Update - We've Got the House!

We're doing great! Closed 11/20, I moved the 23rd, Rod's moving 12/18 with a Pod that he's packing in L.A. and shipping down. We had a great Thanksgiving week - he was there the whole time and supervised the move. There were only a few small annoyances with the move, which is pretty good. The crew were tired from other hard moves - and I think going to a U of A game.

I don't know what happened about the auction of my Ventana condo. I stopped checking on it because the Skyline Properties manager was holding me to the lease. However, with the help of my realtor, we negotiated that I could use the security deposit for the last month's rent, but I still had to pay December. The first mortgage payment is due January 1, so that works out OK.

The house is adorable. We both really like it and find that the retro feel of it is cozy and homey to us. Rod's the one who guided us to the older home - I would have gone newer - but he likes to putter and fix and improve. This house was move-in ready - very pretty paint jobs, mostly a dusty light green, but the back bedroom has two painted red walls, one of them brick. The colors are all "Pottery Barn" palette, I think, from what I gathered from a quick look at the color chips the owners left. They left it in great condition - very clean - but we're still finding things we want to do. Cleaning the sliding glass doors window track, cleaning the overhead fans in the kitchen and baths - stuff like that. The longer I'm there the more I've realized that a lot of the reason the place appealed to me must have been very visceral at first, but it's becoming more conscious. It's a lot like my Nana and Pap's house back in Hinkley, Ohio - crank-out windows, "celery" kitchen cabinets of the old plywood style (but they have all new brushed-aluminum hardware).

We found some neat information about the area online, that there's an active archaeological dig on a 13-acre site that someone willed to the U of A a long time ago for that purpose. Students come there to learn and dig artifacts of the Hohokam Indians that lived there. Here's the link. And some photos.

I'll miss seeing my family this year. I found myself punching the forward button when that song came on in the car, "I'll be home for Christmas, you can count on me...".

It bugged me, a lot. I want to be someone my family and friends can count on, and this damned disease has exiled me. That's how I feel, exiled. As wonderful a place as this is, it isn't home, and it's not where the people I love are. Exiled.