*A day late posting this…fell asleep early last night! 🤣 – S

Yesterday, I was sitting at the desk talking on the phone and looking out the windows at the flurry of bird activity. With the drought on top of everything being dormant in winter most everything is various shades of brown except the birds. They are on the ground and in trees getting insects and seeds; pretty cool to be able to watch that. Nature rocks.

My mom used to love cardinals (the birds and not the sports teams or the Pope’s understudy), and red was her favorite color (probably why she liked the cardinals – not the other two). Every time I see one I think of her and the one yesterday was no exception and it hung around for quite a while.

I had only watched it for a few seconds when I had a text come through. My realtor had another, better offer from the same people. They are fortunately persistent! I responded back with a few conditions and we waited for a reply. So did the cardinal.

I finally heard back…they accepted my conditions and we signed papers today. They were pre-approved and closing is a month out. It ended up being a very special day yesterday.

With this pending sale, there is now a new sense of urgency to get things finished up as soon as I can so I have extra time to do anything last-minute that may need done. Since I had not done much serious damage with the chainsaw yet there is not as much green brush as there WOULD have been if I had continued. I am leaving that for the new people to work on; I have done enough to notice.

Luckily I have some good weather to be outside doing some clean-up work. Still too muddy to drive on the grass yet but I am getting some small trees piled up on top of a stump I cut as far down as I could. I am going to try to burn the older piles before I go. I have another pile of newer stuff in the front yard by the other brush pile. Once the newer brush dries out for a few months it will burn nice & hot and should burn the stump down too. The new owners can have a couple of bonfires.

The exercise is certainly good for me though I still need to watch it and take it slow & easy for a few more weeks. With the heart rate max entered into my watch exercise app I was getting alerts I was over by just 1 bpm so I was having to slow down. he sweet spot so if I keep doing that it will recover quickly. I did find a great app for iPhone/Apple Watch and it is so customizable. It is for anyone looking for tracking most any type fitness/wellness numbers. It also has the ability to download offline maps from GPS files so it is great for hiking. I will get my levels back up; if I gotta watch it that close it doesn’t matter. I will get it back soon.

Some very welcome news to get yesterday and it could not have happened at a better time. It is still kind of a weird feeling, though. I am not jumping up and down yelling with joy in the streets. Yes, I am happy to finally be able to move on, but I do think quite a bit about my parents in all of this. This was their dream they built and they lived it for 50 years. We should all be so fortunate in our lives.

And as this chapter closes, a whole new one opens…or perhaps it is a new book; I don’t really know.

Sorry…started thinking all existential and nobody wants to hear that. Anyhoo, deep breaths, looking ahead to what’s to come, and relieved in many ways.

See you again soon,

Shawn