Tag Archives: house schtuff

Mmmm nervous energy

Otherwise known as: what I’m doing with all this anxiety. Cause I’m still feeling a lot of anxiety. Thankfully I’m capable of using it in ways that will make me happier long term.

I have been working on cleaning up the garage and paring things down a little more and a little more and a little more. The shed in the back yard has been awesomely handy for most of the time I’ve lived here, but at this point there are almost as many leaks in the roof as there is roof. Given that it is a cheap metal shed ‘fixing’ it would mean just tacking a tarp over it and my freak out about getting away from my white trash roots mean that I just can’t live with that as a solution. Last year with all the lovely rain we developed a rather unpleasant mold problem and a bunch of stuff had to be trashed. Thus my goal right now is to go through stuff in the garage and shed and get to the point where all of our stuff fits comfortably in the corner of the garage so Shanna can still have a playroom and we can get rid of the shed. I’m not sure how that will long-term affect what I do with the back yard but I can’t help but think it’ll be a good thing to not have random crap living out there that we never touch. 🙂 I’m working pretty seriously towards this ‘minimalist’ lifestyle thing and it’s making me happy. I am pretty convinced that we will not be able to move out of this house any decade soon and that means we will need to fit in this space comfortably as our kids grow up. This means making room for their stuff. So I’m getting a head start on that process so it’s not a tug-of-war power struggle over who has to get rid of stuff later. 🙂 Not to mention that the less shit we have the less cleaning we have to do!

So Shanna’s toys are consolidating. The pantry is consolidating. I’m trying to figure out the happy medium between getting rid of too much stuff that we will actually miss and getting down to just the stuff that improves our life.

I’m having a quandary about something though. (Hint: this is one of the rare times I’m open to advice!) I have a gorgeous crystal punch bowl shaped like a huge brandy glass with accompanying tiny punch glasses. This is like 40ish years old at this point so it is very fragile. I think I would be afraid to actually use it because it is a family sentimental piece. It was my moms–one of the few things she managed to hang on to through all the years of her hellish moving. Despite my overall lack of sentimentality I would absolutely never just ‘get rid of’ this. I won’t sell it to strangers and I won’t donate it. But I feel like giving it back to my mother is… awkward. If I leave it at my Aunt’s house for my mom to pick up I feel like I will be opening the door for her to do the same thing to me and I don’t want that to happen. If I ask my niece if she wants it (to ‘keep it in the family) it would be a passive aggressive way of getting it back to my mom because my niece will ask my mom about it, not to mention that they are living together. I would kind of like to just give it back to my mom. This is an important thing to her and I have enough respect for her sentimental attachment to it that I can’t get rid of it… but it doesn’t really mean as much to me. Any ideas on how to resolve this situation?

A good day

I spend most of my time on lj posting about being unhappy or talking about Shanna. That is totally not representative of my every day so uhm, here’s a post that is less depressing.

Today is a good day. I got a little bit of yard work done out front. It’s been bugging me so I’m glad I’ve gotten around to it. I scheduled house cleaning stuff for the next several months so that I can stop feeling bad about how little cleaning I do. (Noah [whom I do not spend nearly enough time talking up–he’s so fabulous] does most of the ‘picking up’ so our house isn’t too bad, but he doesn’t really like doing the deeper cleaning.) Currently it sucks for me to bend over and do it so we decided that three or four months of someone else cleaning our house was a Good Idea. The vast majority of this additional spending right now is coming out of the much larger than anticipated tax refund, so I am thanking my lucky stars that we got it. I really and truly see the financial privilege I have these days and I feel so grateful that I have it. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure can do a lot of work towards making life easier so that you have less stress. That leads to increased happiness. So I thank anyone upstairs who is listening that my life is so easy at this point.

