Old Home Week, a la Facebook

So I've been cruising around the Facebook site, typing in the names from my sordid past (that I can remember) and seeing if they're signed up...

It's all very surreal, since I've fallen out of touch with 90% of them...no, make that 99%...

Now that I've sent out dozens of friend requests, I now have to actually interact and answer messages, and remember to sign on more than once a month. As I've said before, I'm really crappy at this sort of "social networking" sort of thing--both in real life and online.

I keep telling myself that now that we have a house, we can start having friends over, but the reality is between the construction and the unpacked (or partially unpacked) boxes everywhere, there's been no space or time for visiting. I'm trying to purge as I unpack, but it's all so time consuming and overwhelming. I keep having the urge to just cram stuff into storage or the pump house and ignore it for a while....but then I need something that is buried in one of the boxes, and things get dragged back in and strewn about. 

What I need is a wife. Or for TTK to be more involved in other aspects of the house besides HIS room, HIS stuff. There's a LOT of OUR stuff to be dealt with, but it seems that I get to do it all myself. GRRRRRR.

But, he is the "breadwinner" of our little family of two--all of his time is spent at the office in San Francisco--so he is doing his share for keeping us solvent. I just wish it included a bit more physical presence and effort, rather than him being gone all the time.

Yes, my new office position is in the corner of the main room, so I get to "survey my domain" and see all the boxes and the cat tumbleweeds and the mess...so of course I am posting about it.

Wheee! [THUD]

We're Reformed

We've changed, all you doubters: We're going to bed by 11 p.m.!

Of course, I don't fall asleep until about 4 a.m., but TTK crashes out, then gets up at 6 a.m. in order to get through the traffic on 101 (construction, of course, has lengthened his commute to 2 1/2 hours) and is off to work...

Meanwhile, construction starts here at 7:30 a.m., which makes me rather glad I am deaf on one side, and wear an earplug on the other.

I've never shopped so much in my entire life--pick out paint colors, a tub, tile, get a sink, choose the color of the faucets, how about a ceiling light, and what about outlets: do you want white ones, or beige, or even grey or almond? Now let's talk about baseboards--there's 4 different types in the house--do you want them all the same, since the baseboards in ttk's room have to be changed? And what about flooring to replace the Astro Turf in TTK's room? Closet doors? What kind of shelving do you want? How about floodlights? And you need a bathroom fan. And a countertop: there's cultured marble, granite, concrete, compressed recycled paper, tile, and of course Formica and Corian. Your vanity in the bathroom is a non-standard size, so whatever you get will need to be cut to fit. Do you want those shelves painted, or bare wood? If you want them painted, I should pick up the primed wood; but you should paint them if I get the primed wood. Oh, and the sump pump has been jury-rigged and doesn't really work, and the drain pipe just ends about 10 feet into the yard, under the rosebushes. 

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I'm now off to Lowe's to buy a shower/tub thingy, and some welded wire, and a closet rod. And 3 light fixtures, and a bathroom fan. And probably something else I'm forgetting, which Alan will no doubt remind me of when I get back. First I am going to go eat, though--we still haven't really found the kitchen under all the boxes.

Oh shit--I have to unload the crap ttk left in the back of my truck. Sigh.

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT

I am sitting here, in our house, FINALLY!

With internet, even!

We are completely moved out of the other place.

[THUD]

I had a whole lot more to say, but frankly I am TOO TIRED to even breathe.

Everything is in boxes. Randomly packed in boxes that are not (or poorly) labelled.

Sam is freaked.

The dogs are confused.

TTK is exhausted.

Loki is the only one who is completely and totally unfazed--we locked the cats in the house so they could associate this place as being home, and this morning when I came out of the house, she walked up to me to be let in...I could swear she smiled.

Wow--the shed is DOWN...

So I got tired of waiting for ttk to line up some guys to carry all the shit from the backyard to the dump/recycletown/new house, and a few weeks ago my contractor's second-in-command gave me his business card, because he does work on the side when not working for Alan.

