Home, at last...

Please, dear friends, this post is to all those who posted on the website wishing us well, the cards via the postal service and long distance calls. Thank you all for your concern for us, knowing that I am totally dedicated to my power chair, unable to stand or walk, and very, very much strength left to even get my desk organized.

Well....we are home, not totally in place but that will come in time. It is so good to be back into the large comfortable house again. As expensive as the taxes are here, the lawn and sprinkler, and utilities are, to be back "home" again can't be described.

While on the market, the house/lawn was kept beautiful and inviting, so to move back where we already had blinds and drapes we'd purchased years ago, it will be easy to feel like our real home again real soon.

The total privacy of our lawn, no houses to be seen except one next door neighbor, the quietness (even just seven blocks from the court house) can't be described. Our lights in the trees covering the house and lawn come on from sunset to dawn.

I've learned that I've never a stranger and that a wonderful friendship and concern can be developed that in the future I've learned how providence meant for us to meet, knowing that the ‘stranger' would soon become a closing, caring and giving friend. This is where my friendship with Dan the Man has become.

Lil Killer has reclaimed his position to looking out the three glass doors barking at squirrels, birds and rabbits as they ‘invade' his space. He also senses when Dan the Man shows up every night and every morning and he is waiting at the sunroom room door. He is glad to be home as much as Lucille and I.

The move had to be made between rain storms/sunshine on July 3rd.so the furniture wouldn't get wet. It was almost like the Keystone Movers as six people scurried in and out using four exterior doors to beat the rain. Once everyone. needed each other's help at the same time that they were calling each other on their cell phone "Help me, please hurry." However, we are glad to have such soundproofing between the rooms so that the cell phones were necessary.

During all this, the Sudden-Link cable guy came wandering through the house, I asked what he was doing in the house on his 3th trip inside (when even one trip wasn't necessary). He said he was looking for video equipment. I told him we had lived here over 15 years and all he had to do was to see the cable lines leading to the pole. Then I told him to "shimmy up the pole, click on the cable or I was calling Sudden-Link and file a "Suspicious Report" to the cable's Human Resources" on him. Well, he left out, shimmed up the pole and our cable was on in less than five minutes and he took off, wanting to get away from that wild man in a power chair!. I assume since so many people were in/out/about the house that no one would say anything to him.

Without the help of our granddaughter Sarah and our daughter Connie driving down from Dallas several times as much as five times a week, packing/unpacking would have been really rough. Connie knew just about where everything should be placed, but having over 75 cartons to get inside because of the rain, we later found kitchen stuff in the sun room and bathroom stuff in the living room - set anyplace to get the cartons off the trailers and trucks between the cloud bursts.

Dan the Man and guys had to bring in the refrigerators, washer and dryer, and gas stove through different doors each time, even removing one set of exterior doors completely and the kitchen refrigerator doors..

As many of you have reported about the lack of home sales in your respected areas certainly isn't good news. A few blocks from us a beautiful ‘Tara" home has been on the market four years; another lovely home down the road has been on the market over 3 years. Kern, my music friend, has his Victorian home on the market nearly a year and only been shown one time. Our house was shown regularly but the city taxes scared prospective buyers away, Where Kern had lived previously in a smaller home with a pool, it is now total ethnic area and has 8 houses on that once beautiful area for sale on that one block.

Webmaster Kelly Miller came over July 2nd to disconnect all electronic equipment, computer, etc, taking over an hour. He returned on July 3rd and to reconnect everything, including Lucille's computer, and it took nearly 5 hours to get it all connected, updated, etc. How I can be so blessed with wonderful, unselfish and generous friends is an amazement to me. He helped me to get into bed just before midnight, allowing Dan the Man to rest after all the hard work for past two days. Sleeping in my own room again, in our own bed, enjoying the two circular 12" air-conditioning vents calmed me better than many Valiums.

Until we returned home, I didn't realize what an air-conditioning system we have. Stepping into our house, just blessed cold air surrounds us like when going into a department or grocery - not any hot spots, but moving cold air in every room; two 12" circular a/c outlets in the ceiling of every room in the house plus the ceiling fans running on low day and night.

Dan told me last night that he feel I would die if I stayed in that small condo much longer, but he said it's as if I came alive once we moved back home. I live in all 12 rooms anytime I want to ride my power chair there.

Today is Saturday, July 07, 2007 and we just got a call that grandson Jeff had flown into Dallas to be a wedding attendant for one of his friends when they all began Kindergarten together. If we don't see him over the weekend, we will all have lunch together Tuesday at Jeff's favorite Red Lobster in Plano (North of Dallas) after I finally get a haircut - it's been four weeks as we've been too busy to make the four hour round trip..(PS Jeff just called - will see us tomorrow.)