Success!

It took me almost three hours on the phone to deal with canceling utilities on the MD house, but I did it! 

I started with Delmarva Power first, mainly because I thought I could cancel our electric service online. I could, right up until the end of the process when I got a message that said due to an upgrade on their website this function was not available. I called the toll-free number as advised by the message and waited on hold for more than 20 minutes. I finally spoke with Alec who took all my information and then told me my service would be discontinued on Monday. I had specified at the beginning of our conversation that I wanted it to be stopped on March 1st, not February 21, so we started all over at the beginning. When I asked for a confirmation number, he gave me his extension and said to call him if there were any problems. I'm not sure how much faith I have that we will still have electricity next week, but I'll just call Alec if there are any issues.

I had thought electric service would be easy to stop, but it took about 45 minutes. I was really dreading calling Comcast because all of my past dealings with them had been a struggle, so I called the Elkton Public Works Dept. next to ask about the water and sewer. The woman was friendly, the process had been started by the title company, and she told me I didn't need to do anything. Great! I excel at doing nothing!

Next, I called Allstate to talk about homeowner's insurance. This woman was angry and yelled at me for even considering canceling insurance. I explained to her that I wanted the cancellation to be effective March 1, and she told me to call back after closing had happened, and not a moment before. Yes, Ma'am!

I couldn't procrastinate any longer and had to suck it up and call Comcast. I ended up being pleasantly surprised after speaking to  Jimmy. There was some initial confusion because we have two different Comcast accounts, one for MD and one for NJ. I kept specifying the one in MD and gave him the address about 15 times, but once Jimmy finally had my life story and understood the situation, things were a little easier. He called me Miss Bonny throughout the conversation, but it was better than talking to a surly grouch. I asked about the possibility of mailing back the TV box and modem, and Jimmy said, "Why sure, Miss Bonny, just drop it off at a UPS Store and they'll pack it and return it to Comcast for free." Thanks, Kim in Oregon for mentioning this possibility!

I feel like my phone calls were successful, but I guess we'll know for sure if we still have electricity next week, the Allstate agent will speak with me when I call her after closing and she lets me cancel our homeowner's insurance, and the UPS store actually takes my Comcast equipment. I especially appreciated the woman at Elkton Public Works and Jimmy at Comcast. If you ever want to speak to someone friendly at Comcast, be sure to ask for Jimmy and tell him Miss Bonny sent you!

Let's Try This Again

A week ago I wrote about selling our house in MD. It was an ideal deal, cash with no inspections, and we were thrilled with how easy it was.

But on Wednesday afternoon I got a call from our realtor (let's call her Debbie so I don't have to keep typing "our realtor"); the buyers were asking to be released from the contract. Debbie said that in 35 years she had never had a cash deal fall apart, but I guess there's a first time for everything. 

The situation was disappointing, but Debbie had already called the realtors representing two other potential buyers that we had received offers from to see if they were still interested. The potential buyer with the second-best offer was enthusiastically in. All we had to do was electronically sign the "Release From Contract" form and then sign a new contract with the new buyer. This offer involves the buyer applying for a mortgage, an appraisal, and inspections, so there are potential pitfalls, but it might also be more money.

It's funny that the buying and selling of a house can be so personal yet impersonal at the same time. When you list your house you agree to let strangers tromp through it, viewing where you live and disrupting your life. This is both personal and disconcerting. I have no desire to expose my life to strangers, nor do I want to pry into theirs, but I do wish I knew why the original buyers backed out. I'd also like to know a little about the next potential buyer's story, but I will probably never meet him. This is an odd business.

So we're trying this again; let's hope the second time's the charm!

Sold!

I keep getting reminded that the proper term is "Under Contract". Whatever terminology you use, we were very lucky to have sold the MD house in less than 36 hours. 

Last Thursday, the real estate agent listed it as "Coming Soon", and it became active on Friday with showings starting at 11:00. Within a few hours, there were 10 showings scheduled for Friday and five on Saturday.

We left MD early Friday morning before the showings started and came home to NJ. I went over to visit Ryan on Saturday and ended up spending most of my visit on the phone with the real estate agent and John, looking at emails and purchase offers on Ryan's computer. 

Ryan and I had planned to go out to pick up lunch, but we ended up getting it delivered. It seems that every moment is crucial in real estate, and nobody wants to wait an extra ten minutes.

I did have a lot more plants in the "breakfast nook" but took most of them home and will find room for these now that the house has sold. 

We received five offers, all of them above list price. Several of them had escalation clauses to frankly ridiculous prices since I don't think the house would have even appraised for what they were offering. But by the time I left Ryan's, we had a signed contract and it was perfect for us - above list price, cash, and no inspections. 

John is very sad to leave this garden but he's already got a new garden staked out at Ryan's.

