Palm Pruner Extraordinaire

So, the day after my first blog post, life got complicated and pretty stressful...  Literally every day since then, I have had new blog-worthy events taking place -- but not a spare moment to sit down and write.  Of all the things that have been going on, the most significant situation was caused by our tenants splitting up due to marital difficulties.

It's funny how people seem to think that just because they are going through hard times, they are somehow freed of their financial responsibility.  (And further, I wish the bank somehow cared about my personal life and struggles enough to excuse me from paying my mortgage.)  Anyway, they were already a month behind on the rent.  I started by executing a quick and successful eviction, followed by loading up the family for an emergency trip back home (520 miles), followed by walking smack dab into a brick wall of depressing reality as I walked through the door of our home.

At some point, after I have had time to fully process this situation and put my heart back in my chest, I will post more details of this situation.  For now, I'll just tell you that we spent 2.5 days, working all day and night, with about 6 hours of sleep each night, trying to turn the place around so we could get it rented again -- And that's on top of hiring professionals to clean the house and carpets.

So I am still working daily, long distance, to coordinate activities to finish getting the place ready again (locks changed, pool water balanced, garage door reprogrammed, etc.)  I don't know what I would do without my amazing parents, and one of my most loyal and best friends, Jason (who coincidentally just moved into the same neighborhood as my house), who are doing the leg work that I can't do from here.  All I can say is.... don't EVER be a landlord.

Now we are back home, and today was yard work day.  We have most of our landscaping duties included as part of our rent.  But I have agreed to take care of pruning the palm trees, since there seems to be some discrepancy between the expectations of our landlord and those of our landscaping folks.  But I don't mind, because it only has to be done once every 6 months or so, and it's nice to get out and work up a sweat in the yard every now and then.  And I don't guess it's very difficult work, but there is a part of me that feels like a foliage artist when I'm pruning palms......  Here are some pictures of my work.  What do you think?

Palm Tree 1 (Before)

Palm Tree 1 (After)

Palm Tree 2 (Before)

Palm Tree 2 (After)

Pool Area Palms 1 (After)

Pool Area Palms 2 (After)

It always tickles me when my kids use my own words against me.  My 4 year old, Braden, sees the pruned palm leaves laying all of the ground as I'm trimming today.  He says, "Daddy, you need to clean up that mess."  I said, "Are you gonna come help Daddy clean it up?"  He abruptly replied, "Nope!"  So I probed, "But why not?"  Then he scolded me, "You made that mess all by yourself, so now you have to clean it up all by yourself!"  ......You little stinker!

On another note, when we got back home from our trip to Pensacola the other day, we had to turn right around and go to Jacksonville for our kids' CTS competition for 2 days.  When we finally got a chance to come back home and look around, my wife, Stacy, took a look at the pool in the backyard.  Somehow, the pin on the timer for the pool pump had fallen off, so the pump/filter had not been running all week.  While the pool had survived the neglect, our pool's integrated hot tub, with the smaller water volume and naturally warmer temperatures did not.  Now it's somewhere between green kool-aid and pea soup. I guess this is kinda funny, in an ironic kind of way.  So I'll be treating algae, and shocking and balancing water for a while.  Check out the interesting contrast in color:

I hope you are having a blessed week.  May you have a nice pool, and may your water always be crystal clear and balanced.  Oh yeah, and may you never have irresponsible or malicious tenants.