Monthly Archives: July 2007

Speaking Correctly

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A couple of years back, Celene & Thad gave Stella this book. It has, apparently, been around since the olden days, and – much as the title suggests – goes to great pains to teach one how to not speak like they was raised in that there trailer.

This book’s target audience is for the 9-12 crowd, and so you can imagine it’s effectiveness on a three year old. Nevermind that the main goal with a three-year-old is to not have them yell things at you. So naturally we figured the next logical step is to teach her the proper use of WELL and GOOD.

The way the book works is that all the parts of speech and undesirable uses of tense and pronunciation are presented as characters. More specifically, they are little stick drawings with creepy faces and long, spider-like arms. They are shady characters who do things like always exclude G from their fun summertime activities (goin, playin, runnin, fishin). Poor little G. The kid with the inhaler left at the swim dock while everyone else gets to go canoin’.

But the reason for this story has not to do with the oft neglected G, or with LY (LY wears a pink dress and “loves action!” I’ll let you interpret the subversive text on that one.), or even that beer-swilling, monster-truck-driving bad-boy GOT (i.e., I ain’t GOT no teefs) – no, this story has to do with MAY. Good old MAY. Of all the forgotten letters, mangled suffixes and superlative prefixes in this book, the one character that Stella has decided to attempt to properly work into her daily conversation is MAY. But as one can quickly guess, Stella’s interpretation of where exactly MAY lives in those sentences has never been fully comprehended – even though we have read this book no less than 50 times.

I find this whole CAN vs. MAY character fairly pretentious and snotty anyway. Nothing is more annoying than asking someone if you can do something and they respond with a haughty, “I don’t know, CAN you?” As far as I am concerned CAN and MAY can go hang out with the improper conjugation of lay. I’ve never liked him either.

So now, when Stella really, really wants something. And wants to impress you with her astute ability in asking for it in a grammatically correct way, you will hear this pleading statement:

“Mommy, Mommy, CAN I please MAY? Please CAN I MAY?”

My baby’s done college bound.

Was there even life before technology?

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Most people? Yeah, when they decide to sell their current house and buy a new one, they might not choose to go on vacation the very next day. Apparently, we are not most people. Instead, the moment both of the counter-offers were accepted and signed – before the ink was even dry – we were headed south on 101. Not to return for another 11 days. That’s how we do it.

Thusly, we have not ever been too far from a computer, and I have actually managed to keep my cell phone not only charged, but within earshot. Thank the heavens for technology. And lots of it. At the rate we are going, we could feasibly close escrow on our new house before we even got home (even though we have chosen not to). Meanwhile, we have been droning on and on (and on) to anyone who will listen about remodeling and landscaping and miscellaneous repairs. Everyone has had to listen us endlessly discuss the finer details of flooring, windows and the differences between a cess pool and a septic system (we were originally told it was the first, but it turns out to actually be the latter). Yes, everyone, we are the kind of people that, if you see us coming, you should probably run. Run quickly.

Aside from the house ramblings, we are actually doing a bit of vacationing. And by vacationing, I mean leaving our children with whomever will take them so we can do luxurious things like shop, sleep in and ignore their whiny tantrums. Stella is wowing all of us with her aquatic skills (she is practically swimming!), and Porter is showing everyone how his adorable cuteness is only matched by his insanely short temper. And tenacity. And ability to bend metal objects with sheer will alone. But you know, all in a really cute way.

When he is not busy attending to whatever the heck he damn well pleases, he is dragging people around by their index finger. Get me this. Get me that. You can see the look of exasperation in his eyes when you just aren’t getting what Uhn, Ma Gaaaaaa! means. Come on people, get with the program, here!

You’ll notice I haven’t made even one whiny complaint about oppressive heat yet. Mostly, it is because there has been some crazy system following us at each stop that changes the aforementioned oppressive heat from hot to humid, which somehow makes it mildly more tolerable. Not to say we haven’t taken every available opportunity to float in the pool like hippos. Because we have. A lot.

Although we are rounding out our trip, and will be home in the next few days, we have continued to get inquisitive calls and emails in regards to our current housing situation. I thought I’d check in and let you all know how things were going. All inspections are completed (on both houses) and it is looking more and more like this is gonna happen. (Although, I still feel a little awkward saying as much.) If things continue on at their current pace it won’t be much longer until you’ll begin to see a lot of photos of a certain yellow house.

