Have salt, will travel

Airports. Not the best places to sleep, but in terms of providing basic office services, they're not bad.

I got stranded in Dallas on Friday because of the blizzard that settled over the Texas panhandle, home of Troubadour Mom and Dad (Troubadour Mom had a birthday last week, so it was a nice reason to visit):

Image courtesy of weather.com

I expected flights to be canceled, given the numerous warnings the National Weather Service was putting out days in advance about whiteout conditions, so I packed a good chunk of work and enough cereal to cover me for two extra breakfasts (that's the one meal that's more difficult to get from airport vendors in a form that will fit my dietary restrictions).

Around the time I was finishing lunch, D called me to say our realtor needed my signature on the post-inspection repairs agreed to by the seller of our house -- preferably before the weekend. Hmm, what to do? I knew I could get to my e-mail for the documents, but where was I going to find a printer and a fax machine without being a member of any airline's elite travelers' club (with the private lounges and conference rooms for business executives on the go)?

Well, it turns out that the people who work at the information kiosks scattered around DFW's terminals have access to their own office technology. For free. They set me up with everything I needed, and within an hour of D's call, he had the forms in hand to add his own signature to.

I wish I could say the rest of my day was as productive. I nodded off more than I graded while sitting in the airport's low-slung faux-leather chairs -- I'd only had three hours of sleep on the previous night -- and by the time the last flight out was scrubbed, all I wanted was a good workout, some dinner, and a real bed. I got all of that at a hotel a few miles away after getting tickets for the next morning.

Saturday, 6 a.m.: first three flights of the day to Panhandle canceled. Grrrr.

Being slightly better rested, I plopped myself down by a plug in a wall (I've gotten pretty good at spotting these in airports since acquiring my laptop) and started editing my thesis prospectus -- it had been hanging over my head since before spring break, which is when I wrote the first draft. I also got to know the large herd of travelers also hoping to get to Panhandle. The first plane cleared to go was around 2 p.m., so we wandered in a pack thereafter, peeling off a few at a time whenever standby seats were available on flights to points northwest. I was eighteenth on the list, so I did quite a bit of wandering, but it allowed me to take breaks between editing sessions. We'd install ourselves at a gate, wait for it to board, and if we didn't get seats, we'd pack up and move on en masse to the gate for the next departure.

I finally landed in Panhandle shortly before 6 p.m., just in time for a belated birthday dinner. After cake (a sliver for me), I gave Mom the gift I'd been carrying with me for two days:


She loved it.

Just the fax, ma'am

I've decided that trying to buy a house while not physically in the city where it's located is a bit of a pain. The technical snafus D and I ran into this week while attempting to get signatures on various documents (in all kinds of file types, from all manner of faulty printers) are too numerous to list. But in the end, it will be worth it: say hello to our new front door.

Yes, our offer that we put in was accepted! D and I are still in shock -- we expected a lot more resistance from the seller, but within four hours of submitting our bid, our realtor called us back with the good news. I don't think I quite believed it until I saw the fax with the agreement on it. And even then ...

!!!

So we've gotten the initial disclosure forms from the seller as well as the inspection report (from which the photo above is excerpted) and are waiting to hear back about certain items for which we've requested repairs (hence the need to get signatures back to our realtor as the next stage of negotiations begins). The bones of the house are in good shape, so there's nothing serious on the list. If all goes well with closing, we'll be able to move in before my final visit at the beginning of May. Here's to finally having a place where we can put down some roots!

Now, back to prepping for tomorrow's classes (today's at this point). Yes, I'm still thoroughly distracted from all the excitement, but I have to at least try ...

Still percolating

Well, the owners of the house we placed a bid on weren't keen on negotiating even after our second offer. They didn't bother to call back, not even after their realtor spent a good two hours trying to reason with them (goes to show that our offer was indeed a decent one). Oh well. We know there were at least two other families considering bidding on the house if our bid wasn't accepted, but as of today, the place is still on the market with no new offers. We'll just let the owners sit for a bit -- we figure in a few weeks, if they don't get anything better (if at all), they may come back to us.

So this weekend, we went back out to look at MORE houses. And we've found another one we like that may end up being an even better deal, depending on how much we can talk the price down. So here we go for another round. D is e-mailing our realtor to get the paperwork in order as I'm writing.

Everything else in the whole house-buying process has gone well so far. D met with our intended loan officer on Wednesday and gave her all the required documents for review. Sounds like we're in good shape there. Whether it's because of our credit scores or the influences described in this article, which coincidentally appeared in my newsfeed that same day, we won't know. But we're happy either way.

Negotiations

A lot has happened in the last week.

When I landed in Seattle on Friday, I didn't have much planned -- just a lunch date with D and then an afternoon of grading before officially starting spring break. Then I checked my e-mail and discovered that the house at the top of our list of places to watch had dropped its price by a tidy sum.

D and I were intending to put together an offer for the No. 2 house on our list (in terms of size, it didn't look like it would last us as long, but the price was better in comparison before the change on the other house). We weren't quite ready to make a decision on lenders at the end of my last visit, but D's done a lot of research since then and we had our choices narrowed down. So when the price drop came through, we decided to act on that house right away -- we figured we probably weren't the only ones watching and waiting.

We spent the weekend getting all our paperwork in order and put in a bid on Sunday. As we predicted, a competing offer was submitted Monday morning by someone else, so D and I did some thinking and decided we'd give the owners a price cap in the looming bidding war and then wait out the rest of the day (our deadline for a response was 9 p.m. our time). About ten minutes before our offer was to expire, we got a call from our realtor, who told us that the other offer had been withdrawn and that the owners had a counteroffer for us.

It turns out the owners were only willing to budge a tiny amount -- so we decided this morning to make an offer -- a final one -- at the value of our price cap in the bidding war that never happened. We've done our homework and know it's a reasonable price. So we shall see what happens next.

(Yes, I'm deliberately keeping this post as neutral as possible until we have more information. There's all kinds of back story that can't be posted until this is over.)

On a subject I can safely emote on, we took care of a Quaker parakeet named Sammy this weekend for a friend of D's who had to be out of town, and now I'm smitten. I know I said I wanted a kitty, but this bird leaves me seriously torn about what kind of pet to get.

