Well, I went down to Omaha, Nebraska to look at houses. I did find one, but I will need to sell my current home in order to fulfill my contract to buy it. I am not going to get stuck having to make a mortgage payment without selling my current home first. I did put that into the contract with the Omaha house so that the seller is aware of my situation. I’ve made a lot of money mistakes in my life, but this isn’t going to be one of them. I’m not sure if that will go through because the first buyer on my Montana place backed out. I’m currently waiting to see what the second buyer will want to do. This is why I didn’t want to tell the schools about the move. As long as a house is pending, it doesn’t mean the sale will go through. I’m thinking if this buyer changes their mind and backs out, I’ll probably just stay in Montana. It is a pain to deal with selling a house. It’s a lot easier to buy one.

However, on that note, I did learn that it’s important to check the plumbing, look for cracks in walls, and search for any signs of water damage while checking out a home to buy. This is in addition to checking the neighborhood. It’s amazing how many homes I looked through had some kind of plumbing issue. I only went through 15 total, but only 5 had plumbing that worked right through the entire house. In all of the others, there was a toilet that didn’t flush, a faucet that didn’t work, or was faucet that was loose. To be fair, I didn’t check the plumbing in two of the homes, but they were still being constructed. I didn’t go with one of the new homes because they came with HOAs, and after reading through the HOA 30-page guide to rules and regulations, I decided that an HOA wasn’t for me. I found out that some of these homes that people buy to fix up and sell aren’t so great, either. Two of those homes had evidence of work where the people fixing the place up cut some corners. So check the closets when going through one of these homes. There needs to be more than a pretty kitchen, new paint, and new flooring to sell a place.

Because I have been on the road and looking at houses, I have gotten nothing written. Today was the first day I got back to the computer, and it was like pulling teeth to write. Some authors get tons of energy when they take a long break from writing. I don’t. I lose momentum. It’s easier for me to write at a slow and steady pace and take a couple of days to a week off. I have had to go through the three stories I’m working on to reacquaint myself with the characters. I can only hope the stories end up making sense when they’re all done. I actually got scared when I sat down to write today because my first thought was, “I don’t think I can complete these books.” But I had to remind myself to just focus on what I will write today instead of looking at the entire story. When you think of completing the whole project, it can get overwhelming. So I went back to the “baby steps”. My goal was 500 words (instead of 1000) in each story today, and it took about the whole day to do it, but I finally managed to get it done. It also helped to put on some music that I usually listen to while writing.

So we’ll see what happens from here. Either way, I am going to keep on writing. 😀