When I saw the temperature today was a calm 65, I knew I had to abandon any unpacking of my office stuff and go for a ride. I mean, cripes, SIXTY FIVE in January. That begs for a ride, and hey! I might as well tool around the city and see where everything is.

The problem with that?

This little city is 3.5 square miles and it only took about 7 minutes to go up and down the major streets.

That's not an impressive ride.

Plus, if you loop around the little city 6 or 7 times, people start to notice, and look at you like "Ya lost? Stop and ask, I'll give you directions."

It still beat unpacking.

It may be the only room in decent shape, but we got the library painted, bookshelves up, and books in place. And true, most families would use the room as a dining area, but it's just the two of us, and we like books more than a table that would only get used once in a blue moon.

Before...we hated the green, really hated it...



After a coat of primer and the first coat of red...and then a nice place to stick boxes during move in...



Bookshelves up and books put away (with a little snoopervision by Buddah)


Click through to biggify

It's not 100% done. We want to put a shelf under that little window above the kitty towers so the cats can get up there, and then to the top of the bookshelves. And if anyone wants to actually sit in there and read, we need a light by the chair. But it's almost done.

Nice that one room is, anyway...

Something's up with Blogger...if your blog is hosted with Blogger and you use their commenting feature, don't be upset if you get no comments. I keep trying to leave comments at y'alls blogs, but for whatever reason the system isn't recognizing user names or that a user is already signed in. Just so you know...

• One would think that after a week in this house, I would know where everything is. So imagine my surprise when instead of the bathroom I expected to find myself in, I wound up in the laundry room. Granted, there is a litter box right next to the dryer, so I could have used that, but I suspect that would have ticked off the kitties.


• I have still not had an entire night without a cat sleeping on top of me. Buddah has pinned me down for several nights running, which annoys the carp out of Max (who jumps up on the bed, growls, and then jumps back down); Max thinks he owns me, and therefore Buddah has no right to be there. The Spouse Thingy is not working tonight, so he may get to enjoy the wonders of Buddah tonight instead. I suspect I've just been a warm body for a scared little kitty, and he'll be happier with his main human bed tonight.


• Two weeks after asking the post office to give us a key to our little box wedged in the middle of the giant community mailbox (no home delivery to individual houses anymore, dangit) we finally got one. Well, two weeks and multiple requests, which ended when the Spouse Thingy finally demanded to see the Postmaster, who was, frankly, horrified that her people didn't want to go out in the rain to change the lock on a box and deliver the key to the people who needed it. So we get the key, and in the box was a notice "You gots too much mail to fit in here. Get thee hence to the post office to pick it up." Like, why not give the mail to the Spouse Thingy when he was there trying very hard to not go postal?


• The house still looks like it barfed all over itself. My lack of motivation combined with the need to be quiet while the Spouse Thingy slept all weekend made for very little progress in the unpacking of things. I don't know what excuse I'll use while he's off for the next couple of days.


• It has occured to me that I now need a new place to go people-watch and write and stuff. I could technically still go to Borders, but it's not very likely I'll want to go that far now. And this is a small town...I'm not sure I have a place to go. What to do, what to do...

How whipped am I?

Buddah plopped down on top of me last night, about 2 minutes after I'd crawled into bed. He curled up and went to sleep right away, so I didn't move for 6 hours, until he heard the Spouse Thingy's car in the driveway. He jumped up in hopes of crunchy treats to tide him over until breakfast, and I could finally roll over.

I'm a little stiff this morning, but the sad thing is, if he does it again tonight, chances are I won't roll over, lest I disturb him...

OK, I officially love this place, just because the nearest grocery store carries Alpha Bits cereal...

We're about 98% moved; there are still a few things back at the old house, but we got everything important out, just in case the house sold at auction today. It's not likely that it would wind up with changed locks before the end of the month, but we weren't taking any chances.

No kitties were misplaced during this move; they stayed in a bedroom while the Boy and one of his friends muscled all the big stuff out and into the truck, and I let them explore for a bit once most of that stuff was gone. The slinked out of the room and it was like "Dooood! OUR STUFF IS GONE!!!" but they didn't seem too upset. They meowed the entire ride to the new house, and then spent the next few hours creeping at high speed, checking out the new digs, and after a couple of hours it was like "Dooood! I FOUND OUR STUFF!"

Max spent that first night sleeping with me, meowing every 10 minutes, and flopping onto my head every 15 minutes, but he was fine the next day. Buddah spent the first night curled around the Spouse Thingy, like he knew that was the one place he'd be safe, but he's settled into nicely.

We're on borrowed Internet access tonight, but the Spouse Thingy is trying to set up DSL service, so we might actually be able to do more than a quick Hey We're Alive post soon...

After a week of painting, moving stuff, more painting...tomorrow is the big move, when the Boy and his friend provide the muscle to get the big stuff out of here and into the new house. We're also going from a pretty fast broadband Internet connection to DSL, and we haven't set it up yet, so I have no idea when we'll be able to get back online (from home, anyway...if my addiction is as bad as I think, I may be taking the laptop to the nearest McD's with free wireless...)

Who'da thunk that there would be no cable access at all in a town of 18,000?

Keep your fingers crossed that this doesn't stress the kitties out too much. They already know something is up and they don't like it; Max has been growling and hissing at us and Buddah, and this morning he bit me. Not hard, but a little harder than his usual just setting his teeth on my skin, enough to let me know he's not happy.

