A Month of Moving

I finally made the move from Conservative Eastern Montana to the more interesting green state of Minnesota - and what a trip it was. First a word of warning to all people planning on renting from UHAUL - DON'T DO IT. The truck I got was a wreck of flashing warning lights, transmission grinds as it had a reluctance to change gears and a gushing of some liquid when I would stop for gas - which was very often as the shuddering beast got a measly 6 to 8 mpg. I may have been overloaded as I had quite a few boxes of books and lots of cans of nails and screws (my inheritance from my dad) but I don't know as I ignored the weigh stations. On the 800 mile trip, I never passed one vehicle and this was on a Sunday when all the old folks were making their way to church. I was getting to feel like friends with some vehicles as they stopped for lunch or to attend weddings, family reunions or whatever and then would pass me again and again as they enjoyed many stops while I just plodded along.

I had sold my house in Montana three times. The first guy didn't get his loan, the second changed his mind overnight and the third was the charm. He and I felt the same about all the bullshit that goes into real estate so he drew up a deed, paid me cash, I signed the deed, paid him my portion of this year's taxes and we were done. The bank said they would do the closing for $300 and he said, "what exactly do you do for a closing" and they had to admit that they just notarized the signature so we cut them out too.

When I finally got here to Albert Lea, the first thing I did was go to the house I had bought through correspondence with a real estate agent. It looked just like the pictures but the internet does not have smellavision. The house had been closed up for half a year, some water had sat in the basement and the thing stunk pretty bad. The former owners had been foreclosed on and they were so destitute that they had burned candles for light after their utilities were shut off so there was candlewax everywhere, although they did seem to find money for cigarettes and drugs (according to the neighbors). The house was dirty and run down looking. The former owners had had a couple pit bulls that went through the screeens, a gutter was hanging, the weedpatch that was supposed to be a lawn was overgrown, there were huge holes in the yard from a fence that had been pulled up, the bedroom was purple and the kitchen was dark red and missing the doors on the cabinets. But it has basically good bones - a nice tall ceiling basement, finished oak floors, almost all new windows and a beautiful fireplace. So my dear readers, I apologize for my absence. I have been washing and painting and scraping popcorn off the ceiling and fixing things so that I can feel comfortable here. I love the town and all the lakes and people in Minnesota are notoriously nice.