That embarrassing kitchen junk drawer

I’ve been unpacking, of course. And came across a box that was, evidently, the contents of my several kitchen junk drawers. These are the sorts of drawers that you hope no one ever looks in, but are certainly the sort that no one should ever just pack up ‘in tact’ and move across the country. But that’s what happened.

I keep cookie cutters and extra pens and seldom-used aprons and such in my kitchen junk drawers mostly. And maybe a few office supplies that are nice to have at hand, and the odd bunch of small and otherwise homeless ‘parts’ that one collects – buttons, screwdrivers, paper clips, slips of paper with the phone number of the garden mulch place… I have old business cards, refrigerator magnets, the freebies from long-ago Tupperware parties. You get the idea.

But back to the box. There was a ‘mystery’ thing right on top that made me think I might be going a little too far in my collecting-things habit. A quart-size zip lock baggie was there, stuffed full of something black and soft looking. I was honestly afraid to look too close, since things have been in storage for months, but I really think it is cat hair. Frik’s cat hair, to be precise.

I can only now imagine that I must have had a fit of exasperation while brushing Frik at some point, wondering if there was a limit to how much hair he could lose and not be bald. Something must have made me decide I should collect, say, a week’s worth just to see how much that would be. Maybe there was something more ‘scientific’ to my thinking, but I sort of doubt it. I’ve always joked that we could manufacture another Frik pretty easily on his ‘sheddings’ but was I serious about trying at some point?

Now that just leaves me wondering. Three questions come to mind actually:

• How much hair COULD Frik lose without being bald?
• What could the ‘packers’ from the moving company have thought?
• What was I thinking?

Moving

We're in the throes of it, for sure. Boxes everywhere and not easy to unpack them since there is no place to put things yet. We bought a 'fixer upper' of course, and now we are 'fixing 'er up' so to speak.

One of the guys who helped us move the 'big' stuff said of the house that it looked 'very 80's.' Now I'm back to that old quandary about how I can tell when something is dated. But I think that one of the issues is that the trim (baseboards, door frames) is all brown - wood finish brown. We are painting it all a crisp white and hoping that will help update the whole house - but it is slow going. And, along the lines of 'the leg bone's connected to the hip bone' sort of thinking, we are finding that it makes sense to paint as we go, then set up the bookcases or china cabinet etc. - each thing that then needs to go along the painted wall. So this is, as I said, slow going.

And it didn't help that the movers didn't manage, for whatever reason, to get any of the hardware for our things to be, actually, WITH our things. No bolts to put the piano's legs on. No pins to hold up shelves in all those bookcases...

But -

• The new appliances are wonderful
• The house stays cool and the neighborhood is quiet
• The cats love looking out the windows and having more of their 'stuff'
• I can do laundry any time I want without worrying about disturbing other people
• The water tastes great!

And more good news - the other house sale looks more and more like it will actually go through!

Just thought a picture would be in order then...

Some complications

We did manage to check for cell phone reception at our new house before we bought it but really didn't pay attention to the cable TV / high-speed internet business, and now it's too late. We should have been suspicious about the little notation about 'leased equipment' on the property regarding a satellite dish, but, well... we just didn't think about it.

And then the seller's realtor, who lives across the street, mentioned that he has a dish too...

And when I was trying to get information about the utilities, the person from city hall said that 'right now, the cable is with...'

Hmmmmm. It appears that the big kid on the block around here - Comcast Cable TV - doesn't 'play' on our block at all. Evidently there is a great deal of dissatisfaction about this and a lot of wishful thinking about a takeover, but it hasn't happened yet.

So. We have 'Brand X' Cable TV. And they need 10 days to arrange for an installation at our house.

Looks like I'll be out of contact again for a while, blogger-wise.

It's just as well, probably. I tend to get a little overwrought in the middle of a move. You don't really want to hear about it, I'm sure.

Wish us luck!