Hopefully he won't try to actually eat my face off...

My Reality..

After going up and down a ladder about 4,319 times this weekend...oh holy carp my ass is on fire. If it's not hard as a rock by the time I'm done painting, there is no justice.

Ya know, 10 foot ceilings are nice until you try to paint the walls they're attached to...

All righty now.

First we were supposed to close on December 30th, but did not. Totally out of our control; we'd done everything on our end, but the seller (Countrywide) had not gotten their collective chit together and signed 2 pieces of paper that needed to be signed.

Then, because we had to extend our loan, we were told there was a fee. $2250.

And then the amount became over $3000.

We were not happy.

In all of this we were dealing with our landlord's Realtor (It's YOUR fault the house hasn't sold!")(Ok, she didn't actually say it, but trust me, it's been insinuated more than once), who called Saturday to say there was an offer on the house, and she needed to get someone in to do a Broker's Price Opinion RIGHT NOW. All right, she didn't say right now, but she did say THIS WEEKEND, which from experience with her means "Wake your husband up so I can send the guy RIGHT NOW. I don't care if he worked last night and he has to work again tonight and that peoples' lives literally depend on him being alert. WAKE HIM UP." She's sweet that way.

I did not wake him. I told her she could send the guy after 3:30, because the Spouse Thingy would be up by then. Her reply was a heavy, "Oh, I'll call him and"--SIGH--"see if he can come later. I'll call you back and let you know."

She did not call me back and no one showed. Not that day, not the next. He did show up on Monday, which tells me just how important it was to get him in THIS WEEKEND. And it took him about a minute to form his Broker Opinion.

But, there's an offer on this house. I hope she can push it through the landlord's bank in time, because this house goes up for auction on the 20th. It's a short sale, so I also hope the landlord is not holding her breath. BTW, we didn't have to pay her this months rent.

Then we find out that the over-$3000 we have to pay to extend our loan is only $400.

Then Countrywide got its chit together and signed the two pieces of paper, so yesterday we were able to go over to the title office and sign (again) about 4 inches of paper.

Whereupon we find out that the $400 we were expected to cough up is now...nothing. It got absorbed into the closing costs Countrywide agreed to pay. Not only do we not have to pay that, or any part of the January mortgage (absorbed into closing costs), we're getting back all but about $120 of our earnest money. That'll pay for the move and the friends of the Boy who are providing the muscle.

Now...we're waiting for our bank to fund the loan. Once it's funded, the title office can record the title, and the house is ours.

Tomorrow, we hope.

We're kinda tired of waiting...

Your twelve year old son is arrested for engaging in a little act of vandalism; he's caught in the act of drawing (or spray painting) stick figures on a drainage ditch. The police cuff him, confiscate his bicycle, and take him to the police station where he's fingerprinted, photographed, and then made to wait while you are contacted about his arrest.

Do you:

a) Whine that your 12 year old son doesn't even know what tagging is, and besides it was just a stick figure with boobs, and one with a penis.

b) Whine that the boy pleaded to be taken home but was still taken to the police station, and when you get there they make you wait to see him for "what seems like hours" and then when you see him he's sitting there, whimpering. The poor baby.

c) Declare that even though he was released without being charged, including releasing his bike,that the whole thing was "absurd."

d) Praise the police for potentially nipping any criminal impulses your son might have in the bud, possibly saving him from deeper trouble later on in life, teaching him that there are consequences to actions, and that you have to suck it up and pay the price if you do harm to other peoples' property?

You get three choices, and none of them are D.

At least, that seems to be the case for one mother in Texas. Her precious baby boy was caught red handed defacing property that was not his own, and apparently breaking the law was not reason enough for him to be cuffed and taken to the police station. She's letting the whole mess be known because, "I feel like I’m standing up for something important by putting this out there."

Really?

Based on the article, what I see is a kid who now knows that he can break the law and Mommy will come rushing in to defend her precious progeny. I see an opportunity to really ingrain in a kid that you don't do something stupid without expecting to pay the price for it thrown away. I see a parent blinded to the obvious...she was gifted a wake up call and refused to pick up the phone. Her son broke the law, but walked out of that station without being charged and without a record to follow him around. And she's complaining.

The Boy was 12 once. I can be pretty sure that if a cop showed up at the door and said he'd been picked up for graffiti and was being held at the station, I would have let him stew there for a bit. I wouldn't have been especially sympathetic to his whimpering when I got there, and I would have embraced the justness of how the lesson he was learning had been imparted, not whining to the world about how my precious snowflake had his feelings hurt because he was actually put in cuffs and detained for, gosh, breaking the law.

Oh, and lady...your son is twelve. He knows what tagging is, by evidence of his actions. You need to pull your head out of your ass before he decides to try something worse, because he's going to expect you to come running, but next time it might not be so easy.

And we wonder why kids seem to be more immature these days...

Why I Don't Exercise...

Dear Costco,

It was quite rude of you to be closed today, a national holiday, when I really really really really wanted to visit one of your fine locations to purchase some cinnamon rice pudding. So it's totally your fault if I eat a bunch of other crap tonight because my snacking needs are going unfilled and I feel pressed to nibble on things that might substitute, but really won't, thus sending me back to the kitchen for something else.

Plus, we wanted to visit our future TV. Please don't sell out before we can get one.

Thank you, and damn your free samples that make me buy new things and then crave them when you're closed.

Thumper