Blitzing on the house

Why I haven't been blogging: Last Friday, we met with my wonderful Realtor friend, who tells us the market for our size house starts now and runs to early June, then dies down for the summer and picks up a bit in the fall. Eeek. We are not ready to put our place on the market. And we're especially not ready if we update our kitchen as she is strongly reccomending we do, so that the house will sell quickly and for a decent price.
Our to-do list now looks like this:
replace bathroom lights
replace bathtub and sink fixtures
paint the upstairs and exterior
carpet the upstairs
replace bathroom flooring
put a hearth on the fireplace
refinish the kitchen cabinets
replace the flourescent light in the kitchen
get granite countertops and a new sink
spruce up the yard
declutter, declutter, declutter

And you know what, I'm sure we'll end up doing all that. We can fritter away endless weeks and months puttering around with the kids, doing nothing on the house or yard. But light a fire under us, and we get really productive, really fast. Steve's already replaced the bathroom lights and repainted a medicine cabinet. The carpet's ordered and the house was measured today. The painters arrive tomorrow for estimates. The guy who replaced our first tub comes on Tuesday. We've got the stain picked out for the kitchen cabinets and a marble installer chosen, but we need to go order marble, armed with a plank from the flooring and a stained cabinet door for color matching.

So, I'm thinking, piece o' cake. We'll have it listed by mid May. (But I think I saw Steve breathing into a paper bag the other day...) We still need to make a family trip to CO, but I figure the best time to do that will be while the marble guys are working on the kitchen, or perhaps the first weekend we list.

All this is just an elaborate excuse for why I won't be blogging much these next few weeks. (But Maddie just got a cute new haircut with bangs, and I really should post a picture. And there are requests for snail sanctuary pics, and, and...)

A post dictated by Maddie

We are building a snail sanctuary to protect the snails from getting poisoned. It is in our side yard. We have some snails that are going to go into the snail sanctuary when it is finished. There are 40 of them. We're keeping them in a shoebox with some food outside, until the snail sanctuary is done. We're going to put copper around it to keep the snails in. It gives them a little bit of an electric shock but doesn't hurt them. We have a sign that says "Snail Sanctuary" on it. But we're going to put some slugs in it too. We have some snail eggs under a piece of bark that we put over a hole for the snails and slugs to go in. The snail eggs look likee little round, clear and kind of milky-white balls.

From the coast to the Rockies

Steve and Harry and I (Maddie points out that Harry appears to have lost an arm)

Maddie with Aunt Cindi



Two weeks ago we were at the beach at Camp Pendleton basking in the (somewhat chilly) sun, then a few days later I was driving back to Colorado with Cindi and the boys asking "is that snow on the side of the road?" as we sped through eastern Utah.

The kids had a great time with the cousins, as usual and we all enjoyed the weather (aside from the sandstorm that raged our first full day there). Steve and I walked for miles, sometimes together, sometimes on our own. It was wonderful to walk up the coast and see relatively undisturbed sand dunes and sea cliffs that ran for miles and miles. I can imagine what it must have been like when all of California looked like this. Unfortunately, it turns out we were violating the military regs and were kindly warned off by a state game warden. The military runs their amphibious vehicles up and down this stretch of coastline (right next to the endangered least tern nesting sanctuary, which was why the game warden was there, I suppose) and we were rather in the way of exercises. Darn it. I absolutely loved lying on the warm sand with only shorebirds for company.

After a bleary, 16-hour drive to Colorado, I spent two days blitzing through Fort Collins, visiting the unitarian church there (huge congregation!), the local unschooling group (I felt so at home, sitting with the three moms and their great kids at the funky 70s era roller rink that was a blast from my past) and meeting a wonderful real estate agent (and 30-year Shambala Buddhist) who showed Cindi and I around the city one day. I was hoping for a clear-cut sign that this was the right move for us, and I have to say, I got it in Adana. How many Buddhist real estate agents do you know (maybe there are more than I realize, but I was just hoping for someone who could hear me when I said that we wanted land, not too much house and funky was okay).

It turns out that Adana's Buddhist community may be selling the house they meet in this summer -- what better vibes could a place have than to be a meditation hall for years on end! It'll probably be in or below our price range, it's definitely a fixer, but it's on a half acre of land (funky long, skinny lot, though) with a wonderful neighbor to one side, a veterinary anesthesiologist with two boys, two dogs, two horses and a goat. When I told her I wanted to raise chickens, she said, "Wait just a sec," and disappeared into her barn, returning with an armful of peeping chicks!

Who knows if this place will work out, but I definitely take it as a sign that we're looking in the right place!
Here's the back entrance (click on any photo for a giant view)


The outbuilding and tree fort



And the long skinny backyard


Next we meet with our Realtor, to find out how much work we really have to do to get our house ready for market and get going on that. I want to go back to Colorado with the whole family to be sure that everyone's okay with the move and to see more of the city. I feel so energized by what I've seen of it!

Good Fences

While Sue was in Denver, the kids and I built a new fence and gate on the north side yard. This replaced the jumble of wire, tall weeds and loose boards that somehow kept the dog in (mostly). Let Sunny try getting out of THIS!

Clockwise from top: Maddie setting nails in the fence boards; Harry making sure we have enough; new post in footing; finished fence and gate; Dad wrestles with boards. Center: Harry handles the final nail.