I think what was so appealing about Sammy was his curiosity and his response to our attention. We really had to work to earn his trust, but that was what made the (brief) relationship we cultivated with him so rewarding. He was pretty nippy at first (chomping hard enough to break the skin), but we understood that he was in an unfamiliar environment and felt leery of us. So we worked on him with pieces of celery offered through the bars of his cage until he calmed down. Eventually, he was willing to climb onto D's arm without drawing blood. He still tried to bite anything that moved suddenly (sometimes our hands, trying to brush his beak away from our necks, which he liked to nip), but he got comfortable enough with us that he would perch on our shoulders and chirp back to us when we whistled and offered him treats.

Sammy's owner lets him loose at home most of the time, so as he grew to trust us, we started taking him out of his cage more and more, which he liked. We figured out that TV excited him -- he started shrieking at the people talking on the screen and darted back and forth on D's arms and shoulders (pausing only briefly to groom D, which included yanking out some of D's chin stubble!). The real breakthrough, though, was when we turned on some music. D had noticed before that Sammy got talkative listening to the dishwasher at his owner's apartment, which has a rhythmic thump to it when the arm spins. So we found an internet radio station that plays techno/dance and turned up the speakers. Immediately, Sammy started chattering away, spouting random phrases including "Good boy," "Pretty birdie," and "Here, kitty kitty kitty"(!).

It was great fun watching D interact with Sammy -- D had an African grey parrot and a Nanday conure when he was a kid, so I imagine this weekend brought back good memories for him. We spent part of Saturday evening giving Sammy some playtime, and I managed to get some pictures. Here are the ones that actually remained in focus.

Getting closer

... to having one of these!

I'm sure you're asking, "Hey, weren't you looking for a house?" and yes, we still are. Today, we checked out several of the ones D and I screened from the list he saw two weeks ago (remember the Valentine's Day viewing marathon?). And we have prospects. Real, honest-to-goodness potential places with price points we're willing to consider, with some negotiation.

The next month could be very, very interesting.

But what about the kitty? Well, we promised ourselves that when we finally got a house, we would get a cat, and now that we may actually have a home in our near future, I can almost feel its little paws kneading my lap. In fact, we're hoping to adopt two cats at the same time so they'll have companionship when we're not home (which will certainly be the case for a good part of the day since D and I hope for both of us to have jobs after I finish this degree).

So the details. Without giving actual identifying information away, of course:

The first place we saw today was one D really liked because of the detailing in the molding (baseboards, crown, bordering the doors and windows, etc.). Most of the places that were built in this area lack molding in some if not all of these spots. So D was quite taken with the quality of the construction and the materials used. I agreed that it was nicely done, but the kitchen had some problems -- a glass-topped electric stove (troublesome for cooking because the heat isn't well maintained) with poor ventilation and no way to install a fume hood without going through some serious renovations. The family room also needed a built-in bookcase to be knocked out in order for us to be able to put our couches and TV in a formation that makes sense (not blocking main pathways, doors, etc.). The master suite was fine, as were the numerous other bedrooms, but overall, the layout didn't feel right to me. "This isn't home," I said as we headed to our next location.

The second place had fewer bedrooms (one less) but had a lovely kitchen. The master bathroom needed to have its carpet replaced by tile, which also led us to think about other improvements we might prefer in that space -- redoing the shower, perhaps. The entire home smelled a bit diapery too, but that's because the family living there has two very young children not yet toilet-trained. I imagine that'll go away (not like pet odors). All in all, a nice space laid out in a way that flowed well. Even the office attached to the master bedroom didn't seem odd (even though it sounds a little unusual). The space is separated by French doors that we can put curtains over -- it could become a nice library nook, I think.

The third place is kind of fuzzy to me, which is not the best sign -- if you can't picture yourself in the space, it's probably not "home" either. This one is located on a nice cul-de-sac where our kids would eventually be able to play, and the back of the house opens onto an enclosed yard as well. Good kitchen, decent master bedroom, despite some slightly odd window placement. What feels weird in the layout, though, is the living room and family room. They're side by side, with a large picture hole cut into the wall between them. This means there's an openness to the space (good) but the areas are in some ways required to coordinate visually (limiting). I kind of imagine my living room being more formal than the family room, so to solve this problem, I'd probably just use the family room for sitting and turn the living room into a library (line the area with bookshelves and maybe one smaller sofa?). Blocking up the hole would make the two spaces feel tight, so that's not really an ideal fix. Anyway, because of this, it feels like I'm trying to force my lifestyle to fit the home, which is not what I want.

The fourth place is a townhome. It is new construction, and the floor plan makes incredibly good use of space. But I'm having a hard time picturing children in it. The main floor is great for entertaining -- the kitchen is open to the living and dining areas, which are fluid. But where would kids be able to play while D and I are cooking? Not feasibly around the good furniture. There is a small office on the main floor behind the kitchen, which could be used as a playroom, but it's small, and I imagine it would be confining for any active kid. There's a bedroom in the basement of the townhome that could be used, but again, it's not where kids can be supervised when they're young. There's no good place for them to play outdoors either as the community will have traffic going in and out of it (no lawns or yards adjacent to the property). So, as I said to D, the place is a phenomenal retreat for us, but it would delay when I'd want to have children. I'd want to put it off until we were ready to buy our next house.

The fifth place we saw is also new construction, but it's priced higher than the range we'd been looking in -- D just likes the builder. The home we're considering there is larger than anything else we've looked at, so the price is justified, but we'll still have to see how much it can be talked down. The house's layout is also a bit busy -- living, kitchen, and dining open to each other in ways that are a little disorienting as you're walking through the space. As D put it after we left, "You need to feel grounded wherever you are in the house." We both certainly had moments of "What space am I occupying and where should I be going next?" as we were touring.

The last place under consideration isn't one we saw today. It's in a great neighborhood but is a bit smaller than the other places we've been looking at. We'd have to buy some sort of butcher block to add counter space to the kitchen. Other than that, no real complaints. This home has been on the market for a very long time now, though, which makes us wonder if there's something we don't know about it.

Our next step is to meet with our realtor when I come back for spring break and come up with our strategy for putting in bids. I think we'll pursue House No. 2, then Nos. 6, 3 and 5 (in that order). In the meantime, we need to get a loan preapproval letter, which D is shopping around for. I'm in disbelief that we may actually have a home before I come back from Little U. on the Prairie. What a dream that would be! Oh, let the housing gods be with us.

