Lawton, bum Saturday

Walls to the right and left will be removed

Mama and I got to see our house in Lawton Friday afternoon. I am glad to have seen it emptied of all the trash Glenn and his crew removed. It is still in need of some minor repairs, a lot of paint and several interior changes to remove unnecessary walls in the small living room. Glenn was not able to meet us at the property, but he did a walkthrough with us as we looked at the house from the inside. Enclosing and repurposing the garage will be a huge improvement in the use of that space. Between the kitchen and the old living room we are going to remove the partial wall and open up that area. We will remove the wall between the old living room and the new living room (once the garage). That will put the fireplace in the center of a very large space, making it more functional as well as highlighting it as you walk into the house. The bedrooms are typical – much like those in our house at the farm.

Recovered garage space

There is not much that can be done to improve the bedrooms other than painting and upgrading the closet doors. The bathrooms are passable. They are dated but clean and functional. The kitchen is what it is. There in little we can do to it without incurring a lot of associated costs. It is functional but will take some cleaning up and refacing to make it marketable. Fortunately, most home buyers are more interested in open space than in a large kitchen. New appliances will be purchased and installed, and new countertops will be set before putting the house on the market. One corner of the old garage will be enclosed to provide a large walk-in pantry to offset the smaller kitchen. That was Glenn’s suggestion. The lumber taken from the walls we are tearing out will be reused to make that enclosure. It is a good plan all told but I am not sure if it can be completed by the end of the month. Time will tell. Mama and I are praying to have the house sold by mid-February. If that does not happen, I will have to adjust my timetable for going into our real estate business fulltime. A small matter.

From the street

Saturday was cold and very windy - making it feel very cold. The temperature was 25°. The winds were steady at 20 mph gusting to 40 mph. I did not go outside any more than was absolutely necessary. When I did go out, I was bundled up thoroughly. Even still, it affected my cough almost instantly. I am ready to be well again – but this cough lingers. So, to make the day ay least minimally profitable, I spent the day on the computer setting up files for our business and getting all the accounting for the business completed for last year. I also hooked up my two external hard drives to my computer so I could remind myself what was on them. They are each one terabit hard drives. Each is at least half full. One is more work-related information for its use as a backup to files I used in training the staff in New Jersey. Most of that will need to be deleted in order to fulfill my obligation to guard proprietary information. All of it is training related but it is not mine to keep.


The other hard drive is filled with personal stuff; movies, pictures, personal files. Some of the image folders date back to 2005. Most of the personal folders – kept for tax purposes – date back to 2007. One image folder had more thirty folders within it. In one of those subfolders was a store of 1158 pictures dating back to 2005. I did not open the other twenty-nine folders, but I am sure there will be a lot of work involved in sorting through all those images to cull out the ones we want to save and eventually share. One folder was called Baby Sitting Pictures. It was an accumulation of formal pictures taken of Mama with her charges sometime in the mid-2000’s. Baby Victoria was really Baby Victoria. Nearly fourteen years ago. The next time we go to Honduras, I will take that hard drive with me so Cori can take the pictures she wants from it. From her wedding. Her pregnancies. Hundreds of family photos as the children grew. She will be able to identify the ones she wants. The others will be discarded. Both hard drives are old as far as computing service goes and will have to be replaces this year if I am to safely keep the information they contain. Fortunately, the externals storage devices have come a long way since 2005.


I also took the time Saturday to set up the files for my taxes. We will be going to Amarillo to a tax accountant there. One recommended by our former tax accountant. Perhaps next year we will find someone closer. It just seemed prudent to stay with someone who had all our information from the last six years of taxes. All the required paperwork is starting to come to us, so it was time to get all that in order. Again, this year we should be close to balancing out our taxes owed to taxes paid. We should not have to pay too much to settle up with the IRS.


I expect next year to be drastically different.