John's last day of work before retirement is February 4th, which means he'll need to be in MD at least until then. I estimate that we've got three pick-up truckloads of furniture and boxes to pack and bring back, but that should be doable. We close on February 24th, and then our time with two houses is over. 

John is also sad to leave his beloved shed in MD, but guess what? He's already ordered one for Ryan's house. 

I've complained a few times (John says the word I'm looking for is "incessantly") about the drive and the numerous difficulties of living in two places, but I'm very thankful that selling the MD house has turned out even better than I could have hoped. 

For Sale!

We've listed the MD house, so the end is in sight! We'll most likely only have to make the drive five or six more times. Keep your fingers crossed for a good buyer willing to pay a fair price!

It's the Final Countdown ...

... or a close estimate.

I've previously mentioned my dislike for the weekly drive from NJ to MD on Sunday and then back to NJ on Thursday or Friday. Last week John told his boss that he is retiring and he has a meeting with HR today to talk about some details, like the actual date that he's leaving. This is most likely in February or March of 2022, so there is light at the end of the tunnel (or the always-congested Delaware Memorial Bridge). 

I'm doing laundry and ironing today, but my new sense of hope has inspired me to do a final countdown of all the things I dislike about living in two places. These aren't hard and fast numbers, but a rough estimate is still a very good thing.

Round trips between NJ and MD that we'll have to make: 18

Number of John's work pants and shirts that I'll have to wash and iron: 48 (too high, but I may never iron again after he retires.)

Times I will have to pay duplicate electric, water and sewer bills, Comcast, and property taxes: 25

Trips to the grocery store to keep two houses stocked with basic food items: 16 

Times I purchase heating oil for two houses: 2

How often I wish that I had something that I've left in the other house from where I'm currently located: 54 (yarn, clothing, kitchen utensils, etc. This happens at least three times/week.)

Vegetables that I will have to blanch and freeze from the garden in MD: 0! I did ~20 lbs. of carrots last weekend in NJ, but in a less-than-efficient way because my food processor was in MD and I had to slice them all by hand. 

Amount of money that we will pay in tolls on the Delaware Memorial Bridge: $90.00

How much we will pay in tolls on Route 95: Anywhere from $0 - 200.00. We had an easy way to travel without any tolls but construction started on that about 2.5 years ago and is ongoing. We've been using an alternate route with only one $5.00 toll but construction started on that yesterday, so I'm not quite sure how we'll go when we head home to NJ this week. We'll just be glad to find a not-too-congested route (just like everyone else is looking for) and not worry about tolls. 

Hope that the house in MD will sell quickly and for a decent price after we list it: Infinite!

On the Plus Side

On Monday I whined a bit about how I dislike the drive to MD from NJ and back, that white-knuckle, 246 mile, five hour plus round trip that we have to make every week. But a lovely positive comment from Becky started me thinking about the good things. I still can't come up with anything good about the drive, but there are some things I like about the house in MD. Since it's Thursday, I'm joining Carole for Three on Thursday.

It's a tiny house. Not one of those tiny houses on wheels, but rather a small house. There are three bedrooms, but I'm not sure we could even fit a single bed in the third one (but there is knotty pine on the walls). With a desk and a bookcase, it works fine for John's office. There is just one bathroom, a smallish open combination living room/dining room and a little kitchen, all contained in ~ 1000 sq. ft. There's a weird little five foot square nook off of the kitchen, but it makes a good place for my plants. 

The small size is just right for two people. It means that I can clean it in about 20 minutes. It means that we didn't have to buy too much furniture. I even found some of my plant stands on the street and I like them. 

It has central air conditioning. Our house in NJ does not, and window units are expensive to run. You can't be comfortable in all the rooms at the same time, so central air has always felt like a (delightfully comfortable) luxury to me. And since we're cooling such small square footage, it's not too expensive. 

We haven't had time to clutter it up. We've lived here for three and a half years and we just moved in with the basics. (Well, I did. John may have way too many shoes, coats, and fishing stuff.) Our only Christmas decoration is a wreath for the door because we usually spend Christmas in NJ. Our dishes and much of my kitchen equipment came from Goodwill. It's really nice and feels quite freeing not to be surrounded by the clutter and all the stuff we've collected in 30+ years in NJ. 

Small, cool, and uncluttered. Those are all good things!

It's the Driving

As John gets closer to retiring (probably early next year), I'm also counting down to some things I'm looking forward to. Once he's retired, I won't have to iron his work clothes (and I do hate ironing). I won't have to worry about library books that are due in NJ that I've left in MD. I won't have to wonder what state my phone charger is in when I can't find it in my suitcase. I won't have to do the same things twice in different locations.

