I haven't posted on the LJs for years. I also haven't posted on my DW account for at least a year. I'm going to make an effort to post on both sites, but I doubt I'll post very often. 

Posting over here on the LJs because I heard that as part of the new TOS, inactive journals will be deleted. I've seen lots of comments on DW from people who have archived and then deleted their LJs because of the new TOS. I wanted to ensure that my LJ isn't deleted until I get more info on the TOS situation. If anyone is even still reading this and has some thoughts on the matter, please reply.

I sold my house and moved into a rental condo last week. Closing on the house was Wednesday. I've been doing nothing for days except packing, cleaning the house, dealing with movers, and now unpacking and cleaning the condo. In the weeks running up to the actual sale, all of my free time was focused on house repairs and improvements required to get the house ready to be sold. It's been a huge undertaking to downsize from a 3 story, 3 bedroom house into a 2 bedroom condo. I'm still unpacking boxes. I'll be finished with that task tomorrow. I don't know how much time it will take me to actually get things organized. Maybe a month. Don't really care, tbh. I'm finally out of reach of the crazy serial rapist who attacked me. Short of a one-in-bazillion chance, there's no way he could find me here. I'm out of the usual territory that he's been roaming since 2010. I can get back to simply living my life and dealing with the usual good and bad events of a normal life. I feel like I can breathe again.

The condo I'm renting is cute, not perfect, but quite cozy and livable. It's so much easier to live in a small, single-story place. I no longer have to walk down 2 flights of stairs just to do laundry, for example. That seems a minor thing but after 17 years of hauling laundry up and down 2 flights of stairs, let me tell you, I am loving having everything on one level I no longer have a huge yard to take care of. No more multiple stories to keep clean. I have so many physical issues now that I can no longer maintain a big house by myself. I only plan to stay in this condo for a year, but I already know that I will only ever live in condos or single story rambler style houses from now on.

Next steps for me will be to start actively scouting out somewhere (here or elsewhere in the US) where I can both afford to live and get a job. There are lots of lovely places out there in the US where I'd love to live, but where there are no jobs, or only poorly paying jobs. Likewise, there are places with a lot of work (like the DC area) but which are too horrendously expensive for me to be able to afford to live on my single salary. I still am favoring a couple of places, namely Portland, OR and Ashville, NC. Portland seems like it has more employment opportunities but it appears to be becoming steadily more expensive. Ashville looks amazingly beautiful and may be more affordable, but employment there seems more limited. I'd love to move to Charlottesville, VA but it's bizarrely expensive and has limited employment outside of the Univ. of Virginia. Richmond, VA, Pittsburgh, PA, and Ann Arbor, MI all intrigue me as well. I'm monitoring employment options in all of these towns. My current job is even more at risk than it was last year. I'm convinced that I was retained this year only because the company is closing one facility and consolidating staff in another building and they needed a couple of spare hands to oversee the process. Once the staff moves, there is no place for me in the new organization. I'm not too fussed about it. I've got cash from the house sale that I can live on if I have to.

But first...first I'm simply going to chill. I've had a truly hellish couple of years. Both my parents died. I was told I had cancer and had radical surgery, only to be told afterwards that it was something else. I was attacked by an honest to god, psychotic stranger in my own home. A hundred people in my department at work were fired. My house needed tens of thousands of dollars of repairs before I could finally move out to somewhere safe. I'm tired and frazzled! All I want to do for the next few months is veg, watch tv, read, and make art.

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I'm very close to selling my house. I have a buyer and a contract. The buyer wants to close by the end of the month and move in no later than Oct 1st. Their home inspector was here yesterday and so far as I can tell didn't turn up any issues that would affect the sale. I haven't seen the formal inspector's report. Their lender will also require them to have an independent appraisal of the price. Unless the appraiser knocks tens of thousands off the asking price, I don't see any problems resulting from that.

I'm about 99% certain that I've found a condo to rent for the next year. The owner is fine with me having 3 pets so long as I add some pet rent. That's fine with me. I just need somewhere to go that isn't here. It's far enough away that my crazy stalker will not be able to find me, yet close enough that I'll be able to maintain a decent commute to my current job, as well as decent access to highways and public transportation should my current job go away and I have to seek something else.

Once I get settled in the new place, I'm going to just chill for a few weeks and then start looking for a new job. That might be here in the DC but it might be elsewhere in the country.

