Life Renewed Ch. 04

"Crawford is a Scottish name I think, but you sure sound Irish. Way too much Blarney not to be. I do not know what the relationship between the two of you is, but I can tell you what you probably already know and that is that you are perfect for each other as you are both full of it. Now, I will accept your offer just on face value because I trust my daughter's judgement, and this would be the answer to a dream I have had for ages. I thank you and I can quit tomorrow early and I wish I had a camera to take a photo of the asshole's face when I quit and walk out. I can arrange with the manager here to get my stuff packed and shipped out to your place or to a storage facility until the snow melts if it is as bad there as I heard it was. She is a friend of mine and I can trust her and I will tell her to call me with the amount I owe her for doing all of it. I can probably catch a flight tomorrow afternoon and get there tomorrow evening late and stay at a motel and we can go from there. Now, A serious question. If need be, can you help a little with expenses as I am sure Ana told you, I have been what we might call under employed, for sure underpaid for a long time. I could not quit until I had another job and I could not get away to work on finding another one anyhow. I have some money and a little room on my credit card but I do not know if it will be enough. You cannot believe how I hate even the very idea of asking, but things are happening so fast I just won't have time to work through it all to satisfaction."

"Okay, Mom. That is still the only name I have heard, so I shall continue to use it until told otherwise. First, give me your credit card number and your Social Security number and password if you have one. Your credit card will be paid off fully in the next 20 minutes so you will have plenty of room for anything you might need. I will also have the limit increased for you. If you need cash, I could have Western Union wire it, but they are so expensive I really hate to do that. A Walmart money transfer might be an option, but if you have enough to get here comfortably, then you will have no further problems, and if you should need quick cash, you can get a cash advance with your card. Use your credit card for everything you can and save what cash you have for necessities"

"You don't mess around, do you?? But you don't need to do all that, but I do appreciate it to no end. And you can call me Mom, you sweet man. No wonder Ana loves you so. Now let me talk to my daughter, please."

After handing the phone to Ana, James went to the kitchen and poured another cup of coffee and got his laptop out and did as he promised. He paid off Ana's mothers credit card and increased her limit by another $3000 and set up an automatic payment from his bank account. He went back into the living room and gave Ana her coffee and told her to tell her mom that he had done what he had told he was going to do and that it was already a done deal so to go ahead and use it as need be and that he was anxious to meet her and welcome her to her new home.

When Ana got off the phone, she looked at James and said "Mister, you are in so much trouble for doing all this without asking. You will be working like crazy to keep the two of us happy from now on as the president has been set."

"I am too old for all this activity"

"Old is a state of mind and it is your own damn fault for doing so much good for me and Mom. We are both going to make your life miserable and wonderful at the same time. I think I love you"

Ana was up and dressed shortly after James had the coffee ready and came into the kitchen for a morning kiss and her first cup of coffee before starting breakfast. As she sat down across from James to sip her coffee, she looked at him and asked "James, have you given any consideration to what we are going to do with Mom until we can get her a home someplace?"

"Well, Sweets, first, I like your good morning kisses. And right now, I can only see maybe three options, two really. One is we can buy a good quality queen size air mattress and put it in the office and let her stay there. Second, we can let her stay in a motel down there, which I am sure she would not like the idea of, or third, we can find and rent her a furnished apartment and get her a car and whatever she needs until we can get her house ready. I really think the first option is best for all of us. What do you think?"

"Realistically, the first option is the probably the best of the three. I know she is going to want to spend time with me and also to get to know you, she'll love you to death by the way. She always wanted a son but never got to enjoy one. However, she is going to feel like a third leg or something until she gets her own place, though."

"You are right, and I cannot allow her to get the idea we are tossing her to the wolves or that we do not want her around. And by the way, My Love, I don't remember you ever answering the question of what we should do about houses and housing."

Ana looked thoughtful at him for a second and said that she had been giving the situation lots of thought and it looked to her like there was a pretty nice building spot on the side of the hill to the left of the house as you are looking at it. It would be a bit further back from the road, but still close enough to easily walk from the house to all the barns and sheds. She said she couldn't tell for sure as long as the area was snow-covered like it is now. She asked him to come to the window and look at the area. He did so and then told her that she had a good eye.

He said they could start on the design of the house but first he wanted to look at the prefabbed log homes on line and see if one of those would work for them. One of those might cost a bit more, but might also be a lot quicker to have ready and moved into and if they found one they liked he could have the builders start the ground work as soon as possible and start the concrete and then framing as soon as the weather cooperated. He told her they needed to kind of sketch out what they wanted in a house. He only had one requirement and that was that it remain a single-story home. It could be big, but it could not have stairs, except for maybe down to a basement to a safe room/canned food pantry combination. The safe room was in case of a random tornado, which did happen every so often and were often quite vicious.

Ana said that things were happening so quickly that she did not know how she would ever keep them straight and taken care of and asked how he did it. He told her that all those years managing those construction projects taught him how to multi-task.

They spent the rest of the day piddling mostly. James fed the horses and mucked the stables and played with Rolf a bit to burn off a little youthful energy and then joined Ana at the table and worked on sketch ideas for their new home. Ana asked him what he thought about dividing the large living room into a bedroom and a living room. He told her that it would not matter to him, but that he kind of liked the large room and thought it fitting for a ranch cabin. He told her they did not need to do anything right then as they could not get the needed materials anyhow, and he thought they needed to talk to her mother as she was the one who would be living there. They could also talk to the designer and see it they had any ideas on building and integrating a bedroom into the scheme of things without ruining the overall concept of the ranch cabin. He told her he was going to get his digital camera out and take several photos of the proposed building site and also of the inside and outside area of the cabin and asked Ana to make a detailed sketch of the floor plan of the cabin to take to the architect, and then it would be bedtime as they had an early and busy day planned for the next day. He asked Ana if she was ready for all this and she told him she had been ready for years, just did not know it and that she was so happy and was falling so much in love it scared her. He told her that he could repeat everything she had said as it was all true for him also.