Well, I spoke to him last week and asked if he could round up a couple of guys for some heavy lifting, and he did. And boy, did they ever lift-haul-demolish! They came Monday, as did ttk's mom, and between the 4 of us we got 80% of the shed done, and a huge amount of stuff purged--and they completely kicked my ass.

I was so sore and tired the next day that even though ttk's mom was here (overnighted in a local hotel) we didn't get anything else packed...instead, we went to a tile store and shopped for bathroom tile. :-)

That woman is incredible--on this one ttk did NOT inherit her manic energy...or maybe he did, and the meds suppress that energy.

Today the guys came again, and the rest of the crap from the shed (and I mean crap--the rats have had a field day in that shed, nesting and breeding and crapping and trashing) has been dragged off, and the shed itself (a carport thing from costco) has been dismantled!

They even took down the crappy awning ttk and I slapped together, and pulled all the pallets from every part of the yard and stacked it in one spot--my contractor is going to come by tomorrow and drag all the wood off and take it to a wood recycler (yay!).

Once again I am exhausted...I thought today was Friday, and not Thursday...so I get to go run all my errands tomorrow, if I survive.

I must say, here, bluntly, no hesitation, that I HATE MOVING!

Ugh.

I'm loving the thought of NEVER having to do this again, though. Less than a month. Less than a month to get out of here. 

The next big nasty hairball we have to deal with is the chickens, and my plants. I don't know how to get my half-barrel planters out of here--do I dig out all of my plants, and the dirt, and move the barrels, or do I try to move the barrels with dirt, or do I just give up on my plants in despair and let go.

Letting go is important--it's a matter of WHAT to let go of--we've been holding onto A LOT of this stuff in anticipation of a house, so some of it seems silly to turn around and get rid of it just before we move. A huge chunk of this stuff is just being dragged over to the driveway of the new place, and there we'll hose off, clean up, sort, purge. 

Tomorrow I am getting a desk...then we'll move my desk I *think* ...

my biggest problem is being torn between two houses, and where I am going to be sleeping and working...ugh. I just hope nothing gets ruined in this move...but something always does, so instead I should hope that nothing IMPORTANT gets ruined.

Sigh.

I survived...

Well, I survived the camera-in-unpleasant-places experience...so on to house news!

The main room is FINISHED and I scooted couches around for a half hour, and arranged other furniture as well. Our dinner table is built, I put together a bench and a chair, I have an idea about a desk, and I finally found a bathroom wall color.

The pest inspector came by as well, and my tuffshed-cum-chicken hut is installed. I found paint colors for the outside of the house, (consequent to ttk's agreement), finally lit upon a BATHTUB, and possibly found a paint color for the master bedroom. 

Moving right along!

Speaking of moving, our goal this weekend is to move all the crap from the shed at the old place--after we sort it, clean it (LAYERS of dust!) and purge--to the new place. Pretty lofty, but it needs to be done.

TTK still has not called any haulers or helpers, though that was his assignment 2 weeks ago...

In other news, I am hot, crabby, and shopping waaay too much on Ebay.

Infusion.

Today was yet another infusion of Remicade. It's working well, except the last 3 days I've had some breakthrough symptoms, so we're moving me to a 7 week cycle rather than 8-9 as we have been doing. My weight is up to 165, unfortunately. It just keeps creeping. I figured that I've been so busy here that I wouldn't gain weight, but no, I seem to have found time to eat...my new resolution is NO MORE GUMMY BEARS!!!!

Tomorrow is going to be even more lovely than sitting in a chair for 3 hours with a needle in my vein: tomorrow is colonoscopy prep day. Whee..so instead of sitting, I'll be s*itting...

Thursday is the easy day--I'll be all sedated for the colonoscopy itself, so that's the easy part. I can't tell you how nice it is now that all the baby boomers are hitting old age and having to get colonoscopies done--that means the techniques have improved greatly--my first few colonoscopies were WITHOUT anaesthesia...INCREDIBLY unpleasant, to say the least. Nothing like laying on a table while some guy shoves a camera up your ass...and up and up and up and *gurgle* ...

and then getting to watch it on the monitor...and seeing the little biopsy-bite-of-flesh-ripper come out and CHOMP a chunk of your intestine...