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Had an open house on my home yesterday. Had 5 tours through the house despite the fact that it was pouring rain. I've had 3 more tours today and I noticed a few people driving by to check the house (I could tell because they slowed down and drove by the house a couple times) and probably to scope out the neighborhood. It's all very encouraging. I hope that this interest turns into an offer so that I can scoot on out of here and into the next phase of my life, whatever that will turn out to be.

Last night I went out with one of my sisters to hear the astonishing band Songs of Water. I saw them a few months ago at a funky club called Clementine in Harrisonburg, VA. This time they were playing in a coffeehouse/bar in Vienna, VA. How to describe their music? Think of a mash-up of Dead Can Dance, Renaissance, Boiled in Lead, Celtic, Bluegrass, folk and world music. SO GOOD. They always come on stage with about a bazillion different stringed and percussion instruments from all over the world. Plus, they feature the hammer dulcimer in many of their songs and I adore the sound of the hammer dulcimer. I particularly appreciate the middle European and Middle Eastern inspired riffs they do because they feature such unusual beats and scales. Anyway, I love these guys (and gal). I think they're destined to become big.

Here's one of the songs from their pending new album. It's a mellow tune called "Ashe".




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My house is officially for sale. There's a spiffy 'for sale' sign out in the yard and everything. My realtor is coming over tomorrow at noon to take pictures to post with the listing. I'm not quite ready for her to take pictures, but I'll cope. I kinda thought she'd schedule the open house for Sunday so I scheduled a cleaning crew to come Saturday morning, and assumed she'd take the pictures Saturday afternoon. Nope. She's having the open house here on Saturday afternoon. I'll do some last minute cleanups tomorrow morning before I leave for work.

It all feels unreal and strange. I've been thinking about selling this house and moving out of here for two years. Now that it's happening, I'm somewhat alarmed, mainly because I don't know where I'm going to go next. I can't commit to renting anywhere else until this house is sold because I simply cannot afford to pay rent and the mortgage for even one month. Just pulling together the cash for the security deposit, first month's rent, and pet deposits is going to be impossible without the cash from the house sale. It's going to be a tricky and somewhat nerve wracking few weeks for me. Jittery. That's me.

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Dental horror ahead. Skip this bit if this might bother you:
So, an old crown popped off a back molar Thursday. I went to my dentist (who I discovered is no longer on my insurance, but since I was already there I kept the appointment) expecting to just have the crown glued back on. But no. Apparently it popped off because the tooth was infected and the tooth had got infected because the crown never really fit right because I have short molars (who knew that was a problem) and anyway, to make a long story short (too late), I've got to go to a periodontist and get my gums cut down (!OMG!)to expose more of the tooth before the dentist can make me a new crown. That whole business about the gums? That's why it's bad to have short molars. This process is going to take MONTHS because I've got to wait 6-8 weeks for the gums to heal before I can replace the crown. It's also likely to cost me at least $1,000 or more in cash, even with insurance. And guess what???? The molar directly above this tooth also has a crown on it and that crown is cracked and needs to be replaced and that molar is 'short' too. Um, yay? I have awful teeth. Some people take vacations. I get dental work.

In other news about me, I'm down to the final bits of housekeeping to get my house ready to go on the market for sale. I've been settled in one place for so long that the idea of living in a different house feels unreal to me, but I'll get over it.

As for the world right now...

I'm heartbroken knowing that Robin Williams was suffering so much. I know first hand how depression changes how you think. He gave so much joy to so many people. Poor dear man. I lost my brother to suicide so I can guess how his family members are feeling right now. They have all my sympathy.

The Russians and Ukrainians get zero sympathy from me. Zero. Those murderous bastards shot down a passenger jet full of innocent people and for all intents and purposes they've completely gotten away with it. Oh sure, we've implemented 'economic sanctions.' Bah.

And right here in the good old US of A, land of the free and the brave, where ignorant, bible-thumping, racist white guys are exercising their right to 'open carry' weaponry into restaurants and toy stores (that is, when they're not all hustling off to rally around a racist white rancher in Nevada who's engaging in an utterly illegal stand off against the federal Bureau of Land Management and threatening to murder federal officials <---speaking of assholes who have completely gotten away with things...)yeah, that America, racist, overly militarized police shot dead another unarmed young black man, this time because he was jaywalking. This is just DAYS after police shot dead a young black man who picked up and carried a toy gun in an Ohio Walmart. Racism has never gone away in America. It's gone underground but it's still there. Combine that with police who are arming themselves with military weapons and who automatically view all black men with suspicion, and that is a recipe for disaster. So, this latest kid who was shot to death, Michael Brown, was no saint. It appears that he had just committed a robbery. But so what, you know? The cop who killed him didn't know that. That cop killed this kid for jaywalking. You don't shoot someone multiple times because he's jaywalking or because he sasses you, or even because (possibly) he scuffles with you and resists arrest. You don't slaughter someone for resisting arrest. WTF America? WTF is wrong with all of us that this is happening all around the country?