For all that I’m not a great pregnant person I am deeply grateful that this pregnancy is easier than Shanna’s. I’m super tired. I have a lot of random body discomfort. I’m cranky. But I haven’t puked once! I am not so completely listless that I am not functioning! I do manage to take Shanna out to play at least once a week and I’m arranging for her to have more opportunities than that with other people. I’m cranky with her, but she’s spectacular about telling me, “It’s not nice to yell at me.” Which really puts a fast halt to my temper tantrums. Having a two year old call me on my behavior is incredibly humbling in a good for me way. I really love having her.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the sexual assault stuff and I am feeling… better isn’t quite the word but less disturbed. I’m feeling more like I really have handled things in a way that is ultimately good for me. Of course I have done things poorly at times. Of course I have not always been in the best place right that minute. But overall I don’t feel like I am a terrible non-functioning crazy person. And sometimes good enough is good enough. 🙂

Mostly I had a really good weekend. I really love my family. I have a wonderful, supportive, amazing husband. I feel like I had the most perfect-for-me little girl possible. I like her so much. I’m rather excited about meeting kid 2.0. If Noah and I combined to make one kid this awesome, what will 2.0 be like? I strongly suspect that next kid will be very very different from Shanna. I base this on the differences in the pregnancy. This kid is active in a way that Shanna wasn’t. This makes me slightly nervous because of the potential differences in sleeping habits. Shanna has been an awesome sleeper since birth. But we’ll roll with it. Whatever happens is what is meant to happen. I think that I am nervous about having expectations this time. Before Shanna I had almost zero exposure to babies. I had no idea what to expect and then she was so easy. (Maybe my memory is already getting fuzzy… who knows.) Now I’ve had a kid so I have a bit more of the ‘I know about kids’ attitude. I’d be better off assuming that I know nothing again. 🙂

So, yeah. Life is plugging along. I have 6ish weeks to go. I’m nervous but looking forward to the birth. It will be a rather different experience this time. Shanna has expressed rather strongly that she wants to be at the birth so that’s going to be interesting. Luckily nipple stimulation is a big help because there is no way I will be able to keep her from nursing during labor. 😀 I’m really looking forward to tandem nursing for some weird, masochistic reason. Something about it just seems really… I don’t know… motherly? Like even if I feel like psychologically I am not always the best at mothering my body is doing GREAT at the physical parts! I can’t quite figure out why I am looking forward to it so much. Too many years on MDC. They have infected my brain. 😀

So yeah. It’s a good day after having a couple of other good days in a row. 🙂

Having trouble settling.

I have a rather spectacular amount of work I need to do and very little motivation/energy to do it. There are a few problems that are intersecting here to make this situation harder. Shanna is… even more festive than she was for interfering in my working. Woo toddlerhood! I am an extrovert so I really thrive on being around people, but the physical load involved in going out somewhere and managing Shanna kind of eliminates the benefit of being around people. This blows.

So I would really love it if someone would come over and talk to me while I do work in my house. I feel way more motivated to work that way. I don’t particularly need help, although there are particular chores I wouldn’t turn down help with, but mostly I would just love the adult company. 🙂

Oh, and dear god I need to get some of that meat out of my freezer. Please contact me if you have any interest in the grass fed beef. Laura isn’t so thrilled about storing my 1/4 until this 1/4 is sold. (I don’t blame her in the slightest but I really max out at 1/2 a cow in my freezer.)

Still working

And I’m still happy about it. I have cheerfully ignored capnkjb so that I didn’t have to argue with her. 😀 I got far less done yesterday than I did on Monday but that’s really ok with me. Grocery shopping, mountains of laundry, ridiculous quantities of dishes… it’s still good progress. Today I continue the laundry. (When we get hand-me-downs and do towels/sheets at the same time it’s kind of a lot to deal with folding.) I’m also going to try and get to some of the other household cleaning stuff that is more intensive that I uhm haven’t done in months. My house will be fit for habitation soon! 🙂

My cousin’s boyfriend finished the gate and did most of the work on the AC unit and the kitchen fan yesterday. He couldn’t finish either because he needs more parts and it was getting late. Nevertheless I am quite pleased with him. 🙂 I think my to do list will actually get done! I’m so excited!

My life fucking rocks.

