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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

stuff

I've been under a lot of stress since the whole we-have-to-move thing got dropped in our laps. I realized the other day that this is a new experience for me, this waiting for someone else to make decisions that will impact my life in a very big way. The last time this happened was when I was applying for colleges. In 1993. In my adult life, I've never had to move house; I've not applied for jobs and waited for calls for interviews; I've not even applied for credit when there was any doubt that it would be approved. So this whole issue of waiting (and waiting and waiting) for other people, who don't know me from Adam and couldn't care less if I lived or died, to get themselves together and make a decision that will alter my life in a very serious way, is taking its toll on me. I have had some up-and-down days lately, and I've been lying low about it around here because if I'm tired of my own whining that I know nobody else wants to hear it, but actually some of the days, the 'down' bits of up-and-down have been almost kind of scary.

So it was nice to go to school tonight for the first time since May and have a really good time. Small blessings, and all. Even though I got to my car after class and saw that I'd left my headlights on (car started fine). Even though I got pulled over on the way home because the officer said I was weaving and thought I might be under the influence. (Yep, that's me, under the influence of a diet Coke and a Beatles song combined with the fact that a 35-year-old car has a steering box that is a wee bit more relaxed than the ones they come out with today.) Even though the instructor for the class I'm taking has a reputation as a really hard grader. Even though I get to spend the semester reading books about the working poor with a decidedly liberal slant, and even though I'm a tiny bit afraid of getting graded down for my opinions rather than my writing skills. Honestly, with the kind of day I had, I could have been going to a dental appointment followed by a trip to the gynecologist, a swimsuit-shopping expedition, and a tour of a dairy farm, and it would have been a pleasant change from the breakdown-inducing difficulties I had with my kids today, just over whether or not their chores would get done. Well, with one of them.

Oops, there's that whining I wasn't going to do.

So. It's good to be back at school. Tomorrow I have another class -- something else to look forward to, that will help pass the time while we wait for house news. I wonder if it's too late to sign up for about thirty more units?

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

in which I am decidedly un-heroic

I have been noticing that I may be mildly depressed right now. Nothing so dramatic as crying fits or wanting to throw myself off bridges or seething inside with rage at the loss of the life I might have lived if I hadn't been such a loser... just this faint whiff of, well, mostly, laziness. I'm faced with the monumental task of having to move all of our belongings from the place I have lived for essentially my entire adult life, into another house that may never, for all we know, emerge intact from the ethereal mists of home-buying confusion. Here are the ways my heroes would handle this situation.

My eighty-year-old spunky grandmother would work herself into a coma.

My mother would make an organized list, divide it into days, and have the whole job done efficiently and promptly within three weeks.

My dad would build a new house with his own two scarred hard-working hands, multiple sclerosis be damned, on land someone gave him as a prize for being the best man in the world.

Jesus would speak kindly and rationally to everyone around him, and they would miraculously and willingly do things his way. Except for the ones who wouldn't, but that would all be part of God's plan.

T would just power through and get it done. Well, he is powering through his (much larger than mine) part of the job, and he is getting it done, one truckload at a time.

Mary Poppins would snap her fingers a few times, and poof.

This last one -- how do-able do you think that might be? really? Because that's about all the energy I have to expend on any of this nowadays. I'm so drained from the waiting, so frustrated with the fact that this big THING that has such a huge impact on the rest of our lives is just one more piece of paper to get lost on the desk of some person at an office who thought he'd already faxed it to some other person at some other office but who really hadn't, that all I seem to have is enough energy to kind of ooze through my day, loading the dishwasher here, packing a box from an unused cupboard there, folding a load of laundry now and then, and spending a whole lot of time reading Wives and Daughters, wishing I could justify a four-hour nap each day. Or maybe two. I don't feel overwhelmed by catastrophe; I just feel by turns angry at the delays and apathetic about the entire situation. T reminds me that it's all in God's hands, but I seem to be having a crisis of unbelief right now and there's no way I can feel that. And it's harder every day to pretend that I do.

And on that cheery note, I'm taking the kids to the town pool, 'bodily emissions' and all. It's too hot to do any energetic playing outside, and we're all three of us getting a layer of winter fat, except it's July. I don't feel like doing this any more than I feel like doing anything. Maybe, though, if I just keep on doing, the ability to feel will return eventually. It's been known to happen before. Here's hoping.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

still waiting.

Just wanted to update everyone.

Also, I just realized that I forgot my book post. Maybe later.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

update again

We made a very conditional (and quite low) offer on a fixer-upper on Thursday. I had to wait to post about it until I could do it without screaming (which left Thursday out) or fainting (Friday). I think I may have whimpered a little just now, but that's manageable. My mantra in this process: People Don't Die Of Buying A House.

