Category: Glimpses of Life

At first, I liked them. Many Canadian geese are flocking to Minnesota. I’ve never seen so many of them. The locals tell us that they come here, mate and then head south.

So — they frolic and play in the water.

Then, while I’m driving, they decide they are going to walk out on the road. Or, better yet, they’ll fly so close to the car that I am swerving to avoid them.

Yesterday, they walked quickly into the road and when cars were trying to avoid them, they honked at us.

The locals tell us that after they mate they get very territorial. But — they haven’t mated yet so I have yet to understand their behavior.

A few minutes ago I made arrangements to have the things we have in storage in Seattle sent to us here in Minnesota.  I am confident that we are going to close on the Lake Elmo house.

As a matter of fact, we received an email from our real estate agent letting us know that the title company would like to close one day early — so April 28th instead of the 29th.

The only picture I currently have of the house is when it was still drenched in snow. Very pretty in the winter and it’ll be very pretty in the summer with all the trees that surround it.

Things are starting to move quickly now. I’ve made a checklist for myself so that I don’t miss anything. My checklist includes:

Forwarding Mail

Arranging for internet/phone service

Changing the locks at the new house

Changing the utility bills to our name

Getting Homeowners/Car Insurance in Minnesota

Notifying banks of our address change

Hiring a cleaning person for the initial house cleaning

How exciting! After 5 1/2 months of living in an apartment and being weirded out we are finally going to have a place of our own again.

Well, it looks like we might have a house pretty soon here. Like — April 29th.

We did run into a couple more glitches yesterday though. The assessor’s office has the house assessed well under other houses in that neighborhood.  That’s good in that property taxes are cheaper but it made us question whether we should have offered so much to purchase the house.

So I headed over to the City of Lake Elmo office and reviewed the file on the house. No permits were pulled for the remodels that they’ve done – kitchen, screened-in porch and the deck.

When I inquired of the city if I should come back and update them on the remodel work the young man looked at me and said “no, we don’t have to know.” Well, that’s a relief.  I think he was shocked that I would offer to update them.

The second challenge — whether a homeowner’s insurance will cover work that was not permitted. The answer, according to Hartford Insurance in Woodbury here, is yes.

We have found out that the seller did the work himself and are checking to see if he is/was licensed. If so, one other check I can do is to follow-up with the State and see if there were any complaints against that license.

But — overall, I think we’ve got a house. How exciting is that!

Well, seems like our offer on the Lake Elmo house is back on. After sending them an email rescinding the offer, we received gobs of paperwork with information that we’ve been requesting all along.

The builder of the Oakdale house wants to give us a new 6 foot fence, washer & dryer, etc. to buy that house instead.

Now we have two choices.  Lake Elmo – older house, deeded lake access, screened porch on a nice treed lot with remodeling needed or Oakdale – brand new house, on a semi-busy street, no remodeling, master bedroom on the main floor.

Options!  Good options! Now I don’t have to pull my hair out.  I just cut it instead.

Thank you God for answering my prayer for good news.

After waiting over 2.5 weeks for the relocation company to accept our offer on the Lake Elmo house, we have rescinded the offer. We do not know why it’s taking them so long to sign the paperwork and at this rate, we will probably not close on April 29th. But, who knows? Since they don’t respond we don’t know.

Combine that with having to move out of our apartment by the end of the month and we are a wee bit stressed.

We have 3 houses now that we are considering. One is in Hudson, Wisconsin, one in Oakdale, Minnesota and the other is in Lino Lakes, Minnesota.

The Lino Lakes house is the one we had made an offer on prior to Lake Elmo but the sellers decided to get weird on us and not disclose any information regarding a new septic that needs to go in after we close on the house. Their agent has assured our agent that all the paperwork we need is there.

Still — we hesitate with that one because once people are dishonest, it is hard to trust them again. So, for now, we’ll make an offer on the Wisconsin house. A little further commute but a new house and it sits on 2 acres so the neighborhood is nice and quiet.

Life has not been easy in Minnesota since we moved here. Illnesses coupled with offers on houses that aren’t accepted or won’t close have made us a little doubtful of what our next step should be.

We have rescinded the offer we have on the house in Lake Elmo as it has been almost 2.5 weeks and we do not yet have a signed contract by the relocation company.

We have looked at this next house twice already – once at an open house yesterday and then this evening.

The good thing about it is that it’s new and it is vacant.  The bad news is that it’s on a semi-busy street and you can hear some noise.  We’re asking if the builder would consider putting up a tall fence to help with the noise.  If so, this house moves to the top of our list.

In addition, it’s very close to my husband’s work.

While driving through Arden Hills, we passed this interesting lake house and I had our Realtor, Bridget Crepeau, take me inside to view it.

The windows all face Lake Karth. The view is very pretty. The house has what appears to be handmade Mexican floor tiles throughout the first floor. Not quite my style but I understand that a lot of people like them.

It needed updating. No master bathroom.

The house is sold pending an inspection.

We made our offer on the Lake Elmo house on March 31st.  To date, we have yet to receive a signed Purchase Agreement from the relocation company.  Time is ticking. We need to be out of our apartment by April 30th at the latest.

We had the inspection on the house this past Friday afternoon. That did not go well. The inspector arrived at 2 pm and we arrived at 3 pm. When we rang the doorbell, a young man, aged 17 or 18, opened the door. I was surprised and asked him if he was the inspector. He said no. The inspector came down the stairs and greeted us.

At that time, the inspector told us that he had completed the first floor already. However, he told us that there was a sick child in a room and that we could not enter one room. The young man who had opened the door told us that the room was quarantined as his brother had a bacterial infection.

Oh great! I have bronchitis and we’re not advised that someone in the house has a bacterial infection. I called our agent right away to let her know. We continued following the inspector around until he completed the inspection.

Overall, the inspector said the house is in great shape although there were places he could not see very well into as the house is very cluttered.

The inspector left the radon testing kit in the basement and said he’d come back for it on Monday.

When our real estate agent contacted the other agent regarding the inaccessibility of one bedroom and some places where the inspector could not see very well, the agent responded that we should have been able to go into all rooms and that he was not aware of the radon testing.

Every offer we have made seems to have had some problems. This one beats them all. We probably shouldn’t have had the inspection done until we received agreement on the Purchase Agreement but the seller’s agent said we needed to get this done asap.

Today we met with our real estate agent to determine what remedies we’d like them to make. We can’t send anything to them though until we have a signed agreement.

So – off we went to open houses looking for our next house to make an offer on if the relocation company does not send us a signed contract soon.

We visited a beautiful brand new house that sits on a corner lot that is really nice. The lot is not very large and it’s next to a semi-busy street but we figure we can plant large evergreens and put a fence up to help with noise.

Tomorrow — another day, another decision. The relocation company still has to have a septic, well and chimney test done. And, we’re going to close on April 29th? I really don’t have much hope of that happening.

Still reeling from a bad cough, 2 days ago I started developing asthma problems. Nothing helped.

So this morning I headed into the doctor and found out I have asthmatic bronchitis and an infection. I am now on an antibiotic and prednisone (a steroid).

The doctor told me that she’s glad I came in. The virus started 10 days or so ago and this past Monday I thought I was getting better until Tuesday morning when I got hit again.

Prednisone helps “cure” inflammation problems and is used for many maladies including but not limited to asthma, migraine headaches, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. There are people who get side effects from taking it such as insomnia, weight gain, depression, etc.  I have never experienced any side effects from taking it.  It is normally only given for very short durations of time.

Hopefully, within the next couple of days I’ll get back to my usual self.

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