Living out of a suitcase

I’ve been doing that this summer. While it’s true that we do try and go somewhere every summer, that’s usually just for a week. Since the middle of June I’ve spent a week in the Dominican Republic with Baby Girl, a week in the mountains at Jesus camp with Wubby and Baby Girl, and 35+ teenagers I know, and another 750 I don’t know, and a week at Hatteras with Alecto and her girls, plus 1.

So, the DR: we built a concrete block wall, one of the kids was attacked by ants, it was hot. But it was Cielo and that’s just fine.

Jesus camp: For the first time in my 5 trips to camp, I hiked Rec Hill every day at least once, most days more than once. The weather was perfect, like early fall in the NC mountains instead of mid-July.

Hatteras: Alecto spoiled me rotten. It’s amazing that people who’ve only “met” in cyberspace can actually spend a week together in the real world and not feel awkward, but I think we managed. I think I may have been on one “all girl” trip to the beach, but we were all related. This was just us girls. We put up a screen house by ourselves. It’s in my back yard now, waiting for me to put it back up and see how it weathered the storms. The screen house had adventures too. The only time we ate out all week was when we had dinner w/ Alecto’s dad at their beach house.  The last time I was on the Outer Banks was 27 years ago and that was Nags Head. Until last week I had never been to any place on the Outer Banks south of Manteo. I have been to other barrier islands in NC; we have bunches. Just not Hatteras. On the way home I stopped by the lighthouse and took some pictures. Also caught a doe and her fawn having breakfast.

There will probably be one more week of suitcase living before school starts back, a week in Todd, NC at the butterfly house.

Where did summer go?

 

nobody noticed

Monday afternoon I had to drive into town for a 3:00 appointment. “Driving into town” makes it sound like I live in the middle of nowhere. That was true 20 years ago when we moved to this part of the county, but not so anymore.  Where there used to be no major commercial entities within about 5 miles of here, now there are: McDonald’s, Sheetz, Walmart, BK, Hardee’s, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Lowe’s Foods, etc. And several large housing developments, one of which is next to the Lowe’s Foods shopping center.

As I passed the intersection at Lowe’s,  I noticed several police cars on the opposite side of the highway, adjacent to one of the newer housing developments. There was yellow crime scene tape going up. No accident, evidently. Something else.

I finished my 3:00, and another appointment at 4:30 and was on my way home when hubby called. He was stuck in traffic on the highway just before the Lowe’s Foods. Said it looked like a bad accident. Told him it sounded like the same place I had seen the crime scene tape going up a couple of hours earlier, and I didn’t think it was an accident. As he got closer to the scene he noticed an ambulance, and a “major crime scene investigation” unit.

He said, “I think they may have found a body.”

They did. Or, a jogger did.

The story is: the jogger found the body Monday afternoon. It was “badly decomposed”; it’s been really hot here for the past several days. No other details were available.

Yesterday I heard this: the deceased person was 34, a landscaper. He had been working on a job last Friday, I guess, and was walking home. Decided to take a short cut through the housing development there next to Lowe’s Foods, and had been stung by a bee. There was no epi-pen to be found. Evidently he died from anaphalactic shock from the bee sting.

So, from Friday until Monday, no one reported him missing, wondered where he was or if he was OK? Maybe they did and the media just didn’t report that.

I hope so.

I hope somebody noticed, before the jogger did.

 

A real guitar hero

I made Wubby mad a while back when I said something like “Guitar Hero is for dudes who can’t really play the guitar.”  Now, Wubby is a pretty good guitar player. Actually, he’s a pretty awesome guitar player.

I think it may be hereditary.

This is Brian, my adorable cousin.

And a REAL guitar hero.

 

What is a house anyway?

Went definition hunting and found these:

House: a dwelling that serves as living quarters for one or more families; a building in which something is sheltered or located

Home: an environment offering affection and security; family: a social unit living together

Each of these definitions can be found for either term.

One of my pet peeves has to do with the interchangeability of the words “house” and “home”. When I was a  kid, we’d go out for a Sunday drive, or to visit family / friends. If my mom or dad saw a house that was particularly appealing,  I would hear, “What a lovely home.”

No, it might have been a lovely house, depending on your architectural preferences, but it may or may not have been a lovely home.

Home has further implications. Home is about more than the structure in and of itself.

Is it a home if no one lives in it, or is it just a house? If the people living in the house are having difficulties with relationships, do we say it’s an “unhappy house situation?”  Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, “He comes from a broken house.”

