Check for Ticks, and Tick-Tick on the Check
Where'd this @#$%^&* tick come from?! And where's our @#$%^&* check?!
On Saturday the 1st, Athennia's primary focus was helping Taylor get her cats to the veterinarian one last time so they'd be ready for the pending move up to Connecticut; and then to take Taylor to the nail salon to get a professional manicure before prom.
Given recent events at the end of last month, they also decided to squeeze in an emergency trip to the mall in the hopes of finding a new prom dress to replace the one that Stacey's Bridal had irreparably butchered... and they miraculously managed to find an almost-perfect doppelganger at Macy's.
Their errands took up most of the morning, afternoon, and evening; but in the meantime, I came across a home south of Pottstown (much closer to Athennia's job) that had come onto the market the day before and looked like a beautiful little place where we might be able to spend a year or two saving money before pivoting to our own plot of land...
Got a nice, warm "log-cabiny" vibe; right?
Good-sized deck...
Decent-sized bedroom, and another bedroom for my office...
...Then Athennia's office... and Riley's room right there out back ;)
It was late into the evening by then; but I texted Angel about it first thing the next morning...
Hey man, let me know when you'd have time to look at one in Pottstown with us. If you're already booked for today, maybe you can meet Athennia there from her job one afternoon or evening this week.
Also, if there are any documents for this one when you take a look, please send them my way.
He got back to me relatively quickly...
Sure man I am mowing my yard so later I will look and get back to you.
But by the time early afternoon had rolled around, I knew we probably weren't getting a call back anytime soon—which meant that we definitely wouldn't be taking a drive to see the house today, and we might as well find something else to do instead.
Fortunately, Five Mile Woods is basically just around the corner from us.
Riley considered tagging along but ultimately decided not to; and so it was just me, Athennia, and our cameras...
I can't remember the last time we were here; but, whenever that was, they were just beginning the installation of the new and improved boardwalk through the swampy area on the Sphagnum Trail.
This time it was all finished and things were looking pretty good...
...except for this comical longcut around a cluster of trees...
This was by far as dry as we had ever seen the swamp—though we still weren't about to set foot in there...
And then we were out in the middle of the forest...
Athennia and I took almost the same picture here...
Some people just have no eye for this stuff; do they, Kitten?
I just happened to take a half-decent shot for once :)
Here's a ridiculous amount of other pictures from our hike—mostly taken by me...
Athennia got some "micro" shots...
And we found Fern Gully (even though Hexxus lives in a tree at Dark Hollow now)...
Eventually we came to an area we'd never visited before and found a little footbridge over a pebbly beach...
So, we stopped and poked around for some souvenirs...
The path up ahead was seldom-traveled and overgrown with poison ivy; and so we decided to call it a day and turn back.
But just as we were leaving, Athennia spotted this little guy...
Halfway home, I felt something crawling on my leg and looked down to see a deer tick walking across my left knee.
Son of a bitch!
I'd taken my baseball cap off and rested it on my knee just a minute prior; so I have no idea whether the tick came from my hat, or my shorts, or what.
But I flicked it out the window... and then jumped in the shower as soon as we got home, just to be sure there weren't any others.
Meanwhile, still not a peep from Angel—even now, hours later.
If we did decide to make a move on this house though, we would need a chattel loan instead of a traditional mortgage (since it's on leased land in a small mobile-home community, rather than land we'll actually own).
So Athennia and I spent a couple hours filling out a few loan applications before winding down the evening with an episode of The Handmaid's Tale and some mindless YouTube videos.
Then Monday morning, it was back to work.
And right around 8:00 A.M., the house we'd asked Angel about went under contract—all with us never having heard back from him in any capacity.
I shot him a text to let him know...
We missed out again. It went under contract this morning.
And as usual, when there wasn't any actual work to be done, he got right back to me within 10 minutes...
Damn that was quick. Well, ok. Let me know.
Let you know what, jackass?
You were supposed to let us know!
It's only been a few days now... you know, since the 29th of March.
In other news, the maintenance guys came around and left a note on everyone's door to set our fire extinguishers out in the stairwell for the fire marshal to come around and inspect the next day.
That wouldn't ordinarily be worth mentioning, except that last month they posted a note telling everyone to get their stuff out of the stairwells because the fire marshal would be coming around and issuing fines because crap in the stairwell is a fire hazard.
So... yeah.
Put your crap out in the stairwell, everyone!
That 'Marshall' guy is coming around again, and we pretty much let him call all the shots in his sole discretion, for no reason whatsoever.
On Tuesday the 4th I spent a few hours researching a 13-acre plot on top of a mountain out in Temple (outside of Reading)... including watching a crap-ton of videos on YouTube about how to go about cutting a driveway with multiple switchbacks into an 80% grade—which I figured was likely one of the costliest and most immediate projects the plot would require.
It was only after all of that time spent that I came across an engineering diagram of the land—complete with a representation of the petroleum pipeline that ran through it right where I had imagined I might have cut in a driveway.
And with the attendant right-of-way creating a nice 40-foot band of this land of yours isn't actually yours across the entire property, that was enough of a deterrent to convince me not to dump any more time into my research.
...And yet, there would still be a laundry list of restrictions on potential development—which would make it difficult to, say, run utilities, fence in livestock, and do all sorts of other things.
So, hard pass.
Sometime that same day, Athennia and Taylor had an argument over the phone when Athennia apparently "blindsided" Taylor by reminding her that Ahlina is not welcome in our apartment after the very, very, very lengthy list of offenses she committed against our family and this household.
(For anyone who may have forgotten, Ahlina's coming down from Connecticut to take Taylor to the prom and attend her graduation this coming weekend.)
I take it that, through Taylor's teenaged understanding of the world, having Ahlina trash the apartment three years ago and then literally try to get into a fist-fight with Athennia two years ago is ancient history at this point, and was hardly a big deal in the first place:
Why can't we just let bygones be bygones; you know?
Well, some things aren't that simple. But we can let gonebys be gonebys... as in, "Hey, Ahlina? You're gone. Bye!"
That really can't get any simpler.
On Wednesday I reached out to Angel yet again about the progress (or lack of) on getting our $2,000 back.
And he gave me yet another non-answer...
It's in the mail. I haven't seen it yet. But Mike said he personally sent it so any day.
Yeah.
Sure.
Except that Angel and Mike (the seller's realtor from the Kutztown property) have both been telling us that the check has been in the mail since about the year 1647 now.
So, I responded,
Me: But we still have no idea where he sent it.
Did he send it to us?
Would you think maybe our realtor would have called to ask about that at any point between the last week of March and this first week of June?
An hour and a half later, Angel got back to me...
Angel: Ok let me call him and find out.
But that's when I dropped the first bit of foreshadowing on him...
Me: We already called him ourselves.
Unsurprisingly, I got an immediate response to that one...
Angel: What did he say?
Me: He sent it to your agency at the address that was on all the paperwork we signed. Tomorrow it will be a week.
When's the last time you were at your office?
But, what do you know? Later that evening Angel stopped by his office and discovered that the !@#$%^& thing was laying on his desk... possibly for days at that point!