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| Casa Tipton-Kelly this morning |
This is a picture of the front of our home that I took this morning when I returned from my short walk.
Casa Tipton-Kelly, our home here in southern coastal Delaware (east of One!) since we moved here in 2006 is the best and last home I plan to have. It is my intention to end my days in this house.
Pat wants to eventually move to Palm Springs. While I love Palm Springs I cannot see giving up this almost perfect (no place is absolutely perfect) home and start all over again. I could never get a home like this in Palm Springs.
First of all homes in Palm Springs don't have basements. I need a basement wherever I live.
We also have four full bathrooms in this home. We lived in a large house in Pennsylvania but only had the standard two and a half baths. I found out quickly that didn't work for us because both Bill and I have our own bedrooms with our own bathroom. When we had company at our house in Pennsylvania our guest had to use one of our bathrooms. That's why we didn't have guests too often. In fact I can only remember one time we had a guest at our home in Pennsylvania in the whole twenty-five years we lived there. That's probably why we didn't have guests.
Here in Delaware, I have a bathroom for every bedroom, a FULL bath. Of course most of the time we don't use two of the bathrooms. I have to remember to occasionally flush those toilets just to keep the toilet water fresh.
Here at our home in Delaware we finally have a place where we have nice neighbors who are respectful of us even though they are straight and Bill and I are gay. No "looks" or other actions to make one feel uncomfortable in one's own neighborhood like we experienced in all previous places we lived.
Another big plus is this neighborhood is so quiet. I LOVE quiet. No screaming kids even though we have children next to us and across the street. No screaming unlike our home in Pennsylvania where "Stephanie" (our neighbor's little girl) always started the day screaming as she ran out to her pool. And her playdates were a nightmare, all those screaming kids. The acoustics were like a megaphone straight down to our house. And to top everything else off they had FOUR ATV'S which they likes to race around the perimeters of their two acre property for hours on end. We moved to "the woods" for peace and quiet and what did we get? Noise. And of course we got the homophobia. I've already went into that in previous blog posts about their anti gay actions towards us and I'm not going to go there again.
Check out my front lawn in this picture. Nice huh? I've always wanted to live in a place with a nice lawn. Be careful what you wish for Ron. Well, I have the nice lawn but man oh man is it ever expensive to lawn treatments. I'm not sure if I can afford that expense if I'm living here by myself. Oh I'll manage somehow, my lawn (and my pond) are two things which give me a great deal of pleasure. And yes, I do the mowing.
A friend of mine is visiting in a couple of weeks. I'll ask him to take a video of me mowing the lawn. I like mowing our lawn. I find it relaxing riding around on my John Deere Zero Degree riding lawn mower. Both my neighbors on either side have Jose (our local lawn mowing guy) mow their lawns. I'm holding out for now but I see Jose eyeing my lawn. I have the biggest lot here, .97 acres whereas my neighbors have .75 acres. I have a corner pie shaped lot, which is what I was looking for. Our lot backs up to a corn field. I didn't want a lot that backed up to another neighbor's lot.
As I have mentioned many times before in previous blog posts I grew up living in second floor apartments. For a brief period (less than a year) I actually lived in a small ranch house (1958-59) and then I was off to the Army for a three year stint. After I got out back to apartments. One room efficiencies, garden type apartments until finally a small town house in center city Philadelphia. I've lived in houses ever since.
I will live in this house pictured at the top of this blog until my last day on earth. The only way I will leave it will be on a gurney through the garage. That's the plan.
Have a great day!