Time for dinner now. D is trying a new recipe for chicken stew, and he insisted that I should blog so he could do the cooking as a treat. Whatever's on the stove smells delicious ...

On endurance

I know it's been a while since I last mentioned the house hunt D and I started this past summer. We've been watching sales in our area since the economy took its nosedive after September, and it's been unclear what the local market is doing. Sales are generally slower in the winter, yet homes are still selling at more than 95 percent of their list price in the neighborhoods we're considering.

Of course, the percentages are fudged a bit as they're calculated on what the most recent price was -- not what it was before it was lowered and relisted. So we're still trying to get a handle on how much negotiating room we have. It is a buyer's market, but if there's something we like, we don't want to lowball our offer so much that we get shut out and end up losing to someone else's bid. Supposedly, if we come back too quickly with a higher offer, we'll be setting ourselves up for tougher negotiations. Says my dad: "Just don't blink." Sounds like a game of chicken to me.

We've been checking in on the market every few weeks, by which I mean that one of us sets up a time to look at properties with the realtor from the listings she's been sending us, and then we evaluate what seems to be available at the price we're considering. What you get for your dollar seems to be improving somewhat, but it's not ideal yet. I went out during my Thanksgiving break while I was in town and saw seven places in about five hours. A bit tiring, trying to remember floorplans and construction quality, etc., for each site. Or so I thought. This past Saturday, D went out again and saw eighteen homes in eight hours. And then he reported everything he saw to me in amazing detail, drawing maps and diagrams to boot! "I think I wore her out," D said (referring to our realtor). This is a first -- she's a dynamo. He was unfazed, though, and went looking at seven more places on his own on Sunday. The plan is to go back to our top picks when I'm in town at the end of the month.

It's been a couple days of digging deep for willpower on many fronts. I'm working on an essay that's due in a week, one I'm actually excited about for the first time in many months, but it's slow going. My workshop is being led by a really excellent visiting professor, which is helping a lot with the motivation. She's been terrific at guiding discussion on other essays so far, which wasn't my experience during the fall under someone else (and I wasn't alone in that). I'm glad to have a fresh start this semester and a sense of hope for this particular piece -- I just wish I could see the structure for it more clearly. For now, the work is more of a meditation. I guess that's all right as long it finds some sort of ending point.

I also knocked out comments and grades on my students' latest writing assignment over the weekend. Thank goodness for enrollment caps! It's definitely more work having two sections, but it does mean I get to teach my lessons twice. Since I see my classes back to back, I get to figure out what worked well and what I need to tweak after the first run. It's nice to have the chance to do that, especially when you can see marked improvement in how students respond the second time around.

As for things health related, I'm making some progress there too. I used to do 45 minutes of cardio at a pretty decent clip each day on the elliptical machine, with intervals of high resistance to make it more challenging. Needless to say, after the switch to low-carb foods, that wasn't something I could maintain anymore (no quick energy available). It was frustrating -- I had to cut my workouts to 30 minutes on low resistance the whole time (and even that was tough to get through). But in the last week, I've been able to raise the resistance by one level, which means my body is adjusting. Perhaps another notch up in a few weeks? We'll see.

Okay, break time's over. Time to get back to the essay.

Time to get creative

For those of you wondering where the pretty card in my last post came from, it's actually handmade. My sister (the one heading into her last semester of college) is amazing with scissors and paper, and she put together all of the cards she gave to the family. A few more examples of her work:




I think my favorite is the snowman, but the scarf, hat, and mittens on the card below it run a close second.

D's side of the family was hard at work on an art project too during the week before Christmas. As I mentioned while writing from his parents' place, D engineered a gingerbread cathedral -- one that took almost an entire week to construct. The results were quite solid:




There wasn't enough time to decorate the walls completely, but D and his brothers did manage to create the "stained glass" by melting down crushed bits of Jolly Rancher candy in greased cookie molds. Lighted from inside the cathedral, the windows really do suggest the real thing. The roof shingles are made from cut-up Twizzlers.

Before we took off on our road trip, D's brothers planned to finish off the decor with gargoyles made from gummy bears and Swedish Fish. Guess I'll find out how far the project got when I return to pick up my car in a little over a week. I suspect many of the would-be adornments will have met a different fate!

So where have I been applying my creative energies, you ask? Well, most of it has gone primarily toward sprucing up our apartment in the last day or two, by which I mean finding more storage and organizational space than truly exists. Goodwill, here we come! I'm giving up on selling much more on Amazon and Craigslist (another project from last summer that yielded a few successes but not enough to help us reclaim that much square footage). I think I'm trying to prepare for what may be a stay of indeterminate length in our sweet but small place while we wait for the housing market to turn up a potential home for us. Prices are looking better, but they're still ridiculously high compared to what people paid five years ago. In this economy, we're not biting. Yet.

The rest of my creativity is being channeled toward the kitchen -- namely, how to rework my diet. No, this is not one of those "new year, new you" fads. I finally got some answers as to why I was so tired last semester: I'm prediabetic. This is such a weird term -- "So you're not diabetic, what's the big deal?" you might ask. Well, it means my body can't handle sugar well, and if I don't make changes in my diet, full-blown diabetes will be right around the corner. (There's more to it than that, obviously, but I'll leave the scientific explanation to my other sister, the one in medical school.) It's especially frustrating because I exercise every day, eat balanced meals most of the time, and maintain a healthful weight. There's no arguing with genetics sometimes, though, the main culprit in this instance.

The good news is that since cutting out refined sugars from my diet, I've been feeling much, much better. I'm also getting pretty adept at doing finger sticks to test my blood glucose levels. The one thing I haven't figured out, however, is how to work fresh fruits into meals. They cause my readings to skyrocket, even in tiny portions, and I miss them terribly.

D has been great about all of this. In a sort of ironic fashion, he's a reactive hypoglycemic (at the opposite end of the sugar-problem spectrum), so he's familiar with the testing and diet restrictions. We're working on finding low-carb recipes to try out before I go back to school. Any suggestions are very, very welcome! The more, the better. I'd like some variety in my new regimen of eggs, nuts, and meats ...