The house itself is in eh OK shape. It's sound, but there's some water damage from broken pipes, which are repaired but the spot in the ceiling is not, which means that if our offer (or counter-counter-offer, or whatever) is accepted, we'll be very glad to have handy family members, since T's expertise about cars, firearms, and telecommunications, and mine about whatever areas in which I may have expertise -- maybe putting on band-aids and reading novels -- will not help us much in the matter of serious home improvements. Also, it looks like someone started repainting the interior of the house and never finished (which I can handle, but prepare for posts with asterisks, just in case), and one of the bedrooms has a bare plywood floor, courtesy of the previous owner's dogs and their carpet-wrecking excretory habits. But all of this is the saving grace that actually puts a house in which we can live (read: 3 bedrooms) into a price range which we can, by dint of scrimping and basically not doing anything fun ever again, possibly afford. And hard work is good for us. And maybe while we're getting home-improvement stuff lumped into our mortgage, we can get enough for laminate floors in the living room/kitchen/dining room, instead of the two kinds of linoleum and pale gray carpet that're in there now. So. The house is OK; what I've really fallen in love with, even though I keep telling myself sternly not to, is the land it is on. It's far enough out to be quiet, there are four nice gentle acres which will be a riot of wildflowers in the spring, there's a tree in the backyard that's just right for a treehouse, there's an empty rose arbor just waiting for Natalie's rosebush (which is some sort of climbing thing, most unhappy in our yard), there's a vegetable garden with deer-proof (ha! ha ha! funny term) fencing, there's a two-car garage and a shed for bicycles and lawnmowers (and, let's face it, auto parts). But like I said, I'm not allowed to fall in love with it. I'm not even allowed to think about falling in love with it. Too much could happen to make it, well, not happen. The way I look at it, though, is that it's something to which God can say either Yes or No. And it feels so much better to be doing something more constructive than simply trying not to panic in front of the kids.

So. In other news. Um. (Is there any other news? I cannot believe we have only been home for four days; it seems like this has been consuming all our thoughts for at least a month. This Too Will Pass; I have to keep telling myself that.) Hmm. I have a medium-sized transcribing job to keep me busy while I'm not sleeping at night, car work is progressing apace, and there are more vacation pictures at Flickr. T has to go back to work on Monday (*snif*). Thatisall. I think.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

update

thing 1: work is progressing. T is ok. I think he might actually be glad to have something constructive to do, under the circumstances.

thing 2: I recovered most of the pictures, thanks to a sanity-saving program I discovered a couple of years ago (when the Coolpix ate a memory card) called "PC Inspector Smart Recovery". It's amazing what can still be on a memory card when it's empty. Kind of creepy, actually.

thing 3: We have three months to either be out of this house or own it. Which is pretty generous, really. Now we just have to figure out what to do and where to go. Without a substantial income from me, our options in this market are rather limited, even though prices have flattened a little bit in the past year or so. And a substantial income from me is not an option at this point. So. Still looking around and praying, and fortunately the cloud of despair seems to have been exchanged for one of simple uncertainty.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

this is where I would swear, if I swore.

thing that sucks:

Poor T has to spend his at-home days during his two weeks off working on cars. My beloved Dart is having transmission issues (in fact, we borrowed my parents' van to take on vacation so as to avoid getting stuck in the middle of nowhere -- there are several middles of nowheres on the way from here to Morro Bay -- with a broken car in the hundred-degree heat) and he's taking the tranmission out of it as I type this so that he can get it rebuilt and put it back in. Also, HIS Dart has had transmission issues for ages (falls out of second gear), and he finally got a good deal on a replacement transmission, so he has THAT to do, as well as the replacement of an exhaust manifold so that his Dart can stop sounding like a lawn mower everywhere it goes.

Thing that sucks more (sorry, I'm selfish):

I just accidentally deleted my very favorites from among roughly half of my vacation pictures (note to self: if you make a "favorites" folder and move a couple hundred photos into it, for pity's sake don't delete it. I'm trying a recovery but I KNOW some of them will be lost forever. (No, Jenn, none of yours were lost, whew). I have GOT to find where I can tell my computer to USE THE DAMN RECYCLE BIN instead of just permanently deleting stuff right away. Any help with this?

Thing that sucks most:

Within five minutes of our arrival home, our landlord (who had put about twenty square feet of primer on the house so far) informed us that this time he really does want to sell our house (there have been a couple of false alarms in the thirteen years in which we've been renting from him). He hopes we can buy it (for about sixty thousand dollars more than we can realistically and safely afford) but if we can't he'll either put it on the market or move in himself for two years so that he can avoid paying capital gains when he sells it and oh by the way can we let him know by Friday what we're going to do because there's this duplex he really wants to buy with the money from this place.

This is where I would swear again.

We are trying hard not to feel really defeated right now. I know the Lord has something great for us in all of this but it's hard to FEEL that at this point. Know what I mean? Oh how I would appreciate people's prayers for peace and wisdom on this.

house stuff Archives | Page 3 of 3

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