Clear Creek

I am on the count down for Clear Creek!  We signed Sterling up and I can't tell you how excited I am.  Okay, so I'm a bit nervous to be sending him off for a week without family there.  Who knows how he will act - but I'm sure he'll be fine around others because it is only around us that he acts up.

One week of freedom!  Of course, I may be a nervous wreck when the time actually comes.

Then, we are going to be sending him to Idaho for a couple of weeks to spend time with Tim's mom and his Sister and her kids.  Oh....we he is going to love it!

If I'm this excited about a week without my son, can you imagine how excited I will be when he is actually a teenager?  I'm not sure we are going to survive his pre-teen attitude - you know, the rolling of the eyes, telling us not to yell at him when we aren't, getting mad at us for teasing him, and the I-know-everything-you-know-nothing attitude.  I thought that started closer to 13.  Wrong.  It started 3 years ago!

Remember

the neighbors behind us in our old house?  You know, the ones who finally drove us from our home?  The ones with the kids living in the trailer 2 feet from my back fence for 6 years?  The ones with 3 old vehicles parked in the back yard with lots of junk?  Well.....

We heard today from another old neighbor that Barb, the lady who owns the home, was visibly pissed off at church when it was brought up that we sold our house to a rental company.  She feels it should be illegal to rent out homes in certain neighborhoods and she isn't happy with us.

Really? This coming from the lady who is letting her children live ILLEGALLY in a trailer?

This coming from the lady who doesn't care that her kids are all into drugs and doesn't believe when people tell them about it?

I have to admit that when I heard that, I giggled.  She (and her hubby) only have themselves to blame.  Maybe they should have cleaned up their property.  Of those who came to look at our house, 90% of them mentioned the condition of the home behind us.  I don't blame them.  When I bought the house, it wasn't that bad.  I remember looking into the back yard and into the neighbors yard and nothing stuck out as being icky.  I don't mind an old looking trailer.  That doesn't bother me.  It is the gatorade bottle holding open a window, a black tarp covering a leak, and duck tape on the windows that bugs me.  And it sure wasn't like that when we moved in!  nor was it right next to the fence.

But now, there is no way I would even consider buying that house.  We would have taken one look at that and would know that we couldn't live with that.

So it is no wonder that the only people we could sell to was a rental company that didn't even look at the house first.

But now I'm a bit bugged by the fact that she is upset with us for selling to a rental company.  Why should she be mad at us?  She needs to look at her own property with a critical eye and see what needs to be changed.  My house wasn't perfect and it needed updating, but I think we would have had a better shot at selling if they weren't trashy.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I don't stew about this all night long.  I'm starting to feel really guilty now and wondering who else is mad.

Lovely.

I do want to thank them, though.  I absolutely love it here.  If it wasn't for them, we'd still be in that house (which I did love - but not as much as this home!)

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is sweet.

Sometimes I'd like to be like a child and forget the hassles of the day before and start fresh.  I wake up and always seem to remember what happened the day before.

Take last night, for example.  We had a major homework blowup.  It was not fun around our house - we even scared off my niece and her boyfriend!  Ster has gotten in the habit of saying he can't do it.  And I have gotten into the habit of saying "Yes, you can.  You aren't trying."  Well, it ended up in a battle of epic proportions.  He didn't know the meanings of any of the words he had to know and he couldn't read out of the dictionary because the words were too little and he couldn't figure out the correct answer because he didn't know it.  Frustrating.

This morning, Sterling woke up as happy as can be and was just as cheerful as ever.  He sure didn't act like the pissed-off boy he was yesterday.  And he wasn't in the least bit mad at me for getting on him last night.

Last night he hated me.

This morning he loves me.