July 26, 2011 Everything is on Hold July 26, 2011

Made you nervous, didn’t I?  What I mean is everything is on hold while I take a few minutes to dash something off in the WordPress blog.

The past month and a half  have been crazy busy – clients, contracts, dogs, wind storms, trip to Florida and yard work.  Slowly we are returning to a more consistent work schedule.  That is if we can deal with the unreal heat.  The more we have to accomplish, the hotter the weather seems.

Even if we could deal with the weather, the non-representatives in Washington DC have the whole country half paralyzed with stress and fear while they conduct their behind the doors meetings about the debt ceiling.  Do you want to know what I think is happening behind those doors?  Movie night, popcorn, brandy and cigars!  They already know what the decision is – they just prefer the drama of last minute “deals”.

We’re going to have to go to another half page in the Buyers Guide because we keep getting new listings.  In fact, my ActiveRain blog later will be about Print Media and if it is relavent to today’s real estate marketing.

The dogs and cats seem healthy right now, thank goodness – even though we are busy we still don’t have the money or time to deal  with vet’s visits.

We seem healthy right now too although burning the fires over the weekend for me and Leslie did housework in the un air conditioned house pretty well zapped our energy for a few days.

So, I guess I’ll get back to work now and just hope against hope that my most loyal reader catches this new blog and leaves me a sweet comment!  I love you and you know who you are!

June 28, 2011 Never a Dull Moment June 29, 2011

Mothers can be funny, you know?  I’m juggling like crazy with the contracts we have up in the air, keeping the house in order, generating new business, blogging on ActiveRain, correspondence, you name it and I’m in the middle of doing it.

I get notifications via email when people comment on either blog.  I only have one reader on the WordPress blog and the comments I get are something like…it’s almost the end of the month, this blog has been neglected – so sad, etc.  Guilt trips!!! I’m in my mid 50s and my mother guilt trips me!

Just got done with dinner.  I grilled chicken and of course thought about Dad the whole time.  He was the inspiration for me to learn how to use the grill.  He would have liked the chicken tonight.  I marinated the chicken in a combination of zesty Italian and honey mustard dressing along with soy sauce.  Delicious.

We just got an email from a former client now friend that her mother had fallen back in April and had been bedridden since.  She just passed away on May 31, a few months shy of her 100th! birthday.  Just imagine.

Okay, headed off for a shower and to try and come up with a blog for the other site.

May 31, 2011 It’s Too Darned Hot! May 31, 2011

It was so incredibly hot yesterday, according to the weather report it was the hottest day of the year so.  However, not as hot as it will be today. Great.

Grilled out last night, something simple – the chicken was marinated in Zesty Italian dressing.  Because of all the fires we’ve been making to burn off the excess wood around here, Leslie thought it would be kind of fun to try cooking corn on the cob in the ashes. We soaked the corn (husks and all) in water for an hour and then Leslie buried the corn in the white part of the ash.  They were pretty good, only 1/2 ear was a casualty to being burned.  Not bad odds.

Today we’ll get our new contract over to the sellers’ attorney of choice and wait for the buyer and buyer’s agent to get started on home inspections, etc.  The other contract for the lady from Washington DC already had her inspections done.  Now we need to see if there are any repairs she wants to ask for.

We’ve been away from the office for three days! That’s a record.  Probably most of our day will be spent cleaning up old emails;-D

May 30, 2011 Memorial Day, A Time for Truth May 30, 2011

I started a fire this morning from the coals from last night’s fire.  While doing that I started thinking about Memorial Day and what it means to me.

I know what the media wants it to mean and I know what advertisers want it to mean but I don’t think it should mean an unwavering belief that all war is justified and all war-time deaths were necessary.  I really don’t think its a day for celebration and commemorating by rushing out to buy a new car, a new grill or a new summer wardrobe.

War is crap.  Ultimately the flag waving comes out and democracy is heralded but it always starts out as a land grab or a power grab.  And there are always weapons, wounded and death involved.

I abolutely honor the fallen soldiers.  I believe the majority of them served in the name of democracy, decency and fairness.

However, the fallen never start the wars.

May 29, 2011 Update to May 27!

Well, duh…guess I save the 27th post as a draft instead of publish.

We have a new contract.  Looking for a closing date in mid July.

It was really hot today, but still got a lot done. Boxed up the winter clothes and straightened the drawers.  Cleaned the dog room and the basement. Vacuumed the house. Chopped more wood from the maple tree. Had another bonfire. Cooked dinner.  Now, I’m going to collapse!

After I update the 31 Days of May Challenge in the other blog!

Realty Matters

May 27, 2011 Directing Traffic

Now that I have the new blog figured out on ActiveRain, Realty Matters, its time to start taking care of the first blog.  It would be great if all I had to do was take pictures and blog – but, sadly that isn’t the case!

We are under contract on one house and waiting for a home inspection report, there are negotiations going on with a listing of ours, we are waiting to hear if we will be co-listing a property with an agent from another MLS, getting our ad ready for the Buyers’ Guide and keeping our finger on the threads of leads we are generating.

