Category Archives: House Stuff

call me June (Cleaver, that is)

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A couple of years ago, Dave and I refinanced our house to consolidate some debts, pay for our wedding, and oh yeah, invest a whoooole lotta money in fixing this place up. I wouldn’t say that Dave and I are exactly financial experts, although we’ve learned quite a bit since we got married. (Mostly lessons we learned the hard way, unfortunately.) One thing we learned was that our interest rate was only fixed for two years. So now we’re faced with having to refinance again, or else our mortgage payment will go up close to $700 a month. Fun!

A tip, if you’re ever looking to refinance or buy a house for the first time: avoid AmeriQuest. Seriously. Just stay away from them. Take my word for it.

Part of the deal when you go to refinance your house is that you have to get an appraisal, so the mortgage people know what your house is worth. They sent a guy out to do the appraisal last month when I was in Mississippi, which was nice for me, in sort of a “well, nothing I can do about it from here, so I might as well not worry about it” way.

Turns out, the company sent out an apprentice to do the appraisal, so the mortgage company won’t recognize it as valid. Um? I don’t know. Whatever. The point is, the week before we left for California, they told us they were going to have to send out another guy to do yet another appraisal. This one was free since the last one was their goof. Ok, fine. But this time I was home to worry about it, so I spent two days in Frantic Cleaning Mode. We haven’t been able to afford our housekeeper since I stopped working, and with the baby and everything, housework just hasn’t registered all that high on my “must-do” list.

And of course, it was fine. The house was in great shape by the time the guy got here, and I felt pretty good about it. We’re not sure what the status of our refinancing is yet, since we sort of forgot to check our home voicemail while we were out of town. Oops.

But the cleaning frenzy just reinforced something that I’d been thinking for a while, which is that we desperately need a new vacuum cleaner. Ours weighs a ton, it’s hard to maneuver, it’s impossible to clean the stairs, and it really just moves the dirt around rather than sucking it up.

So, I told Dave that for my very first Mother’s Day, I wanted two things:
1. A cheesecake from Costco (have you ever had their cheesecake? It’s the next best thing after my grandmother’s. Honest.)
2. A new vacuum cleaner.

I know it’s a totally trite, 1950’s housewifey kind of a gift, but that’s what I want. And behold, my wish was granted:

I haven’t used it yet. I feel like it needs some sort of special inauguration ceremony. But I will try it out soon. The cat fur is starting to get out of control now that it’s shedding season, and this is the model that’s designed for removing pet hair.

Oh, and I’m still waiting on that cheesecake.

beach trauma

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We flew in to San Jose on Saturday, which was one of those nightmare “everything you do only makes you an hour later than you should be” experiences. But we finally got here, settled into the hotel, and both Dave and Cate took naps. (I had consumed way too much Diet Coke, there were no naps in sight for me.) That night, we got to meet up with Cat, Tony & e-baby for dinner, which was great. I almost never get to see them more than once a year, so twice in less than three months is a real treat.

Yesterday, Dave and I went house-hunting. It’s an idea we’re kicking around – if he wants to stay at his new job long-term, it may require us to relocate to the Bay area. It’s not necessarily my preference. I love Washington, and I have friends there, so moving isn’t something I’d be terribly excited about. But if it’s important for Dave’s career, then that’s what we’ll do.

The problem is, the housing market here is so insane – we tend to think that the Seattle area is expensive until we come down here, and then it’s like, “wait, a 2 bedroom, one bath bungalow for $850K? Are you KIDDING me???” For what our nice big four-bedroom house on two acres is worth, we could maybe get a 2-bedroom condo in a sketchy neighborhood here. It’s unbelievable.

So we drove all over the place yesterday, and definitely found some places where we know we absolutely don’t want to live, but we found a couple of places that we could stand and which we might possibly be able to afford without selling any of our internal organs or our future children.

We ended up in Santa Cruz, which is one of the places where I would absolutely love to live – it’s a beautiful town, and there are parts of it that we could possibly afford, although the commute wouldn’t be very practical for Dave. While we were there, we went to the beach to dip Cate’s toes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4GgZLFJoo

As you can see, she was not fan of the beach at all. Hopefully we didn’t traumatize her too badly, but we thought it was pretty hilarious.