There and back again

So I expected that I would have MORE time to blog while in Seattle for Thanksgiving break, but it was exactly the opposite. Some of that was the product of catch-up time with D, of course, but while he was at work, there was just that much stuff to do -- Christmas shopping, prepping for dinner guests, taking advantage of the free laundry, and working on the holiday newsletter to go out with the cards to friends and family. That last item is sort of becoming a tradition. I had hoped to get it finished before leaving so I could print off the copies from our color printer, but I couldn't manage it. Oh well. I'll write the rest of it tonight, and D will print it. Hopefully his version of Word won't scramble the document like it did last year after I sent it to him! Coordinating a repair job over e-mail took some creativity, to say the least.

I wish I could have stayed in Seattle through Sunday morning, but in order to get there using mileage awards, I had to come back today. D and I will see each other in three weeks, which will also mark the beginning of winter break for me (can't wait!). This little week off was wonderful -- a taste of what we'll have over December and January. We had a dinner date on Friday after I landed, and then we had a very lazy Saturday -- lots of lounging and talking and just being in the same home with the prospect of another five days together instead of only one. D made his special waffles for breakfast and we tested a molten chocolate cake recipe (part of the menu for Thanksgiving). On Sunday, we went marketing for Christmas gift ideas and I got reacquainted with the irises. Ralph has what seems to be a bud! Silly plant -- it's not time for that yet!

Things really started picking up on Monday. While D was at work, I met up with our realtor again to look at more houses. The market has definitely changed a bit with the economy. I'm glad we didn't jump into making an offer on anything this summer as there are larger places for better prices now. We looked at seven homes, two of which felt like they had good potential (with room for us to grow so we wouldn't have to move out again for several years). Appreciation rates have slowed, so being able to stay put for longer is important to us.

Tuesday, we did the last of the pre-Thanksgiving grocery shopping and D made a delicious white bean and ground turkey chili for dinner while I was whittling away at grading and the newsletter. It sounds almost mundane, doesn't it? Trying to write about why all of this was so good is difficult -- how do you explain how extraordinary ordinariness is when you never have it?

Our guests arrived Wednesday, and their visit deserves its own post, so I'll stop here for the moment. But yes, it was lovely just to be back where I could see the mountains, even if it's dark at 3:30 now because we're so far north. My plane followed the sunset on the way out to Seattle, which was a little treat. Here's a shot of the last of it and the north star somewhere over Montana.

On loss, mostly

Today was all over the place.

Today actually started in the middle of the night -- I woke up with the sensation that something bad was about to occur. You know that feeling where your heart starts pounding because there's some imminent threat you can't identify? Pulled me out of a dead sleep. So I lay under the blankets, holding my breath, listening. Then the earth started to roll, as it did during the earthquake last April, and like last time, I froze, even though I should have gotten up to stand in a doorway. It was the strangest sensation, feeling the mattress bucking underneath me and hearing things fall elsewhere in the apartment. Then the rolling stopped, and for the rest of the time before my alarm went off, I was semiconscious, body tensed, waiting for aftershocks.

When I woke up to the radio, though, there was no mention of any tremors (unlike last April, when they were the first item on the news). That's right, I was dreaming the whole time -- a dream of being awake in the here and now when I was actually unconscious in some parallel universe. Disturbing if not plain eerie. So that was an unsettling start to the day.

Things got better once I was up -- I breakfasted, read the news online, worked out, showered, did some reading and figured out what spring classes to register for. Talked to D briefly. I've missed him more than usual in the last week (I think the three-week stretches between visits have been getting tougher since the fall semester hasn't had any big breaks before Thanksgiving). We've been planning what to do while I'm in Seattle. Maybe some house hunting just to explore the market now that the economy has changed so much. Definitely a meeting with an attorney to set up our wills. We should have done this right when we got married, but I was applying to school, and he was looking for a job, and then we were moving me and then moving him and then commuting for two semesters and then cramming five weddings into our summer and now here we are. I know, no excuses. The plan is to start the paperwork over this vacation (we have an appointment in place) and finish it during winter break. Not that we have huge amounts of property to divvy up, but we would like to make sure it goes to the people we want it to go to instead of having the state make those decisions.

It's always a little weird talking about wills and such. The idea that one of us won't always be around is a strange and familiar thing at the same time. We've been apart for so much of our relationship that we're used to functioning without the other person there. But the idea of losing that person for good is still, of course, terrible -- and feared even more, on some levels, because the life we've wanted to begin together hasn't quite begun yet either. Hence the extra urgency to get the wills in place. We've talked about where and how we want to be buried, we know each other's favorite flower. I know it sounds morbid, but it's really not. We've just had enough time apart to know that time together is never long enough, so having all this out in the open kind of gets it settled and out of the way. Which means we can get on with enjoying our lives with each other.

After talking with D, I packed up to head to class. My students had their papers due today, so I knew attendance would be fairly high (part of the reason why I scheduled my teaching observation for today). I wasn't nervous about that, but I was a little worried when only half of the class had shown up by the time we were supposed to start. Almost everyone else got there within five minutes, though, so things looked like they were going to be fine. Then one of my girls arrived but only stuck her head in the doorway as we were getting discussion moving. She beckoned with her hand, asking me to go out into the hall with her.

I knew, before I left my seat, what she was going to tell me. This was the student whose family member was in a car accident not quite three weeks ago. I knew his condition was poor (he was thrown through his windshield when a driver rear-ended him on the highway, the student told me), and I was guessing that, since he hadn't woken up within the first week of the accident, his prognosis wasn't good. But it was still a shock, like getting all the air forcefully evacuated from my lungs, when she told me he was dead. He was her twin.

She handed me her paper at this point. I must have looked bewildered -- I couldn't believe she had come all the way to class just to turn it in (my policy is that written work has to be handed to me in person unless there are extenuating circumstances). I told her I was sorry and that we could talk privately in office hours tomorrow, if she was up to it, to determine what kind of arrangements she would need for the rest of the semester. I asked her if it was okay to give her a hug, and she said yes.

And then I had to go back into my classroom and pretend that everything was fine.

I know I never knew her brother, but the complete and utterly meaningless destruction of his life is the same sort of thing I've feared most for the people in my own life, especially now that they're scattered across the country. I can't say that I know what her loss feels like, but I've imagined it a thousand times over, every time I've left D at the airport, even though I've tried not to let my mind go there. So I wanted to feel sadness for her -- to honor her loss within my physical body, to recognize its weight in the pit of my stomach. But I had to stifle myself, cut the feeling off after my initial reactions (those can't be controlled). Doing that -- even if only temporarily, for the sake of my student's privacy and for the sake of conducting a productive class for fifteen other people -- felt wrong in some way. To be able to shut down instantaneously. Not to allow some molecule of grief to hover in my consciousness. It was almost inhuman. But it was either-or.

