Written on August 3

Too-Perfect House for a Very Imperfect Man

This must be what the day after you go to heaven is like.

Again, I am forced to post this after the fact, but still.

This is a Thursday. My dad and I just went to the final walk-through at the farm he is buying. The sellers took us through the whole place. I am floored.

The place is spotless. It looks like a new house. The interior doesn’t even need to be painted. Some areas are carpeted, and the carpet is new. The seller gave me a three-point attachment for the tractor, free, with a pointy thing on it for lifting hay. I found out later it was called a “bale spear.”

There is a ton of storage. I won’t have to throw out my toys. Like I was even considering it. I guess I could just have the movers take everything both of us own, and then I could store it all and then reduce it at my leisure. Some of it would probably look nice in the fireplace on a cold February evening.

I’m going to take an entire floor for myself. My dad can do all the damage he wants downstairs. He can turn it into the TV-Watching Shrine for the Southeastern United States if he wants. I’ll be upstairs waiting for the Rapture with my hobbies. The house has an intercom, believe it or not, so whenever he wants, he can summon me, and like Lurch, I will appear and solve his problems.

The area where the farm is located is nicer than I remembered. It has a little altitude, and that supposedly improves the breeze. The land is hilly, although the farm itself is fairly flat. The traffic is light. The roads are in great shape. There’s a lot of green, especially after a rainy July.

I still have to get moved. I don’t care. I’ll get it done if I have to carry everything up there on my back.

My dad is concerned he won’t have anything to do, but since he has had nothing to do for two years, I don’t think his gripe will turn out to be well-grounded. If he’s not bored now, he never will be. I’m looking into opportunities for him to socialize. Marion County is jammed up with geezers, so I’m quite sure I can find amusements for him.

The seller says we can kill the property tax by selling hay or by getting goats. He raised cattle, but they poop the place up. That’s a good thing if you need manure, but it’s not like manure is hard to come by in horse country. He said mature Boer goats would be very happy on the farm, but that it was not a good idea to have breeding stock, because coyotes eat the kids. Down side: no baby goats. Up side: I may have coyotes for rifle practice.

He said he lost one calf to coyotes. What ever happened to the old days, when they stayed out west where they belonged?

Tonight my friends Leah and Scott will be swinging through again on their way back from Sarasota, so there will be a lot to talk about. I’m overwhelmed.

Apparently, God does not mind doing surprisingly nice things for you, when things line up right. I think my blessings are related to the fact that I haven’t given a dime to a preacher in several years. I feel like God is using me to make a point.

Tomorrow we close, and then–wheeeeeee–back to Miami for a while. It will end. I will remind myself of that over and over, the same way I’ve said the same thing to myself when I’ve had the flu or severe diarrhea. Like severe diarrhea, every visit to Miami eventually ends.

I don’t have any new photos worth posting, but you can expect some when we take possession. Believe that.

Now I’ll relax before dinner. Time to lie back and think about tractors.