Land ahoy!
Hi! I bought a house last Friday and Owen started preschool and Cormac split his lip open on the granite fountain in the backyard and Iain is up to his ears in lesson plans and we are still living with my in-laws but we are here, we are still here, somewhere.
Perhaps by the end of the month basic renovations on the new place will be done and we can move in and resume normal activities. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of you guys as I wash dishes by hand and read the Post Gazette and twitch a little bit.
Further dispatches from beyond the Alleghenies
- My car topped 100,000 miles this weekend.
- They’re tearing down the Commodore building, the 19th Century red brick facility I went to Junior High in, in my hometown, and I am disproportionately angry about it.
- Mackie is putting my iPod up to his ear and saying “hello” right this second.
- I brought Owen to a preschool orientation last night, which pretty much blew my mind. There’s nothing of the baby left about him, nothing at all.
- My in-laws are surprisingly pleasant to live with. Wait, that came out wrong. What I mean is, I am surprised that living with one’s in-laws can be so pleasant. I knew they were nice people, but you know how it is when you move in with someone, anyone: you wait for the other shoe to drop. So far it has not.
- I just read a collection of essays by Sarah Vowell which made me very sad that I do not live in Chicago and can’t write essays.
- Owen, despite a solid nine months of pirate mania, is staunchly informing me that he would like to be a firefighter for Halloween. This does not detract from the ongoing pirate mania, but rather makes it more confusing for his mother.
- I was awakened at 6:50 a.m. by, of all things, a tornado siren, which made the possibility of falling back asleep a joke. Furthermore, there was no tornado.
- Pittsburgh’s North Hills appear to be able to reroute geography like an alien in a Douglas Adams book. No matter which way you turn or which direction your compass takes you, there is Route 19.
- I will never understand hills. Nor will I ever understand roads that are not laid out in an even grid format. This is what growing up in the Northwest Territory will do to a person.
- I have, and have had for a week, a hangnail on my left thumb.
- It’s a special treat for my kids to play in the dirty-clothes basket.
- I’m in the mood for vodka sauce.
- When Mac isn’t playing in the dog’s dish, he’s unraveling my yarn. I wish he’d decide what animal he wants to be.
- From the Unfair Files: I’ve encountered two roofing crews in the last two days. One was a pack of very strong-looking Amish guys in straw hats and blue pants putting the roof on a barn at a farmer’s market. The other is a pack of fat, belching, U-shirt wearing men putting the roof on the neighbor’s house. The fact that I didn’t have sunglasses at the farmers market, much less dark mirrored ones behind which I could gaze at length at the hot Amish roofers with nary a qualm, hurts my heart. And the fact that I can hear the boorish burps of the men next door from within the house hurts my heart also. Life is so very unfair.
Househunting and other slow-moving things
So we’ve been here, dog-sitting the poor, pathetic, sad, blind dog, since Wednesday. We’ve toured about 10 houses and made an offer yesterday on a fixer-upper in a great part of town, and still waiting to hear back on that. Turns out that our price range … well. When you sit down and chart it out, trying to buy a house on just one schoolteacher’s salary is like trying to frost a cake with your feet. You’ll get something eventually, but it probably won’t be pretty.
And my god. Have these people not heard of staging? Or, I don’t know, Lysol? Soap and water? Storage? One house was especially foul and stinky and dirty, though you could see how someone with money could come in, gut it, and make it fabulous. We are not that person. Other houses are brimming to overflowing with lace and ceramic cats and Nascar memorabilia. I haven’t got the slightest problem with any of those things — if you’ve seen my collection of wicker baskets, you know I understand — but in this day and age I really expect people to clean it up a bit, you know? Ah, well. Perhaps I’ve watched too much HGTV.
So, as I’ve said, we put an offer in on a fixer-upper that’s within our budget. The drop-dead gorgeous Victorian with brand-new kitchen, four bedrooms, and two full baths turned out to be about 30K above what we could comfortably afford and still have money for mac’n’cheese. Sucks. I mean it really, really sucks. I planned the rest of my life in that house the moment I walked through the front door. Oh, well. If we get the fixer-upper and fix it up, it’ll be all right. And if we don’t get it, that’ll be all right, too, because to really make it work would require us building an addition down the road.