Odd-funny

I saw an ad a few weeks ago about a free and helpful booklet you could order that gives information for travelers in various vacation spots around the country. It's called "Where to go when you have to go." Something about that tickled my weird sense of humor - maybe it was the sample calling card to give business owners to explain your 'overactive bladder' and ask for the use of their non-public restroom. Anyway, we got on the internet to find out more information (giggle, giggle) as the ad invited us to. I'm not really sure, anymore, why it seemed so funny at the time. Laughing all the way, we ordered the booklet. And it came today.

Now Mark is wondering what sort of weird list he is going to appear on in cyberspace.

Anyway, it all brought back stories about our whacky California next-door neighbor, Jane. She was full of advice on this topic – where to go if you needed to go. She thought real estate offices and new car dealers were great places - usually had clean restrooms without the waiting that you sometimes find at more touristy spots. A fanatic clean nut, she wouldn't use regular public restrooms, a habit that fit with her 'high maintenance' personality. We once invited her along on an excursion to a botanical garden in Berkeley, at least a 2 hour drive away, and she announced, in the middle of a traffic jam coming off the Bay Bridge, that she had taken a diuretic before she left and we would need to find a suitable restroom soon! (No, she didn’t have high blood pressure or any other medical issue requiring such medication.) The obvious McDonald's fast food place wouldn't do - it had to be something less-used. We got lost, of course, first trying to find a place and then finding a way back on the freeway. What a mess.

But that's not the only topic for our 'Jane' stories. Another time she was talking about traveling and the inventiveness she has employed, as a single woman traveling alone, to still enjoy company on her trips. On a vacation to Boston she contacted a realtor and feigned interest in buying a house in the area - and conned the poor woman into days of showing her the neighborhoods and local attractions and buying her lunch. (I said she was weird, but did I mention ‘criminally insane?’)

One of our favorite 'Jane' stories is about when she was looking for people to rent individual rooms in a house she owned - and was putting up flyers in churches on Sunday morning (when they were open and there were people around, of course.) She didn't go to the service, mind you, just snuck in afterwards to put her notice up. One church was hosting a congregational breakfast (a $3.00 per person fundraiser) when she went in (her usual attire was shabby, to say the least, and she hadn't 'put on airs' to run this flyer-errand at all, but, oh well…) and she suddenly felt hungry… and the bacon and eggs and pancakes smelled sooooo good... So she dug into her pants pocket and came up with $0.58 and asked the nearest official-looking person how much food she could get for what she was holding out to him in the palm of her hand. What could he do? He told her to eat her fill, and "God bless." And she did. She owned 3 houses at the time and privately claimed to us that she was one of the richest women in Santa Rosa – which was patently untrue but at least she didn’t qualify for a free breakfast as a charity case.

She proudly recounted other instances of ‘saving’ money. Like the time she returned a set of dishes she’d had for 9 years – and demanded, and got, a full refund. Or the time she decided to go to a San Francisco Giants game with only $30 in her pocket to see if she could get a scalped ticket and parking for that amount. (I think she ended up paying nearly that for parking and then snuck in somehow and kept switching seats. Not sure how she got the hot dog, but we probably don't want to know.) So we had sufficient evidence, and should have been forewarned, but we were still surprised the time she invited us to a movie – her treat to pay us back for all the times we’d invited her along and bought her lunch and had her over for dinner etc. – and instead of just paying for the tickets, handed Mark a $10 bill and told him to buy the tickets for the two of us at ‘that’ window while she bought her own ticket at ‘this’ window… Movie tickets were pricey in northern California - $8 apiece.

When last we saw Jane, she was standing outside our CA house after we'd put it up for sale and during the realtor’s Open House, telling prospective buyers/neighbors that they had to be ‘white’ and couldn't own a dog. ("I have to look out for myself," she told our realtor. "No one else is going to.")

I guess not.

