July Is Over

I have a few catch-up items since my last post, so let’s get to it.

Foster cats:

Pam has foster litter #26, 4 kittens and a mom cat, ensconced in our cat room. The kittens are fairly nondescript but full of energy. One had an incident where he hurt his back and was down for a few days; Pam hand-fed him (kitten’s name is Pieter/Pete) for a few days to make sure he was getting enough to eat. Pete is probably the most attractive of the batch although he is also the smallest.

Mom cat Juliana

Foster #26. (Pete is at right.)

Pam calls this batch the “House of Orange.” They require a lot of work but will be put up for adoption (including the mother cat) when they get big enough and have had their spay/neuter operations.

House hunt:

We made an offer on the Chu Chu Lane home but the offer was rejected. Apparently the owner did not take us at our word that our offer was the best we could do; the owner and her agent expected us to come back with a better offer. We already had planned to cash in one of my retirement accounts – not large! – to come up with the down payment and simply cannot raise our offer price.  A budget is a budget.

The owner indicated she may re-think our offer over the weekend and may put forward another counter so the deal may still survive, but we are not optimistic. Technically, we have rejected her counter-offer so the deal is dead but we will review another counter-offer if one is put forward. The search will continue if this deal does not work out.

Chu Chu Road home is styled as a farm building

The Lot:

More of the same story; I went up and hauled non-salvageable wood to the burn pit. We are working on clearing the area we call Bird House Ridge (after Pam put up several birdhouses in the area). Clearing this section is our goal for this year – two more months and the season will be over – and it is looking pretty good right now that Bird House Ridge will be checked off the list.

Our neighbor put in a well, cost was over $12,000.00 and the driller had to go down 400 feet. I would like to have a well on our property but we can’t both buy a retirement house and drill a well, so I continue to use the community hand pump and haul water in when needed.

My generator died; the shop says a winding went out and it would cost more than it’s worth to fix so I am back on the search for a cheap generator. I need one to operate the honey wagon kit I bought last year and to power electrical equipment (primarily my cut-off saw and chain saw sharpener) used at The Lot. More on this as the search goes on.

ATV Ride:

I took last Sunday off from working on the lot and rode my ATV in the Mosquito Pass area. South of Alma and north of Fairplay, this area is high in mining and railroad history as well as some mountain scenery. I have a long video on my ATV Video page (look for Mosquito Pass) but here are a few photos taken along the way.

North London Mill

Top of Mosquito Pass

Mosquito Pass road

White Columbine along the trail

Although I got rained and hailed on during the trip, it was an interesting 28.2 mile excursion and I enjoyed my visit to this area.  Last time on Mosquito Pass was decades ago – before the kids were born.

Note on the video: I’m trying out “wide-screen” (16:9 ratio) on this clip so it will be rather wider than normal. You may have to adjust the size to fit your screen; you can do this by “grabbing” a corner and re-sizing the window. I would like feedback to help me decide to continue the wide-screen version or go back to my standard size so please leave some feedback.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Five Cents Worth:

The game that is real estate boggles the mind.  I even composed a cover letter to accompany this latest offer on Chu Chu Lane, giving an overview of our financial circumstances, and we still were not taken at our word that this was the best offer we could submit.  Did I need to go into the details of how we will carry two mortgages in the interim until the De Beque place may (someday) sell at a significant loss, with zero equity gained over ten years? Did no one else go through the recent recession?  To say we are bummed is putting it mildly.  Almost puts a person off the retirement house search entirely.

What we have learned – there is no “dream house” in Western Colorado we can afford, not even at auctions or estate sales. After having looked at types of properties on the market in price ranges from $100,000 to $200,000 to $300,000, our price point for a livable house is probably in the $265-$280,000 range instead of the lower-than-$250,000 range we had originally thought.  And for us to pay that amount means likely delayed retirement and/or me working full-time rather than part-time for more years.  Sacrifices to consider carefully.

But, putting it in perspective, my closest childhood friend in Florida is recovering from cancer surgery. House hunting is not life or death.

Happy trails.