Aren’t y’all thrilled? Isn’t this fascinating? I know it’d be way more fascinating if I could give you MLS numbers and whatnot, but I’m not gonna. Sorry. There are wackos in the world and you might be one of them.
So, in sum: I hope to hear from our lady realtor tonight or tomorrow, and then we’ll know if we should settle in for the long haul and wait for more houses to come on the market, or start researching kitchen remodels at Lowe’s. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, most of my updating is happening at Twitter, usually at least one a day. The dial-up situation here is killing me, in addition to making me feel like a.) a spoiled brat who can’t deal and b.) a junkie with a wicked case of withdrawal. Typical.
Hither, whither and how!
Lord, I can’t wait to move out of this house. We brought everything back from the storage unit (long story) and it’s stacked, boxes floor to ceiling, in various rooms. Nothing is where it should be. It feels like a cave of Wicker Wonders in here, and it’s making me claustrophobic.
We have yet more packing and dismantling to do, and phone calls to make, and temporary address changes to file. Next week we have an ill-timed stretch of promised dog-sitting to undertake, and I hope we can coincide that with some house hunting.
In Pennsylvania.
Buried the lead again! ha ha.
So the cat’s out of the bag, we’re packing up house and home and moving to Pittsburgh in, oh, three weeks or something ridiculous like that. After the dog-sitting but before Iain’s starts the new job. We’ll be living out of boxes in my in-laws’ spare room for the foreseeable future (starting in August), so my paltry posting will probably either skyrocket in frequency (I predict many Starbucks runs) or drop to near-record lows (inertia is my enemy). Just fair warning.
I have a big Moving Post I want to write, and of course a Farewell to Baltimore post, and lots of other things, but with so much to do and so many tiny little people trying to help me do it, I don’t figure you’d better hold your breath. The mind is willing but the dial-up won’t be able.
I think I’m a Glamour “don’t”
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the last two weeks or so I’ve been documenting my outfits over at Flickr on a daily basis. I kept going until I ran out of outfits. It took a surprisingly short time. And when it happened, I was tempted to just start photographing myself in various modes of ridiculous dress — bridal gown, bikini, three piece suit, monkey costume — but in the end, sanity and modesty won out. As it typically does with me. (Iain says the last one should have been me in a barrel with a sign saying “Laundry Day.” Only he didn’t say “barrel,” he said naked. But I left that bit out for your sensitive ears.)
(and your sensitive eyes.)
Anyway, here’s the set. You may marvel at my monochromity, my apparent devotion to Gap Inc., and my increasingly haphazard attitude toward footwear. You may also marvel at my credenza. And maybe my size 9 feet.
Limbo like me
Firstly, I have to share: I have a case of writer’s block like you wouldn’t believe. There is some unsettling stuff going on at work. So that’s — well, it’s unsettling. Then there’s the comedown off of selling one’s house: you no longer have to knock yourself out keeping the house clean and dropping everything for a potential seller. The phone is no longer ringing off the hook. The house has reverted to its normal sticky, slobby state. And we are suddenly struck with no true plan for the days. Having one’s teacher-husband home for summer vacation is fabulous, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but without his daily routine the whole family kind of crawls to a stop, unsure what to do next.
A lot of our time now is spent panicking about where to live next. The neighborhoods I like are a bit too far away for us to drive to and check out any old time we feel like it. And preliminary calculations are telling us that, instead of trading up, we’re actually going to have to find a home that costs less than what we’re currently living in. So THAT’S depressing.
But then I think, well, hey. If we shave a good chunk of money off our monthly mortgage, really downsize in terms of housing costs … maybe then I will be able to afford an iPhone. Maybe even an iPhone AND a Prius (or whatever). Perhaps things are not all bad.
Meanwhile, though, Iain and I are just staring blankly at Google Maps, wondering where to live, and I’m still being horribly vague about where we’re moving to because of business at work. I promise I’ll come out with more details, but I have to put work first.
Mixin’ it up ‘round here
So hey guess what? My super awesome husband scored a new job. Can I get a woot?