On the personal front, I scheduled the car for new rotors and front brakes next week, just got done burning a bunch of wood from fallen trees, had to take the chain saw and John Deere to the repair $$$hop so there are tons of grass to cut and more limbs and small trees to chainsaw.  We just picked up the chain saw so we’ll be cutting more wood and burning more fires.

I just got back from showing a house in Savannah and on the way there I saw a brand new horse baby…so cute.  I’ll blog about it tonight and post the new pictures.

In the midst of all that, we are both trying to really watch what we eat – cutting out as much processed sugar and flour as we can eating veggies and proteins mostly.

So, never a dull moment!

 

 

May 17, 2011 Neglected Post Oh So Sad May 17, 2011

I’ve been so wrapped up in my other blog  that I haven’t been paying attention to this one.  This is true and I’ll try to exert more effort.

My dad is home and my mother sounds good.  I’m hoping that Dad will continue to progress with his therapy and Mom won’t have to work so hard.

Turns out that the move to go out on our own has been a really good one. We are busy with clients and contracts…making a living again!

Weather here has been freaky. High winds have been pretty scary.  We have a tree guy coming out this morning to give us an estimate to remove a 50′ tall dead poplar.  We don’t want to take a chance on it falling into the house.

So, thank goodness we are making a living again.  Seems a long way from being lucrative! Gotta go, moniter keeps winking out.

April 24, 2011 Easter Morning Walk April 24, 2011

Good Morning, I went for my walk today and when I got back to check email – there was a comment from someone other than my most faithful reader!

It was the mother of our client who just closed on a house with her husband in Franklin.  You remember, the gorgeous house that had been a foreclosure.

Yesterday was a two festival day.  First, the Easter Hat Parade in Dillsboro and the Greening Up The Mountains in Sylva.  Beautiful sunshiny day, hot hot hot. So, I got a little sunburned which should be helpful for my new drivers license photo tomorrow.

I took a ton of pictures in Dillsboro and when we got home last night I started to process them from the camera to the computer.  The combination of taking so many pictures and having the battery on while downloading to the computer just wore the battery out.

So…now that I have two wonderful mothers pushing me to complete a task, I guess I’d better do it!

Have a great day and check my other blog later!   www.callmoondancerrealtyfirst.com

April 5, 2011 On the Road Again April 4, 2011

Good Morning. We had a very successful closing on Friday. It was our first foray into foreclosures. The buyers (now owners) met their neighbors and got some history on the house they bought.  It seems that when the former owners started getting into trouble they tried selling the house themselves. Mistake #1. Then they priced the house at more than $800,000!  Sure it’s on 8 acres, but still.  Even at the height of the real estate bubble, it might have been at best $495,000.

This is a problem when sellers are pricing their homes.  They want the sale of the house to take care of all of their financial woes.  That’s fine as long as their woes don’t exceed the market value of the home.  From now on, we’ve been lucky and haven’t had sellers with those unrealistic expectations.  If we do have someone wishing to list above market value in a ridiculous range, we’ll have to decline the listings.

The museum curater we’ve been working with closes on her house today.  We don’t expect any problems.  The commissions are sure a welcome sight.  A brief sight to be sure, Leslie is writing checks out as fast as she can.  Good news is we are catching up, bad news is we can’t retire!

I’m happy to report that my dad is back home and my mother seems happy about that.  It sounds like his progress is moving forward better at home than at the rehab. What a trooper my mother is.

I walked for the first time in weeks today.  I don’t know what the deal is about not walking regularly.  Sure hope I can commit myself to taking this walk daily.  I know there are tremendous benefits to the way I think, feel, and respond.

Before I forget, the recipe for Chicken with Grapes and Shallots was fabulous.  Here’s a link to the recipe:

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/chicken_cutlets_with_grape_shallot_sauce.html

Well, off to sieze the day.  Have a wonderful day.

Mar 26, 2011 Coordinating All Blogs March 27, 2011

I showed houses today until 7:30.  That’s later than I usually work, but that’s just the way time happened today.  We went to a surprise birthday lunch at Bogart’s in Waynesville and I couldn’t start showing until 2pm.  I really enjoy working with this particular young couple.

Besides the birthday party, this has been quite a social week for us.   We had dinner at clients’ home on Wed, pasta and ground beef stuff – it was tasty.  Then we went to a birthday party for clients’ 90 year old mother, pasta and ground beef stuff – it was tasty too.  We’ll try to lay off pasta and ground beef stuff for a while now.

Tomorrow, a client has invited us to see a performance of Kiss Me Kate at the Fine and Performing Art Center in Cullowhee.  Before that it is uggggggghhhhhhh time to gather tax stuff.

Our two closings seem to be right on track.  Everything seems to be going really well, except that Leslie has caught some kind of chest cold.  That’s not good at all.

Rainy, rainy, rainy tonight.

Been pretty busy navigating the ActiveRain site.  If you want to see what I’ve been blogging about there, go to www.activerain.com and click on search.  Enter my name and all the stuff I’ve blogged should show up.

Could be a big snooze session though, so I’d do it late at night.  ;-}