Our New Home

We finally found a place to live and will be moving the first week of October. It is a frame cottage...everything on one floor except the bedroom. We have one 4 piece bath upstairs and a 2 piece bathroom downstairs, which makes it very convenient. The only time I will have to go upstairs is to clean or go to bed at the end of a long day.

The house has four bedrooms, so when the boys come to stay they can each have a room of their own. All appliances are supplied, including the microwave. The large pantry off the kitchen and numerous cupboards will give me lots of storage space. The living room/dining room is open concept. Our round oak table and chairs will fit in there perfectly.

There are laminate floors throughout, which suits me fine. I'm not a fan of carpeting. We can take Dakota and the house has been entirely renovated, painted and it's in spotless, move-in condition. There 's a small yard, a patio, a workshop and a shed.

What more could you ask for. The only thing missing will be the green space we have here. It's on a main street but there is a park two blocks away. Just hope we like it. The landlady is new to renting and the one thing that concerns me is that she thinks she can enter the premises whenever she wants. I explained that is not feasible and against the landlord/tenant laws of Ontario. Hope it doesn't cause a problem.

Sorry I haven't been around for a few days. For some reason every time I tried to log in, it took me to an error page. Glad I'm back once again.

I will post more photos after we get the key.

House Hunting

Well, this week, along with packing, we have been house hunting. No, we are not moving in with Mom. I just wouldn't be able to take that kind of abuse all the time. This is not the mother I've known all my life. I'm suspecting that she is having dementia problems or the beginnings of Alzheimer's as my friend Sarah pointed out. Sarah is a nurse and I'm sure she could be right. The anger, the childish behavior and the way she is treating everyone is just not like her. She has a different favorite person everyday of the week.

Now, to tell you about hubby's and my experience house hunting. We have looked at about a dozen places. Out of that number, I would probably only live in two of them. One is a beautiful little cottage. It has a storage shed, a workshop, four bedrooms, a huge pantry, all appliances included and a freezer. It has lots of cupboard and storing space. It is $1050 per month. That is high for us, but it is to die for. The second place that was acceptable was a townhouse. 3 bedrooms, an unfinished basement, one full bath, two 2 piece baths, a pantry and carpeting, which I'm not keen on. Too much vacuuming, which I can't do because of my spinal injury. Hubby is not real faithful about vacuuming. We can take Dakota to both of these places.

Other places we have looked at are semi detached houses, townhouses and single family dwellings. We also looked at one apartment in a building. Most of these were more than the two above and many of them were in deplorable condition. They still want $850 to $950 a month plus utilities. In two of those places the floors were only half there, tiles were torn up, holes in the walls and other damage done by tenants. One man wanted me to move in to a place that was filthy, clean it, lay a new floor and paint the entire semi and didn't want to allow us anything on the rent. Afraid not.

So the search goes on. There is a perfect house out there for us somewhere and we're hoping it shows itself before the end of September. That is when we have to be out of here.

Going With the Flow

Life is an adventure, isn't it? Well, mine has been. Seems I go from one thing to another or sometimes from ten things to another. Everything happens at once some times. What's that old saying? It never rains but what it pours?

Mom and I have been very close most of my life. We used to have the odd disagreement when I was a teen, but never since I've been an adult. Now within two weeks, we've had three disagreements and one was quiet hot and heavy. The reason for this is that Mom is having trouble downsizing her house. We've found that when her roof leaked and was replaced five years ago, that the downstairs room we were going to be using for a bedroom had never been properly cleaned. The carpet and the walls both had mold on them. We ripped up the carpet, treated the walls for mold, sealed the area, as instructed by a mold expert, and laid a beautiful new wood floor. All Mom did the entire time was criticize hubby and Brandon on the job they were doing, which was an excellent job. The room was very crooked and difficult to get perfect. Mom knows this. She and Dad practically build their home from the ground up and she knows that today's houses are not square or level. That was ignored and no one said a word.

Last week, Mom and I had words over a box of newspaper that she wanted to hoard. I told her it had to go into the garbage. That made her very angry. Now this newspaper smelled musty and was nasty. It was not something she could reuse. I took the box from her and put it into the garbage bag and she blew up.

The next disagreement was about a bunch of little fabric pieces no bigger than an inch square. She had a huge plastic bag of them. I told her they were absolutely no good. She said she knew someone who would use them and I told her to give them to that person then because she had no room for them. She won that round. They are still sitting in the family room, which is huge and it's piled halfway to the ceiling with fabric, craft items and things she will never use.

Round three was the other day when she tried to save plastic bags, greeting card boxes and more newspaper. We had quite a disagreement on that one because some of them were moldy. We also found that the laundry room has mold all down the north wall, which can be easily treated because it is cement. However, I'm to the point of giving up.

Mom wanted to stay in her home and was hoping we could help her out. I'm not sure I'm willing to do that any longer, because she is being unreasonable and not making good choices, or for that matter, any choices. She is just clinging to mildewed and moldy items and moving them from one room in the house to another. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

My Weight Battle

Last year I lost 26 lbs. between December and April when I had my heart attack and subsequent bypass surgery. Because I was inactive for so long during the recuperation process, I gained it all back and a few lbs. to boot. Some of it was also from water retention. We had a terrible time getting my meds right. I was either retaining fluid or I was passing out from too many meds. At this time the meds are working perfectly and I am beginning to lose weight again. Over the last few months, I have lost 6 lbs., but it's coming off very slowly. That isn't a bad thing, it's just annoying to get on the scales week after week and see no difference in the numbers. This week, however, I did lose another lb., which is great. So the battle continues. All I can do is continue to try. I'm eating better and have a lot more energy and though the lbs., are coming off slowly, I am losing inches.