Just to mix things up a bit — life with two little kids just gets so dang calm and peaceful sometimes! — we have decided also to sell our house. Why not? The housing market is softer than room-temperature butter, so this is surely a good idea. It’s a market in which buyers could waltz up and slap us each in the face before commencing the tour and we’d thank them heartily for the honor. So, yes. We are brilliant. But also motivated! And also knee-deep in staging hell! (Seriously. Have you seen my furniture?)
So right now we have boxes everywhere and splatters of beige paint in our hair. We rented a storage unit and it’s already three-quarters full. (And then the managers of the storage unit place told us that the entire building would be inaccessible from the time of: hmm, yesterday until the time of: oh, one and a half weeks from now. Super helpful! Jagoffs.)
Owen is doing super well through this transition. Seriously, he’s blowing my mind. He is excited about buying a new house, and all of a sudden he’s night-trained as well. I know! Weird. Woke himself up at 3 a.m. to pee one night last week and has been going strong ever since. Color me surprised, with a light patina of very pleased.
So that’s the haps. Boxes boxes boxes, paint paint paint, shuffle shuffle, nap. It’s thrilling, every bit as thrilling and meditative as you know it obviously isn’t. But that’s all right, we still know how to relax.
Still alive, and coated in crumbs
I had a mentor once who taught me never to promise anything in print that I did not deliver immediately. For example, one should never write, “see you on the flip side, with photos!” because then one is obligated to actually arrive on the flip side, with photos, in presumably a prompt and timely manner.
Suckas! All my pictures are still sitting on the memory card, which is lodged comfortably in the camera, which is somewhere in the living room. I have promised something, Supa Readers, and this is the part where I hang my head in shame because I have been too busy baking strawberry shortcakes and sweeping the floor to upload them.
Tangent: I told Owen we were having strawberry shortcakes for dessert the other day and he was all, say what? Are we going to brush their hair? How do you eat a doll? And I realized it was because we were playing with the actual early-80s dolls at Pirate Grandma’s* house over the weekend. I had to explain the concept of the dessert, and he still didn’t like it anyway, so nyah nyah more for me.
De-tangent. So. While I bustle about doing momly things and keeping the house in order and disciplining my children (gently, but firmly enough to get them to stop having Nazgul shrieking battles in the kitchen), you will have to wait. I will deliver, and I have video, some of which is going to make you reach for the cotton wadding to stuff in your ears but is still cute, and you will be glad you have learned the sweet art of patience.
That, or you’ll delete me from your feedreader because I suck at updating these days. Either way. It’s cool.
*He actually calls my mother-in-law Pirate Grandma, as an honorific, the full title. Not because she’s swashbuckling, but because she always sets out the world’s coolest pirate ship play set when we come to visit, and as such has earned Owen’s lifelong devotion and highest esteem.
Hammock days are here again
This is what you do when the weather gets nice: You drop the preschooler at Ikea’s Småland (you know, for kids!), revel in the comparitive ease of shopping with just a tiny, containable, mute infant, and buy some patio furniture. Haul both kids and acacia wood seating home, set up shop, and start taking all your meals in the backyard.
Then you hang up the hammock, climb inside with your family, and start taking all your naps in the backyard.
Soon you will probably just dig a hole behind the compost and take EVERYthing in the backyard, knamean?
This week we have begun work on the “green room,” the room at the back of the house that gets gorgeous morning light
yet is by all other times of day cluttered and ugly as a warthog. We started priming and have picked out a paint color (Martha Stewart’s “Newsprint”, by Valspar, as reimagined by a cheaper and closer paint dealer). Soon we will decide on some sort of laminate-wood flooring and then, oh frabjous day, we will tear up (and stomp on! and dance around) the stained, dirty, ugly green carpeting and put some new flooring in.
In the meantime, the weather’s great and the backyard has never felt more hospitable.
I’m sure the children would agree.
adequately laid plans
Walking to the delly for prosciutto, vacuuming, reading moby dick, procrastinating phone calls, arguing with mac over his loudness quotient, arguing with owen over TV viewage, cleaning house, being a pirate, driving to airport, hugging my sister. You?
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