So what?

We’ve been talking to real estate agents since the beginning of May about putting our house on the market. Makes sense; we don’t live in it, but we’re still paying the mortgage. The general consensus among the different agents was that it would sell eventually, but it would sell quicker if we put some work into it. Paint every wall “safe beige”, (don’t you love that phrase?), replace the porch railings, replace the deck, fix up the landscaping. Last year we gave the house a new roof, new siding, new windows and new garage doors. We are out of “fixing up the house” money.

We talked to contractors, got estimates on the suggested improvements, thinking that maybe we could do one or two small things.  Still couldn’t afford to do the work, and afraid to put the house on the market unless we did.

Last week we took a deep breath and, Thursday night, listed our house. The real estate industry is almost exclusively internet-driven these days. The listing goes into some magic database and voila! Overnight it’s visible to every prospective home-buyer in the civilized world.

See that: I said “home” buyer, not “house” buyer.

There were four or five hits on our listing over the weekend. No big deal.

Monday afternoon I got a call from an agent, requesting permission to show the house Tuesday afternoon between 4 and 5. “Of course, go ahead, it’s vacant.”, I said, while my brain was screaming in terror at the thought of someone looking at the ratty deck, the walls in desperate need of paint, “safe beige” or otherwise, the outdated bathroom fixtures.

Tuesday night I got a call from our listing agent. We had an offer on the house, a serious offer, from the guy that looked at it the day before. The very first person to look at it. Buyer has sold his house, closing the 29th, and wants to close on buying our house on the 30th.

Of June.

So, last night we signed the seller’s contract documents.

I know the butterflies won’t go away until everything is completed, so I’m remaining calm about it. Really, I am. There’s still the inspection to be done, and I’m sure we’ll have to fix or negotiate some things. We had already dropped the price to compensate for deck and porch, but it ain’t over til it’s over. However, the thought of not having a mortgage, in light of current economy and future economic trends, is almost incomprehensible in appeal right now. I should be thrilled at the prospect.

I mean, it’s just a house, right? An empty house.

This morning I had Wubby go over and move the remaining stuff stored in the basement away from the walls so the home inspector can get to them, just in case we can’t get the 1-800-GotJunk people to come before the inspection. (Why do we call them home inspectors? They don’t inspect the intangibles that make “house” become “home”; they inspect structural issues.)

And I started thinking.

We bought that house 20 years ago, when I was pregnant with Wubby. We were so excited to have bought our first house that we spent the first night there sleeping on the living room floor in sleeping bags! One of the things we liked about the house was that one of the rooms was already painted as a nursery, with big stenciled teddy bears on the walls. Yeah, we painted over them once Wubby left baby-hood. The house also had 2 working fireplaces, one in the living room and one in the basement. One day we were going to finish that basement room and make it a library / office / whatever. Never got around to it, though. Little girl came along, work got complicated, being “sandwiched” between our kids’ needs and our parents’ needs got very complicated. My health got very, very complicated.

In other words, life happened while we were thinking about those plans to finish the basement, rebuild the deck, paint the walls.

As we signed the contract last night, it occurred to me that we closed the deal when we bought the house on June 30, 1989. And exactly 20 years later, crossing my fingers as I type this (which is quite a talent if you think about it), we will close another deal on that house, and it will belong to someone else.

And the tears won’t stop.

I’ve lived in that house longer than in any other dwelling in my entire life. For the 28 years prior to buying that house, I lived in 11 other dwellings. Never stayed in one long enough to get emotionally attached to it.

Until now.

It feels like I’m losing a dear friend. I’ll still see the house almost every day; it’s only a mile away. But we won’t be friends any more.

Maybe it’s because that house is the only one that intersected with my life for more than a few years, or months even.

Maybe it’s the 20-year thing. For a generation, I had a house that was mine, love it or hate it. And I did both.

Maybe it’s because it was my kids’ first house, and they actually lived in it long enough so that, when they go off to live their own lives, they will remember that house as the one “where they grew up.”

Maybe it’s some weird mid-life issue. I seem to being having quite a few of those right now.

I can’t really explain it. I just know that, when I think about it all, I tear up and get all stuffy-nosed. Kids think I’m having terrible allergies.

So, this friend I’m leaving behind, was it just a house or was it a home?

Yes.

