just a small town girl.....

ok i am not really a small town girl. i lived in chicago until i was 8 and then the burbs until i move out here in, as i like to say, hicksville. i really am more of a north shore brat. or maybe just a fan of the 'burbs. in any case, i am sure you are sitting wondering, "if she hates it out there why did she move?"
good question and one i ask my self every second of every day. i chalked it up to being young, dumb, stupid. ace chalks it up to getting married in a few months, lease up on our apartment 3 days after we got married and we had to hurry and find a place to live. ok so his excuse is a bit lame but it does get him through the long 50 mile to work drive (one way by the way).
we did not really plan of living in a small town 50 miles from work, 55 from his family and almost 80 to mine. well, you know what they say the best plans goes haywire.
this started with pouring through the paper and a stupid realtor. we wanted a place near
where we were at but due to the fact taxes were high and we had a budget to stick too, that was becoming the impossible dream. personally i really had a vision of what kind of house i wanted but there was nothing our price range for the vision.
once day ace was working a saturday and one of our co-workers was cruising the Internet looking for a house for her and her fiance. yes, i know dunning work don't do that blah blah etc. anyways they both saw what looked like a nice house with most of what we were looking for. note to self here, do not believe a picture.
well he comes home with a print out and says we should look at it. so i call the realtor and we make plans to see it the next day.
we get up go do the 50 mile schelp to sandwich. yes there is a small in illinois called sandwich. at the time the drive seemed ok and we find the realtor and set off to look at the house in question. as we are driving i see all these houses that look like crap outside. and i sit here and think "no way is my family ever coming". we are talking small town and ugly as hell.
we see this house and first thing i see is a mouse, no closet space and the main bathroom is upstairs in the bedroom. smack dap in the middle of the bedroom. and the kicker the 1/2 bath mentioned, well that consisted of toilet with no doors right in the middle of the dinning/laundry room. no joke. veto right then and there.
for the next few weeks we look, we schelp into sandwich and all i see is a bunch of crap houses that are ugly, no closets (which, how you you people live with out one?), no anything that would make me happy. finally it is now a month and half before the wedding and time is something we have none of so a decision needs to be made. on this last weekend we go see two prospects. the first one was a big as my walk in closet. so no can do here. one down, one to go. we drive up towards house #2 and i am falling in love. at least what i thought we were here to see. color my stupid, not even close. we were here to see the house next door.
i was in shock and not happy but going inside was a different matter. which teaches, do not judge the book by the cove. the inside was nice. cleaner and better than anything else i saw. ok the kitchen has no dishwasher, and the bedroom closet will not hold all my shoes and clothes, but it was clean and decorated to what i liked. so we make the offer and get the house.
the house had problems that were not mentioned until after the papers were signed.
for example, nobody said the basement floods, there is a well that would need to be primed when the power goes out, new plumbing,(where? their new house), the well primer thing is older than dirt, and the kicker no a/c. or heat vents upstairs. i know next question is "were was the building inspector?" he was there, and he did inspect. who know that he was a fraud inspector! we were not there when he came and left it to our wonderful real state agent.
yeah dumb ass mistake there. not to mention that part of our property was sold the the guys next door to build the house (house i should have had) next door.
we find this all out 2 weeks after we finished signing and started to move our crap in.
now let's keep in mind i am doing this before the wedding. 3 weeks to be exact and at this point i am not a bridezilla, i am a fucking lunatic who is trying to pack up an apartment, keep tabs on wedding details, pack for a honeymoon, arrange for the truck the day we get home from our honeymoon, make sure someone is taking care of lucky, holding my tongue not to kill my future mother in law who wants some stupid thing at the chruch, going through hoops so we can get married in the chruch for his family, keeping my family from having a meltdown with that one, and still go to work and be nice to customers. oh and let's not forget my future x cousin in law deciding to have a massive coronary and dying 2 days before my bridal shower. yes i know that is mean, but that's another story for you to read.
after all this, it is no wonder i was getting sick.
like i tell people this all seemed like a good idea at the time. we were so busy looking for a house we could afford and worry about the wedding that we never looked at the town, took stock where the major stores i need in life are, or that the winters here could kill a person.
i never had a house, i had apartments were people fix things for you and they worried about the garbage, the heat and water.
one month into this house and we realized this was not good. i have to drive 10 miles for walgreens, 15 to wall mart and a million for anything else. the roads are not plowed right away so driving in the winter you are taking your life in your hands. nobody ever wants to visit ( i know i do not like people in my house but still....) and since we drive 50 miles one way to work, i don't want to drive and see anyone.
so i spend my days with ace and lucky and with my best friend the laptop. i do miss the burbs. i miss having a mall 5 minutes from me, i miss the bagel store, and i miss an all night walgreens with 24 hour pharmacy service.
then the kicker, we get sued for back taxes on a house we did not live in for land that was sold off and never accounted for. great huh? we could have also counter sued the previous owners for the false inspection report on the plumping, which costs $8,000 to to redo when the main pipe that is older than this town blew, but due to ace's big heart he just couldn't do it. so the mortgage company pays the taxes since they did not do their research, and instead of being on easy street we spent our savings on new plumbing.
i know you are now asking did i get estimates for this and why so much? yes i got 7 of them and the entire plumbing on the house was never up to code. each plumber said the same thing, but scott was the lowest bid and the quickest. little plug here: O'Neil plumbing in Plano.
they rock!!!! and our building/fraud inspector, doing 10 in jail and might just use him again if i ever find someone dumb, young and stupid enough to buy this place. just kidding on using him again.
so this is how i am now a small town girl, living in a lonely world and broke as a joke.