Oh, and I surprised myself at the beach with my maternal instincts. There were dogs running around all over the place, playing frisbee and whatnot. After we filmed that video and Cate was still screaming, I lay her on a towel on the sand to try to calm her down. This little Boston terrier came over, probably just to check out the small screaming creature on the beach. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm, but without even thinking about it, I yelled “no!” and shoved him away. Um, what? I normally wouldn’t touch a stranger’s dog, but I didn’t know the dog, I wasn’t sure if he was gentle or not, and my Big Ol’ Mama Bear instinct kicked in and told me to get him the hell away from my baby. His owners – two guys who were several yards away – saw me and called the dog back, and I thought about apologizing to them for pushing their dog. I know I didn’t hurt him, I just felt kind of rude. But then I decided that maybe they should have been more vigilant about making sure their dog wasn’t around any little kids, so whatever.

Oh, and remind me to tell y’all about how I scared the bejeezus out of some punk kids at our hotel. I’m pretty proud of myself for that one.

P.S. Pics from the trip so far are here. I’ll keep adding to that set as we take more photos.

mad poetry skillz

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Cate and I are flying out crazy early tomorrow morning. 7:15 a.m. flight means that I have to get up around 3:30 in the morning, so I can be ready to leave the house by 5. Fun! At times like this, I really wish we lived closer to the airport. That also means that I’m spending most of today getting as much stuff packed as possible so I won’t have a lot to do in the morning. And cleaning, because I hate coming home to a messy house. (You hear that, Dave? You keep it the way I leave it, mister!)

So since I need to go get back to work, here’s a post that I started last week and never finished. Enjoy.

————————–

In honor of the fact that April is National Poetry Month, I present you with my own haiku (haikus? haiki? how do you pluralize that word?), titled “Why I Hate Spring”:

Dave says the cats have
fleas. I’ve only seen one so
far. Yay! More vet bills!

Mosquito bites all
over. One on my toe. The
hell? I had on socks!

Spider in shower.
Are you the kind that bites? Oh
well. So long, Charlotte.

Go spin your web in
the comfort of my septic
tank. “Humble,” indeed.

Wasp in my bedroom.
Fantastic. Clearly I can’t
sleep there anymore.

At least there are no
cockroaches. Still, seems it’s time
to call Terminix.

crazies in the boonies

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We had the weirdest night, and I don’t even know how to tell this story in a way that makes any sense, but I shall try:

Last night, I met up with my book club ladies, and Dave and I watched a movie when I got home. So we all got in bed pretty late, around 1 a.m. A few hours later, I woke up to hear someone knocking on our front door. At first, I thought it was the contractor who’s been renovating Dave’s office. Sometimes he gets here around 8 a.m., before we’re up for the day, so that wouldn’t be too shocking. Except, oh yeah, it isn’t Monday morning. Then I looked at the clock: it was 3:50 a.m. The hell?

I went to the top of the stairs – from there, I could see through the window next to our front door. I saw a person’s arm, but that was all. And the person kept knocking, repeatedly. I hustled back to the bedroom and woke up Dave. He went to the door while I hovered at the top of the stairs. It was a woman, she was soaking wet and shivering (it was raining and probably in the 30’s outside), and she asked if she could come in. Dave said no, and asked how he could help her. She said she needed “to call Billy,” and asked again if she could come in. They went back and forth a few times – her asking to come in, Dave politely saying no and trying to figure out what she wanted. She didn’t exactly seem drunk (although Dave said later that he could definitely smell alcohol on her), but she was really confused and disoriented. Finally, Dave caved in and let her inside to use the phone.

I came downstairs, and Dave and I tried to ask her a few questions to figure out exactly what was wrong, and how she ended up at our front door at 4 in the morning. I mean, our house is pretty freakin’ remote. Of all the places to find yourself stranded, why our little part of Duvall? And who exactly is this Billy that she needed to call, and why didn’t she have his number? None of her answers made any sense, she was just totally out of it, and she asked if she could rest on our couch for a while. Um, no, sorry.

She called her mom to get this Billy person’s phone number – meanwhile, I grabbed my cell and headed upstairs to our bathroom to call the police. I know it probably didn’t qualify as an emergency, but you hear stories about the one person who gets inside the house, and then the other people with guns show up, and… yeah. I sort of freaked. From our bathroom, she couldn’t hear me talking to the police dispatcher, and I could also keep an eye on Cate, who was sound asleep in the Pack ‘n’ Play in our bedroom.

