Lake Livingston

We spent all of yesterday looking around Lake Livingston with a very nice realtor who showed us lake homes from 11:30 a.m. until dark. I lost count of how many houses we looked at during the day. We barely had lunch (my husband and I split a banana) and we didn't have dinner till 10:00 last night.

And, of course, I found another cottage-in-the-woods..... or maybe I should say that these little cabin-style homes find me. This one was a picture-perfect, story-book-style cottage, complete with wood floors and light-colored paneling in nearly all the rooms. The sellers are the original owners and they have put all of their love and energy into that four-bedroom home and it shows. The best parts of the house were the large kitchen, large dining room, and an enclosed sun-porch filled with white wicker furniture. The husband loves to fish, the wife loves to read. Needless to say, by the time we left that house, the wife and I hugged one another as if we'd known each other for years.

I loved that little house....... it's on its own little peninsula, surrounded on three sides by a cove of Lake Livingston. And, of course, there's always a glitch. The subdivision that it's in has deed rights that allow owners to rent their property, or put up mobile homes or trailers instead of houses. Give me a blessed break......... my husband just about had to pull me out of that house. We both loved it, especially the park-like property it was on, and I expected my husband to make an offer before we left the house. Silly me. But it's a good thing that he's "in charge" of this little adventure, because if it were up to me, I would've already bought half a dozen houses since we started this quest a few months ago. (Has it been that long?)

Another house that we found was a wonderful house similar to ours here.... lots of tall windows, all over-looking yet another cove of Lake Livingston. Brand new house, lots of bells and whistles. And a glitch. The cove it's on has low water in it at the moment. It seems that during last year's awful hurricane season, The Powers That Be in the Lake Livingston Water Authority opened the gates of the dam to let water out.... they let too much water out of the lake, which resulted in the smaller coves losing some of their depth. So at the back of this beautiful house, on a quite private cove, the sellers had their sailboat tilting in two feet of water instead of the usual twenty feet. Again..... give me a true and blessed break. My husband doesn't want to put in a bid on a waterfront house until he sees deep water with his own two eyes. (Details.... details....) The realtor, as well as all the literature up in Lake Livingston, says that the lake and its coves will be back to normal depth by next month.

We saw so many houses yesterday that our heads were spinning when we said thank you and goodnight to the realtor. She was a buyer's dream-come-true, showing us all the areas up there, and all the houses that fit our requests. My husband liked Lake Livingston more than Lake Nacogdoches, for the simple reason that it's a larger lake. Might as well be an ocean, as far as I'm concerned, because you can't see the west side of the lake if you're standing on the east side, or the north side if you're standing on the south. Lake Nacogdoches is 2200 acres; Lake Livingston is over 93,000 acres. As I said, it may as well be an ocean.

My husband has dreams of boating and fishing all around that lake. I told him that the only way I'd get on a body of water that size would be if I had the Queen Elizabeth II underneath me. The realtor thought I was kidding, and she told me that I could just wear a life-jacket and I wouldn't have to be afraid of drowning. I assured her that I would drown in a bucket of water if I happened to panic. She laughed at my joke, and I knew she was thinking "Such a city girl."

Our trip up to Livingson yesterday only confirmed the fact that we'd have to go back. I think we've narrowed it down to two separate areas..... each of which has deed restrictions that don't allow renters, or trailers, or mobile homes. Now that the realtor knows exactly what we're looking for (a cozy cottage for me, deep open water for my husband) she will be able to put together a list of good houses. Not that yesterday's list was anything but good..... we had a nice selection of low to middle-scale to fantastic houses to look at and compare.

My problem is that I have to feel comfortable with a house when I walk into it. Laugh at me if you will, but I swear that I can sense the "energy" of a house when I go through the door. There was one house that we walked into the back door from the water side, and I walked straight towards and out of the front door........ the house felt that bad to me. And it had a spectacular waterfront view from the back of the house. I told my husband that I wouldn't care if they gave us that house for free, I wouldn't be able to stay in it for more than 20 seconds at a time. He didn't laugh at me, because he knows that I'm not joking about what I can feel about a house. The realtor, I'm sure, was probably again thinking "City girl."

This whole process is taking much longer than I thought it would. And I have a feeling that if we don't settle on something by the end of June, the rest of the summer months are going to fly by without a result as well. Although, being that the summer months here can last till the end of October, we may still have a chance to enjoy a lake house this season.