Today's Decisions and Thoughts

We've lowered the price on this place by $5,100. Don't know if it will do any good but, after investigating area sales and prices, it seemed there wasn't much choice. According to info from our realtor: four homes in the $30,000 - $70,000 range sold in this county in Sept. of the nearly 300 that were listed. ONLY four homes. Then she had us look at the homes currently listed in that price range. Not good news for us. You can buy (if you have cash of financing, both big IFs nowadays) a 1,800 sq. ft. ranch home with a garage on anywhere form 1/4 to one acre for LESS than we're asking for our place on 10 acres!!! Also, when we listed this place on July 9th, nearly 90 days ago, there were eight mobile homes on acreage - not lots - up for sale. Two of those were removed from the market, and the remaining six sold BEFORE Sept. 3rd. There are currently TWO mobile homes on the market in the aforementioned price range in this entire county.

So, in view of this news, we're hunkering down. If we've not sold by the time our listing expires, we won't list again until spring or summer. We're going north for a visit later this month and have decided to try to convince my father to come here for the winter. He's 80 in November, losing his memory, falls often, lives alone and has nine steps up to his front door. NO ONE in the family is willing to take him in and they all work other than my oldes son who would not be a good choice anyway. My two sisters who live nearby work as do their husbands; my brother is in Afghanistan now. He's what I call a hired gun - trains swat teams and works undercover, etc. He's no longer in Delta Force but I assume knows what they're up to.

Today is day five of the freezer experiment. We're eating leftover lasagna to day so no withdrawal from the freezer.

I have another seven quarts of tomatoes to can today and think I'll can some butter too. I'm also thinking of cooking all the chicken in the freezer and canning the broth for use later. This frees up some space in the freezer and means we're less affected when the power goes out. After intermittent rain for days on end we now have our usual few weeks of high winds. Last year we were without power six times, the longest for two days. Another consideration is to just cook and debone the chicken and can the meat and broth together. Time will tell. I'm a woman and that means I can EASILY change my mind.

A load of wash is already hanging outside. It will dry in 10 minutes. I've removed about half the window screens, washed them and put them in a closet. Last winter we discovered this gave us more daylight and made it easier to clean the indside of the windows. I'm kind of picky about that as I like a crystal clear view of our woods!

And now the Fed is going to pump in more money - this time via supporting commercial paper. And so the game continues. I still feel it's not going to get things back to "normal." What has passed for normal in this country for a few decades now is really abnormal though people "bought" into the idea that they don't know any better.