Spring Fever

Spring is springing here in Eastern Washington state. A few days of sunshine, then a couple with chilly wind, and a light shower or two. All in all it’s been pretty nice. Although, today has been a slow soaker. I’m debating on how to do a veggie garden this year. Container vs. in ground. Things grow really well here in ground. I’ve been looking at key hole gardening too. I haven’t gotten any seeds yet. Most likely I’ll get some locally. The one year I did a garden here (in ground), I bought some 10 for a $1 seeds at the Dollar store. It was late in the season. The only problem with that was, it gets really hot here in the summer. So, I lost some stuff to the heat. The peppers did great. And the tomatoes and herbs went crazy! Now that I’m writing this down. I could do both, in ground and containers. Anyway, I’m just distracting myself from thinking about how/if we are going stay here.
On that front:
We found and faxed a copy of Randy’s dad’s will to the AG’s office. I don’t know how much that matters. She won’t be back in the office until the 20th. I also took some really ugly pictures of this place to e-mail her. It wasn’t hard to do. Since I’ve lived here (5yrs) we haven’t done much to clean this place up. What would be the point if the state was going to take it anyway? That’s how long this has been hanging over our heads. This year has been the first time we’ve ever been offered some kind of settlement. We’ll most likely take whatever they finally offer, but I figure there’s no reason not to talked them down as much as we can. It’s going to take a lot of work to get this place back to what it was when Randy’s parents were alive and living here. I’ve seen a couple of pictures, and it breaks my heart. I can only hope we get a chance to do right by them.

New developements, kind of.

The lawyer we talked to a couple of weeks ago suggested that we ask the state for some kind of payment plan. We’ve tried it before, and were told that the state is not in the real estate business. But, we decided what heck! Why not try again? The worst thing that could happen is they’ll say no again. Well, she didn’t say no this time. Wonders of all wonders! She told us to send an offer. So, we did. We based it on the $15,000 they had previously offered. The reply was nope, if you’re going to make payments we want $30,000. Ok, I get that $30k seems reasonable for a house on one acre. What she does not fully understand is that this place is not worth that much money. It is a 70’s vintage trailer that is in pretty bad shape. Plus, it’s kind of a funky neighborhood. We had a realtor out here about 2 years ago and she said she might get $20K. It could take another $5,000 - $10,000 to make this place worth much more than $15,000. And then, of course, there’s the economy to consider. So, we’re mulling it over. I think we’re going have to make a counter offer. We’re only at the beginning of this stage of the game. It’s exhausting, but were still in it! We’ll see what happens next.