growls more than the dog? Pics from the weekend. I have wonderful kids. I miss Dave and Josh and wish they could have been here too. :(
Have a magnificent Friday (hurray!) and an absolutely stellar weekend.
Love,
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