Boxes anyone?
Dan and I will be returning to Rochester on Sunday to pack up the house. The plan is to pack everything ourselves and then the movers will be coming to load it all up and deliver it to Maine. Sharon and Bill have been gathering as many boxes as they can but I'm sure we'll need all that we can get. I'm also looking for newspaper to pack up the fragile stuff. If anyone has any of these items, let us know before we leave for New York or for those of you in Rochester, please let Sharon and Bill know and they can open up the garage for you to leave them in. We really appreciate the words of encouragement from everyone that we've received over the past two weeks. It really means a lot to us to know that we have great friends and family. I'm sure that things will get better for us but for now, all of these words help. This experience has made me glad that I've managed to stay grounded in my life and never take anything for granted. We're both hanging in there and trying to stay organized for the big move back to Maine. I've applied for 4 jobs so far so let's hope something develops. I'll be applying for more this week. Dan has a couple of things lined up as well so keep your fingers crossed for us. The dogs have adapted to life back in Maine and living with another dog. They all get along pretty well actually which surprises me but I'll take anything that goes well for us these days! Dan will be helping Gavin tear out the shower and tub in their bathroom this week. That ought to be quite interesting. Maybe Gavin will post some pictures on his site. I'll keep you all updated on things as they progress (hopefully they DO progress!)

In a nutshell.....
Okay...this will be brief and then I'm moving off the subject. To make it short and sweet, Danny has left his new position and we are moving back to Maine. I'll spare you the details. The house in Rochester will close as planned by the end of September. We're not quite sure how we're getting everything back to Maine but will be storing all of our stuff with family until we can find jobs and a new place to live. We are currently staying with Ann and Dana who have been awesome to us and we'll most likely spend some time at Stephen's house as well. It's times like this when you really appreciate your family. As you may imagine, this is a pretty difficult time for both Danny and I. He has worked since age 14 and has never been unemployed since then. I appreciate all of your words of encouragement. If you haven't heard from me personally, it's because I need a little more time to digest this situation. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'll continue blogging away and keep y'all updated as things progress.

The Future...

There is a very bumpy road ahead of us.....stay tuned

Life...

Some of you are probably thinking that life could be much worse for us. I know that it could but getting over the bumps can be really irritating also. Danny and I are well aware of how lucky we are and have been and NEVER take it for granted. We are thankful for everything and everybody in our lives.
Ella.....
Ella continues to recover. She is still on the pain medication and without it seems pretty uncomfortable. When I took her to the vet on Friday, he said that her eye looked better so if things continue to improve, I won't take her back to the vet until next Thursday. She has a really large divot (sp?) eye so I hope everything turns out okay for her. The owner of the kennel is in pretty tight with the vet and called him before I went in on Friday to be reassured that he didn't cause this. While I know that he probably couldn't have prevented the cause, he could have paid attention to the fact that my dog was suffering and only had one eye open for what must have been several days.
This week.....
I'll be focusing on wrapping some stuff up here at the house in Rochester like packing up the desk and cleaning out some junk. All of the plants will be going to the neighbors. Depending on how Ella is doing, I'm hoping to go back to Mass by the end of the week. Danny and I will be moving into a one bedroom apartment in the same complex at the end of the month. When we moved there, they didn't have a one bedroom available so we ended up paying $600 more. I hope the one bedroom is not any worse than the two bedroom that we're currently staying in! I'll post again soon!

Baylee and Ella

Dogs and Moving......

I arrived back in Rochester yesterday (Wednesday) to get the dogs out of the kennel and get some other things taken care of here. I was excited to pick the dogs up at the kennel yesterday because they had been boarded much longer then I've usually boarded them in the past. Everything (food, blanket and toys) was ready and waiting when I got there and they had my invoice all ready. They even put the dogs in the car for me. I wrote the check ($300.00) and left. When I got to the stop sign at the end of the road, I looked over at Ella and noticed that her face was all gunked up with something. I looked closer and saw that her right eye was closed up and VERY infected and it had all run down into the hair on her face. What a mess! I knew that her eye looked really bad so rather than go home, I took her straight to the vets office. They were closing but agreed to look at her after I explained her condition. The vet took one look and told me that she has a very bad ulcer on her eye and that it was deep and very serious. He also said that this was extremely painful for Ella. He examined her and put dye into her eye and looked at it under a black light. He cleaned it and put some ointment in and then gave me pain medication as well as an antibiotic and some ointment to put in her eye. He is very concerned that her eye is not going to respond to the medication. I have to take her back in on Friday morning to determine the next steps. If it's not better, she'll need to see an eye specialist. Right now she cannot see out of her eye at all and will hardly open it. As you can imagine, this was not a pleasant thing to come home to. I pay a lot of money for them to take good care of my dogs and I'm not happy. I made two calls to the kennel before the owner finally called me back. I told him the circumstances and also told him that I had stopped payment on the check that I wrote to him. He was apologetic but I told him that in this case, he cannot do enough for me to rectify this situation. It was obvious that Ella has been in pain for several days and it went unnoticed by him and his staff. This certainly adds to the stress of selling our house, buying another house and trying to organize a big move. Hopefully this will be a good outcome for Ella.

On a better note, we found a house! Not quite as fancy looking on the outside as our current house but much nicer inside. After looking at houses again this past weekend, Danny convinced me to go back to the solar panel house. I went back and decided that I really do like the house but wanted to have a few changes made to it. After talking to the builder and asking a lot of questions, we decided that it really is the ideal house for us. It's a colonial with 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. The master bedroom is huge and it's on the first floor which will be really nice for us. I'm finally getting a jacuzzi tub! I deserve it at this point!! The house is in a really nice quiet little town called Townsend. It's a typical small New England town. The energy savings are a plus too. It's about 2 hours from Portland which works for us. No more 8+ hour days on the road! Now for all of the paperwork and mess that goes along with it!! I'll post again in a few days.

Temporary Housing

We have arrived in Massachusetts and are staying in an apartment on the outskirts of Lowell. It's a two bedroom, which we don't need but they didn't have any one bedrooms available so we'll stick it out with this one until a one bedroom is available. It's just eh, okay. I'm kind of freaky about the cleanliness of the place so I've scrubbed it from top to bottom even though it's done on a weekly basis.
We went out on Sunday with a realtor here and looked at several houses, in different towns. Mostly new ones. The one that I liked is so awesome inside but kind of strange looking outside with a few ugly things nearby that I'm not crazy about looking at all of the time but the inside of the house is beyond what I would have expected to find for the money. We found another one that seemed pretty good to Dan but not so much to me. It is a "green" house which has solar panels on one side of the roof which keeps the electricity, including heat and air conditioning at a cost of $500 per year! I liked the house okay but wasn't crazy about the restrictions of not using certain fertilizers on the lawn and other limitations. They also really cheaped out in the kitchen and carpeting. Who knows, we may revisit them. I'm going out on Wednesday with the realtor to look at some other houses and then Dan and I will both go out again on Sunday.
Dan started his new job yesterday and ended up going to Vermont in the afternoon for three days! That means that I'm here in the apartment by myself until Wednesday night.....not what I had in mind but oh well, it comes with the territory I guess. I've managed to keep myself busy so far. I'll be going to Maine to visit on Thursday and coming back here on Sunday morning to go back out with the realtor again. Dan will be joining me in Maine on Friday night. I'm planning to go back to New York next Monday to get the dogs out of the kennel (poor things!) and manage the house selling process there. We've had some interest but are waiting for people to "crunch numbers" as they said to my realtor. Keep your fingers crossed! I'll post again soon.