Let me count the reasons to be grateful towards the universe right now:

-Mo is coming to visit me today and she is going to help me do work! The only yardwork I will request of her is helping me get those @#%^#@ white rocks up. Then we will come inside and she will help me give the house the scrub down it has needed for months. She loves me *that* much. <3 -My cousin and her boyfriend are coming over on Tuesday. Her boyfriend is one of the most hard working people I have ever met in my life. He's going to help me get the rest of the yard work stuff done. I am so excited about this I could float off into the universe. I think that, unexpectedly, I am actually going to get my yard to a place where I am happy with it for the first time since I’ve lived here. That is so cool I can barely stand it.
-Taylor is coming over on Thursday and he will give me a massage. I’m going to be a happy pile of goo after that. And he will help me put the gate up in the side yard to keep Shanna out of the compost. 😀
-I am pretty sure I will have ALL of my projects done by Thursday and I can’t express how happy that makes me. I feel constantly unsettled and anxiety around projects not being done. It really affects my day to day happiness in negative ways. But I will get caught up! Dude! SO EXCITED!!!
-We have a babysitter for 10 hours on Saturday and we get to party hop! This will be thrilling.
-Good stuff with my aunt. It’s nice to have someone in my family sit down and listen to me. I needed that so much. My soul feels lighter.
-I have this wonderful, amazing, fabulous husband and hanging out with him is so awesome. 🙂
-Shanna continues to grow more individualistically person-like daily. It is so much fun to spend time with her. I really love watching her charm the pants off everyone she spends time around. 🙂 She is such a poster-child for reproduction that I giggle when avowed ‘not into kids’ people are all over her like white on rice. 😀
-I’m really excited about the upcoming camping/wedding/festivity in May. I think it will be super fun and really great.
-I’ve been getting out and being more energetic and it feels really nice. I’m less slug-like. 🙂 I’m even doing better about doing cooking and eating slightly better. I’m being good to my body and the tiny baby and I’m glad I can do that more now.
-For today I feel like the burdens in my life are all in perfect balance and thus there is the lightness of a feather upon my back. I don’t get here often but I really cherish it when I do. Thank whoever is watching for reprieves from hard. 🙂

ETA: and I totally forgot to mention that Alex volunteered to make a play kitchen for Shanna for her birthday. Maybe I should be less down on my chosen family. They are totally rocking lately. 😀

Where I am today

So right this minute my back is a little better. I took half of a leftover vicodin to get to this point. Earlier I was having trouble with feeling really angry because of how badly my back hurt. Shanna is being super super super (add a few of those on) clingy because she is teething. She’s not being bad. She’s not doing anything wrong. She’s just hurting and she needs lots of attention as a result. It’s hard sometimes to give her all the attention she needs when I’m also feeling crummy.

That said: overall it was a good day. After a less than awesome traffic experience we had a great Ikea run. 🙂 I found lots of stuff we need and a few things that we don’t need but I really want and I let myself get it. Yay! I found all the stuff at Home Depot that I will need for venting the dryer and the stuff I will need to put backs on the shelving units. Verra successful, that. Shanna was extremely patient.

I’m going to go do some more to try and help my back feel better so I can better enjoy the afterglow of a good day instead of being cranky. 🙂

Plugging along

Mudding and sanding are completely done. Today I am going to sweep and mop the garage. Then the kitchen. And then we can vacuum the rest of the house. 🙂 Tonight the garage will get the first coat of primer. I think two coats are a good idea given some of the areas of funk (the wall next to the house is stained and the beams are all pretty foul). The second coat will probably happen on Thursday. The inspector came this morning so I’m about done with this stage of the project. Yay! Decorative painting is going to wait a few months until there is more money in the kitty.

So I will probably start moving stuff out to the garage on Friday and Saturday. I only need help for the biggest pieces and then I can handle the rest of the work by myself over the next week. YAY!

Cookie baking is done. Cinnamon rolls are happening on Saturday.

Christmas cards are completely done and in the mail.

