Cape Karen
Well now I really have something to blog about - I'm moving to a new home! At long last I got up the nerve to actually do something about my hatred for this horrid place. It seemed that I just couldn't put together a feasible plan for moving - with the hassle and expenses and all.
Then, last week, I decided to go on the internet and begin searching for house rentals in Davenport, IA - mainly because my only daughter lives there and every time I visited her I liked the city more. (This was before the floods and tornadoes!) For a long time, the thought of being in the middle of the country, even further away from my beloved ocean, held me back from actively pursuing that idea... not to mention their long, cold winters.
But then, I thought, what could possibly be any worse than living here, with our 'bad-ozone' polluted air, our unbearable year-round tourist traffic, and the ever-increasing influx of illegal aliens driving ultra-loud vehicles past my house all day and night?
Reading the Quad City Times online, I found an interesting and compelling article about a local couple who've been restoring many of the old Victorian homes located in a historic district, and turning them into rental units, with strict guidelines in their leases. (No rusty cars, no more than two cars per apartment, no large dogs, etc.) Reading the news articles about their work, and seeing all the community awards they received over the years, my interest was peaked even more. This sounded promising!
Going to an inventory of their restored houses that were currently available, I quickly found the perfect place for me. It's a huge Victorian house with the entire top floor closed-off due to having too-low ceilings for most people today. Usually, these big old houses are rented as duplexes - so I'd have had someone living above or below me (not!) But, because of the low ceilings upstairs, this particular house would be all mine... thanks to those short Victorians! (They lined the upstairs floors with insulation to keep the heating bills down.)
"My house" has a large, long living room, a medium-sized kitchen, a small bedroom and a small 'shower-only' bathroom. And, as far as I'm concerned, that's enough... it's the perfect size for just me and Smudge kitty. And the best feature ~ the one that I really LOVE ~ is the huge wrap-a-round porch. There's a rather sparse "Zen garden" in the front, a well-treed side yard and a really big back yard. It sits at the end of a dead-end lane, in a fully-restored neighborhood. They had just finished restoring it for the second time, what they called a "mini-restoration," so it has now has new paint in every room and gorgeous "glowing" wood oak floors throughout. I also saw that it had a washer-dryer hook-up... somewhere? (I forgot to ask them where - and if it has a basement? I'll assume it does, and we'll see....)
I'm moving in on July 1st, so I've been busy packing. Moving an 8-room house full of furniture into a smaller 4-room house just isn't feasible - and Frank is staying here for two more years until he retires - so I'm only bringing what I can "jam" into my car, for now... just the bare necessities. This will give me a chance to 'try it out,' and to see if Davenport, IA is somewhere that I'll want to stay long-term, or not. (Gotta try a winter first! Yikes!) The Mississippi River is located down below me - way down below me. They say I can actually see it from the upstairs windows, and fortunately, given their recent weather, the house sits high up on a summit - far, far back from Old Man River.
It will be so refreshing, and so truly wonderful, to live in a neighborhood where people speak english again, and without having hundreds of loud cars, trucks and SUV's zooming back and forth, 24-7. I'll miss Frank doting on me - and I'm sure, at first, the silence there will be deafening, especially after all these years of living in what has become a barrio, but I'm so looking forward being able to sleep at night without being awakened by vehicle noise or car crashes. That alone makes this move well-worth any hassles. Yep... I'll even take a tornado and a flood over this damn place! (Famous last words..?)
Now, if I can just get Smudge and I there safely ~ without getting anymore speeding tickets!
It's been a while since I've blogged. I'd like to say it was because I'm living such an exciting life and I'm just soooo busy. . . but, (pfffft!) not! There are so many things to blog about lately that choosing just one topic is difficult. Driving trips and good friendships, speeding tickets, the sad loss of my daughter's beloved dog, the already too hot weather, and, of course, there's always the Hillary/Barack thing.
I've chosen speeding tickets ~ because they piss me off! I'm a little old lady, just driving long on cruise control minding my own business, and I got two (unfair) speeding tickets in just the last nine months! What's with that? The states must be getting desperate for money.
Was I speeding? "Not really..." and "No!"
The first ticket was on my way to Cape Cod from TN last September. It was the result of my passing a truck that had just blown one of those big mega-tires in the right-hand lane. As pieces of tire rubber began to fly all over the place, I sped up to avoid them, passing the truck. Right at the very moment I passed him, there sat a VA state trooper in the grass island with his laser gun pointed directly at me. I couldn't believe my eyes! Of course, he immediately put on his lights, zoomed up behind me, and pulled me over. I explained to him why I had been speeding temporarily, but he just laughed. He laughed at me! He didn't believe me. I told him to go back and look along the road and he'd see the rubber strips all over the place... but, nooooo... he just wrote me a ticket.... for going 80 mph in a 65 mph zone.
The second ticket was really a pisser! I was just exiting one highway and entering another on my way back from Florida. I had barely gotten onto the new highway when I saw 4-5 police cruisers lined-up along the side of the road, and 2 or 3 policemen were waving people over to stop. I thought there must be an accident up ahead, so I pulled over, even though many other people just kept going, speeding right past me. When I saw them, I had looked at my speedometer to make sure I wasn't speeding, and I was going 68 mph in a 65 mph zone (on cruise control.) And then it dawned on me... duh... this was a damn speed trap! But surely, I thought, I won't get a ticket for going just 3 mph over the speed limit... will I?
The officer who approached my car said, "Ma'am, I have you on laser going 70 mph in a 55 mph zone." As my jaw dropped, he asked for my license and registration. Never once did I ever see any 55 mph signs. I didn't even think there were any 55 mph zones on our highways anymore - except maybe in construction zones, which this was not. When stopped, I must have had my front tires in a 55 mph zone and my back tires still in a 65 mph zone. I've since learned that it was what they call a prima facie speed limit area, as opposed to a fixed maximum speed limit area. Fixed maximum limits make it unlawful to exceed the speed limit anywhere, at any time, for any reason. Prima facie speed limits are often newly posted speed limits which allow drivers to prove in certain cases that exceeding the speed limit was not unsafe and, therefore, was lawful.
So, I got one speeding ticket in VA, and another one in GA. Two in 8 months. Was I going to drive all the way back to either state to try and fight these unfair tickets? Of course not. So, I begrudgingly paid them - and now I'll paying more for car insurance, too.
That's me ~ the little ol' speed demon from TN.