Oh, and the well broke yesterday.

Finally found someone who could come out this afternoon, and he was great! A good 'ole country boy, who had the well fixed before ttk and I could even get there. and it didn't cost us a fortune! About $129 bucks, actually. The worst part of the experience was not being able to have the guys work on the house today or yesterday, so everything is scooched back by 2 more days. Sigh.

On a somewhat amusing note, I seem to befuddle the remedial spell-checker that blogger uses--it doesn't like any of the medical words that I use with regularity. And it hates TTK's name. Heh.

That American of Games...

Catch-up.

Basically, the month of August...

week one my dad went into the hospital and I flew down to L.A. to see him...
week two, three and four were house house house.

There was more, really, but for the most part all was drowned out by migraines and stress.

So, August was a month of family and property, health and pain. Whee.

On the family side: My sister is getting married, yay!!!! It's coming up in October, and I'm doing a bunch of crocheted items for it...
My dad has some serious problems...30% liver function, ascites, emphysema, cirrhosis of the liver, partial thrombosis of the portal vein, splenomegaly, and a partridge in a pear tree...

Nana Roo is coming down to L.A. for a visit, from Australia...

On the house side:

My reptile room is done--we had to move critters out over here so we could clean and have an informal walk-through (we got an extension on our rental for another month), so their cages are all set up and it looks great! ...except for the floor, which I forgot to have our contractor, Al, paint before I moved everything in. I'm not ABOUT to have him move everything out, though, so funky concrete is how it's gonna stay.

We got our couches delivered on the 23rd--they're gorgeous! Black leather yumminess!
The main rooms are almost all painted...TTK said he'd "get out of the way of the cobalt juggernaut" so I've been making 90% of the decisions on the house...which means the colors are DARK and INTENSE.
The main room is grey, with dark green trim, and one wall is a Merlot/Aged wine color...the opposite wall is a deep blue-black, and the kitchen is light and medium green. It all actually looks really good, although my description isn't doing it justice.
It's all very dark, though, but he room is huge and there's plenty of light to offset the dark.
The hallways are painted "french clay" and if it's too dark, I plan to do a Venetian/Tuscan plaster technique with a lighter golden-ish glaze...
By Monday the main rooms will be ready for us to move in--which means we will get to put together our dining room table and chairs, and arrange our couches, and BUY ME A DESK! We're getting closer and closer to getting to move in!

TTK's mom came up on Wednesday and brought me a BEAUTIFUL antique curio cabinet for my guest room. It's perfect! I found it on Craigslist, and sent her the info, and she went to Santa Cruz, bargained it down, bought it and brought it up. The woman is a DYNAMO. She wouldn't tell me how much the cabinet was, saying I "deserve a nice mother-in-law!"
I gave her the tour, and we had a good time--and I went to bed at 9:30 that night, EXHAUSTED.

I need to take pictures...oh...last week when I went over to the house, I spotted TERMITES. Yes, termites. In the studio that we had tented, less than 2 months ago. GRRRR.

This week coming up is going to be HELLISH...Tuesday is my infusion, Wednesday is "prep day" and Thursday is Colonoscopy. Wheeeeeee.
[THUD]
Wednesday is the worst of the 3 days--the colonoscopy itself I am sedated, and Tuesday I just sit there with a needle in my arm...but the prep is a whole day of phospo-soda, shitting, and clear liquids. And shitting. NOT fun.

So that's it for now...

Surreal

I'm sitting here at ttk's work...I have a drs appointment with Dr. Mahadevan, my IBD specialist.
He's been introducing me to people here at his work, and they all say, "oh, you're cobalt." or "I love your chickens..." or "your pictures are great..." Hey! What are all these people doing knowing me? I commented to ttk that he's told them all about me, and he said "It's easier than talking about me."
Ooookay...