What we are doing and some stuff about us

Poppop is 67. Grama is 65. Harry is 5. Me, Maddie, I am 8. Mom is 42. Dad is 43. Sunny is 1 and a half. In dog years she is 7 and a half. Maggie is 14 and a half. In dog years she is 101 and a haf. We are baby sitting fang, my Grama's dog. He is a white german shepherd. He is 3. In dog years he is 21.

Getting ready for a visit with the cousins at the beach!

We're waiting for Cindi and Chelo and the boys to arrive this weekend. Our folks have gotten a beach cottage on base next week, so Steve and I are rearranging work schedules to take some time off. It will be great fun to be all together!

I'm going to be driving back to Colorado with Cindi and the boys when they leave, to spend a couple of days checking out the community in Fort Collins. I've been wanting to move to Colorado for several years now, and last summer, both Steve and I were quite taken by the downtown and art scene of Loveland, which is just to the south of Fort Collins. We came back from that trip full of energy to get our house on the market and move, but as the fall progressed and we got involved in starting up our new UU church here, the momentum ebbed.

I keep telling myself that I should be happy wherever I am and find my contentment internally, but I just can't shake this urge to live somewhere that isn't so thoroughly conservative, religiously and politically. (One of the things that struck me about Loveland is that a few people had liberal political yard signs in their yards. That does not happen here. I get so excited when I see a liberal bumper sticker on the freeway here -- once every few months -- that I'm compelled to wave and give a thumbs up to the usually bemused driver.)

I can make up all sorts of good reasons why we should move -- we can buy something small outright and work less, being top of the list -- but in truth, I just want to move. I want to experience seasons again. I want to have chickens and a bit more land. I want to be involved in a vibrant "out" liberal community (the Fort Collins UU Church has over 500 members!) I'd like to be closer to my sister and her family. (And I want my parents to move out there too!)

California, or my corner of it at least, is crowded, its culture revolves around buying stuff and we seem to be so busy earning money that we don't have time for each other. It may be that the rest of the country is like that now, and I'm imagining points east as they were 30 years ago. Hence, the scouting expedition. And we'll go again with the whole family, so that the kids can get a feel for where we're talking about moving.

When we returned from Colorado last fall on fire with plans to move, we were astonished to hear that our wonderful neighbors down the street, Don and Brenda Gray, had just decided to move back to Oregon. We were struck by the synchronicity of our decisions and I was further convinced our exploration of community here was playing out.

Steve, for his part, would probably never move from here. He's mindful of the huge effort and disruption involved in moving, and he finds contentment where he is much better than I do. When I point out, however, that we cannot sustain our current lifestyle here without earning more than we have of late, he says, "Let's get the house on the market then."

He's been putting in many hours in the studio lately, exploring, more intensely than I've ever known him to go, his fine art. He says it has not only improved his craft dramatically as an artist, but his newspaper illustrations and his children's work has benefited as well. I'd hate for him to have to put that back on the shelf to focus on more "profitable" pursuits, and I feel like I'm in danger of burning out on massage if I try to keep up my pace of the last year. I like how much time we've been able to spend at home with the kids -- these childhood years are starting to fly by, especially once I started to work again. All this seems a strong argument for downsizing right now, and that isn't going to happen in California. (Well, we could move to Yucca Valley on a little bit of land, but we're talking Mojave Desert. I suppose I could adjust to that...)

I'm not sure I can generate enough sustained enthusiasm and momentum to get the four of us moving, I'm not sure we can really find something suitable for us in our price range, and I can't guarantee that I'll be happy forever in Colorado (I think Steve would like this assurance), but I do know we'd fill our lives with fresh energy and new experiences and I'm trying to keep myself convinced that that is worth the effort!

Lady bugs

A couple of weeks ago, I was washing some swiss chard from the CSA farm when I noticed a couple of little brownish red and black globs stuck onto a leaf. Ladybug larvae! So I set the leaf aside in the kitchen window and hoped that the trauma of harvesting and a day or two in the fridge's crisper drawer hadn't killed off the ladybugs-in-waiting.

A few days ago, I noticed something wriggling as I was washing the dishes. One of the larvae was hatching! Unfortunately, its wing was stuck in the casing and it was valiantly trying to work it loose, tugging and walking backwards, walking in arcs around the casing. We all watched it for a few minutes, not knowing whether we should interfere, then Steve went upstairs to get some tweezers. By this time, I was feeling anxious and (ridiculously) guilty, wishing that I'd tried to help it out as soon as I'd noticed it, since it seemed obvious that its wing was damaged. I went outside to collect aphids while Steve worked to get it free, finally dropping some water on the casing, which softened it up enough for the ladybug to get its crumpled wing free.

So now we have Lucky, in a beetle jar, who gets fresh rose leaves loaded with aphids, and I'm making a conscious effort to change my perspective on this and other of life's little dramas. Instead of feeling distressed and vaguely guilty that the ladybug didn't come out perfect, I could have been simply amazed by this miracle of nature and our luck in witnessing it, and feel happy that we could help it survive. I wish I had that setpoint naturally, but I do think it's possible to shift one's automatic interpretations more positively over time.

(And for the record, the second ladybug hatched out perfectly two days later, was released to a rosebush in the front yard, where it still resides, three days later! It knows a meal ticket when it lands on one, I guess!)

Oh, and we can't post pics because our good digital camera is broken and the old one doesn't do macro shots!