The continuing story.......

Since my last posting we have once again moved. The old adobe and the repair work it needed became more than we could stand. The straw that finally broke the camel's back was the need to remove the roof from over the garage, master bedroom and bathroom. For those of you that don't know anything about adobe dwellings, this entails tar paper, gravel and tar and the removal of the old. Our landlord, his son and a friend removed the old roof which left nothing but the vega beams over the garage and a lot of daylight. The bedroom and bath were not quite as wide open, but they used a leaf blower to clean all the small debris off the roof and of course, it all fell down into the rooms below. And of course, most of the debris was left in the yard behind the house and not cleaned up until we moved and he had to find new tenants. The help that our landlord hired (which I am sure got paid dirt cheaply as they didn't speak a word of English and the landlord is very cheap) did not do too bad of a job replacing the roof, but they were very messy and tar leaked down the walls, into the bathtub and all over the comforter on my husband's bed. By the time it was finished, it was either find another place to live or do grievous bodily harm to the landlord. We were also finding the electric bills to be extremely high and didn't even want to find out what a full month of gas for heating would cost! Someone told us to check on Craig's list for houses for rent and we lucked out. The rent is cheaper and the heating bills are normal. The electric is still high, but that seems to be the norm around here.

The new house is smaller, brighter and much easier to keep warm.
The living room holds most of the furniture that was in the other house but is still not used. We each have computers and TV's in our rooms so conversation is done over the kitchen table at dinner time. There is one major complaint that I have about rental properties in New Mexico for anyone out there who may consider moving here and renting. Unless you rent from a large complex you will find that the places are generally not clean when you move in. I have shampooed the carpeting 6 times now in the 3 months we have lived here and still can't get the stains out. The house is well built and it is unfortunate that the original owners went into foreclosure and never got to finish what they started. We were going to do some finishing work in here and then thought better of it. I am really tired of doing work to a home that doesn't belong to us.
I am eagerly awaiting the day of the final closing on the house in Tularosa. Once we have the rest of the money from the sale of the house we can make our plans for travel. The people in our house have until Sept. 1 to refinance and close. I am hoping that it is sooner so that we can head back "home". The warm weather and salt water are calling me................