(Btw, she’s been sleeping 5-6 hours at a time for the past several nights, which is awesome. Or at least, it’s awesome when there aren’t crazy people in my living room keeping me awake.)

Oh, and apparently Dave had the same thought process as me about how this could be some kind of scam, because I found out later that he snuck into the kitchen and grabbed a box cutter and put it in his pocket, just in case. It made me feel better to know I wasn’t the only one who found the whole thing to be totally suspicious.

Now, I know we live in a small town, but wouldn’t you think that since the weirdos are generally out on the weekends, that it might be a good idea for have more than one police officer on duty? Because it took the cop FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to show up. Meanwhile, Miss Crazy is downstairs making multiple phone calls (because I guess Billy wasn’t answering his phone) and in between, Dave is still politely trying to ask her what the hell is going on.

Finally, the policeman arrived, and he asked her if she had left her car at the bottom of the hill (we live at the top of a big hill). She was like, “oh, you found my car?” I’m honestly not sure if she realized that he was a cop or not. But the cop was very nice and told her that yes, he found her car, and if she’d just come with him, he’d take her to it. She followed him quite happily. And on her way out, she tried to give Dave a hug. He gave her a quick little “Ok then, bye-bye” pat on the shoulder.

That was it. I still have no idea what the hell that was about. And now I’m just wondering if we’re going to end up in our town newspaper’s weekly police blotter article.

a list: things I am not coping very well with right now

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1. Still no bloody power.

2. Hospital tour tonight.

3. Ultrasound tomorrow morning.

4. The fact that we have water (because my brilliant husband got our well’s pump working), but that it’s brown. REALLY brown. I’m thanking my lucky stars that we got a water filter installed in our kitchen sink last week. I’m still not huge on the idea of showering in that stuff, though.

5. My entire family (mom, dad, brother, sister) will be arriving on Friday. As in four days from now. See #1 as for why this is a problem. It’s looking like they’re going to be spending Christmas in a hotel, which they’re all fine with, but I hate it.  

6. This sentence, which Dave said to me on at least three separate occasions yesterday: “Ok, I’m going outside to work on the generator. If you hear a loud bang, don’t worry because I’m nowhere near it.” I spent the next several minutes with my cell phone in hand, waiting for any loud-ish type noise to trigger the 911 call.

7. That I have no. energy. whatsoever. I usually think of myself as pretty tough in a crisis situation, but I am just not doing well with this whole disaster scenario at all.

8. To follow up on my lack-of-toughness in this crisis? I read this on our utility company’s website this morning, and promptly fell into a puddle of huge, heaving sobs:

Carnation, Duvall, Fall City, Snoqualmie and North Bend areas

The North Bend, Snoqualmie, and Snoqualmie Valley areas were among those hardest hit within our service area. Work is focused on restoring the high-voltage transmission grid and the substations that feed electricity to local neighborhoods. We hope to have our substations in these areas re-energized by midweek. Once this work is complete, we can concentrate solely on repairing the local distribution lines that serve customers. Restoration work in the heavily damaged Snoqualmie Valley will continue through the weekend.

Yeah, that Snoqualmie Valley area where the work will be continuing through the weekend? That’s us. And that’s really all I can say about that. Merry flippin’ Christmas to us.

realizing I couldn't have survived a hundred years ago

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Ok, since that last post was written on Friday night, I guess I need to finish up the remainder of our weekend:

Saturday: After freezing my butt off all night and running outside to fill a bucket with water to force the toilets to flush manually (thank God we are lazy people and never put our wheelbarrow away, because I don’t know where I would’ve gotten all that water otherwise), I decided that this whole “roughing it” business was not for me. Dave’s plane was due to arrive around 11 a.m. In the meantime, I got up, packed a suitcase, made sure there was tons of food and water available for the cats, and started calling hotels to try to find us a place to stay for a night. Or two.