Simple things, not always so simple

I’ve spent the afternoon working on address changes to magazines. What a way to spend some hours! Because of a quirk in US Postal Service regulations, mail can’t be forwarded from the private mail box arrangement we now have - and we’ll have to individually change the address on all of it. And it has become clear (when I’ve generally, before, been able to hide the evidence) that I am subscribing to nearly every magazine out there. I’m not sure how the habit got that bad, but it probably has something to do with how bummed I’ve been. Oh well.

Every magazine has a website, but that’s where the ‘common’ approach to the problem ends. Few of them have obvious ways to do subscription changes, although ALL of them have obvious ways to subscribe in the first place. In some cases, having finally found the right ‘page’ and changed the address, they come back to you thanking you for renewing your subscription. Or in one case, thanking you for changing your address to the old address. Hmmmmm. Did I miss something there? Don’t know, because it won’t let me back in to check – the site now says they are processing my change and I won’t have access to the system for several days. Goodness knows where that magazine will end up but I’ll probably not miss it, considering all the other ones that are piling up anyway.

The utilities were easier, once I finally figured out which utilities they were. (Somehow that didn’t get into the real estate information papers, and should have, and was hard to track down on my own. That’s probably just me though, now that I think about it.) I ended up talking with nice, considerate people who seemed to know what they were doing and were helpful and friendly. I didn’t really expect that, but there you have it. Garbage will be collected, lights will go on (though the light fixtures themselves are another story!)

Piano-moving arrangements have had to be adjusted, but again, people were very understanding and helpful. I had to admit to myself that we might not be able to find the thing under all the boxes and stacked up furniture and so it will be the last thing, not the first thing, out of storage. (Cross your fingers for me that we can actually find all three legs!)

We signed all the papers today; paid the money and suffered the sticker shock. We’ll get the keys on Tuesday and the movers will move the apartment stuff on Wednesday and the storage stuff on Friday. All new kitchen appliances (my concession to myself for having to ‘downgrade’ and ‘downsize’) are coming on Wednesday also, and the piano (finally!) will be moved on Saturday.

All that’s left is to get in there on Tuesday afternoon and put in new shelf paper.

Where we are going to put all our stuff? No, not ‘simple’ at all.

Science and indecision

I read today that scientists still don’t have a definition for ‘planet’ and will be voting on whether to adopt one soon, at a convention no less. It seems that this new definition possibility – that a planet is round and bound by gravity, basically – would mean that several other already-identified celestial bodies would instantly become planets – rounding us out to an even dozen but with potential for 57 total and a whole lot of controversy. Or something like that. Good grief.

So we'd have Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon (Charon is Pluto's same-sized moon but would now be classified as a planet, only both Pluto and Charon would actually be 'Plutons' to distinguish them from the other planets... er... ) and, finally, 2003 UB313. I kid you not. Sort of takes the romance out of the skies, doesn't it?

I guess all this came about because of the discovery of Pluto and the fact that it was declared to be a planet right away. Evidently not a lot of consideration went into that one. Frankly, Pluto has been around long enough that you’d think any controversy about its status would have been resolved by now. Since the names of the planets are among the few things I’ve ever managed to memorize and remember from elementary school (along with the beginning of "Four score and seven years ago" and the charming little ditty*, “What a wonderful bird the frog are…”) it seems like such a betrayal. Why aren't things we 'know' still the things we know? Worse, certainly, than changing the name of Bombay to Mumbai, for example. But that isn't really my point. I'm wondering, actually, about the 'indecision' of it all.

Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences. Astronomers have been around - with their own scientific instruments and everything - for centuries. You’d think they’d have their act together better than that at this point. Sort of gives one pause for thought. If we still can't decide what a planet is… well, I don't know what. Can't decide. Good grief.


* (In case you were wondering)

What a wonderful bird the frog are.
When he stand, he sit. Almost.

When he hop, he fly. Almost.

