Phase II Land Clean-Up

We have officially started phase two of our property clean-up back home in Pine Mountain. We rented some heavy equipment and Operators and starting pushing down trees, uprooting old stumps, etc. this past Saturday. Hubby and I ran our chainsaws cutting up the large trees into smaller lengths for easy handling- we buried some and burned others. We worked sun up to sun down on Saturday and then sun up to mid-afternoon on Sunday. We were so surprised at how much we debris we cleaned up! I forgot to mention that the previous owners used to dump their old junk on one part of the land too- I am talking YEARS of dumping...NOT fun to clean up other folks crap! Unfortunately, the bull dozer we rented cannot get close enough to all of the junk to relocate it... so we are renting a track-hoe with a grappling hook to pull the debris to relocate it. The track-hoe will be delivered tomorrow and we will be starting back to work tomorrow as well. Why not use up our precious vacation days to do manual labor for free? My kind of vacation! The worse part is the fear of ticks, inhaling all the smoke from the burn pit, non-stop sweating due to the high levels of humidity, and running around in uncomfortable work boots. I just hope the end product by this Sunday makes it all worth it. And I just hope we get our entire To-Do List finished by Sunday too.

After we finished our work last Sunday, we did swing by to see my Grandmother on our way home. Boy, she was full of bitterness that visit. It is so frustrating to spend time with her since she seems more and more bitter and angry all the time now- even Hubby got to witness it this time around. I think at this point in our trip down dementia lane I have just got to accept the fact that no matter how well she is taken care of physically, she will never be happy again- never be happy any where or in any place. It just seems like her record is scratched on the bitter groove and it just keeps playing over and over. I do not know how the Caregivers deal with it day in and day out. I know it has to be hard on them too- especially enduring it 24/7. This is just another reason I should count my blessings every day....

Endurance Is A Gift

Today is Good Friday and here I am at work. It is so hard to believe that April is almost half over and it makes me wonder where did the first 1/3 of this year go already? We are headed back down to Pine Mtn tomorrow... not necessarily for the Easter holiday... just to do some things on our neverending To-Do List. I will head to the store today to buy my Grandmother some Easter goodies.... I always like to show up with gifts for her. Sweets always make her smile. Since our conversations lately have been so limited due to her diminishing communication skills, I try to bring gifts to stimulate her mood- which makes my visits much more enjoyable. I do not know why I carry this ongoing guilt for not going down to visit her more often. I keep telling myself that every other week really is enough... but, that guilt feeling is always lingering. And now as her dementia increases, her ability to communicate her negativity towards me (since I am her main target) has dwindled. I am not having to call down there every single day to talk to her- she just does not remember if I call any more or not. She really does not ask and when I do talk to her, she does not ask why I did not call the day before. Yet, I still religiousy call to talk to her at least every-other-day. Of course, the conversations are mostly about much of nothing- very limited, very brief- and on those days that she does try to say something, it sounds like babbling and I cannot make out much of any of it- very stressful!! Oh well, I am going to visit her for a couple of hours on Saturday any way. Hubby will run some errands while I am visiting her and then we are meeting up with an Equipment Operator around lunch time and going over to our land to do some work-planning. We are gearing up to do some more work on our property starting next weekend- Exciting! I love to watch progress on our future home land... We will then head to the south end of the county to consume oysters with other friends and family (while they are still in season)... and then probably head back up to the City that night. I know it is a long day trip but, I decided against staying for Easter service in our hometown Church. I really do want to go but, the fact that ALL those folks attending the service will be inquiring about my Grandmother- it just does not sound like something I want to endure. I am saddened that I cannot take her with me, but I am not willing to attempt that with her broken hip and all. And I am not ready to answer the same questions over and over and justify why she is not there. Is that just awful of me or what? Oh well, I cannot help it if I am not ready for it. Period.

Barn Burning- It's A Party!

I have a funny story I want to share with you... another saga in the life of Kelly... more drama, more stress... I thought this life was supposed to be "No worries", right?!!

The property we bought back home in good ol' Harris County was purchased from about eight siblings that had inherited the land from their grandparents. They had not touched the land since their grandparents died and the farm was overtaken by trees, bushes, vines, just growth in general. And then the old home place burned down on the property a few years back (not really sure how long ago- could be 10 years or 15 maybe?)... Anyhoo, we closed on the sale back in mid-October last year. Only one sibling actually showed up for the closing and she signed for herself and two others. And one of the nephews signed for his mother and the remaining others. Now this nephew is probably in his 50's so the siblings are probably in their late 70's to 90's... so it is undertstandable that most cannot sign for themselves... in person at least. We were told at the closing that it took the siblings many years to agree on selling the property, how much to sell it for, get all the signatures on the same documents, etc. Besides the fact, that one of the siblings died right after we made our offer- which now added her children into the picture as well.

Anyway, we closed on the property in October and started cleaning up the front part of the property in early November. When we realized that the land clean-up was going to be a LOT more than we could do ourselves with just my few family members and a tractor with a box blade, we agreed to save up our money to pay someone else to come in and take care of it. Our first official clean-up was around Christmas time. We hired a guy with a brush clearing machine that could literally eat trees and overgrown brush- he cleared over two acres for us over the course of 12/26 to 1/5. During all of this clearing we really exposed quite a bit of the leftover farm stuff- ex: chicken coops, hog fencing, food and water troughs, miscellaneous rusted junked appliances and last but not least- the old 2-room barn. We debated on what to do with the barn... push it over? burn it down? leave it till it falls? In the end after locals kept saying to keep it since it is an antique, we decided to let it stay...until it falls.

Well after these past two weeks, I am seriously thinking about pushing the barn to the ground myself... Maybe that might just end the saga that has seemed to unfold itself over the past week or so.. or at least anger someone enough to forget the other lingering issue at hand. Let me explain: About a week or so ago around 9:30pm on a weeknight, I get a phone call from a phone number from back home that I do not recognize. I call the number back and stepped right into a heated discussion with a very pissed off elderly woman about us needing to give her "her property" that was left in the barn on the land we bought. She is one of the siblings that we paid dearly for our land and now she thinks that she is entitled to "her property in the barn" and that "we only bought the land and not her property in the barn". She thinks that we should have known that under all that trash and crap left in the barn and under all the rat nests, buzzard droppings, busted bags of lime, dirt, dust, leaves, and who knows what else, she had a bed, some heaters and a corn sheller in there. She thinks we should have seen her stuff and known to call her and ask her what to do with it. I tried to be as diplomatic and respectful as I could considering her age and all. But I gotta tell you... she was not listening to ANY thing I was telling her! And then she called again the next day... and the next day... I called her nephew twice and told him that his aunt was out of control and how everything in that barn was hauled off to the landfill, buried or burned during the land clearing. We have since had another company out to do more land clearing in March and he cleaned out EVERY thing. The barn has been cleaned out end of story. I offered for him to come look himself. Well he must not be relaying the message because she keeps calling and leaving these 4-5 minute voicemails that call us every thing in the book. It just makes me cringe. I wish I could turn back time or I wish she would have said something earlier- you know since we have owned the place for over 8 months now!!

Yet and still, she has wished bad luck upon us and the land. We are bad people and she wishes they would have never sold it to us. She didn't sell us her property, just the land.

Hey lady, for all the thousands of dollars we forked out for your land... that includes every freaking stitch of property- the trees, the pinestraw, the grass, the barn, the trash you dumped on the land for years that we now have to haul off, EVERY thing. So every time you think about that ancient, rusty corn sheller and how you want it back, look deep into that wallet of yours and count your chunk of the pay out!