I'm not too thrilled about seeing this doctor...she's the one who said, two years ago, "oh, you're under control, no need to go on any of the stronger medications..." (there's no such thing as being cured with this disease--it's either quiescent or in a flare-up)...and then I proceeded to get worse and worse, and lost 40 pounds and went through a year of pain before getting onto the Remicaid back in September. My guess is that she sees SUCH severe cases of Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn's Disease that mine seemed minor in comparison. I think she kind of forgot the patient behind the disease. So now I get to go in, tell her I've been on Remicade, and ask her if I should be on it for a year, or for 2 years. We'll see what she says.

In other news, I had a salad Saturday, and for the first time in more than 2 years I didn't get hurt or the dreaded D word from it. Wooo! Though the drug has got the disease into remission in like, a month, my intestines still weren't healed and I couldn't immediately begin eating. I've gained back 15 of the 40 I lost, and I'm really not happy about that, but I expect that the weight gain will stop once we move and I have a larger space to deal with. I know the whole exercise machine thing tends to be a totally useless purchase for the most part, but it's tempting to get something like a stationary bike and put it in our studio.

On the house front, we meet with the contractor tomorrow to discuss the repairs we need to make before we can move in. The electrical is NOT safe, so that's my main concern, plus drywalling the garage and tenting the studio for termites. We were going to (okay, I was going to) renovate the kitchen, but upon the advice of my best friend, i am going to wait until after we've lived there a few months to really get a sense of what I want before changing what's there.

Touchdown, we have touchdown...

WE CLOSED ESCROW!!!!


As of June 2, 2008 we are now landowners. Houseowners.
Slaves, as one of my friends said. Slaves to a house, yes, but no longer slaves to a land lord.

The sellers are still living there, though--in the contract they asked for a rentback until June 15th.

So, we're not fully in possession, yet.

And when they move out, we can't just move in...there's a lot of work to be done before we can...

We need to tent the studio for termites, replace its roof, tear out the carpeting, and paint the outside and a few other things. I dunno how long I can wait, though--some of the work (like renovating the kitchen) may just have to wait until AFTER we've moved in: I want OUT of this house so bad, I just can't stand it.
I cannot wait 2 more months or really even a month--I want to move NOW. I want to move YESTERDAY. I want a garden. I want a nice chicken coop for my chickens. I want to get my snakes out of their slum lord housing and into nice cages and setups. I want a desk that is not stuck on the end of the couch. I want a real couch, not an ancient futon on a cheap wooden frame.
I want I want I want I want.
{isigh}


With ttk's new job I get to see him for about an hour a night during the week--I don't know how I am going to do this alone. that's what it feels like--that he is so exhausted from work that I am going to be the one organizing our move, getting a contractor, getting a housecleaner for both places, getting stuff packed, purged, prepped, moved, organized, sorted, settled. Getting the house painted and floors installed. I don't know if I can do this.
Well, do it I must, but I just had to vent...I'm a little scared. No buyer's remorse, though--we've had too much time in escrow for that.
We're not giving notice for a few months so we can get all the work done, and have time to move calmly, although we seem to get more done under pressure. I won't say "work well" because we barely hold it together, and make stupid mistakes, but we seem to waste a lot of time before we knuckle down and get to it. With extra time, that's just extra worry time and lazing time.


We shall see, right?

A Month?!!

Have I really not written for a whole month? I've been thinking about it, I swear--in my head I have posted at least a dozen times since March 27th...
We're in escrow again. Number three.
TTK's last day of work at the archive was March 31st...hey, I sense a correlation! He's been home 24/7 for all of April, and I've not posted for...all of April!

He got a new and fab-o job, though...He starts May 12. I'm not sure if I'm thrilled to finally have him out of MY space, or bummed that he's starting a job with more traditional 9-5 hours, in SF, and won't be able to help much on the whole prepping and moving. Actually, I'm a bit of both.

