(a)musings

When I got to work this morning, my little bird's nest was gone. If you didn't read the entry from the other day, go read.

The property management came and scrubbed the front glass doors and the patio, and it looks as if they removed the nest from the backside of the 4 in 40 about 20 ft up in the air. I felt an amazing sadness this morning.

Poor birdies. Too bad they're so stupid that they nest inside signage instead of some really nice trees, which are abundant around our office park. I go lots of places and the way the signs are designed the birds just love to nest there... and in this case it was a very bad choice.

Sorry little guys.

In happier home news, my parents have found a place to call their own.

They are in their early 60s and haven't ever owned property. In fact, they've been renting the same place for over 30 years. It somehow boggles my mind that they didn't make the move earlier, but circumstances were not where they could be in order to help them make that leap.

Things have gotten so bad where they live (both my sister and I have written about the projects in the past) that they had to make the move and had to make it NOW.

So we will welcome them to the commonwealth of Massachusetts, as they take possession of their trailer in September. By the way, fuck you if you're laughing at "trailer." Yes, it is a mobile home in an over 55 community. It's all they can afford, and to be honest, it's all they need or want. If you think trailers are trashy, go spend a week where they're living NOW and you'll see that a pastoral community park for grown ups is a real blessing to them.

I am very proud of them, they made good decisions on which one to pick, and had a hell of a great buyer's broker working with them and on their behalf.

My mom had been working with a real estate agent early this year, and the woman was pushing my parents to make a decision. We had a similar problem when we started looking for a house in 1996. A very aggressive real estate agent who took us to see things that we didn't feel were "right" for us, and got mad when we changed our minds about what we wanted to see. In my mom's case, the real estate agent wanted her to put $10,000 down NOW on something, and my mom didn't realize that if the deal fell through she'd lose that money. She panicked because no one was educating her on how the process works, so she withdrew her offer and ran for the hills, discouraged and upset.

While on the phone with my mom, I told her that when we experienced pushy bullshit from a real estate agent, we ran for the hills too, and found a buyer's broker.

World of difference.

Our experience could not have been more positive, so I encouraged my mom to not give up, but to try and find a buyer's broker and go that route instead. She didn't even know where to start, so I googled and found this woman in the general area where my mom was looking. She was a name on a website of buyer's broker in southeastern Massachusetts.

With my mom on the phoen, I emailed her and explained my parents' situation, and what they were looking for, and encouraged her to contact my mom or myself for further information. The next morning she called me and we talked for 40 minutes.

And then she called my mom.

Mom had some serious constraints on the choices she could make, one of which is her cat. Doug and I were laughing that "the cat is making the decision for her..." because everything my mom looked at had to be a place where the little shit could be happy. Letting the cat dictate exactly where you're going to live is something unheard of to my husband, but I bet many of you have had these considerations to make in the past and can empathize with her dilemnas.

So my mom and the buyer's broker worked together like mad over the past several weeks, and when my mom couldn't come up to go look at things, Jackie would go in her place and give her an honest opinion of the property. They found a great spot, and there were a few trailers for sale there, and they picked one that is "the" one. I think my mom is tickled pink, and I do hope that this is a great move to a perfect place for her and my dad.

My dad's two comments were:
1. It's too quiet there, it'll take some getting used to.
and
2. We have three rooms of wall to wall carpeting for the cat to piss on.

I hope the cat his happy.

Heh.

Anyway -- I should go visit and spend time. I need to figure out what the hell we're doing for dinner. Doug is napping and everyone else seems disinterested. So. More later.