So now I'm putting all of that here, just to feel it at last. Enough from the universe, please. Enough for now.

Getting into the spirit of things

Well, the packing list has been made. D will be here Friday night, and since it'll be Halloween, he's bringing his costume, along with my winter boots and foodstuffs from Trader Joe's (they don't have TJs out here, so we get the benefit of their discount dry goods by importing them in D's carry-on luggage). I'm not going to reveal what D's chosen to be yet, but the photo is a clue to his identity. Any ideas as to what's in the picture? Correct guesses (of the item and/or the alter ego) will win you celebrity mention on this blog. Sorry, no monetary awards -- we are still trying to save for a house, and the economy is nuts at the moment, as you all know. I'm refusing to look at my IRA until at least after Election Day.

Speaking of houses -- the one that D and I loved has disappeared from the market. It's been gone for a few weeks now. We weren't sure if the owners had temporarily taken it out of the pool or if it had actually sold, but we're watching to see what else catches our eye. I recently noted one place that was quite inviting in its photos online, but we haven't had the opportunity to check it out in person (and if you ask a realtor to take you to tour something, he or she won't leave you alone afterward).

On a completely different topic, my students informed me on Monday that it SNOWED over the weekend. I was inside the entire time, so I didn't actually see it happen. But gaaah. It's too soon. Didn't we just get through those endless months of weather delays?

Sleepless

And not in Seattle.

I think that last wedding may have done some damage to my body clock because since getting back, I haven't been able to get my full forty winks at night. More like half that amount, followed by a lot of tossing and turning. For someone who was known to her college roommates as the girl who habitually got into bed and never moved again till morning, this is highly unusual.

We had a good time in New York -- I got in around 1 p.m. that Saturday and met up with my friends in Greenwich Village. We proceeded to talk our jaws off until D arrived in the late afternoon and then headed over to Bryant Park to ride the merry-go-round (why not?) and talk some more. Dinner followed at a random Chinese restaurant in Murray Hill (authentic, believe it or not!) and then more talking until D and I had to make a dash for the subway in order to catch our train from Penn Station to Long Island, where the wedding was going to take place the next day.

The ride was interesting, to say the least. There was construction on one section of the line that forced our particular train to divert to a station not normally on its run so that the tracks could be switched. Since it wasn't an official stop on the schedule, the train doors stayed closed. However, several large, loud guys in our car seemed to believe that it was a stop, and they started demanding that the conductor let them off. Demands led to threats about pulling the emergency brake, and then other patrons started getting involved, telling them to stop making trouble. D and I hastily grabbed our suitcases and moved to another car when one of the passengers said something about using someone's head to bash open one of the windows.

Can't say I'm sorry I don't live there anymore ...

The ceremony and reception on Sunday were lovely. Sadly, we weren't able to stay much longer than the first two hours because we had to head back to the airport for our 5 p.m. flight. But we did get to congratulate the bride and groom and wish them well, which is what mattered most. We also got to witness what was probably the best unscripted promotion for Tide to Go that we will ever see. Dave, one of our friends at the wedding, got attacked by a plate of pasta during cocktail hour, and within seconds, a sonsy middle-aged woman had the stain-removing pen out of her purse. "Here, sweetie, I've got Tide to Go!" she said, handing it to him before he had even registered what was happening.

Her husband patted his ample gut and winked. "You got one of these, you need one of those," he said, gesturing with his loaded hors d'oeuvres plate, which really did seem ready to drip spring roll sauce onto his belly. "This is what you learn after 25 years of marriage!" (all of the above spoken with an especially thick Long Island accent).

Needless to say, Dave was quite grateful -- as was his fiancée of three days. Yes, that's a wedding for next summer that we can already count on! Exciting news. Hopefully the travel will be less hectic and our visit will be longer.


The first week of class finished well, despite Monday's rustiness. My Wednesday class went beautifully -- my students are quite willing to engage in discussion! -- and my own seminars look like they're going to be interesting and helpful for my writing. Tomorrow, I'm meeting with a professor in my minor to figure out how to do independent study in her department so I can finish my requirements there. With luck, I can get that done this year and not have to deal with it while working on my thesis.

News on the home front: The owners of the house we love have dropped their price a little more! But again, not enough. Definitely nervous that someone else may put in a bid, but if it happens, so be it. Our time will come. Our realtor has pretty much figured out that we like the place -- she sent us an article about rising mortgage rates a few weeks ago to encourage us not to stall just to see if prices would come down further in the market at large -- but we're sitting tight. Hopefully the house will too until we're ready.

I got way less done this weekend than I wanted to, especially in planning my unit on Hamlet, but it's time for bed. To sleep, perchance to dream ... oh heck, just give me sleep and I'll be thrilled.

I have house lust

So we may have found the house that we want to buy!

But it's too soon, and now we have to stall!

!!!

My parents were interested in seeing some homes with us during their visit, so on their first morning in town, we went out with our realtor to take a second look at a few places. One of these was a house that D and I immediately loved on our first viewing, but we kept our sentiments under wraps. No sense giving our realtor more reasons to prod us about getting pre-approved for a loan.

Mom and Dad had already previewed the pictures of the house and looked it up on Zillow.com (a very useful website for previous sale information among other details the realtors are loath to disclose), so we had a pretty good idea about how reasonable the listing price was. The current owners are definitely asking way more than any smart buyer in this market should pay, so we've been watching the listing closely for any changes. Yesterday, our realtor forwarded us a notice that the owners have dropped the price. Not by much, but it might be enough for overeager buyers to jump on it.

The house isn't perfect -- there are little things that we made sure to mention in front of the realtor to sort of throw her off how much we like the place -- but I have a feeling she may have seen through some of it. There's no tub in the master bathroom (not an issue for us since we're not tub people, but future buyers may find that to be one), and the furnace is in the attic with a questionably sized crawlspace for access. If that furnace breaks, it'll be a major operation to get it out of there (not to mention putting a new one in its place). Then there's the lot across from the house that looks like it's being reclaimed as a protected wetland, but the clearing that's going on also suggests new construction(?). And let's not forget the problem of the greenbelt overgrowth behind the house. Right now, the plants back there are young, but we're not sure what the law says about trimming all that stuff back when it gets higher than the fence. Are we allowed to touch it? Some sources say no. And that would mean a raggedy mess to try to market when it's our turn to sell ...