Yesterday I made a whole bunch of Aloo Gobi Mattar and it is really really good. Today I am making corned beef and cabbage (and potatoes, of course). Tomorrow is some cut of beef that Noah took out of the freezer; I should probably figure out how I am cooking that. I should also make veggie soup today or tomorrow and that will use up the vast majority of the veggies in the house. With the generous help of Sarah’s freezer foods I think we will be set for meals (except for Christmas dinner) for basically the rest of the month. That’s kind of awesome. 🙂

Wow. I have cleaning, cooking and wrapping presents left on the agenda for this week and setting up the garage for next week. I think this may be my lowest stress Christmas in years. 🙂 Everything is coming together easily and in advance. Yay!

busy week

Based on what I have read and how much is left to do I can probably get the mudding completely done this week in the garage (thanks to the generous help of awesome people) and I can probably even get the garage painted with primer if not with colored paint.

I need to get baking done. I have barely started. I could also stretch this into next week if I have to but I would prefer not.

I need to get the holiday cards addressed so they can go in the mail the day I get the pictures back or they won’t go out at all.

I need to get cooking done that uses up this week’s vegetables.

And there is the constant avalanche of crap inherit in living with a toddler. I would love to just ignore this part for the whole week but Noah gets cranky.

And let’s not get into how desperately my bathroom needs cleaning.

I’m tired before the work even begins.

Mania

I kind of forgot this feeling. Man I’ve been productive today. Shanna woke me up at 4:30. We didn’t really get out of bed till 5. I left Noah sleeping. Then I got up and got busy. Today I have (in no particular order):

-Cleaned up basically all of the small debris out in the garage and put it away or broke it up small enough for the trash.
-loaded the dishwasher and ran it
-put the dishwasher stuff away
-did a full dishdrainer full of hand washing
-diaper laundry is nearly done
-another load is in the washer
-went through extensive stain removal crap on a shirt of Shanna’s that I love. *cross fingers it will actually come clean*
-completely cleaned off the kitchen counter and scrubbed it and the stove
-cleaned off the kitchen table and changed the linen
-cleaned the cat litter box
-read several chapters in My Mother Wears Combat Boots while Shanna napped (turkey butt)
-got my nephew started mudding the garage (w00t)
-ate the best cookie ever: white chocolate, blueberries, and milk chocolate covered blueberries. I think I died and went to heaven.
-made sausage and eggs for breakfast
-fed Shanna several snacks
-Completely scrubbed down the high chair (it was disgusting)
-spent a lot of time chatting with my wonderful Sarah 🙂
-rounded up all the unused Christmas stuff and put it away

And it’s not even noon.

I think I will go clean the bathroom. I’m thinking that I should sweep the kitchen. Mopping is pointless until we finish the drywall stuff. Hmmmmm…. what else should I do…

Just life

Getting ready for a party this weekend is more stressful than I thought it would be. My house is in a weird state of flux because of the garage project. There is a ton of stuff in the house that is normally out in the garage and finding spots for everything is a nuisance. It doesn’t help that I have weird/stupid compulsions about having my house look neat and orderly when people I don’t know come over. If I could manage to not care this would all be much easier. 🙂 [Just so people don’t think I am not inviting you to a party–it’s a going away party for a friend and the invitees are her friends, not mine. So I’m hosting, but it’s not my party. Kind of weird.]

Shanna’s development is no longer as dramatically quick. Her progress is still rapid, but it’s slightly less startling if that makes sense. Now it is on a more predictable trajectory. She is more and more kid-like by the day. Her speaking is amazing to me. She picks up signs as quick as I teach them to her which means I should focus on more signs that are relevant to her. I gave her crackers for the first time this week and she’s in love. I wasn’t withholding them for any particular reason, I’m just not a cracker person so I don’t have them around. I can’t stand stuff that is crispy like that in my mouth. I guess she won’t have my texture fuss. This will make her life easier. 🙂 I really should post pictures of her.

Using our not perfectly accurate scale it looks like Shanna has gained almost three pounds in the past two and a half months. That makes sense. She is eating like it is going out of style. I’m starting to feel slightly frustrated with her wanting food all day long because it is hard for me to work on projects when I have to stop and help her with food. She can feed herself but if I let her go at it alone the mess is prodigious.

We took her to her first Gaskell Ball this weekend. She had a great time playing with the other little girls at the event. One of the things that is hard for me about living in Fremont is I am far away from my friends and all events. I would really love to be able to host baby dance parties during events like that and have all the folks I know drop their kids off. I think that is even more fun than going to Gaskells but it’s not going to work out. No one wants to drive down here for that sort of thing.