He ain't got no sense hardly
He ain't got no tail hardly either

When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got.

Almost.

-- Anonymous

Parenting

It's 'back to school' time. Time to refocus on kids, I guess, for there have been a lot of feature articles on my newspage about parenting lately. A recent one was about paying kids for getting good grades in school; another was about how kids behave in public and whether parents should have to rein them in (or are we just becoming a kid-intolerant society, we are asked?) Boy, parents have a job to do, don't they? And there is no shortage of advice about how they should do it.

I've been reading 'advice on parenting' articles for 35 years now and have concluded that anyone who takes them seriously needs to, well, seriously reconsider. Who writes this stuff?

Now I can't resist. So here's my shot at it... (Not that you should take this seriously or anything.)

My 'guiding principle' for childrearing: Raise your children to become successful, happy adults.

Are you laughing at me? Did I just say something too obvious and completely un-helpful?

Let me try again then. In two parts. Numbered, if you will:

1. You have to actively 'raise' your children, practically all the time. Everything is an opportunity for guidance and learning, and there is no time like NOW to take advantage of that opportunity.
2. You have to understand what the end goal is, and always work toward it.

In 'education-speak' that end goal boils down to knowing what they (successful, happy adults) have to know and be able to do in order to BE successful, happy adults. MY list, just off the top of my head here, includes:

• be responsible for your own happiness and pursue it with enthusiasm
• be considerate of others
• be able to motivate yourself and delay gratification appropriately
• be goal-directed; able to set goals, develop plans to achieve them, actually take action, and then evaluate your progress and try again
• know how to look for help when you need it
• understand and manage your emotions so that they express you, not control you
• be flexible
• take care of yourself
• ... hmmmmm... and I'm sure there's more

OK, that's the second part - here's back to the first part: I think too many parents hope their children will become successful, happy adults without giving any daily consideration, from earliest childhood, to how they are going to get them there. Children can't easily cross an imaginary line at some point when they are suddenly expected to be an adult - with all the skills and responsibilities and good habits thereto. It's not fair to spring that on them! They have to be able to develop those 'habits' from the beginning - when habits are most likely to develop and take hold anyway. And that means actively teaching them about having choices and making decisions and interacting with others. Give them the words, the actions, the emotional tags, the decision-making processes - all the specific tools - to deal with things the way they will need to deal with them when they are older.

They will grow up confident and capable and self-reliant. Happy successful adults. Mostly anyway.

Seriously.

Hooray?

We got an offer on our KY house yesterday. Not a great one. In fact, a lousy one in every aspect of the concept ‘offer,’ but an offer nevertheless. And we accepted it, and I’d guess there is a 50/50 chance that it will actually go through, sometime in the next few months. Hooray?

Somehow, after all the disappointment and anxiety and frustration for the past 9 months of NOT selling this house, yesterday was probably the worst day we’ve had emotionally. It was actually worse than all that ‘nothing’ that was going on before. I think that’s because now, for sure, we’ve got our worst-case scenario on the sale. Hope isn’t an ‘out’ anymore. Wishing didn’t get it done. The gamble didn’t really pay off. In spite of our best efforts, we didn’t get the outcome we wanted. Oh woe is me… sort of thing. (My father would have added something along the lines of going down in the cellar to eat some worms but, well… that was HIS thing.)

It is interesting to me that it played out this way with my emotions, for surely the ‘worst-case scenario’ is really that it didn’t sell for another year or so. But we’d gotten over that. We’d already found a way to make that work and come out the other end, so to speak, of that dilemma. It was awful, and having been done with that finally – all that wallowing around in despair that I can be so guilty of in tough times where I don’t have any control or choices or action to take – I wasn’t ready for this next, final blow.