But how can we not love this house when D and my parents and I can envision our children sleeping in the bedrooms?!? Dad was so funny -- because of the depth of the greenbelt, he was concerned that mountain lions might be able to make off with his future grandchildren while they were playing in the backyard. The fact that he was even thinking about grandchildren was just too cute, but the fact that he was serious about the mountain lions was even cuter.

(It is highly unlikely that mountain lions would prowl the neighborhood we're looking at. There's more of a chance that they'd appear around our current apartment complex, which is not far from the foothills of the Cascades.)

This post has to stop here for now -- I am on my way to wedding #4 for the summer. The next installment on my parents' visit when I get to my next internet connection! And if anyone has ideas on how to prevent someone else from buying this house, we're all ears ...

The air out there

... is much cooler than the air in here. And that is why strategically positioned windows are essential to homes that don't have air conditioning.

Even though D and I had an uncomfortably hot morning wandering a few neighborhoods with our realtor yesterday, it was very helpful to see which homes had good ventilation -- and which did not. We tested several places to see whether we could get substantial cross breezes flowing. Sadly, our own apartment isn't very conducive to that, even with its big windows (they're not situated across from one another by any stretch of the imagination). So now this little guy is my new best friend. He kicks up a nice breeze, and each of his fans is independently adjustable for aim and speed. Thank goodness there was one of these left at Target -- they were nearly cleaned out when we arrived.

We watched the Euro Cup final today with some of D's friends from work, which was fun (especially because there were supporters for both Germany and Spain in the group). Since the beginning of the month, D and I have arranged time to get together with several of those friends, so I'm starting to feel more comfortable around them -- they remember my name (or at least that I'm D's wife) and I remember theirs too. An intern even made a point of mentioning that people bring their friends and spouses to the office cafeteria for lunch and that I should join the group some time. I thought that was nice.

Oh, how wonderful it would be to put down roots here for good instead of having to get yanked up again in August ...

What's the plan?

Which one are you asking about? I have about five going simultaneously ...

It came to our attention that we will be leaving in a week for Miami (wedding 2 of 5 plus extended vacation). When we booked our tickets back in April, we figured we should make good use of the trip since the distance we'll be traveling is nearly equivalent to flying across the Atlantic. So we gave ourselves a few more days at our hotel and said we'd decide what else we wanted to see and do in the area after I got done with school. On Monday, we realized that we had nothing lined up yet. This may be a very impromptu sort of vacation.

We do have most of our warm-weather clothing ready to go, which is kick-starting the "exotic getaway" state of mind here despite the chillier temperatures (have I mentioned that it still gets down into the 40s at night?). D and I have both invested in sun-protective clothing so we don't roast while we're at the beach. There is a possibility that we might take a one-day cruise to the Bahamas as well. Stay tuned on that one -- we're looking into the cruise line to see how reputable it is. Beyond that, we're open to suggestions on things to soak up besides sun and frozen drinks. Recommendations, anyone?

On the entrepreneurial front, we did manage to sell the futon (congrats to Buyer No. 3!), which means we have nine square feet of space newly liberated at home. We are also officially registered with Amazon and I've listed the books we want to sell online. Though the likelihood that someone will pay a good price for any of them is kind of low. How do you compete with sellers who list the same titles for $0.01? Fortunately, we happen to live in a city that has Half Price Books. D and I are going to haul our stash there this weekend to see what the store will offer us. If they can beat the average price on Amazon, we'll gladly hand over the goods. Now if we could only find someone who would buy our NordicTrack ski machine -- I have a feeling that it might end up going to Goodwill. We'd like to avoid giving it away for free (new ones retail for $1,000!), so I guess we'll just keep watching the Craigslist "wanted" forum.

Speaking of avoidance, I've been hiding from our realtor. She is
h-u-u-u-ngry! Which is a good thing -- she's worked very hard to send us many listings that suit our needs and tastes -- but we can't get her to stop hounding us about obtaining a pre-approval letter from a lender (her in-house folks, naturally). D and I are going to have to get creative with excuses on why we haven't called any of her recommendees yet. "We'd like to do it when we're both available to chat with them," was the last thing I came up with on the fly when the realtor called me at home from a number I didn't recognize (programmed that one into the phone right after she hung up!). I researched the lenders this morning just to see if it really was worth giving them a ring, and it turns out that both are only local organizations (independent mortgage brokers, not affiliated with any banks per se). One of their websites, in fact, had a ton of broken links, which inspired little confidence. Ironically, the only link that did seem to work was to customer testimonials (all good, of course, but given the context, not so reliable). Maybe I'll mention that when she brings up the lenders again (because you know she will) while we're looking at more houses with her on Saturday.

The real reason we're stalling is that we don't intend to buy a house in the next three months, which, for many lenders, is about the average shelf-life for pre-approval letters. Getting pre-approved means having our credit checked, and having "hard" inquiries into our credit will affect our scores if we go through this process every few months in the next year. Hence our resistance.

What we do plan to do, however, is bring me home to Seattle after the next school year ends, and then we can look at buying in earnest. Yes, we've decided that keeping me in Iowa to write my thesis during the third year of the program will be too expensive with travel and renting the extra apartment, even if I have a TA salary. So, as much as I'd like to teach that extra year for the experience, D and I are definitely planning a permanent reunion for May 2009. I know, I know, "permanent" was what we said last time, but I think we've both determined that we'd rather find alternative solutions to furthering our careers instead of having a third round of commuting.

As for the Plan (i.e., what I'm going to do with my life), the jury is out on that one, and I'm okay with that for now.

First sale!

Well, almost. Someone is coming to pick up our futon tomorrow. Hopefully the buyer won't change her mind once she gets here. She sounded quite enthusiastic in her response to the post I put on Craigslist (the beginning of our attempts to make more space at our place), but these things can fall through. There was another person who replied to the ad, asking to see the futon first before deciding whether she wanted it. Guess we'll see what happens! I have a good feeling about this. Prospective Buyer No. 1 e-mailed me at 6 a.m. on Friday to put her offer in. By 7, we had decided on a price and pick-up time (I was up early because D had to leave for a 6:30 bus). Prospective Buyer No. 2 may not have a chance if
No. 1 is as gung-ho in person as she is online.

