Nearly There

We have paid the money over to our lawyer, so just waiting to hear when the purchase of our lot is finally completed. We anticipate that this will either be today or tomorrow. This almost coincides with us having the offer on our Port Hawkesbury house being accepted on the 17th March last year. So we will be in the same bar this year celebrating another achievement, and St Patrick's all at the same time.

We are sharing the lawyer with the seller, but as it happens he is with the same company as our lawyer. Then the sellers lawyer is out of the country, and we have ended up with the same lawyer as in Our Lawyer. We just had to sign a document that we were happy for him to represent all parties. This is very similar to the system in France where you used the same Notaire, and is always trusted to represent fairly, and it is standard practice that they represent both parties. The British are so used to having their own lawyer that most find this situation difficult, but the French notaire is never happy having to split the cost with another notaire - and the inference is that they are not trusted to represent fairly, and on top of that they don't get all the money. We were among the few that accepted that the French system worked, and found our notaire very fair.

Jerry is on Spring Break from school, so he has been taking Oliver our dog up to the lot, and checking things out. We need to go that step further to get the house footprint marked out, as to where the frost wall needs to go, and we are expecting more snow tonight, so today may not be a good day for that either. But it feels more real every day. When Jerry was up at the lot yesterday he found what looks like a pond off to one side of where we are hoping to have the garden, or maybe the chicken run. Yes as much as it was hard leaving our chickens in France, they went back to our original home there, and were quite settled, but we do look forward to having chickens and a cockerel/Rooster again.

On the house plans front, Jerry is taking me to Central Hardware after work to look at a possible Bath for the new house, and a wood burner that would be for cooking as well, so you see we are planning in the right order here.

I mentioned in the last post what the doctor had told us about Cape Breton, and I found this on the internet:

• March 2004 - Cape Breton rated #2 on National Geographic's Traveler Magazine destinations poll
• rated the most beautiful island in the world by Conde Naste Traveler!

Yesterday, we dallied with the idea of buying a Cabin Kit, and building a house quickly to live in, and rent the house out sooner. This would then leave us time to work on building the main house. We realise that this would really take our focus away from building the house we really want, and so we have returned our focus to our original thinking. If we went down the kit house road, we would also have to put in further planning permission too. I believe the family that want to rent out the house will wait, and we have already said that once the shell is sealed and we have heating, we can pretty much move in there. It may be a case of putting things in storage while we finish up the interior. On the Planning front, we received a call this week from the Planning officer to ask us if we had started building yet. It seems that for every month end, they update their statistics as to where everyone is, that have been given a planning permit. Jerry said no we haven't started building as we don't own it quite yet, which was quite amusing, you had to be there really.

Of course once the house is done we can then dally again with the kit house idea for my sister either on the ridge behind the house, or down on the water front. Since the house is so open plan, I think a guest cottage will give guests privacy they would not have in the house, being we will be lacking doors mainly.

Another update on the health front, is that the doctor has called us again, and wants me to come back to discuss the blood results from the hospital now. That appointment is lined up for next Wednesday, but I am not going down the worrying road, I will just wait and see what they have found. On the positive side is that I do feel better, and any coughing is clearing the lungs now, but after a week back at work I am tired. I feel ancient and find myself going to bed at 9:30 at the latest truly. What cheers me is that the flowers my sister sent me when I was first ill, are still wonderful, and of course my bear - named 'Bandage' is still keeping a watchful eye on me. Oliver is still very jealous of Bandage, so I have to be careful, otherwise I will get home one day to only half of Bandage, so he is propped up against the flower vase. I have also received lots of Get Well Cards, and you know you were really ill when you get Get Well Cards don't you. You don't get them when it's just a cold or Flu.

On a different note Jerry and I are big Grand Prix fans, and we have the first race of the season this weekend from Melbourne - Australia, so we are going to have some very late nights in order to see the qualifying and the race. We are hoping to incorporate the St Patrick's night celebrations, with going home just in time to see the race.

We will let you know when the sale is through, and we can finally say we own a decent piece of Cape Breton.

And finally, thank you Caroline for giving us proof that someone is reading our blog, very exiting to have our first comments. Thank you for your good wishes, and hope to meet you this year.

Jerry here, just been up to the lot, and there is less snow as of today, but the ground is very hard, so digging is out of the question at the moment. Heard on the radio on the way home that the whole of the province is on a winter storm warning, so we'll see how things are in the morning. Hopefully it'll turn out not to be anything. The picture shows the pond and brook I discovered yesterday.Will have to see if it's just snow melt or a permanent feature. Tomorrow we hope to explore the bottom half of the plot, which has a stream and larger pond at the valley bottom.