When John's company announced that they were buying the R&D parts of Dupont after Dow and Dupont merged in 2015, they also announced that they were moving to Newark, DE. All of the employees were a bit shocked, but in the end it wasn't a complicated decision. We weren't financially ready to retire, but John didn't have a job if we didn't go to Newark. We ended up buying a small house in MD, just four miles away from his workplace, but we kept our house in NJ. We like the NJ house and plan on going back there after retirement. I know we're lucky to be able to do this. We usually drive down here to MD on Sunday, hoping that we won't encounter too much traffic on the Delaware Memorial Bay Bridge and drive back to NJ on Thursday, hoping we won't run into bumper-to-bumper traffic on 295 N. This has created issues I never thought about.

Some of the issues are silly, like having enough clothes at each place without buying double of everything. My yarn stash is in NJ, but there are times I wish I had a stash in MD. I bought some tea from Plum Deluxe a while ago and wanted a cup of chai this morning in MD, but after digging through the tea cupboard here in MD, I think the tea is in NJ. Some of the issues are larger, like having to mow the lawns in both places and then there is snow to contend with), shop for groceries in both MD and NJ, clean two houses, and pay bills for both places. Then there is the worry and work of flooding in NJ while you're in MD.

But I think that what I l dislike the most is the actual driving back and forth. John and I take turns driving, but I dislike the actual drive (a lot!) no matter whether I'm the passenger or in the driver's seat. It's not a relaxing scenic drive at all, with people whizzing past at 85 mph (the speed limit is 65) and usually loads of traffic. It's at least five hours out of our lives every week, and I tend to resent it every week. 

But I counted this morning and I've got fewer than 20 drives! That is cause for a celebration on Monday, and I hope your Monday is off to a good start, too (even if you resented what you had to do on Sunday). 

Sometimes Monday ...

 ... is a day to begin to catch up in MD, and it's also a day for questions. 

Carole encouraged readers to ask her questions, Kym asked her readers a week's worth of questions, and then Kat answered questions from comments. These posts have all been very interesting to me, so I'm borrowing/stealing the idea this week. I don't have big detailed plans for how this will work, and am just going to hope it evolves. 

Today I'll pose a possibly boring question, but it's come up because it's concerned with what I have to catch up on in MD - paying bills. I have always been the kind of person that wanted to receive a paper copy of bills in the mail, which I then put in a special place in my desk, and then paid with a credit card online. That system has gradually fallen apart as I'm not always where I need to be to receive a paper copy of the bill, several companies have even stopped sending bills and now send emails, and quite a few companies impose a surcharge for paying with a credit card. I've been gradually using my bank's Bill Pay features which allow me to receive "e-bills" that I can then pay easily through my checking account. They are very good at notifying me when there is a new bill, so I no longer have to worry about terrible mail service or being in MD/NJ to get the bill. 

Then there are still the bills that have to be paid by check. I hate writing checks, addressing the envelopes, finding a stamp, and going to the post office. Too many steps! Most of these bills are for quarterly property taxes in NJ, quarterly water and sewer bills in NJ and MD, and annual property taxes in MD. They all accept credit card payments, but the surcharges really add up, and I'm too cheap for that.

So my questions today are do you have any sort of system for paying bills? Do you pay them as soon as you receive them or wait and just pay them all at one time? Am I missing some wonderful function of Bill Pay that would make this all easier? Have you given up the illusion of control (one that I am still clinging to) and signed up for auto-pay for your bills? I'd appreciate your thoughts and ideas!

I would also like to say that if you have any questions you would like to ask me (about almost anything), please feel free to leave them in the comments. Knitting, reading, gardening, cooking, biggest pet peeve, family, mental health, biggest fear, things I'm proud of, things I regret - it's all fair game!

Thanks for reading and I hope your week is off to a good start!

Zukes, Cukes, and Beans

It's mid-July and the garden is producing a bumper crop of zucchini, cucumbers, and string beans.

My problem is what to do with it all. Here's what we've eaten (and are still eating) during the last week. (The kitchen in MD is very dark and the only decent light is from from the hood over the stovetop where I took these slightly odd photos.

A meta-cucumber combination of cucumber spears dipped in tzatziki sauce. We also had tzatziki on zucchini fritters but we gobbled those up before I took any photos.

The classic cucumbers in sour cream. There was always a bowl of this salad in my grandmother's refrigerator during the summer.

Sweet and dill refrigerator pickles. My house will probably smell of pickles for days and my hands are stained with turmeric.

John threw some string beans in a half-full container of old dill pickles, and now we have pickled beans.

And we've eaten plenty of plain old steamed string beans.

But wait ... there's more! Zucchini marinara and zucchini bread (one loaf pictured, five more in the freezer). Chocolate zucchini cake is the next zucchini recipe I'm going to try — soon. 

