Small help, big help

Help can come in many forms but yesterday, Mama had the Thomason boys to help her. We have not yet mulched the accumulation of leaves shed by all the trees near the house. Some of the leaves are piled on drifts so deep the big dogs are able to completely bury themselves in the drifts. Mama and I have talked about leaving one of those drifts for them to be able to continue to burrow in through the remainder of the colder months. For instance, this weekend, after reaching a high of 72° on Friday afternoon, the temperature is forecast to drop to 19° by Sunday morning. On that night, the outside dogs will need the extra insulation the leaves provide.


To get rid of the leaves, we typically use Mama’s zero-turn mower to mulch them, but we have not taken the time to mow the leaves because we are never sure exactly what is beneath them. Our trees regularly shed branches – some small, some large – but there are always branches to be picked up. Enter our help. Krystal had a doctor’s appointment yesterday afternoon. One that was going to take a couple hours. In order for her to be free for all that appointment required, Mama kept the three boys. After a movie and some inside play time, Mama got them organized and they gathered sticks in the front yard, the back yard, the coop area and the circle in front of the house. By the time they were done, we had a large pile of branches in the burn pit on the patio. Once the yard was cleared of obstacles, Mama wasted no time in getting out her mower and chopping up leaves. It was late in the evening by that time so the work with the mower will have to continue today and perhaps tomorrow, but a good portion of the leaves have been shredded.


While she worked with the boys and began mowing, I worked in the barn lot cleaning up the areas where we had fed out hay to the cattle. Mama contacted our neighbor and he is supposed to drop off a bale of hay today. I wanted to make sure we could put it in a clean area. Plus, it helps for me to keep up with the soiled, wet refuse left by the cattle in the spots where we set out the hay. Only one of those places is covered and Mama specifically requested the bale be put in that spot. Even though the work was mostly done by the tractor, I was still coughing because of time out in the cooler air. 


I texted Glenn, our real estate/investor partner, yesterday to see if he would be available to meet with us Friday afternoon. Mama and I have been trying to make the time to go to Lawton to see the house we purchased there and access the work that is being done on that house. Glenn called me later that afternoon to appraise me of a change in scope of the remodel. We had originally talked about installing a garage door in place of a poorly constructed wall that had been built to fill that space when some previous owner remodeled the house and removed the garage door. Once the house was emptied (it had been full of discarded items and trash from front to back), Glenn was able to see that the living room was small for the size of the house. It was not functional as a living room with doors centered in two walls and a window in a third. However, the garage is huge. Far larger than a typical garage. He decided to turn the garage area into a large living room, while making the less functional room into a dining room. The wall he will build to enclose the garage door opening will require a redo of the exterior on that side of the house to eliminate the “enclosed garage” look. We wholeheartedly agreed with the decision. Friday afternoon we will get to see it in person.


I asked about the turn around time to put the house on the market. Glenn expects to have the remodel done and the house staged for listing by the end of the month. That would be wonderful! There are sixteen more foreclosure auctions in Lawton this year. Mama and I plan to be at as many as possible so we can continue purchasing homes offered at these sales. With the oversight Glenn is providing, we feel confident we can avoid some of the typical mistakes new investors make in this market.


He has been a very big help to us.