We signed our lease renewal today, which means we have at least one more year to pare down our overflow of stuff. I'm relieved that we're staying and I think D is also pretty glad we're not moving. We'll have to remind each other about that when we pay next month's rent. Sigh. Incidentally, the New York Times ran this article today, which confirms the market news we were given by the apartment office on why the rates went up so drastically.

On a happier note, one of my former roommates from college sent me a belated birthday gift! Look at what she made:


Needless to say, I'm very impressed. The glaze has a watercolor-like quality to it, especially the gradations of pink on the inside. I need to find some kind of hands-on art classes or projects -- not necessarily pottery, but something that will give the creative part of my brain new ground to explore. Maybe that will stimulate the essay writing neurons again; of late they've been burned out. Or whenever I get some thoughts going, they peter out again when I start to jot things down. Frustrating.

Habit-ational attachments

Because it's close to the mountains. Because the bathroom is nice. Because the doors aren't hollow. Because of the gas stove.

There are so many reasons why I don't want to move out of this apartment at the end of this month.

We didn't expect that to be under consideration in our summer plans, but we just found out from the apartment office that our rent will be raised considerably if we renew our lease because of the sudden market demand for rental units. It seems there are people lining up to get into places like these now that the mortgage crisis is forcing homeowners to abandon their real estate. It figures.

We're getting a one-time discount on next month's rent as a concession for the construction noise we have to put up with for probably the next year (there's another set of units going up behind us). This is nowhere near what we were discounted when we first signed (for the same issue), but because there are fifteen potential lessees anxiously hoping to take our place, it's not really negotiable. Not that the noise is actually that bothersome, but hey, anything to save a little more.

D is pushing me to think about our looking into a smaller, cheaper apartment here for the next year so we can keep saving what we've been saving toward a downpayment on a home and, hopefully, some nice upgrades on it to boost its resale value. But how small are we going to have to go in order to make the move worthwhile? As it is, we're stuffed pretty tightly into this place (you've seen the closet). Any reduction in square footage is going to mean putting some things in storage somewhere -- which certainly won't be free.

Beyond that, there's the issue of building quality. The place we have is decently constructed and finished with newer appliances and fixtures. Last summer, we saw places that were much older and smaller, downright shoddy in their assembly -- and more expensive. Somehow I doubt they've resisted raising their rent rates either.

There's the option of taking on a roommate (say, a coworker of D's), which D has also suggested. This will also mean putting things in storage (a roommate will likely come with duplicate furniture). Add to this the awkwardness of having to share common space as a married couple with someone who will probably want to host video game nights and do the sorts of all-guy things that I'm really not inclined to take part in when I'm visiting on already too-short weekends or during holiday breaks. This arrangement is clearly suboptimal.

"But you'll hardly be here for most of the year anyway," D points out.

Yes, this is true. But each time in the past months of our separation that I've walked through the door into this space, it has been home. A haven at the end of a journey, a sanctuary where I can relax. Not just because it contains the familiar -- sounds, smells, belongings -- but also because it's occupied only by someone familiar. Someone I can wear rumply pajamas around, someone I'm so comfortable with that being asked to clean up my crap or asking him to do the same isn't awkward. Someone who understands why I prefer to work out in private. Someone whose daily routine is already melded and entwined with mine, so that the pas de deux we perform as we get ready for the day or retire for the night is second nature, even after my extended absence. I need the habit in our cohabitation. With a stranger in the mix, it's bound to change.

So if we are to stay here, it means the savings have to come from somewhere else. Call more, fly less? I'm willing to entertain this option; D is less enthusiastic. As it is, plane ticket prices have ballooned and probably won't come down in the near future.

Why am I going through with this master's program again? In the face of these new developments, I don't know if we can afford it anymore.

Trailblazing

What a weekend.

It was cloudy but dry Saturday morning, so we packed a picnic lunch and headed for one of the state parks outside the city to explore some hiking trails. No, we didn't end up renting bikes -- it was too expensive, we decided, and picking them up would have added some extra driving to the cost (gas is $4.40 per gallon!). So we climbed a small mountain instead and got a nice workout all the same. My hip flexors can still feel it today! Whew.

The trails we used were moderately well-maintained except in a few places where the overgrowth was up past my waist (where's a machete when you need one?). We managed a six-mile loop (about 2,000 vertical feet) in four hours with a stop for lunch. By the end of it, we were quite muddy, but it was worth it for all the fresh air and the peaceful sound of the streams that occasionally crossed our path.

Most of the sights didn't vary much, but the vegetation did change as we got higher. The lower areas were carpeted by ferns that looked like giant carrot tops poking out of the earth, which made me feel like I had wandered into rabbit heaven by accident; the upper ones had holly and more fir trees. At all elevations we came across some interesting fungi that grew out of the sides of tree trunks as if the trees were sticking fat fleshy tongues out at us.

The highlight of the day was the nest of birds we discovered inside one of those trunks. The energetic chirping stopped me on the path next to it, but I couldn't see where the noise was coming from. D walked up to a crack in the bole and realized there were babies inside. An adult with something in its beak landed on a branch not far away and echoed the same call that was coming from the tree, so we stepped back and waited. Sure enough, the bird circled the trunk, slipped through the crack and dropped whatever it was holding inside. Then it zipped back out and disappeared.

Sunday's explorations were more suburban (and thankfully did not involve much walking since we were a bit sore). We didn't find the nest of our dreams (as expected this early in the house-hunting process), but we did learn a lot about the realtors we chose to try out. The first one, who drove us around to the homes we had asked her to show us, was pretty astute -- she had previewed all of the places earlier in the week and pointed out things she thought we might not like about them (but in a way that suggested that they were details to consider bringing up in negotiations, not that they were total dealbreakers). Then she zeroed in on our reactions as we toured each house, observing what we focused on even if we didn't comment out loud. It was almost a little unnerving, but it showed us that she had an eye for detail and was experienced in reading people. The second realtor, on the other hand, did a much more perfunctory job -- not really trying to assess what our tastes were and just talking up the properties in a slightly too transparent sales-minded way. In fact, she talked down about one residence when comparing it to another we were looking at (I can't imagine what its owners would have thought had they heard her). Like they say about job interviews, don't ever be openly negative about former places you've been ...

All in all, quite the learning experience.

Time for a little introspection

The quest for personal direction continues -- in the form of personality typing.

