Category: March 2022

Ann moved to Dallas! Ann was our sweet tenant with a lovable and enormous golden doodle. She got a much better job offer in Dallas and just couldn’t resist. Plus, she was ready for a new scene.

We were faced with the question – do we sell or rent the house? And if we rent it, should we list it with a rental management company, or continue to manage it ourselves?

It seems silly to try to manage an Albuquerque rental from Tucson, but the last time we had a management company for a rental in Albuquerque when we were living in California, it seemed like dealing with the rental management company was just as much of a nuisance as dealing with tenants. If not more! They were charging us for the privilege of being a nuisance!

So off I went to Albuquerque to replace our tenant myself. John had to work in Albuquerque that week anyway, so the timing worked out.

Typically I’d get a rental completely ready before advertising it – professional cleaners, carpets professionally shampooed, yard cleanup by a landscaping crew, and a thorough handyman fix-all. There are always things broken – sink stoppers that don’t operate, a stove burner that doesn’t light, nail holes in walls, blinds that are loose or inoperable, stuck locks, drippy sink traps, grinding garage doors, dirty filters, etc.

This house had all the typical things needing fixed and I lined up the workers for the first few days of the week. Initially I figured it would take a week to get the house in shape, and another week to get it shown and a lease signed. But the market is very strong and I was in a rush to get back to Tucson. I decided to go ahead and advertise and show the house at the same time as all the cleaning and repairs were being done, and see if I could get it all done in under a week.

I felt apologetic while showing a dirty house with cleaning supplies and handyman tools and paint buckets strewn everywhere. I kept reassuring people not to worry, that it would all be done in a couple of days. But all the prospective tenants were like, “We don’t care, it doesn’t matter, please, please rent to us, please, please we want this house, tell use when we can sign, we can pay starting today, please, please, please.”

Typically that amount of strong interest (dozens of applicants) would suggest I priced the rent way too low. But I had marked it up by 25% and I just didn’t feel right about going any higher. I listed it at maybe slightly below market rate, but not that much lower. It’s a pretty little house, with a nice back patio in a very good school district. But it’s small. The problem is not my pricing – the problem is a shortage of housing.

Even though I know I’m lucky that it rented easily, it was a stressful experience for me. I don’t like turning people down, I don’t like disappointing people, I don’t like saying no. I felt bad for them all. I’ve been there myself when I was a single mom – trying desperately to find a house to rent in a tight market. I was nearly in tears when the applications started pouring in moments after the ad went live and I realized how bad the market was. And I was crying again as I sent “sorry” messages to everyone. I’ve been managing rentals for many years now, but for some reason I really took it hard this time.

It’s done now. The very first applicant (who contacted me literally seconds after the ad appeared) turned out to be highly qualified (I go by credit score). So I rented it to her. It’s weird – she reminds me so much of my previous tenant. It’s just coincidence, but they are similar-looking young women, both with a golden doodle. The neighbors are going to be like, “They only rent to single young women with golden doodles?”

I know you’re thinking that with so many applicants I could have said “no pets.” And that’s true, but it’s a house with a little yard and it’s so hard to find rentals that allow pets. And I think that pets are important – sometimes a dog’s love is all we have to keep us away from the brink of despair in the hard times. I want to allow pets; they are important for our mental health.

Particularly golden doodles 😉

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

We’re working on socializing Biska. We want her to grow up knowing how to interact with other dogs.

Luckily we have a nice dog park right near by us with separate sections for big and little dogs. On our first visit to the dog park, there were no dogs in the section for small dogs when we first arrived. Biska was excited to see all the dogs in the big dog section, and wanted to play with them. We tentatively gave it a try. She seemed a bit overwhelmed after we got in. There were too many big dogs and they were very interested in the new girl in town! When they crowded around her, she headed for the gate. Let me outta here!

Just when we were about to leave, Yoda arrived at the small dog section. Have you ever seen such an aptly named dog?

We quickly joined Yoda in the small dog area. Yay, saved by Yoda! I thought Yoda was great. He was very patient with Biska’s puppy energy. I’m hoping we get to see Yoda again.

Soon afterwards, Songbird arrived. She and Biska loved to run together.

Unfortunately Songbird’s human wanted to rant to me about politics. Uh – no thanks. I’m just here to let my dog play.

On another day we took Biska out to a doggie daycare and boarding place in the hills east of us. Unlike a dog park, this isn’t free! But Tally, the owner, is very good with the dogs and doesn’t accept problem dogs. Biska is safe there with friendly dogs and good supervision. We want to get her comfortable playing there so if we ever need to board her it won’t be traumatic for her.

It’s a huge yard – look how happy she is!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

Thanks to all of you who are providing feedback from my last blog as I try to figure out how to make the videos work.

My brother Steven wrote to suggest that I also post simple links to the videos in addition to the embedded version, since the embedded videos aren’t making it through. I wrote back explaining that was exactly what I’ve been trying to do, but wordpress (my blog software) embeds them automatically. That’s why I posted each in two different ways – I was trying to post the link without it being imbedded.

As I was explaining to Steven that was what I’ve been trying to do but failing, I thought of another way to try. So let’s do another test!

We’re going to experiment with a link to a video of Steven playing my handpan at Christmas time. I was very impressed with his musical ability. He had never even seen a handpan before in his life and just sat down and started playing it.

First I upload the video to youtube and copy the “shareable link”.

Then I paste that “shareable link” into my blog post.

Here’s what happens when I paste in the youtube link using a normal paste function: It embeds it automatically.

Do any of you see a video or a link to a video above this sentence? I think you’re getting exactly nothing, although I see the video.

Here’s a screenshot of what I’m seeing on my end:

Somehow I need to paste that link into my blog without wordpress automatically embedding the video. How do I make it stay just a link?

Steven gave me an idea by suggesting that I include a clickable link above or below the embedded video. And I have definitely tried, but I couldn’t figure out how. Every time I tried to paste a clickable link of a video into my blog, it would automatically change from a link to an embedded video. Non-video links work just fine – they stay as links – when I paste them into my blog. It’s just the video links that are automatically being converted to an embedded video when I paste them.

But then I remembered a link function I use to link to other parts of my blog. It looks like this:

And it works like this – I put in my keyword and it brings up relevant links from my blog.

I usually use that link function as a search engine to search for the url of the post I want to link to. But maybe if I pasted the video link into that link box, rather than into a regular paragraph block, it would link to the video instead of embed the video?

It was a “oh duh” lightbulb moment for me. I didn’t realize the link function worked for links outside my blog (such as youtube), because the search results are always limited to my blog posts, not the whole internet. Can you imagine what it would return if it were searching the whole internet using the keyword, “video”? LOL.

Because the keyword results are limited to my own blog, it didn’t occur to me that I could put outside internet links in there, like a youtube link. I thought that function was just an internal function, limited to within the blog.

But what happens if I paste the youtube video link into the box where I usually put a search term?

It looks like it’s going to work! Here’s the test – this link should take you away from this blog post and to the video on youtube. It’s not embedded in my blog anymore, and it should be a working link. Click here: https://youtu.be/a3F5aRTOt8g

Did it work? I’m hoping so. Meanwhile I’m curious if this link works too, https://youtu.be/a3F5aRTOt8g – or maybe not. I think that didn’t render as a link. Which is fine. I’m pretty sure the one in the previous paragraph is going to work. We’ll find out in a moment!

I appreciate all the feedback – thanks for being my blog testers!!!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com