Stream of Consciousness Blogging

Lots of thoughts on my mind today.

School for the kids continues to go well. Our oldest who has the biggest challenges in school is making progress. We are grateful and praying for it to continue. Our middle son is much more easy-going and does things according to the teachers schedule, so we have been happy that he has kept up his normal behavior and seems to be fitting in quite well. Our daughter is doing fine, too. She just needs to keep her head out of the clouds a little more so she can finish her assignments a bit more quickly.

Housing is another issue that has been on our minds a lot lately. Back in the early part of the summer we started working with a realtor to find a home to buy. We are FTHBs, so it has been a learning process. Our lease here isn’t up until late November, so we wanted to find something that would allow us to close so we wouldn’t have to pay rent and a mortgage payment for even one month. About 2 weeks ago, we put an offer in on an older home in a “transitional” neighborhood (that realtorese for “not the best, not the worst”). We had a building inspection done at the end of the week we made the offer, and it revealed a lot of problems. Then we had a contractor friend look at the place to make a bid on the repairs so the sellers could decide if they would make the repairs before we purchased the house. Between the negative vibes we got from the inspector and from our contractor friend, we had the gut feeling that this was not the right house for us. So we walked away from the deal. Of course all of you who have purchased homes know that we also walked away from nearly $600 for the inspection. As a result of that loss, we are suspending our search for a while.

Our rental house is really fine in lots of ways. It is in a great neighborhood. It has a 2-car garage, which in our price range for buying, it is likely we wouldn’t be able to get this little perk. But throwing away the rent every month really irks me. Then there’s the fact that we would really like to be paying even a small bit less than we are currently. For now, the rental is ok, but I am hopeful and praying that we will find either a less expensive home to rent or a house we can afford–either in a neighborhood we would like to live in. It’s a tall order in a city like St Louis where the housing market is somewhat inflated.

The other thing on my mind a lot lately is work. I started working in a sales job in July. Most of July and August was training. Now I am getting into the nitty gritty of doing the sales work. I like the job since I can do most of the paperwork and “leg work” from home. I am selling fundraisers to schools. The main product is a food co-op that schools sign up to do with our company and the parents place orders every month and one day each month, our truck arrives at the school where I work with the school volunteers to unload and fill orders. Then the parents come and pick up their items. The schools make 10% of retail for their designated project, and I earn a very modest commission. Our company also offers traditional fundraisers like candy bars, cookie dough, strudel, and make your own pizza that schools or groups can do for a one-time event. So far the work itself is going well, but having never worked in commission-based sales before, I am struggling wtih waiting to actually make some money.

Now, how’s that for disjointed unrelated topics for blogging. But since it is my blog and my readers are few, I don’t worry too much about cohesiveness.

Have a good week!

4 thoughts on “Stream of Consciousness Blogging”

  1. Jennifer, I came across your blog from Valerie’s site, but I’ve know of you Hornes for awhile!(having been on BH)

    You probably made a good decision walking away from the house deal. When we bought our house a few years ago, we had an inspection done that didn’t catch a number of problems (plus we weren’t told the truth about some problems by the former owner). We ended up spending a lot of money replacing two air conditioning units, fixing a leak in the basement, a leak from the upstairs shower…if you have an inspector and a contractor putting up red flags you do well to heed them!

    Hope your sales job goes well. I have good memories from high school of eating those yummy school-fundraising chocolate bars (that I was supposed to be selling…)

    Angie

  2. Our first contract on a house was also derailed by the inspection. In our case, we had to kind of drop the idea for the better part of a year, by which time I had a better job and a better house was on the market. It was definitely a blessing for us.

    Now I’m wondering how to proceed with another little one on the way, and me barely able to carry Jay upstairs… Yikes!

  3. Angie & Lenise,

    I am sure this was the right decision. I think we’ll be happier about it as time passes, and perhaps something better will come along. Several people keep saying, “The bubble will burst.” They seem to think the prices will start to fall on real estate (per Alan Greenspan’s predictions), and perhaps that will be a help in all of it too.

    Lenise, as far as carrying Jay up the stairs, perhaps you need to make a sleeping/changing area for him downstairs for naps so you can cut out some of the regular trips. Just a thought. . . .

  4. Oh, we’ve tried. He won’t sleep in the pack’n’play we bought for him to nap in. The only thing that could work at this point is to turn the office into his bedroom. Of course, the DSL hookup is in the office and his bedroom is all nice and yellow and blue with a dancing sheep chair rail wallpaper border, but something just might have to give.

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