House hunting with the hippy quilter

I've been really bouncy lately because of some awesome news.  My friend Kathy (aka: The Hippy Quilter) has been living in the Armpit of Hell for the past couple of years and has been reeeeally uncomfortable there.  Her husband just got a new job which was fabulous news to begin with but the best part is that the new job is in Greeley!  Woooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!   {doing the snoopy-happy-dance}  Greeley is only an hour away from me!  That's close enough that we can do lunch and spur of the moment fabric shopping and see each other more than once a year! I'm really happy that she's getting out of Armpit and even happier that she and I are going to live close to each other again.  We haven't lived close to each other since 1981.

Kathy and I met when I was 17........I was a newly-wed and she was a newly-widow and we lived next door to each other in some tiny little run down duplex apartments next to the railroad tracks.  We were always together and up to something.  Not only were we both artisans even back then, but we knew how to  make our own fun.  One of our favorite past times was to go to "town" and visit the trailer house lots.  Neither of us could afford a home of our own, not even a trailer house, but if we told them we were just browsing, they'd let us go thru the trailer houses and we'd talk about how we'd redecorate them and laugh at how they were already decorated.  I'm pretty sure that if there were any toxins in shag carpeting, Kathy and I would have died a long time ago.  LOL!  We definitely saw more than our share of harvest gold and avocado green kitchen appliances too!  But it was our way of getting away from some of the harsher realties of our lives and we had a good time wandering thru hundreds of mobile homes and mentally hanging curtains and ripping out walls.  We spent a lot of time sitting on floors in empty rooms and being impressed with garden tubs.

So anyway, house hunting isn't a real foreign concept to us but this week we discovered a whole new way to go about it.  Kathy and her husband were in Greeley looking for a house.  Since they're moving before their house in Armpit sells, they'll be renting and finding a house for rent in Greeley isn't all that easy to do.  The online listings are usually for apartments and the few Realtor-listed houses that she'd found weren't what they needed and no one advertises in the newspapers anymore.  Finally Kathy just set out in her car with her cell phone and started driving around looking for "for rent" signs with phone numbers.  When she called to tell me what she was doing I was in front of the computer with my headset and "Operation Find-a-House 2010" began.  I started digging thru the more obscure online listings and classifieds and when I'd find something I'd call her with the address and with the help of Google satellite maps, the driving directions.   She'd take off for that one while I looked for more listings.  When she got to the house, she'd call me to let me know what she found and we'd start again.

Kathy and I have always been in sync with each other like that.   Over the years we've developed some excellent systems for everything from how to paint fence rails in a feedlot to how to get rid of psychotic ex-husbands.   And as with all of our other systems, the remote house hunting worked out well!  I think we were on the 4th or 5th house when she found "the one".   It's a really nice ranch in a lovely neighborhood with five bedrooms and a fully finished basement.  Now she'll have space to lay out quilt blocks again!  She'll also have decent shopping and pizza delivery which she's been living without for way too long.  (I told you she lives in the Armpit of Hell!)  I'm soooooooooo happy that she's getting back to civilization.  I'd be happy for her about that even if she wasn't living in the same state as me again but having her an hour away makes it even better.  I can't wait till she gets moved and we can go have chinese for lunch!