But I think I’ve got it back together now. This will surely be better in the long run. Uncertainty being what it is, a ‘bird in the hand…’

I know what it is all about at least. I just can’t stand to go backwards; to ‘lose ground’ as it were. It’s hard enough for me to accept the ‘2 steps forward, 1 step back’ sort of progress that life can throw at you, but very bad when it becomes ‘2 steps forward, 3 steps back’ and no progress at all.

(A well-documented psychological phenomenon: Successful people tend to credit their success with hard work and planning. Unsuccessful people tend to blame their lack of success on ‘bad luck’ and things generally outside of their control, like the general meanness or stinginess or prejudice of others.)

So – more lessons learned; more progress made; better things to come. Hooray!

My perfect luck

I’ve been playing solitaire on my computer a lot lately. Terrible habit. I had to get away from the jig saw puzzles (I finally got worried about the pop-up ads and viruses) but have just been too distracted for any serious reading – and, of course, there is nothing on TV, in spite of 150+ channels. I don’t know why I should resort to any of that cheap entertainment but… well, there you have it.

So, today I hit the perfect solitaire game.

Now, I’ve played solitaire since I was a kid, once in a while going through spells where I play it all the time. I can’t really even estimate the thousands of games I’ve played over that time. It is the only card game I know how to play, not having a mind for remembering numbers or counting cards. I have some ‘policies’ that I follow in terms of priorities in the moves I make but of course it is mostly just the luck of the draw whether you win or lose. If the cards are stacked right, you can win. If not, no amount of good decision-making will help.

The perfect game then? Depends on your point of view I guess. In this perfect game, there wasn’t a single move I could make.

Not one.

I don’t think that’s ever happened before. Or maybe it has and I don’t remember. Maybe it just hit me as odd this time.

Is this another ‘metaphor’ discussion? It could be…

Squeaky mice and metaphors

My mouse squeaks; the one that goes with my computer, I mean.

And I think that is just taking the metaphor too far.

Things that sneak up on you when you aren't looking

In the various categories of general annoyances in life, this category – Things That Sneak Up On You When You Aren't Looking – has to be the worst. Unlike, for example, Noisy Neighbors or Unpleasant Head Colds, all too often 'sneaky' things don't go away. Or even if they can go away, they leave residue of some kind that stays with you - usually embarrassment, depression or other kinds of scars.

(Scars, you say? Well, I have several surgical incisions that were the end result of various 'growths' that snuck up on me while I wasn't looking.)

Take, for example, my friend from years ago who one day discovered a 3 inch long thick black hair growing robustly from the front of her neck. I have similar 'sneak ups' regarding stray eyebrows, but 3 inches is a lot of growth to not notice...

When I bought my car, its 'new car smell' was there for a long time and then just wasn't. I'm not sure when it went away, but at some point it was surely gone. And at some point also, the whole thing somehow morphed from being a beautiful new car to being a 'used' car with some dings and dull paint and stains on the floormats. I don't know when that happened either but the evidence of its occurrence is unmistakable. (Well, maybe that one isn't really so embarrassing as it is depressing.)

Overdue bills are another example - the ones that get stuffed in the checkbook because you are going to pay them 'tomorrow' and one thing leads to another and you don't get back to it when you should and then suddenly you realize that you haven't even looked at your checkbook in 3 weeks. There's a 'gift that keeps on giving.'

Or 'fat.' Certainly that's something that sneaks up on you, right along with your cholesterol number and blood sugar.

Gray hair, scuffed shoes, retirement financing. Pets going from puppy/kitten fun to geriatrics with halitosis and elimination problems. I had a beautiful navy/tan handmade quilt on the bed in my guestroom for years and suddenly it looked so faded from the sun shining on it day after day through the window that you couldn’t tell it was supposed to be navy blue. Things That Sneak Up On You When You Aren't Looking aren’t good.

How did I get on this depressing topic? I had cause to wonder, this morning, just when it happened that I became a gray-haired little old lady with orthopedic shoes and hot flashes.

That sort of thing gets you thinking in ‘philosophy.’