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Taking a break from cleaning the oven to say that IMO, cleaning the oven is the single worst house cleaning task there is, worse even that cleaning toilets. Oven cleaner is toxic and it stinks like a burnt tire after you spray it in the warm oven. You have to stick your head halfway into the damned oven just to be able to reach the back and the top to scrub it so you end up greasy and filthy from the top of your head to your waist by the time you're done. You finally think you've finished after you've scrubbed your fingers raw and rubbed several of those magic sponge things into tiny bits, but once you wipe it all down with clean water you discover yet more burned on, greasy patches and you have to start all over again.

Ugh.

Probably if I'd bothered to clean this oven more than three times in the 16 years I've lived here, it wouldn't be this difficult or this skanky. It's times like this that my sheer laziness and hatred of housekeeping comes back to bite me. :P

My moving prep is down to these sorts of annoying cleaning tasks, sorting through years worth of paperwork that I should have shredded years ago, and then cleaning out closets. There is some junk on the back deck that I'm going to have someone haul away (couple of broken shelves and similar stuff that is too big to put in my tiny car) and then that's about it. My realtor wants to have an open house here the weekend of August 23-24 and possibly again the following weekend, so I'll have to board the dogs somewhere and check into a hotel with the kitty for one or two weekends. That's okay. I've already identified a nearby, pet friendly hotel. The realtor wants me to crate the dogs in the basement until the house is sold but I don't want to do that to these dogs so I'll have to figure out something else. I work close enough to the house that I think I could just come over and take the dogs out for a walk anytime the realtor wants to show the house. The place I normally board them is an hour from here so I obviously can't board them there every day. I could board them at the vet but I only do that when I don't have any other alternative. I don't like cooping them up around other animals that are sick or in pain if I can find any other alternative.

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I'm very close to having my house ready to go on the market for sale. The walls that were damaged in the earthquake here 3 years ago have been fixed and repainted. I had new kitchen counter tops installed, and replaced the majority of the windows. Tomorrow, the contractors will install new carpet on the main and upper floors. There are a few minor wall repair/painting issues to deal with, and then I'm done with the work inside the house. If I can get someone to cheaply power-wash the outside of the house and the deck, I'll do that too. One of my neighbors wants to charge me $400 to power-wash the house. That's about 3 times the going rate around here so I told him, no.

I still don't have a place to go to after I sell this house. My realtor gave me the name of a different realtor who manages house rentals so I'm going to call that person tomorrow. I've also got a couple of possible leads from rentals.com and hotpads.com but I'm not counting on either of those sites too much since the vast majority of the listings I've checked from there have turned out to be scams.

I'm no longer going to try to buy a house here in the DC area. Property is just too expensive. Plus, I have some work intel that indicates clearly that my entire department is going to be dissolved within the next 2 years, with most of us gone next year. The last thing I can afford to do now is use the equity from this house sale as the down payment on another overpriced home here, only to possibly lose that next house if/when I lose my job. Far safer to just rent for a bit, ride out the storm of whatever happens at work, and be able to take my time to relocate out of this area entirely to somewhere cheaper. I've crossed both Portland and Charlottesville both off my possible move-to location. Portland real estate has gotten too pricy, and Charlottesville real estate has always been crazy high, and none of the salaries I've seen for possible jobs I could do there would pay enough. I'm currently taking a seriously hard look at Richmond, VA. The city has rebounded very well from the crime-ridden, rundown town it was just a few years ago. The economy is doing well there now, houses are super affordable, and there is a lot to do and see in the area. Plus, it's just a couple hours by car or train from DC so I could still get downtown and take advantage of the museums and galleries and things in DC that I love so much. I haven't ruled out the Chapel Hill/Durham/Raleigh area though simply because I haven't seen it. I only know of it from what I've read online. Once I get out of hell house into some place new and safe and calm, I plan to take road trips down to North Carolina and to Richmond and check out both areas.

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Window guys are here installing new windows. I showed one of them the cracks by the window frame and he said that they're not serious. It's just where two pieces of drywall are joined together, and not indicative of any structural problem with the house. That's what other contractors told me so now I feel a lot better about the state of this house.

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