It’s worth noting that in a situation such as this, calling hotels.com‘s 800 number is totally freakin’ useless. The first person spoke so little English that I got frustrated, hung up on the poor guy, and tried calling back to see if I’d have better luck with another operator. (I know it’s rude, but the guy just couldn’t understand that I wanted suburbs of Seattle, not specific neighborhoods in the city. I’d say “Bellevue or Redmond,” and he’d say, “Belltown, yes?” Um, no. Not the same thing at all, dude.) I did have better luck with the second operator, but then she booked us at a hotel that still didn’t have their damn electricity back yet, so that didn’t do us a fat lot of good either.

Meanwhile, Dave and I had talked on the phone and agreed to meet up at the hotel, since we were coming from different directions. (Me from our house, him from the airport.) We got there, found out the place had no power, and decided to take a leap of faith and drive to the hotel we stayed at when we got flooded out and couldn’t get home last month. And once again, the lovely Indian ladies took one look at me and were all like, “You’re expecting? Oh, you poor thing. Here’s the king suite. We’ll give it to you for half price.” (I’m not kidding. Love. Them.)

At least this time I was able to pack ahead, unlike when we were stranded and couldn’t get home. I even put my body pillow in a hefty bag and dragged it along with me, because lord help me, I cannot sleep without it at this point. We managed to find some places around here that were open so we were actually able to get some hot food, and we were both sound asleep before 9 p.m.

Sunday: Not such a good day for me, emotionally. I was ok until I checked our utility company’s website, and saw that our town is listed as one that will remain without power “throughout Monday and likely longer,” due to some extensive structural damage to their transmission system. I’m trying to hold out a tiny ray of hope that maybe we’ll get ours back sooner rather than later, since we live in the unincorporated part of Duvall, and there have been times when the entire city lost power, and we were just fine. So maybe that means we’re on a different circuit? Or that our power comes from a different transmission system (maybe one that isn’t so “structurally damaged”)? Who knows, but it’s what I’m hoping.

In the afternoon, we went back to the house to check on the cats. [Side note: when Dave went into the garage and told me that everything in the freezer had thawed – the dishes I had pre-made for Christmas, the meals I had prepared and frozen for after the baby arrives, everything – and that it was all going to have to be thrown out? It took everything in me not to burst into tears on the spot. I knew everything in the fridge and the indoor freezer was a loss, but I had been hoping that the garage freezer would be ok because it’s been so cold outside. Sadly, that isn’t the case.] The kitties seemed to be coping ok, although I worry a lot about Teenie, just because she’s old and has always been an indoor cat. Dave’s cats occasionally stay outside overnight, so they’re a bit more used to braving the elements than she is. I seriously contemplated sneaking just Teenie back to the hotel room with me. But alas, my husband, he had a plan… 

Since I was feeling a tad emotional (read: cranky, tired and weepy), I came back to the hotel while Dave set off to gather the necessary supplies to rig our circuit breaker to our generator. I still don’t understand what his plan was exactly, but he promised that we would have heat, water and lights, which is a heck of a lot more than I was able to get the generator to do. (One lamp and the Internet router. Go me!) It’s funny, I always forget that Dave has a degree in electrical engineering until stuff like this happens and then he goes into Boy Mode and is all, “Ok, so I just need some electrical tape and a soldering iron, and then I can blah-blah-blah…” (Note: he never actually says “blah-blah-blah,” but that’s what it sounds like to my totally confused ears. He might as well be one of Charlie Brown’s teachers with the “wa-waaa-wa-waa” stuff.) Yes, ladies, apparently I married my own little McGuyver. Sorry, he’s taken.

There is the issue that whatever he does might not be exactly legal or up to certain county-regulated code standards. But I don’t think we have to worry about that until we decide to sell our house. (And my god, I do hope that day is fast approaching, because I’m not sure how much more of this “country life” crap I can stand.) Meanwhile, nobody call the authorities on us, ok? Desperate times, desperate measures, all of that, yes?

As soon as I got back to our hotel room, I crawled into the bathtub and stayed there until I got prune-y. (Baths are kind of fun these days. I can just lie back and watch my belly make involuntary movements when the baby flops around. Totally creepy and alien, but cool at the same time.) After that, I was a little calmer – at least, I didn’t feel like I was about to burst into tears at any moment, so that’s good. We’ll see how well I do when it’s time to clean out the freezer.