Dahlias

Mark suggested a walk through the Bellevue Botanical Gardens this morning and I jumped at the chance. After seeing the incredible display of Dahlias in the flower stalls at the Market downtown last week, I was anxious to see if the Botanical Garden had a section for them. And I wasn’t disappointed.

We grew Dahlias in Oregon for a couple of years, coming off the inspiration provided by the Swann Island Dahlia Farm in Canby, Oregon. They are one of the largest producers of bulbs-by-mail and their display gardens are wonderful, topped only by the acres of flowers in their production fields. Very much like the tulip festival, the Dahlia festival was a highlight of the end of summer. I’m such a sucker for that stuff!

So now I have dreams of a Dahlia garden of our own. Surely there will be a good place for them in our soon-to-be backyard. It is truly wonderful to have something concrete to look forward to again, instead of just that ‘someday’ and ‘whenever’ and ‘if only’ business…

Time marches on

I've been neglecting my picture processing lately - and have files from 3 weekends that I haven't done anything with. Yikes! I like to be more organized than that, mostly because the memory is going and I'm not sure, looking at a bunch of pictures several weeks after they were taken, what they are. That's not good.

Why is it that weeks can blend together and separate events can get all jumbled up in our minds? When I lost my credit card a few weeks ago I knew I had been to the grocery store the day before, but my memory put me into one store when I had actually left it at another one. (I got it back, fortunately, after finally getting the place right.) I never used to make those sorts of mistakes - certainly not leaving a credit card in a store in the first place, much less not being able to reconstruct my day enough to know which store it was! Or when we had to wait forever to catch a ferry back to Seattle a while ago, I remembered it as the Bainbridge ferry but I think it must have been the Mukilteo ferry instead. It's disconcerting.

Does memory fill up as we age? Do I need to consciously let go of a bunch of memories to free up space for new stuff? I'm not sure I know how to do that.

And I was just thinking that I wouldn't WANT to do that, but then it occurred to me that I'd really like to forget all about the times I made stupid mistakes or hurt someone's feelings with an offhand remark or got embarrassed about something. (And over my 55 years I've sure done a lot of that!) A whole bunch of memory cycles are taken up with regrettable stuff. And, of course, every time I get down on myself much of that stuff lines up waiting to parade across my consciousness and make me miserable again.

Here's a ridiculous example: I had a Camaro that I bought in 1973 and had for several years. It was the only 2-door car I've ever had, and the doors were big - long, actually. One time I opened my door in a parking lot and it came into contact with the car in the next stall... whose owner just happened to be approaching the car. He yelled at me, of course, and I was mortified, of course, and I still remember the incident. Why? (Well, because of the emotional content and chemistry, but that really was a rhetorical question, not a scientific one.) If I could give up that memory, even if it was just in order to remember where that ferry line was a few weeks ago, I'd happily do so. 1975 or so was a LONG time ago!

I should work on that. I'd like to let all the miserable stuff go so I'd have more room for the good.

Anyway, back to those pictures... Before time marches on too far to know for sure, this one is in Gig Harbor.



(It's been a while since I posted a picture and I thought we needed one!)

Inspections and other stuff

The house inspection was fine - no surprises. Mark had a chance to meet the dog that lives there now - Widget. I wonder how 'dog' smells will hit our cats.

Anyway, there were a few things that we could have asked them to take care of, but they are moving already and it would be a hassle for them so we decided not to. Just seemed like the right thing to do. We'd have appreciated it, at least, if the situation had been reversed.

So the Massive Paperwork Generator is hard at work and, come the 22nd of this month (or maybe, actually, a couple of days before that) it will spit out its guts and we'll develop writer's cramp signing and initialing all that paper.

We think we have 'moving' arrangements made, although the line on the list for 'move and set up piano' still has a question mark next to it. Putting three legs on and flipping it all upright is a bit more dicey than it seems.