 

Enchanted

Little girl lives in jeans, t-shirts (mostly black), mis-matched socks and fluorescent Converse sneakers. Recently she decided to change her hair color to something a bit more remarkable than mouse brown and decided auburn looked pretty good. So, off we go to Wallyworld, looking for auburn Miss Clairol or whatever. Turned out very nice.

Yesterday it was time for a touch-up. So we gathered up the hair-coloring paraphanalia and went to work. I had been watching “Out of Africa”, and when it was over “Enchanted” came on. Now, I’m not much interested in recent Disney movies, and this one had all the indications of being particularly annoying. But I needed LG to sit still and it fit the bill for that.

I got hooked.

As my blog title implies, I’m a sucker for a good Cinderella story.

Make that a Cinderella story. Good is gravy.

We finished the hair color job. Then we finished watching the movie. LG was totally engrossed in the movie.

I was totally engrossed in LG.

She’s beautiful. Sophisticated auburn, mouse brown…

Enchanting.

 

What happens next?

Gee, I wish I knew.

Anybody wanna buy a house?

Hubby is working his hiney off….and will be receiving a 10% pay cut starting July 1.

Wubby gets a good lead on a job and discovers that you can get booted if you don’t follow through. Duh!

Baby girl doesn’t do her project, the teacher isn’t concerned, and even if she needed to go to summer school, there isn’t any because, now that we have the education lottery, there isn’t enough money to fund summer school.

Where can I find blueprints for building an ark? Wait…I know this one. Genesis.

What is the air speed velocity of an un-laden swallow? And before you ask, I don’t know if it’s African or European.

 

Something’s wrong.

 

I hope this is because I’ve cycled off Cymbalta after almost 5 years, but I have a sniggling suspicion that it’s not…

Sometimes I wonder why I bother, with anything.

Sometimes I think that if something that appeared to be a positive in life actually turned out positively, I’d die from the shock of it all.

The fact that you walk on hardwood floors does not negate the possibility that the rug could be pulled out from under you. (I made that one up all by myself; isn’t it cute?)

Murphy was an optimist.

 

Bird buddies

From my current perch in front of the computer, I can look through a second story window right into the trees in the back yard where the birds live. There’s a robin looking at me right this second! A few weeks ago we put a bird feeder in the back yard, just off the deck. So far the birds have been a bit tentative in visiting the feeder, but last week they started coming around. One morning there was a momma bird and her baby at the feeder. Baby was on the roof, momma was on the perch grabbing seeds and feeding the baby.

Now the birds perch on the branches outside my window and use them as their staging area for aerial assaults on the feeder. I’m not much of a bird expert, but I can recognize a few species: robin, cardinal, bluebird, nuthatch, goldfinch. All have stopped by the branches, looked in at me to say thanks before heading on to the feeder, then gone back to their nests. There’s also a hummingbird that runs by every afternoon. And of course, the squirrels.

All of the little creatures, stopping by to chat before grabbing their take-out and heading home.

Back at ya, birdies.

And you’re welcome.

 

What happened to the money?

A few years back, North Carolina implemented the “North Carolina Education Lottery”. All proceeds from the lottery go to benefit public education in the Old North State. The same idea had been institutued in Virginia; the problem was that public education in Virginia never seemed to be receiving any benefits from said lottery. When the idea started to gain popularity in NC, I sent a note to the local newspaper and, amazingly enough, it was published.

I wanted to know if the officials touting the benefits of a NC lottery for education had done any research on the success of the program in Virginia or South Carolina.

Never really got an answer.

Fast forward to now.

Last week NC governor Bev Perdue announced a salary cut for NC teachers of, wait for it….one-half of one percent.

So, let’s pick an arbitrary salary amount, say, $32000 per year. The cut amounts to a whopping, wait for it…$160 bucks.

This measure was implemented to help offset a $3 billion budget shortfall.

I’m doing the math, and it don’t add up.

It gets better.

Yesterday there was a protest in Raleigh. Teachers from all over the state were present, protesting their salary cut.

I could talk about some of the things I heard these teachers saying at their protest, as broadcasted on the news last night. But I won’t.

I could also question how much money some of the teachers at the protest spent to get there as a percentage of their respective cut in salary. But I won’t.

Because something even more interesting happened during the broadcast of yesterday’s protest last night.

The winning numbers for last night’s drawing for the NC Education Lottery came across the news crawl at the bottom of the screen, during the coverage of the Raleigh protest.

There was something really, um, special about the juxtaposition of ideas displayed there on the little screen.

Wasn’t the lottery supposed to HELP public education?

Where’s the money?

I’m so confused.