I was going to post about the house, but I'm just not up to it now that I see I haven't posted AT ALL about it...
it'll have to wait until it's not 3:30 in the morning when I'm waiting for the skunk to come back and get trapped in the Hav-A-Hart cage we have set up...

Disambiguation

Sorry, I just realized that I missed mentioning a few things in the last few posts--we went into escrow on a house east of Sebastopol, on a gorgeous piece of property out on a winding country road, but the house inspection showed the house itself to be a mess, so we used our buyer contingency of inspections failing to live up to our standards, and left escrow. Two days later we went into escrow on a house that is the polar opposite of the first house--great house, incredibly built, well-laid out property, but smack up against a busy road.

Now we've released our contingencies, and the seller has 4 days to release their contingency (of finding a property) so we'll know by Friday if they wish to renegotiate, or just cancel. If all goes well, we should be closing escrow by mid-April, and starting our moving process by the end of April.

I'm alternating between hoping they'll cancel, and absolutely and totally wanting them not to cancel...this is all such an emotional, stressful process, that if this deal falls through I don't know if I can do this again. Of course, we would start all over and do this again (because the alternative would be staying here for longer), but I might lose some serious sanity points in the process.
My internal gyroscope has hit this place of almost calm--a wait and see kind of feeling.
There's a whole bunch of job stuff going on for my sweetie as well, so he's a mess about that AND whether we get the house...

He's cooler than I am...

So TTK got his pictures up online into his own webpage, all laid out and annotated, so I'm just going to send y'all there rather than try to get mine together. For now, anyway--I have a whole lot more pictures, but his commentary is more entertaining than I feel like writing right now, so here's where to go: http://www.ciar.org/ttk/mkindex.cgi?dir=images/house/2008-03-17

Oh--this is all about the house for which we're in escrow, in case you were wondering.
We went in today and removed our final Buyer's contingencies--now we just have to wait until Friday, for the Sellers to remove their contingencies, and we'll move into closing escrow. !!!!!!

I keep alternating between being overjoyed at the yummy house and property, and being all sick inside worrying about how busy the street is. It's not the quiet country road property we wanted, although it is on a country road, rural rather than residential. Problem is, it's a road that is straight, and connects two sections of the countryside, and people use it quite a lot. The speed limit is 45 MPH on this road--I don't know how, but somehow we compromised on one of the crucial issues we both said would be a deal-killer for us.
I'm worried the traffic's going to get worse, but my primary fear is that Sam or one of our other cats are going to end up splattered on that @%&@$!! road...
and yet here we are in escrow.
I don't know if these are normal buyer's regret quavers, or if we're doing the wrong thing, or what. I do know that we both have hit the point that if we do not get out of this cramped little rental, soon, we will either kill each other or ourselves, so we're doing this, even if we decide to move in 5 years.

migraine surges

Migraine stopped about 7 pm yesterday evening---but then sleep was nowhere to be found. And now, today, both dizziness and no sleep are my companions...
Yesterday was the home inspection, which I could NOT go to--so TTK went, and the inspection was over 4 hours and according to him, "very intense."
The house is in incredible condition--which is what happens when a master craftsman owns a place, I think. Our 10 day deadline for our inspections is Monday, and their 14 day deadline for opting out if they haven't found a place to move is Friday...so we'll know in a week whether or not the place is ours for sure. SCARY!!!
The migraine keeps threatening to return, which really sucks because tomorrow is supposed to be a busy day. :-(

We'll see.

We Walked Away.

Well, we decided that house needed more work than we were going to be able to afford, both timewise and moneywise, so we Walked Away. It actually felt really damn good to know we're strong enough to let go and be able to move on. 

So, we're in escrow on a different house. Heh.

The first of the inspections for THIS new house is tomorrow--the Well Inspection. It WILL go well.

This house is much nicer, but more expensive, and we're being much less over-the-top excited about being in escrow, now that we're all experienced n' shit. I've decided that buying a house is rather like getting pregnant, 50 years ago: you wait to tell everyone until you're sure you're not going to miscarry...

