Seven Quick Takes Friday -- 9/18

I'm posting twice in one week! Whee! And all the credit goes to Jen at Conversion Diary, who thought up Seven Quick Takes and hosts them weekly. Go see -- but don't forget to come back.

1) For those of you who own pets (of the cat and dog variety) -- no matter HOW tight finances are, do not think you can save money by skipping the monthly flea dosing. This is a bad decision, which will come back and bite you. Literally. I'm just sayin'....

2) We sold our house to the state on Wednesday. (This is for a major public works project, that I talked about here.) We are no longer homeowners, but we have way more money in the bank than we have had in decades, or probably ever will again. We have a 90 day grace period to move out; if we can't manage that, we pay rent to the state.

3) We hope to put a bid on a new house on Monday. We have already had one bid declined, on a different house. I am really hoping/praying that this second house is "the one". Despite needing some cosmetic upgrades, it has all the features I really hoped for in a house AND is in our price range. But we need to have our friend who is a builder give it a once-over for all the details we don't know how to evaluate, and anyway our real estate agent is "upnorth" for the weekend. So we will bid Monday at the earliest.

4) It this is not the right house, we have some serious looking to do. We have already scanned, and sometimes toured, the "possible" houses in our price range. Some of them are impossible. One of them rejected our bid. Of course, God could have a hidden jewel out there which isn't even on the market yet. The house we bought 24 years ago -- the only house we've ever owned -- never technically went on the market at all. The sellers came to our agent -- a friend -- to list it, and Bill realized that it was next door to some good friends of ours; in fact, the builder who will be checking over our possibility! We bought it without it ever showing up on anyone else's possibility list.

5) In an interesting twist, the woman who now lives in the house next door (it's already sold to the state as well) is the woman from whom we bought THIS house. It was a rental property, not her home, but it was distinctly odd when she bought our friends' old house. But she's been a good neighbor and friend. Denise, we'll miss you.

6) If I talk any more about our housing situation I might start to blubber. Four of our kids were born in this house, and it isn't ours anymore. I said once that I expected it to be easier to have it torn down than to see other people living in it, and that's still true, but that doesn't make it easy. Tonight at dinner I looked up and realized that in a relatively short time the view from my table will be different. We aren't losing our HOME -- that will be moving with us -- but this house will soon be gone forever. Sniff.

7) Last night our church choir began rehearsing again after our summer break. I love these people, and it was great to be back together! But -- I didn't sing enough over the summer. I've lost two notes from each end of my range. With regular rehearsals and masses and some hard work on my part they'll probably come back, but I shouldn't have let it happen. I resolve to do better next summer. My voice is, unfortunately, getting old and stiff like the rest of me. Exercise is no longer optional.

And that's it for another week; see you again soon!