At 10 p.m., Dave called to say that he had the water and the lights going, but not the heat. He said that he would keep working on it if I really wanted to come home that night, but he sounded so exhausted, and he’d been working on it for hours. I told him to just go to bed (because he apparently doesn’t mind sleeping in the freezing cold), and that I’d stay at the hotel by myself. I mean, what the hell, we’d already paid for the room and it was too late to check out and get any of our money back, so I figured I might as well stay where it’s cozy and warm (albeit husband-less, which sucks).

Monday: Dave got the furnace hooked up to the generator late last night, so I checked out of the hotel and came home this morning. It’s already warmed up from 37 degrees inside the house to a balmy 52, so I’m optimistic that I might be able to take my coat and gloves off at some point in the next few hours. Here’s hoping.

another edited timestamp post

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Sorry for the delay in getting these online, but you wouldn’t believe the last 48 hours we’ve had. More updates to come too!  

It’s funny that I wrote the title for that last post at the time that I wrote it (Thursday night), because I assumed (since I had no TV or Internet access) that the storm was only affecting us out in the boonies. As it turns out, not so much. There are close to a million people in this area who still don’t have electricity tonight, and it just happens that our happy little home is one of them.

Last night was quite possibly one of the scariest nights of my life. Even in a house as solid as ours, 70 mph winds make the entire house (including our bed) shake, and every time I heard some unknown noise, I was convinced that it was someone in the house. Who on earth would go out looking for rape or murder victims in the middle of massive windstorm? I have no idea. But I was sure he knew that I was alone in the house. So even with the benefit of Unisom, I didn’t exactly have what one might call a restful night’s sleep. I was more in a drugged state of panic for hours on end.
 
This morning I got up and checked out the damage. There are branches everywhere. A tree in our front yard came down and took out part of our fence (that’ll be a fun expense). There was this big white metal thing in our front yard, and I couldn’t figure out what it was, until I saw that Carol (our across-the-street neighbor) had her entire fence taken out. Then I remembered that she had a little shelter for her horses in her yard (sort of a metal framed carport-style thing with a canvas roof), so that solved the mystery of the big pile of metal in our yard. Apparently when it came rolling out of her yard and into ours, it took out our mailbox. Carol was very apologetic about it, and said that she’d pay for the mailbox, but seriously, if she hadn’t said anything, I would’ve just thought it was the wind that had done it.

I drove all over the Eastside today looking for what, I’m not exactly sure. At first I thought I’d just find a Starbucks, get online for a while, charge my cell phone, and head back home. I quickly realized that every retail establishment imaginable was closed, because no one had electricity. I stopped at a hardware store to see if they had any regular old-fashioned phones (you know, so I could just plug it into the wall and have a dial tone? Instead of stupid cordless phones which need electricity to work?), but they were sold out. I managed to play the “I’m 8 1/2 months pregnant” card so they’d feel sorry for me and let me use their restroom. (There were 2 candles on the counter. The guy handed me a flashlight on my way in. Lovely.) I did manage to find one store that was running on generator power, and they happened to have a car charger for my particular model of cell phone, which made me ecstatically happy. That’s the best $7 I’ve spent all year. 

Finally, I gave up and headed home. Carol, the lovely across-the-street neighbor (oh she who has helped me break into my own home before) came over and helped me start our generator, which I didn’t know how to do because that’s always been Dave’s job. (Figures that the one time I really need him for something like this, he’s in another state, hmm?)

With the generator running, I was able to get online for a little while and get that last blog post up. The generator has since run out of gas, so I’m back to typing in the dark with the laptop on battery power. It appears that the wind took out a lot of cell phone towers in the area, so my one source of communication is pretty flaky. Oh, and the stupid, stupid well – our home’s source of water, which I hate with every fiber of my being – apparently runs on electricity too. So I have no tap water, and I can’t flush the toilets. Niiiiice. 

Just about the only good bit of news that I’ve heard all day (oh yeah, forgot to mention this earlier) is that DAVE GOT THE JOB!!! Which is awesome-awesome-awesome, and I’ll fill in more of those details when he gets home tomorrow and I can talk to him for more than 30 seconds without my cell phone signal breaking up.

For now, though, I have another date with my good friend Unisom. Maybe he’ll be more effective when there aren’t freight trains of wind whipping past my windows.