Fun Saturday

Keith wanted to take a drive up to Tehachapi for breakfast on Saturday, so we drove up there and ate, stopping at the Murray Family Farms fruit stand to use the restroom and buy some apples and pomegranate jelly. They have a bear in their peach orchards that keeps evading the animal control people who are trying to get the bear back up into the mountains. No, we didn't see the bear but had seen the pictures on the news of the bear just hanging out in the orchards and having a great time amongst all the fruity abundance.

Then in the afternoon we pretended we were shopping for a new house and went looking at model homes. There are all these new developments in town that are now having real problems trying to sell all of these houses and are offering all sorts of incentives to buy-free pools, ten thousand dollar gas cards, no down payment, and one was even offering a buy one get one free for a while.

One development was huge custom homes, we looked at one that had a central courtyard with fireplace, movie room, and the biggest kitchen I've ever seen with a center island that was bigger than 2 pool tables side by side. I just wondered how you would clean the island, you'd have to get a stepladder to reach the middle of it or just climb up on top of it. We don't know how much this house was, obviously totally unaffordable for us though!

One of our favorites was a spanish style house with a front porch the entire width of the house, the entryway had a formal living room on one side and dining room on the other, then a central enclosed courtyard/patio thing, a huge huge master bedroom suite with a sitting room, stairs going up to the upper level with an landing half way up and a window seat on the landing. We could just picture all the kitties sitting on the window seat.

The best development that we saw was the 55 and older houses. I was kind of expecting town house type things but these were actual houses with big master bedrooms and 2nd bedrooms for guests or grandkids. They had six houses to look at and we liked every one of them. I never thought I'd get excited about a 55 and over neighborhood, but think about it-no screaming kids, no skateboarders or bicyclists that you might run over since your sight isn't getting any better. No young firm bodies at the pool to make you feel even older than you are, and no trick or treaters to disturb you on Halloween. The place is gated so all the young riff raff can't get it!

It was a little disturbing to see all of the for sale signs in the neighborhood, though, did these people get in over their heads with the payments or all they all dropping dead? Hmmm...

Keith and I want to see a model home that looks like real people live there. The living room would be decorated with lazyboy recliners and a few beer cans would be leaving rings on the coffee table. The kitchen would have dish soap and sponges on the windowsills, some dirty dishes in the sink, and coupons and junk mail on the counters. The bathrooms would have a wet towel or two on the floor, magazines on the back of the toilet, and the kids rooms would have toys and dirty clothes all over the floor. And an old sofa on the front porch to welcome you.