I find it pretty funny that at this point I have far more stuff for organizing than I have stuff to organize. 🙂 I have a lot of empty space in my house. This pleases me immensely.

I’m starting to feel a mixture of excitement and trepidation about painting the garage. I have really cool ideas, but I’m not particularly artistic. I will have a hard time if I put in a lot of effort and it looks really bad. I’m not sure what is the best way to try and get something vaguely pretty given my level of (zero) art skill. I’m great at doing basic house painting. Well, by great I mean that I am neat–I don’t like doing it much. 🙂 But I really like the results so I do it.

I asked my bio-family if it would be ok for me to host Christmas this year because I like to share the load and not put everything on my aunt. But my cousins won’t come off the mountain and I don’t want to alienate them so it won’t be happening. So my 70-something year old aunt will be doing all the work for everyone again. I think my family sucks.

I haven’t heard from my mom in months. Not since she grudgingly sent me some money towards paying back what she borrowed from me. I’m feeling unfortunately justified in my not so awesome opinions of her. Thanks for using me then ditching me again mom. I appreciate the reminder of how much you care about me.

I’m still having to struggle with my upset at feeling used by people in general. I know that no one means anything bad. It doesn’t matter if people mean to be treating me like shit or not if they are it hurts. But I’m the only one responsible for my feelings. I can point at a bunch of different things making this harder right now but it doesn’t matter what excuses I have. I need to deal with this because I’m making myself miserable and the only one who notices is me. It would be nice to be happier. I’m trying.

Oh, and I cut my hair. A wonderful friend got a great picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9522728@N08/4043845455/in/set-72157622662085684/ That was after a long day of me running my fingers through it and putting it up then taking it down then messing with it then shaking my head to resettle it. Isn’t it a great haircut?! I’m pretty excited. I think it may be one of the best haircuts I’ve ever received.

Ladder!

So next Tuesday we will be putting drywall up in my garage. This is very exciting to me. I am curious if anyone has a ladder I can borrow. Probably not more than 8′ and 6′ would be better.

In addition to generically begging for a ladder, if you have time on Tuesday during the day this is the sort of project where additional help could be really really handy. 🙂

Whoo hoo!

Today’s the day! I get to start back-breaking physical labor! Sheetrock is heavy. 🙂 I keep telling myself, “It will all be worth it when I can walk down the hallway with less of risk of breaking my neck in the middle of the night.”

Man am I grateful to Taylor. Yay Taylor!

ETA:
Apparently today is the day I get to schedule back breaking labor. He had a good point about waiting on delivery so stuff isn’t going to happen for a while. I think I am just as happy. This will give me a chance to do more fussing inside the house with arranging stuff without being grumpy and in pain. I also get to have a couple of weeks between bursts of project obsession. Maybe in the meantime I’ll get around to making jam. 🙂

Appreciation

Today I am feeling very happy with the world and everything in it, so I’ll talk a little bit about what I appreciate today. 🙂

I appreciate that my wonderful Marcie let me have huge blocks of wood for my yard. Soon I will get around to finishing that project and I will have the coolest sandbox ever!

I appreciate that my darling husband tolerates my ongoing projects and obsessions. 😀

I appreciate that my daughter loves books so much. And that she is picking up words at a prodigious rate. It is getting so much easier to communicate with her.

I appreciate that my house is small enough to be easy to clean. The older I get and the more stuff I have to get done in a day the more I appreciate this. 🙂

I appreciate that Taylor offered to come help me finish the garage. It is almost entirely cleaned out! It will be done by Friday! This is so exciting. (At this point there is probably about an hour of moving stuff and an hour or two of cleaning left.)

I appreciate the heck out of the chest freezer. Man that thing makes my life better. I have a whole mess of (organic) beef and chicken. I have a huge stash of raw milk, butter, cream, and cheese. I have a freak-ton of ice cream (I buy it on sale and stock up). And then there are the ’emergency’ tv-dinner lunches for Noah’s lunch when we have nothing else. It’s so awesome. I think I have enough meat to last me the next six months and maybe longer. This pleases me immensely. We will need more ice cream and milk before then. 🙂

I appreciate the wonderful variety of food available to me here in the bay area. I like that my taste buds have been expanded in ways they wouldn’t have if I lived in middle America.

