Simply Norma

The wind moves the clouds swiftly through the sky as the rain pummels down on my car. I haven’t seen this “type” of rain in a long time.

Minnesota has given us many sunny days for which we have been thankful. But with the rain comes the promise of budding trees, daffodils, crocuses and green grass. The terrain already looks different from when we first arrived in November. The snow is now a memory — although they are talking about the possibility of snow for tomorrow morning.

It is definitely spring. Even mosquitoes have ventured out already enjoying the feast of nectar (males and females) or blood (females). Females must have blood in order to produce eggs and are attracted by the chemicals in human perspiration.  Adults live for 4-6 weeks.

The dragonfly is a natural enemy of the mosquito. Since we’ll be moving into a house that has a treed lot and is near a lake, I’m thinking of perhaps becoming friends with the dragonfly — assuming they don’t have their own quirky habits.

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!