All in a day’s work.

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Today we bought a house. Today we sold a house. It was a pretty good day.

The process of actually selling our house got more complicated than I could have ever imagined. After getting not one, but two offers in a 4-hour period, we ended up countering them both. Much to our surprise they both came back with a resounding, “We’ll take it!” This meant it was up to us to have to pick which offer to accept. Do you know how hard that is? Two great, enthusiastic buyers willing to do just about anything we ask of them just so they can become the future owners of the most high maintenance kitchen ever constructed. Little do they know of the floor, counter and appliance polishing that awaits them.

Our agent emailed us not only copies of their acceptances and counter offers (one actually nudged their bid $250 over asking price to sweeten the deal a bit), but she also attached their carefully crafted letters in which they laid out their case as to why they should be the new owners of this house. Seriously. So we did what any other red-blooded American would do – we sent it out to committee. We emailed the letters to friends, family and anyone who would read them and asked them all to vote for their favorite. The results came back unanimous. We had a winner.

As for our attempts at purchasing our little slice of heaven, we got the news that our latest counter offer had been accepted. Booyah!

We promptly scheduled another showing of our (almost) new home so that Steve could take an endless array of photos of boring things like window casings and eave overhangs. All things he will use in planning the infinite repairs and upgrades. A word to my father: consider yourself warned; you are about to be bombarded with remodeling questions.

And our new neighbors? Oh, just the most famous of all salad dressing dynasties!

Hidden Valley

(Yes, that actually says Hidden Valley Ranch. Try not to be too jealous.)

Friday the 13th, indeed.

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Yes, our house is now on the market. Yes, we are a bag of mixed emotions about it. Yes, I know the magnitude of selling the house we have poured our heart and soul into fixing up. The house we have fine-tuned down to the last window treatment. The house where we brought home both of our children. The house that holds enough memories to fill every square inch of our 1100 square feet of high ceilings and light-filled rooms. The house where we realized the emotionally devastating blow of a burglary, juxtaposed against the generous humanity of neighbors who offered to help us pay to have a security system installed. Neighbors we hardly knew. Yes, I have complained endlessly about this house. Yes, I will miss it more than words can say.

On Wednesday we went to look at a house that Steve began affectionately referring to as “the one”. By Thursday we began getting calls requesting that strangers could begin touring our home. And, as Thursday, the 12th, became Friday, the 13th, life as we knew, it started to change.

As of Friday morning, we had one showing scheduled for 6:30 in the evening. As the day wore on, more calls; more showings. I had scheduled to work a full day, and so it was Steve who had to wrangle both kids in and out of the house – on 4 separate occasions. It finally got to the point where I called Dore to ask if, after I got off of work, we could all just park it at her house for the remainder of the evening.

One other small item from Friday: we made an offer. This is the part where I have to qualify that “the one” is not perfect. In fact, it is far from it. But this is where the trade-off game has begun in full earnest. We don’t have the financial resources to afford what we want, in totality. Instead, we are going to have to make accommodations. And when it comes to weighing in on location, lot size and structure, the only real thing we have control over to change is the structure…which leads us to this house. It straddles between two desirable school districts, pushes us further Northward, is tucked away enough to feel a bit remote – while also not being more than 2 minutes from 101. The lot is a healthy, but manageable 1/3 acre with good South-West exposure and mature fruit trees. Then there is the house. Ah, the house. I won’t go into a long litany of the details, but will point out that it is a bit bigger (roughly 1500 sq feet), two – yes TWO bathrooms and three bedrooms. And as for it’s aesthetic features, well – we have some work to do.

By Friday evening we already had a counter-offer from our offer. And two offers had come in on our house. By mid-day on Saturday I met with our agent to do paperwork on three counter-offers. We countered both offers on 2323 B Street and countered the counter offer on the house at 111 Hidden Valley Drive. And now we wait.

I guess I’m a bit superstitious, but I feel like I am jinxing all of this by writing about it – like every offer, both incoming and outgoing are going to fall apart if I start speaking this out loud and in writing. But after the dozen or so emails and phone calls, plus the handful of comments on these pages, I feel that I owe it to you to let you know the full story. So stay tuned. One way or the other, there will be more to come.