Thursday, October 11, 2012

I'm baaaack....

     Actually, I have been back for about two weeks, but I guess life was just waiting around to pounce on me. Hence the long  blogging delay.
       London was fun, but so overbuilt and overcrowded that I hardly knew it. And we moved fast. No opportunity for jet lag. Did I say "move fast ?" Our "friends lunch" began the visit with 3 hours of food and conversation ( at the Grazing Goat Inn) followed by a flash cab trip (if 30 minutes can be called flash) to the Tate Modern to see the Edvard Munch exhibit. Then another race across London for another firiend's get together  dinner before collapsing. More details about the England segment later, including Stonehenge and Salisbury. And photos, as soon as I learn how to insert them.
      On to Ireland. Gatwick: patrolling phalanxes of police in body armor, bearing full automatic weapons and accompanied by German shepherds.  Standard, we were told. Arriving in tiny Knock Ireland, a different story. We are ushered through the airport, not much more than a doublewide, as the lights are turned off behind us as we go.  Customs?  Passport control?  Don't bother.

And then the drive to our hosts home, somewhere near Ballinifad (A bend, literally, in the road on the western coast).  Let's just say our hosts are athletic. They ski. He bikes, they hike. Everywhere. South America, Canada, Taos, you name it.  If I thought about a cozy chair by a peat fire was in my future, forget it.  Also visiting at the same time, a pro skier who was off into the mountains for a couple of hours on a bike every morning. And these are  lovely, kind, generous people. Just really, really energetic people. And the land... Beautiful and wild doesn't describe it.  The mountains strewn with tumbled jutting rocks, the Atlantic, a fiord, of all things, and sheep, sheep, and more sheep.  The wild ponies of Connemara. Details in the future.
       I am finally getting to the point of this blog, about what held me up during these two weeks at home post trip. About a day and a half after returning home, we found that the property next door was for sale.  We have suffered for years with a  bad owner and a succession of worse renters. I longed and prayed to own this house and it's acre of woods.  The seller had just dropped the price by a whopping amount.  A bad sign, and a strong clue she wanted a bidding war, to pay off an unmanageable mortgage debt. 
     That Sunday (last Sunday, actually) we got our realtor and took a tour of the poor misused little place.  Sunday we also wrote an earnest money check. Monday - no go. She wants all cash. There is already someone who will pay it. And they want to flip it.  No!  More headaches for us, guaranteed. Could we beat their cash offer?  Of course no one tells you what it is. Could we pull that kind of cash out of our assets on short notice? And so close to retirement, too. I felt like I was being asked to ransom a family member.  That property shares our  property line on the south, with the house so close to the common fence that it feels related anyway.
       Yeah, we gave in. I wonder if we are expected to attend the closing with a suitcase stuffed with  cash.

Lots more to come.
     

1 comment:

  1. What a trip...and I don't just mean to vacation to England and Ireland! Do let us know how that closing goes. Welcome home, Joann!

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