Hopefully though, we won't end up with broken ribs... Is that what happened, Ryan? You moved and your brother beat you up for it?

A year!

I've been blogging for a year, exactly.

And I'm amazed at that. Who'd have thought there be something to say for that long? (I realize that is stretching it a bit - I haven't had much to say at some points, and at others, what I've said hasn't been particularly worth saying.) In any case, it's been a year. This is the 370th posting in that time - so I managed to average about one a day, in spite of some lapses. I read something yesterday from a news correspondent who was saying he's giving it up (blogging) after five years! Of course he was blogging about world news. I'm just blogging about 'Cathy' news. Actually, I am blogging about 'Planning.' Or, being without a plan, as the case may be. Maybe world news would have been easier.

Mark and I were talking the other night about my 'planning' habit. I am one of the great planners in this world - and he has appreciated the irony of my blog title. I can't help it. Plans just pop into my head right and left. That I found myself without a 'big' plan for my life in the midst of moving and setting up shop in new places, was odd, to say the least. That I have failed to develop that 'big' plan in all this time though... well, that seems OK to me. The smaller ones are more fun.

Right now, of course, I am either carrying out details of a long-ago-developed 'moving' plan - 'closing' paperwork details, change of address paperwork, insurance arrangements, giving notice at the apartment and storage facility - or developing a new plan for redecorating our new house - paint samples, appliance comparisons, room-by-room breakdown of what needs to be done with a cost analysis and priority assignment. I'm also starting to think, now that we are getting out of our 'temporary' status here, that we might begin to plan a vacation. Am I getting too far ahead for the 'little' plans?

(I used to be married to a recovering alcoholic who was a devotee of the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is basically to take life 'one day at a time.' Codswallop, in my opinion. You have to be able to plan, prepare, anticipate... just to enjoy laying out the future for yourself, just the way you want it.)

Anyway, the question now is what to do with the blog? If I don't post every day, I lose people - and I've found that I really like the 'comments' part of blogging. In fact, that is basically why I've continued to write. (Although I wonder if my last hiatus resulted in losing Ryan??? Where are you Ryan? Carolyn? Lauren?) But finding something to post every day is difficult, obviously. I'd like it to be interactive - more like a conversation - but every time I ask for comments I don't get them, so it doesn't look like that would work. I know there are some people who read the blog but never comment (my mother, for example? Ahem.) And it is, of course, MY thing, not anyone else's. Anyway, I'm going to put some thought into it and see what comes of it.

I do want to thank you, who have read and commented and shared pictures and laughed with me. You've made it a lot more interesting and fun for me!

Not a bad way to spend a year.

Details, details

Mark is meeting the realtor and the house inspector this morning at the new house to go through the inspection and make sure the house will still be standing in one piece when we take possession. This is the time in the home buying process when you are thinking of all the questions you should have been looking for answers to BEFORE you signed on the dotted line.

Most significantly, of course, is "Yikes! How are we going to pay for all this?"

But there are also all the little 'sub-plots.' Uh... where are we going to put the piano? The safe? All the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations?

Do we actually get cell phone reception out there? Are there window coverings in all the rooms? Does the garage door have an electric opener? Are there cabinets above the refrigerator? Where was the mailbox?

(When we bought the Kentucky house it wasn't until we were unpacking the extra sheets and towels that we actually realized that there was no linen closet in the house. )

But first things first. The most pressing issue on Mark's mind this morning is more likely to be "Do I know how to get there?" We get lost easily, as anyone who has ever visited us can attest. (My sister came to see us shortly after I moved from Alaska to Portland years ago and I got lost trying to get her home from the airport. We made it eventually, but it wasn't pretty.) Hopefully we can actually FIND the place again - and if so, all the other issues will be answered as well.

Even as I ponder all the questions though, I know that the noise and inconvenience and hassle of apartment living will soon be behind us - and that is a big relief. Huge. And out-trumps anything this house can throw at us.