Recently in Dream Category

Then (February 1995): You’ll notice the soil near the house is a different color red. That is red clay just like the famous Georgia red clay. It is great for a foundation but a major nuisance otherwise. When wet, that stuff gets on your clothes, on your walls, in your carpet, everywhere. When dry, it’s as hard as bricks.

Now (February 2004): We’ve had vinyl siding installed because paint was starting to peel in the front and the overhangs were mildewed in the back. Speaking of peeling paint. I painted the front porch railings three times since the original painting. The house faces south and the elements were just unmerciful. We had to tear some of it down. Vinyl for that one day, too.

Today's BOTD courtesy of Practical Penumbra.

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: “This evening dined with Mr. Jason, and my lady Betty, and her gentleman, which occasioned our thinking and remarking upon the happy life that we live now, having we nothing to care for but ourselves. Mr. Jason treated me huge nobly, procuring a great platter of ribbonned dough seasoned in the Sicilian manner, and many flagons of ale and a bottle of wine, which was of very great flavour."

A little culture for CrabAppleLane readers. Enjoy. -Rob

We intended to move in on the weekend. It was Thursday, February 9, 1995. It was just about ready. A cleanup crew had gone over it. It was essentially time for our inspection. We decided to spend the night there because we didn’t want to leave it unattended. That’s probably definitely a bit of a rationalization on our part. We were just excited and wanted to be there. We were staying in an apartment about 15 miles away from our brand new house.

When I got home, we ate, and started packing up a few things. We put the queen-sized mattress, box spring, and frame in the bed of my truck along with the 3/4" sheet of plywood that went underneath the mattress. The mattress had started to sag as older mattresses do and we used it for support. We had to stand all of this up diagonally because the plywood was 8 feet long and I have a 6-1/2 foot truck bed. I secured it with one of those spider-web elastic nets that were popular then but the net would not reach all the way around everything and back down. It reached far enough around where I thought I could make the trip safely if I drove carefully. It was about 10PM.

We’re coming up on our ninth year here in Bush. It will be 9 years on the ninth of February. We had decided to move to the North Shore of Lake Ponchartrain around Christmas of 1987. We had come over to cut down our own Christmas tree and I just loved the crisp, clean air. The plan was to buy property, pay it off, sell our house in Metairie on the South Shore, and use the equity as a down payment for a larger, newer, lower maintenance house. One of my sisters lived over here already and I think they paid less for their newer, larger, lower maintenance house and larger lot than we did for our tiny, rundown house and lot in Metairie.

In January of 1988, we started looking around at property on our own. We were just driving around various areas aimlessly. We wanted at least five acres and we had no money at the time so we were just looking. We weren’t getting very far. There are places on this side of the lake that you would never find if you didn’t know they were there. We needed a realtor and preferably one that was familiar with this area. We kept seeing one realtor sign in all of the areas we were interested in. He was the natural choice so we called him and set up an appointment for a Saturday.

After several lots were shown to us, we came to one that was at the end of a gravel road at the top of a hill. Some of the debris that was produced when they cleared the road was pushed up onto it and there was only one marker so we only knew where it started. We walked as much of it that was walk-able and left. We then went and looked at another property. While we were there, the realtor asked us if we wanted to see any more, call it a day, or what. I said I’d like to go back and see the one we had seen just before. Patsy was thinking the same thing. We saw it again and decided we wanted it.