I finally decided that I'd really have no choice but to go back to school in some form. I needed a career change. Law enforcement here in the small counties doesn't hire anyone outside their good ol boy network. And I wasn't going back to school for years to get a CPA degree to do what I already knew how to do. And quite frankly, accounting is pretty darn boring anyway.
Because I've been caring for my husband all these years that I've been unemployed, and found that I really, truly enjoy being a caretaker, I chose nursing. Aside from the stated, it's one of those careers that no matter how bad the economy becomes and how bad things are, they'll always need medical personnel. Our daughter worked for a local nursing home a couple years back and I knew they did training for the basic CNA course if you work for them for a year. So I went and applied late last year. I got a call asking if I was interested in the position and told them I'd need to make sure there was someone to care for hubby during my classes, but if there was I'd definitely be interested and I'd call back. I called back half a dozen times and never got an answer or call back. It was very frustrating.
Then almost a month ago I got a call as I was leaving a home visit for a foreign exchange student that I'm coordinator for. It was the nursing home stating there was a class coming up in March and wanted to know if I was interested. This time I didn't make the mistake of hesitating. I said yes right away.
So I've been in class since the first week of March. It's a CNA position. It's not glamorous by any means and being on the floor for eight straight hours is killing me. By the time I get home my feet hurt so bad I could cry and my legs, arms and back are super stiff. BUT it's a step in the right direction. I'd hoped to attend the two year RN course this fall at UT Chattanooga, but after talking to a lot of nurses I realized that it's so intense that if I went that direction I'd have to give up work and put all of my life into that class.
Now, two years in school vs four years in school is nice. BUT if I take a four year course I come out with a higher degree and because it's a slower pace, I can work while I do it. So it definitely is a much better option for me. The bonus? TTU in Livingston has the courses.
We've been looking at a large tract of land up near the state line that's about 45 minutes from where the classes would be. It's a small town we'd be living in and it's close to where hubby's doctors are all at anyway. The bonus? It's only an hour and a half north of where we are now, which is also an hour and a half north of where the two girls and our grandbabies live, so we'd be close enough to still see them on a regular basis. Up until we found this land and this RN course we'd been looking at land in KY and WV. I'd wondered many times how in the world I'd handle moving away from them. Now it feels like everything is just falling into place.
We're going to drive out to where the land is next week. There's no road that actually goes to the property, which is the hold up on buying it. They're trying to get a right of way issue resolved since it sits behind two other people's pieces of property. The realtor did say that we can park at the creek though and walk the creek edge back into this property to see it. From the photos it looks like there's a big rock cliff on part of the land and aerial photos from Google show a couple places where the creek branches off and runs through the land. A huge bonus for us!
So the current plan is to finish up the work that needs to be done to the farm here. We'll get the basics done - replacing carpet in three bedrooms, refinishing hardwood floors in a couple rooms, finishing tile and renovating the bathrooms and kitchen. Do some landscaping and most important get some outbuildings and fencing put up so it can sell as a true small farm. We'll be adding in some donkeys and maybe some goats and pigs once the fence is up since they'll help clear brush and turn the land to make it more fertile, all helping improve the value. If we can use the pay I get from the nursing home job and pour it into this house and get a decent credit card through a home improvement store with a nice credit line and a small loan, we can get this work knocked out quick. Once it's all done we've estimated that we should walk away with enough to pay for the land and a little used trailer to drop on it as a temporary living place for the time being.
Here are some photos of the land and the area:
Cave in the town
Downtown
Another abandoned old mine
The valley and river
Aerial view of where the land is
Courthouse
Map of where the land is (outlined in thin red lines)
River
Waterfall
River
Another cave
Rock bridge at the local park
View of the valley
Waterfall at the old grist mill
Pretty neat little area, huh? It's full of rivers and creeks, caves and old abandoned mines, waterfalls and mountains and valleys. Exactly the type of area we have been looking for. And it's a HUGE tract of land for a very tiny price. Probably because there's no electric lines close by so it'll cost a bundle to bring in electric. And there's no public water or sewer but that's fine with us since we wanted septic and a well anyway. We're also wanting to put up some solar panels and use as much solar as we can and only pull from the grid if there's an emergency.
I think we've also decided on the farmhouse. It's not the cute little Florida Cracker Style home I wanted, but it does definitely fit in the area better and it's a better layout for us as far as fenced areas for the dogs (no wrap around porch where they could potentially jump a gate and get loose), as well as the brooder room for the poultry. We've got a group of White Rock chicks right now and after having to keep them in our house the last month or so, I'm totally ready for a handy attacked brooder room. It'll make life so much easier!
The garage will go at the back of the yard and we'll have an outbuilding along each side. By connecting walls between the house and each of the outbuildings on each side and then from the outbuildings to the garage in the back it'll give us a nice private garden type area.
Game plan right now is to get the house we're in now fixed and sold and buy the land up near the state line in the next year. We also want to invest in a little piece of lake front property in northwest Florida in the Chipley area at the same time. Then we plan on building the farmhouse at some point over the next five years. Once we've recovered from the strain and stress of building that house, we're looking at building a small vacation cottage on the Florida lake front land that we can spend a couple months each winter living in. This is the floor plan for the little cottage:
It will actually look like the house on the bottom left corner. It will have cedar shake siding and a slate roof and functional shutters, which is what the photos are of. I extended the loft to include a screened sleeping porch over the full size screen porch on the main level. Since we'll be there in winter the weather should be nice (what we consider nice, not what those crazy ass Floridians think is nice!), so we could sleep on a bed out there. I'm sure we'll also have friends and family coming up throughout the year. The rest of the time it'll be a seasonal rental. We'll place it with a property management company down there and use that money to off set the cost of ownership some. It's small, but with a sleeper sofa in the living room and the loft and beds in the two bedrooms and the sleeping porch, it has the ability to sleep ten people. Might even do a built in twin bunk over the sleeper sofa in the loft upstairs to add an additional person sleeping space. I figured pre-teen kids might think that's pretty cool.
So, that's the current plan!! Nursing career, here I come!
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