I took a version of this test several years ago when I was teaching in New York, and I think my profile may have changed since then. I suppose that's possible. I was originally introverted, sensing, thinking, and judging (ISTJ); now "thinking" has been replaced with "feeling" (not by a huge margin, but it suggests a real shift all the same). This is good. I don't mean that who I was before was bad, but I think I'm happier as the person I am today. And if being more of a "feeling" person rather than a "thinking" one is responsible for that, I'm content. I have a feeling (no pun intended) that deciding to get up close and personal this year with who I am in my writing allowed that change to happen. Even if it was uncomfortable much of the time.

The ISFJ profile on the test website lists possible career matches, some of which are amusing. Others are eerily consistent with things I seriously considered as a kid (before all the practical career advice was heaped on me in high school/college). Maybe interior decorating isn't entirely out of my future ...

Speaking of interiors, D and I are going on our first realtor-accompanied visits to a few homes this weekend. We met some realtors last weekend when we went on an open-house tour and decided to let two of them do private showings for us on Sunday morning. Then we'll hit a couple more open houses in the afternoon in some neighborhoods we haven't gotten to see yet. Just one day of checking out the conditions of different places at various price points was extremely informative. We now have a basic feel for what is grossly overpriced and what will require significant remodeling to make it suit our needs and tastes (apparently windows are very expensive to update). While we'd both enjoy transforming a space into one we can truly call home, we're not looking for something that would demand a second loan (not to mention time we don't have) to renovate. We're also being careful not to get too burned out right at the start of this whole search process -- some good advice from a friend of ours who just bought her first house in Boston -- so Saturday is for us to enjoy without the mention of square footage, mortgage payments, and pre-approval letters.

My nesting instincts are buzzing with all this house talk! Maybe I really should try to tackle the office closet ...

Actually, there is some evidence that cleaning is good for boosting your mood. Check out this article. It explains, perhaps, my increasing affinity for all things tidy.

Confessions of a workaholic

You know you're avoiding something when taking a crack at this mess suddenly becomes an attractive use of your time.

It has been exactly three weeks since I woke up on the first morning of my summer vacation here. And despite vociferous protests from the Type A part of my brain, I've heeded the advice of several of you who witnessed the craziness of this last semester and have deliberately ignored the impulse to "do something productive" during this break. But I think my defenses are cracking.

I know. I'm supposed to be figuring out what I really want out of my life to make me happy. I'm supposed to be finding real ways to relax. This means not focusing on "the Plan" as it was originally laid out -- to get this master's degree and then launch myself into an energetic search for a professorship or editorial position. It means not worrying about what will happen if for a while after I graduate, we fail to become a two-income household. It means not listening to all the practical advice I was ever given on building a foundation for my future as an independently solvent woman.

It means staring spare time in the face and deciding what to do with it. Which is not the same as deciding what not to do with it. The latter is all I've really accomplished, I think. Don't enter last month's receipts into the budget spreadsheet. Don't research where to send essays for publication. Don't do anything that could be construed as work. Don't worry about how much time I'm "wasting."

I've knocked off the easy stuff on the List of Ways to Relax -- sleeping in and reading to my heart's content and just being in the same space as D every evening and every weekend. And while that has been very good, the Type A part of my brain has been feeling so deprived of activity that I find myself guiltily breaking from my vacation regimen (it's like cheating on a diet!) just to appease its hunger. It started with loading a few plates into the dishwasher during mornings last week. Then there was that one load of laundry that turned into three, all of it neatly folded -- and then the toilet that was so conveniently in need of disinfecting right before my shower on Saturday (I had to get squeaky, so why not the loo too?). Then yesterday, I cleaned the kitchen and before I could stop myself, the dining and living rooms as well.

Today, though, was the clincher. I opened the door to our office closet and actually considered giving it the full-on reorganization it desperately needs (see photo). Fortunately, the boxes are stacked so high that I can't get them down without D's help. There's also the risk of having something heavy whack me on the head if I try to get the items at the bottom of the pile out, so for now, the contents of the closet are safe.

I didn't intentionally go into the closet to try to sort through all the random junk we've collected. I was, in fact, searching for a piece of embroidery that I started four summers ago and never finished. But clearly, even my pursuit of new (or renewed) forms of relaxation is only revealing other ways to deviate from my plan to get rest and get happy or else.

D says he'll help me find the embroidery. I think I may have discovered another project for myself, though, that veers dangerously into cleaning territory: putting our stuff on eBay. We've intended to do this since last summer's move, but we haven't made time. I now have tons of it, and if real estate prices here are an indication of the space we can afford, I need to clear out some of our possessions. At the very least, it'll make our current place less cramped, which is definitely key to creating an environment conducive to R&R.

I admit, it's a compromise. But maybe it'll keep my brain satisfied enough that I'll be able to think about what I really need to be happy. Not in five years, but right now. Besides, if completely squelching the Type A in me makes me miserable, then the rest of this is moot, no?

To market, to market

... to spy a fat pig!

Okay, not really, but these porkers are all over downtown Seattle. This one in particular watches over Pike Place Market, which we wandered through on Sunday to pick out a "fun ingredient," as D calls it. We decided to do this about once a week for the summer -- going to a local grocery or produce stand to find something interesting to build a meal around (or at the very least a central dish). This expedition landed us some plump little Calimyrna figs. More news to come on what we do with them.


The market was overrun (even more than usual) because it happened to be the weekend of the Pike Place Market Street Festival. We managed to weave through the crowds without stepping on any toes. Maybe next time we come down, we'll bring the cooler and get some seafood from the famous fish counter where the men working the stand juggle orders (literally). The masses were a bit thick -- attracted, no question, to the fish-flinging act -- and getting a good look at the merchandise would have required more elbowing than we were inclined to try.


In other projects of the moment: we drove around Mercer Island for the first time. Mercer Island is the home of the top rated school districts in all of Washington (and thus, some prime real estate), and a random internet search of properties for sale there turned up some scary prices a few months ago. D and I figured we probably had no hope of buying a house in this part of Seattle. But on the off chance that there was a bungalow we might stumble upon, we took a tour around the island on the way back from the market. Believe it or not, we found something. It's not for sale, as far as we can tell, but this is proof that even people of modest means can have their square footage there:


Based on what we've seen for more standard size homes out there, we're estimating the value of this place to be $400,000. (And that is why we'll be looking elsewhere for a home ... )