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[paxamicus AT earthlink.net]

.....on a place in Ithaca.

The place that had 170 acres, Roy said the house was too much for us.  
It really needed to be taken down to the pegs and completely redone.  
As much as both of us wanted the acreage, the house just completely  
daunted us.. Also, the house gave me uncomfortable vibes. I don't know  
why.

We made an offer on a teeny little place with a very funky little  
eyebrow colonial. It's younger than this house by about 100 years. Eh,  
huge draw back, no hardwood trees except the ones that ring the house.  
But, it's about ten minutes outside town...there are two barns, one  
old one, one new Morton barn, both in really good shape with electric  
and water. Roy can have the older, smaller building as a workshop, I  
can do the ponies and the sheep in the big barn, and there will still  
be room to park cars in there in the winter.  The front half of the  
barn has concrete floors, the back is already all rubber matted.   
There's a pond, a stream, it's fenced. By that I mean the posts are  
in, but  are strung with two strands of barbed wire, so we will need  
to run some wire, but the hard part is done. There's a POOL!  
HAhahahahaha I don't even like to swim but I sure do like to float  
around reading under an umbrella with a book in my hand. The house is  
horse shoe shaped, and there's a gorgeous flower garden in the middle.  
I really wish it was herbs but once I see what I've got, I can always  
tuck them in here and there. And there's loads more room, besides, I  
can really put them anywhere. There are at least three apple trees, a   
pear tree,  tonnes and tonnes of flowers coming up around the outside  
of the house tulips, roses, violets, something which I think was  
lenten rose. All the lilac bushes are starting to come out up there  
now.  There was at least one rose hip bush, forsythia, ...it was  
amazing. The seller lived there for thirty years and the garden really  
shows it. It's all in pasture. The seller kept fox hunters.

The house, not so much. The kitchen is teeny weeny, the baths are kind  
of gross, and the upstairs floor plan is really, really weird, but I  
am SO excited because you know, that just means we can redo stuff a  
little bit at a time exactly the way we want it, without worrying  
about whether or not we are potentially messing up resale valuee, like  
I was worried about to a certain extent in this house.  The ugliest,  
ugliest ugliest room in the place is a sort of den that was added on,  
the windows are so stubby I can't even see out of them but GUESS  
WHAT!!!! It's the south facing wall so we are ALL about putting a  
conservatory on the side, which will transform the room. There's a  
whole HUGE mud room space, in addition to a laundry, and a lot of  
space to turn into pantry. There's a teeny tiny little office just off  
the kitchen which is bright and sunny and which I am claiming as my  
own little sanctum sanctorum.  : )  There's a teeny tiny little  
bedroom which is a walk-through, so I plan to put the kids in one room  
on either side and they can share the little room as a closet. There  
is an easy place to convert to a separate in law apartment.

There is a tiny little town five minutes away down the hill, there a  
real town. Teeeny, one of each of the bare bones...a bank,gas station,  
mini-independent grocery, a place that made really really good New  
York style pizza. Oh my oh my, I'd forgotten how good that stuff  
is...flat, foldable, crispy, with ultra gooey cheese. I was in such  
heaven. I may hang up my peel! ; ) And then it's 15 minutes to Ithaca.  
When my kid has a choice of three different kinds of yoga class, and I  
can go snag up Moosewood's "Chocolate Moose"...(hahahaa) and then I  
can go over to the Co-Op and not only is the produce local and  
organic, the signs tell you which farms the stuff came from and the  
employees are owners. There were six different live music performances  
to pick from tonight that I saw in the papers, or stargazing at  
Cornell's Observatory.

I am really, really hoping we get it. We wrote the contract this  
afternoon, we've got a tentative home inspection scheduled for Friday.  
There's even a pony-sized sleigh in the barn. I'm hoping he leaves it,  
I might ask after the negotiations are done, just buy it separately.


I'm a little excited, can you tell?

Whooohohohohohohoooo!


Celia