I appreciate the awesome cookbooks available to me that have taught me how to cook some of the amazing food I enjoy so much. And the baking. *swoon* The baking! I’m pretty good at baking, I have discovered. I really enjoy it.

I appreciate being comfortable financially at a time when many people aren’t. It’s a luxury. I have the luxury of staying home with my kids as long as I want to. It’s really nice.

I appreciate my new roof. Holy crap on toast do I appreciate my new roof. And I really love that we are basically off grid for our electricity usage. That makes me feel good about my impact on the planet. I’m wasteful in other places (like travel and eating meat) so I try to do what I can elsewhere.

I appreciate our wonderful car. It is fantastically efficient and well functioning. It is still pretty through absolutely no effort of mine.

I appreciate having the luxury to sit around and think extensively about what is best for my family. My life is non-stressful and non-traumatic. I get to think about family planning in a safe and comfortable environment where many options are possible. That’s amazing.

I appreciate having yards big enough to worry about. 🙂 It means that Shanna has lots of room to play and explore. And I appreciate how much she loves being outside. That bodes well. 🙂

I appreciate Ikea. My house is turning into an Ikea showroom. It’s kind of funny. But man is it useful and cheap! And I think all the stuff we bought there looks perfectly decent. Yay Ikea!

I appreciate that when I have computer problems I always find a friend to help me fix them. 😀 Man living in the valley rocks. 😀

Wallpaper ideas

Now that I was shown the wonders of wallpaper (previously I didn’t consider them because my experience with wallpaper was all really ugly shit in old people’s houses) I have some awesome choices to make. I am interested in something that encourages a variety of imaginative play. I would like something that isn’t too ‘baby’ because I’m not going to want to change it particularly soon. I would like something that does not dictate that my daughter ought to be a tomboy or a princess. She gets to be whatever she wants to be. And I would like something that is not strictly speaking ‘girl’ because then little boys will scorn it because little boys are trained to be retarded like that. (We have a really machismo neighbor with a little boy Shanna’s age. I expect they will play because I get along with the mom. I expect that his father will make cracks if something is too girly because he’s already made cracks about how I shouldn’t ever cut Shanna’s hair because girls should never be allowed to cut their hair.)

Idea #1 which I like because it’s a neat old library and that’s always fun. I’m not sure how this one would age with a kid.

Idea #2 I like this one because it is very open-ended and it lends itself to all kinds of neat imagination games.

Idea #3 I think this one would age particularly well. I worry that it could be a little spooky for a small child. Of course I do love my tree imagery.

Idea #4 also very open ended but in a slightly more realistic sort of way. This one seems to me to be more about adventure and less about fantastic, if that makes sense.

Idea #5 this is less open ended but really fun.

Idea #6 neat, but I’m not sure.

More cheerful

Today I am feeling happy because I have made a bunch of progress out in the shed. I am getting rid of the debris left from when the housemate before the last housemate was here. (I’m not complaining! Thank you for the roses!) This means I am able to organize the stuff I want to put in there. This kind of anal retentive organizing makes me swooningly happy. 😀

And I am going to squash my “I can do it myself!!!” attitude and gratefully accept help from the wondrous Taylor in finishing the garage. This way it will actually get done instead of me just bitching at Noah that I want it to get done. 🙂 Then I get to move on to feeling angsty about my lack of artistic ability. 🙂 That part will be easier to get done I suspect. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do the playroom yet but I feel a tantalizing array of options. 😀

Bits and pieces to get them out of my head

Looks like trying to have more of a relationship with my family was a bad idea. 🙁 It’s time to withdraw from that again. Noah gave me some really good advice on how to do it without exploding a drama bomb.

I got into a really bad place for a while there where I was doing the martyr thing full time. That doesn’t help anyone least of all me. I need to knock that crap off. Noah can take care of his own happiness.