I am in the process of trying to get photos uploaded to my Kodak account, which is not public, so if you're interested in seeing them email me and I'll send you a link. WHEN I get the darn things up--I keep getting distracted and end up wandering all over the 'net doing research, reading blogs, and I get back on track and suddenly I am wandering through my computer files, looking at photos and oh, I need to do a little editing in Photoshop on this one, and I should upload it to my Flickr account, oh but I need to finish the crafty blog post I was making about this project, and oh oh oh oh

and suddenly instead of uploading photos, I am here writing in my blog about how I am NOT getting it done.

Ah, the joy of the easily distracted....

This is just miserable.

We had our house inspection yesterday, and the pest inspection. I swear, everything that could be wrong with this house, is. The roof is sagging, it has both dry wood and subterranean termites (I didn't even know there was sub-t!) the septic is for shit (literally!) and needs new leach lines and possibly a new tank, there's fungus growth around the edges of the roof from lack of gutters, the roof needs replacing, a "vapor barrier" needs to be installed in the crawlspace, etc. etc.
We thought about it overnight, then after my infusion this morning when ttk left, I sat down and started thinking this through, and I realized: I AM NOT UP TO THIS.
There is so much work that needs to be done before we could move in--at least 50-100 THOUSAND dollars--so why not spend more money and get an already fixed and nice house, that we can move into when escrow closes?
We told ourselves that if there were major problems we would just walk away--and I think that we need to acknowledge that now is the time. It feels like we have put so much work into this already, but realistically it's been a week. 5 days. We can find another house. I KNOW we can. We love the location so much, but the house is in miserable condition.
Are we going to have regrets if we walk away? Yes.
But I don't have the strength to manage a house rebuild, while ttk commutes and is gone most of the time.
Amontillado!
For the love of God, Montresor!

We are going to talk more tonight--I juts talked to him on the phone and he is going to call our real estate ladies and put a hold on the next inspection.

Anticipation.

I CAN NOT WAIT until we have a HOUSE!!!!!

With the brutal (but not as torrential as the weather dudes predicted) rainpour this last week, I've been completely unable to do laundry.

Our laundry area is OUTSIDE.

Have I mentioned how much this sucks?

Through the back door, on the side of the house/porch, is a pair of doors that open onto a closet-like area that is just deep enough for our washer and dryer. Nothing else. 

Not even a basket of laundry can sit in front of the washer and still have the doors close, so we've added a bungee cord to the doors so they can be kept closed most of the way when I have laundry out there. There's only about 4 inches of roof overhand, so I can't do laundry if it's even drizzling, since everything (including me) will get wet.

It's really evil to get a whole bunch of laundry done, have it hanging on the door all fresh and clean, and FORGET to close up the laundry area and have it get rained on.

When we take possession (knock wood that all the inspection reports are positive) the first thing I am doing is buying a fab-ola washer and dryer (front loading!) and having it shipped, and installed. No more doing laundry in the rain and cold and having the summer sun bleach my clothes if I leave the doors open!

This HAS to happen.

please

please

please

please

Waiting is the hardest part.

[sigh]

Um, so..

we just we bought a house.
Yeah.
Eek.

I suppose once the shock has worn off, I'll be really ecstatic, but right now I feel really strangely unemotional.
Kind of a solid feeling, really.
I'm not freaking, or assailed by doubts, but I'm also not overexcited and bouncing.

We just signed the papers yesterday, submitted our bid, and the seller accepted it this morning.

WE'RE IN ESCROW!!!!!!!

Okay, saying that makes it feel more real, since we have 30-45 days to close of escrow.
We're really in this!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, moment over--I prefer the calm.


WE JUST BOUGHT A HOUSE!

Now, if ttk doesn't lose his job before the loan papers are signed, and if all the inspections go well, and if I don't get sick again, and and and and...
We'll be in our new house in about 4 months.
June.
Just in time for our tenth wedding anniversary, and our renewal of vows we're hoping to do!
[thud]