I hope I still have zucchini on the vine when the corn is ready to pick soon so I can make this, this, or some mashup of both recipes. 

I hope you're enjoying summer vegetables, whether they're from your own garden, a CSA, a farm stand, or the grocery store. I think I could be a vegetarian during July and August!

Ugly Fish, Part II

This past Saturday, July 4th, was Free Fishing Day in Maryland. That's a day that most states' fish and wildlife agencies offer during the summer to promote fishing, and it allows you to fish that day without a license. Justin had asked me if I wanted to try and catch a snakehead, and I said "Sure!" I am not much of a fisherperson, and as Free Fishing Day started to get closer, I began to worry about it a bit. Would I be able to cast with Justin's bait caster reel? Would I remember how to set the hook if I did get a bite? Would it just end up as a frustrating, disappointing day when we just wanted to have some fun family fishing?

Nope. It was neither frustrating nor disappointing.

It turned out to be the best day possible. John took us to the "snakehead spot" and Justin showed me how to cast (and corrected my mistakes) about 50 times. Like any skill, there is a lot to remember, and you need to remember and do it all in order, every time.

I had mastered pinching the line with my index finger, flicking the bail, casting, reeling in as soon as the spinnerbait lure I was using hit the water, and reeling at the right speed so the lure didn't drag on the bottom. Justin was going to show me how to set the hook just in case I did get a fish when he unexpectedly caught a snakehead! He handed me the rod and I reeled it in. He removed the hook and was rinsing the sand and gravel off for a picture when it got away in the creek. Justin takes fishing fairly seriously, so he was sort of heartbroken. He morosely cast a few more times, but you know what's coming next ... he caught another snakehead! He handed me the pole, I reeled it in, and this time we took the hook out and took a million photos far away from the water. 

So "I" caught my snakehead, I have photos to prove it, and that's what we had for dinner on Saturday. I am completely aware that Justin did all the work and I just reeled it in, but it was an exhilarating experience and also gave me a new appreciation for how skilled Justin is at fishing. His casts are perfect, placed exactly where he wants them to go, and he takes so many things into account. Like whether he has cast upstream and the line may be "bunched up" a little if what he is fishing for has teeth (snakehead do) and liable to abrade or nick the braid fishing line, and how big a mouth the fish has and whether they are likely to "short strike" so maybe he should use a trailer hook. I know this is much more detailed than any of you are liable to want to know, but I'll admit that I'm writing this post so I can look back and remember this day. It was a good one. 

Thanks, Hijo!

How Does The Garden Grow?

Pretty well, given that this a year for haphazard weeding, occasional watering, and benign neglect.

The tomatoes have blossoms,

the zucchini and cucumber plants have monster-sized leaves (but no blossoms yet),

and the string beans are coming along nicely.

Corn and carrots are looking good,

along with my blueberries.

The bushes were loaded with berries, but I suspect the birds have been enjoying them. Maybe I'll still get a few.

That empty space and low fencing is where the snow peas were until John tore them out. They produced loads of peas this year, enough for us to eat them almost every night for a month and still blanch and freeze 30 quart-size bags. Blue bottles continue to sprout. 

The bee balm is looking especially majestic this year, and I love how the few sprigs of mint that I transplanted from NJ are managing to show the rampant ferns who's the boss.

Thanks for taking a tour around the garden and now I've got mint tea for everyone!

Ugly Fish

Justin came down to MD and discovered that we live in a fishing haven. I know we're near the Chesapeake Bay and also knew that there are several large creeks and ponds nearby, some in our backyard. He had done some research, found that MD has an interesting pricing structure for an out-of-state license (charging what the reciprocal state would charge someone from MD), and went in search of snakeheads. 

They are an invasive freshwater species of fish, native to Asia, and highly predatory. Once they get into a waterway they can decimate native species of fish. And they can get into waterways because they breathe air with their gills, migrate up to 1/4 mile over land by wriggling with their bodies and fins, and can survive on land up to four days. They have been established in MD since 2002, and the DNR seems to have accepted that they are here to stay. You are not required to kill them if you catch them, but it is illegal to transport live snakeheads.

Justin is usually a catch-and-release fisherman, but he had heard that snakeheads are quite good to eat, so we got to find out for ourselves. 

He caught two of them only a mile away from our house! Justin is not easily excited but I could hear the excitement in his voice when he called and said "I have very good news!" I went to pick him up as he had just fished his way up the creek from the house but didn't want to carry ten pounds of fish back. 

He fileted them and I fixed them two ways, baked and fried. They were both delicious and among the favorite things I have eaten.

Thanks to Justin for taking care of two invasive fish, and introducing us to the delicious taste of snakeheads. For such ugly fish they sure were good eating.