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Monthly Archives: December 2019

Decisions? Regrets?

Sometimes you win...sometimes you learn.

Every meaningful decision you make has risk. Each one benefits you, whether emotionally, spiritually, or educationally. No regrets!

Author and publisher Michael Hyatt—who apparently has nothing to do with hotels—thought enough of a quote from Catherine Cook to put it on page 99 of his Full Focus Planner, which I have been using for a full quarter now. (It is just the best!) That quote is, “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making decisions.”

While I kind of agree with the sentiment of Cook’s statement, I have a couple of issues with it, including a superfluous “then.”

At the risk of making a semantic argument, you can and do make decisions every day without the risk of making mistakes. Should I wear the dark blue shirt or the black one? Which sides do I want with lunch? Coke or Pepsi? Maybe iced tea.
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Scoping the Pope Residence

We’re getting ready to get going with more of the renovations we need to have done. Most exciting, at least to the general public, will be the Pope Residence. 2020 will be the year it comes back to life!

Now that the electricity is on, we were able to bring our contractor, Cody, in to look the place over. Lee explained what rooms would be in phase 1 and what parts of the house will be in phase 2 of the project.

This floor takes a distinct downward turn.

We looked at the sadly sagging floors in the room Lee wants for his office, and Cody said he thought that maybe it just needs a joist repaired rather than a big leveling job. That was some good news, and we have our fingers crossed that it’s true.

Much of the rest of the proposed changes look like they won’t be too bad, though it will be interesting to remove the staircase and put the ceiling/floor on the upper level back in. We are interested in finding out if we can resurrect some beadboard from another area in the house to re-create the proper ceiling. I think there are some ceilings in a bathroom and a closet that we can get them from.

We look forward to removing the death trap stairs.

We found out that Ms. Erma, who lived there before, still wants a couple of things out of the house, so we are really glad we didn’t already clean the place out. We sure didn’t want to get rid of things she wanted.

Cody will bring in an electrician next week to look at both the Pope Residence and the Hermit Haus next week. Both will have some challenges, we predict, but nothing we can’t handle.

So, all is well, and we’ll have a bid by the new year. We’ll also have a bid for rewiring and enlarging the offices in The Hermit Haus. Luckily, we probably won’t start that until the series of classes that are going to be held there are over.

I love progress!

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The F Word.

Talking about foreclosures. They make me physically ill. I understand why they happen, and I know the business decision behind it, but I can’t stand to know that someone is losing their home. Sometimes people don’t budget properly, and sometimes something unexpected happens. I don’t care which of these it is, I want to help! So what do I do?

This is how I feel on Thursdays. But! If I help one family, it is worth it!

Once a week I go through a list of foreclosures that are posted. I start writing letters to the people facing this, and offer our help. This is a situation where sometimes your best option is your least bad one. Yes you will probably still have to move, but you will not be followed by a foreclosure, and we try to get some money to you so that you can afford to move. Obviously we can’t take over your mortgage plus pay you the market value of the house, but we can usually get you something and we can save that foreclosure from being on your credit.

Here’s an interesting factoid about foreclosures that I learned from Lee yesterday. He had a friend go through this experience. When the bank writes off the bad debt of a foreclosure, you get a 1099 in the mail from the bank, because the IRS considers it taxable income. I looked this up, and the article I found here says that the IRS views a foreclosure just like a sale. That’s insane to me! Now here’s the kicker! Banks typically take YEARS to write off things like this, so you’ve finally re-established yourself, doing so much better, that foreclosure is ancient history of 10-15 years ago, and !!!BLAM!!! You get a 1099 saying you owe taxes on $180,000 worth of income from a FORECLOSURE!!!

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A Year Here, Almost Three

We’ve been in our new offices for a year now. It feels like it has been longer than that. Once bare walls in my office are now covered with calendars, notes, charts, printer settings so the checks print correctly, and pictures. The memories of the move can only be described as hectic. There was a lot to do in a very short time. Then hooking up all of the equipment again.

Tax Season is coming again. Oh the horror and drama and paperwork.

I’m also closing in on three years with the hermits. It’s amazing for me to think about what I thought I was going to be doing, and what I am doing now.

It also seems like I have been here for much longer than I have. Last week Lee handed me a stack of tax papers from 2015 to file and said, “This was the first packet of tax papers you put together for me.”

I said, “No, these are from 2015.”

He said, “Yeah, you did them in 2016.”

I said, “You did these because I didn’t get here until 2017.”

He stared at the packet for a minute and said, “Here is the last packet of tax papers I put together before you started!”

That’s one of our busiest times. Lots of things to find, verify, questions to answer, etc. We manage, but it takes a lot of time, effort, and coffee. It’s almost that time of year again.

My son Matthew finally got his birdies for Christmas. Angel on the left, and Sven on the right. They’re coming along very well and calming down quickly. He can almost take them out of the cage. We love Sven’s beard.

My desk right now looks like some terrible office storm of paperwork hit it. It just has to stay that way for now. I’ll start the new year with clearing it off because I’ll be looking for tax papers probably. I don’t have time to sort it right now with the end of year things that have to be done.

It’s good though. I enjoy busy times! These are the days when I get to work, start working, then look up and say, “What happened? It’s already lunch time?! No wonder I’m starving.” That just happened actually. Even though I had to leave to go do some paperwork elsewhere, I had no clue what time it was. I would say it has to do with not having windows in the office, but the same thing happened at the old office.

Time to sign off again and go find something to eat for lunch. Enjoy the pictures, I’ll be writing again soon!

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At Long Last the Gillis House (Pope Residence) Is Officially Ours

You just don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to write this post! (To be exact, 13 months.) But, as of December 12, 2019, the house behind our former church building is officially a part of our Hermits’ Rest Enterprises properties. We seem to be the champions of extended contracts and protracted closings! But it’s done! Sometimes it takes a while to do a good deed, but we did it.

The old Pope Residence. We call it the Gillis house.

We’ve had this house under contract since November of last year, according to our web page about it (which, by the way, I still can’t edit, because the PHP isn’t updated). We have been paying the mortgage for the former owner’s family, so that it would not go into foreclosure. They need the money from the sale to help the lovely elderly woman who used to live there, but just couldn’t deal with the stairs, maintenance, etc.

We honestly thought we would close last January, but you know how title searches, legal issues, complications and such can happen, along with vacations and illnesses of various parties. It’s okay, though, now is about the time we were wanting to start working on it, anyway.

We are so glad to have been able to help this family move forward, and even more glad to own a historic Cameron property! Here are a few more pictures of the interior. We will be sharing a LOT more now that we actually own the property.

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