Shanna now, quite delightfully, says “owwwww sigh”. For those of you without children this means outside. It’s awesome. She loves her swing so much. I’m thrilled that I got the idea from and and I bought one. 🙂

I’m shifting things around in the house a lot more trying to figure out what arrangements will make me happiest long term because the long term is how long we are here. I really really want to make a cool playroom for the kidlet so I’m looking into that. I have a bunch of cool links that I might post later.

I’m feeling frustrated by the fact that people very very rarely initiate social interaction with me. Why is it that I have to do all of it?

My last tattoo appointment is on August 3rd. We’ll be stopping birth control after that. That means I’m taking advantage of the ability to drink. 🙂

Noah and I had a wonderful date on Monday where we had breathtakingly good food. Being married to a foodie is the best thing ever.

I’m not being good about exercise just lately. This is another thing I need to work on.

Urf and arf. Time to start walking towards the bus stop. I bet Shanna is going to love the trip on BART again. 🙂

A resolution.

We just got back the appraisal as we are working on a home refinance. Well. We aren’t underwater but the house is less than Noah paid originally. This means that regardless of other preferences we are staying in Fremont basically permanently because we would have to make money on this sale for a move to make sense. So I need to work on my attitude about living here. My resolution is to stop being negative about where we live.

Things I like about Fremont:
-I have a great food system worked out. I have a milk co-op just a couple blocks away (I sometimes walk with the order if it isn’t too huge).
-I really love our weekly walks to the farmers market/store. It makes me feel more like I am living in a community.
-I like that I am getting to know my neighbors and that there are a lot of kids in my neighborhood.
-I appreciate the good Thai/Chinese/Mexican/Lebanese/pizza all within walking distance that are local independent places.
-Even though Fremont is far from many of my friends, I’m still in the bay with all the benefits that entails.
-I’m close to BART.
-Even though I am not yet a good gardener and my yards still have a ton of work left before they are awesome–I can do that work at my own pace and I have a decent amount of room in which to work.
-This house is a really good size for us at this point. I appreciate how much time it takes to keep the house (not much). I like that we have way way more storage space than we need.
-I have awesome solar panels on the roof and with the recent reroofing our house is cool and comfortable even on very hot days.
-It’s not going to be hard to finish the garage to create a playspace when my kids are a bit bigger.
-Our mortgage is fairly low and about to get lower. This allows me to stay home without any financial pressure while still doing awesome travel.

One of these days I’ll have to figure out a name for the house that I like. 🙂

Adventures in home ownership

So the roofers are pulling our roof off today. They are feeling nervous about the possibility of weather this weekend so they are hoping the solar guy can get his butt out here tonight/tomorrow morning so they can put the roof on tomorrow afternoon. I feel guilty because I didn’t give the solar guy as much lead time as I should have. However, my sister says that the solar guy freaks out about everything and he would have been this unhinged no matter how much lead time I gave him. Ok then. She dated him/lived with him for a few years so she is probably right.

The fun part is that when they pulled off the current roofing material and looked at the wood underneath it they found that it is rotten. As in it would cause problems over the next couple of years rotten. I’m not sure how the home inspector missed that. 🙁 [side note: the home inspector has never sent us a bill. hm.] So they are going to be replacing the wood. Of course this ups the cost. *sigh* Not by enough to cause a problem, but I’m going to be feeling very poor for the next several months as we build our savings account back up.

And Noah’s dad called yesterday. We had a very polite conversation. I think he called when Noah was at work on purpose. If Noah is home I hand off the phone as soon as I hear who it is. 🙂 He apologized for not being able to come to the birthday party. I don’t think he really needs to apologize. We picked a crap-tastic weekend for them. Noah is going to be getting a new niece/nephew right around that date. Noah’s little sister has a music recital. And Noah’s other little brother is graduating from college. So yeah, kind of a busy time. I wish that things worked out such that it was easier for me to get to know Noah’s dad. He seems like someone I would like.

And my house is a complete and total mess right now. Oy. It’s a process.

The good news is that starting on Friday I won’t have to feel bad about running the hot tub cause we won’t be using power from PG&E to do it. w00t.