If you’ve ever watched Planet Earth, which I understand is the world’s first and only nature documentary, you know that many creatures do this thing in the winter known as “hibernating.” Basically, they eat a ton of food in the fall, buy a new house to renovate, find a comfortable hole or cave somewhere, and then drop off the face of the earth and do nothing for a few months. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re really into nature, so I thought I’d try a similar thing with my blog.* But now I’m pretty much back.
The fact is, I haven’t played any new board games in a while, I haven’t cooked anything weird, and since Bank of America is the worst**, there are way fewer changes to the house than I wish I could report. It’s just been a slow news day in a lot of ways. With the sun out about 17 minutes a day at this point of the year, it’s like life itself has sort of gone into hibernation up here. Although that’s starting to get a little better too. (And I’ll still take 8 months of vitamin D-deficient grey in exchange for a reasonable summer. That Mid-Atlantic August just ain’t Christian.)
So what have we been up to? Well, obviously, Greta’s been growing up, and I do have the pictures to prove it. My goal with the weekly pictures was to get one a week for the whole first year, and I pulled it off. There were a few times when I went to bed on a Saturday and realized I’d forgotten, so I took a great picture on Sunday. And there were two times when a picture from Monday was just so much better than one from the weekend that it supplanted the Official Weekly Picture from Saturday. But for the most part, mission accomplished. So here are the last several for you.
Halloween. If you haven’t seen the pictures from this, check out Kirsten’s blog for more.
I think this will have to be my second favorite weekly picture, behind this one. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s like some Escherian staircase with her, where you can always find an even better picture.
Hanging out with her CA cousins Ethan (left) and Remy (middle; just kidding! right). She looks like kind of a bruiser between those two microtykes. Also one of the last recorded sightings of The Boots.
She had so much fun climbing in and out of this basket at my parents’ house in VA. It was a new skill at the time, and it led, of course, to her fascination with her current toyboat.
I love this picture, even though we both look a little tired. It’s at the little garden shop in Colonial Williamsburg. And we were, in fact, both a little tired.
I really have no explanation for this picture. I look ridiculous, Greta’s kind of a mess. We were on the way out to the Windows Christmas Winter in Seattle party, realized we hadn’t gotten a weekly picture yet, and even though Greta was in rough shape, took what we could get. And then we forgot to take better ones the next day. Also, Edward Munch in the door window. Eek.
Erm… So, about that two weeks in a row of bad pictures…
The crazy thing is, we took probably 100 pictures that night. It was the Christmas concert. I think our photographic priorities were elsewhere. Sorry, Greta…
…and just like that, the cupcake was no more. Finding the best of the pictures from her birthday party really involves combing an embarrassment of riches. Tons and tons of great pictures. Yes, she really did eat the whole cupcake. She practically ate it all at once, actually. We put it down, and she looked at it, turned it over, turned it back over, prodded it, patted it, shook her hands to try to get the frosting unstuck from them, and then finally gave up, ripped off about a third of it, and put the rest in her mouth as completely as possible. Fingers poking to stuff it in, eyes watering, cheeks bulging, breath held, but she she got it in there. And then she was just like “chubby bunny” and then swallowed it all and came back around to mop up the other piece. It was awesome.
Silly girl is standing just fine on her own now, which is great, and she claps proudly for herself every time, which is unbearably cute, but she still doesn’t have a lot of interest in walking. I can understand that, really. She can crawl and get where she’s going, or she could try to walk and fall down. Fair enough. It’s why I initially had such a difficult time when I made the transition to getting around my workplace via Pogo Ball rather than walking. But I made my transition, and I’m confident that Greta will make hers.
Skills!
On the other hand, teeth. This one is just getting ridiculous. There’s no really no advantage to having only two teeth, but try as I might to impress this on Greta (I read her some stats and averages the other day), she insists on sticking with what she’s got. She mentioned her concerns with teeth crowding one another and eventually needing braces, and what about head gear and blah blah blah. I told her that headgear more or less went away around the time Zubaz did***, but she’s still concerned. Again, though, I do have some sympathy here, as one year olds are normally pretty nervous creatures. I don’t want to make light of her concerns. Really, though. No walking, no more teeth… I’d be more concerned about being boring than wearing headgear.
The house hasn’t sat entirely unchanged for four whole months. Closer to it than we’d like, for sure (did I mention Bank of America being the worst?), but there has been progress. We have new cabinets and appliances in the kitchen, and we have so much fun baking with convection in an oven that doesn’t look like it once baked a dog (I’m talking about fur here), washing dishes in a real functioning dishwasher, and drinking water that comes out of a clean refrigerator. Seriously, sometimes I’ll turn the oven on just to watch it convect. Next up will be new floors downstairs (the last vestiges of pet urine will be gone!) and countertops (no more sketchy boards from the garage!), and then we put baseboards and trim up (down?) and head outside to fix up stuff out there. Considering the shape of things when we moved in, we really are coming along. I’ve been forbidden from putting up the before and after until we have a Very Special Presentation of all of them, but stay tuned, because it will happen.
Spring may not really start for a few more weeks (7?), but hopefully I’m emerging from my cozy cave ready to both eat and update every so often. Check back to see how it goes. I’ve also been in a sort writerly mood lately, so I may try to get something good up in the Writing section. And that really never happens. So 2010 could very well be full of good things. In any case, thanks for waiting.
* I hear the animals come out of this hibernation considerably more lean as well, but with very few exceptions, wild animals do not tend to get married, which is probably related. Myself, I’m not getting any less married day by day, so it will be interesting to see how this works out. I can say that I’m hungry at the moment, which is the other thing I hear about animals coming out of hibernation.
** Seriously, the worst! Long story short: our unusual loan for purchase + rehab was supposed to get us the + rehab part in 10-15 days. We’re at four months and counting.
*** No, Zubaz, they are not Baaaaacckk!! I could put my toenail clippings up for sale (in fact, if my Craigslist stuff doesn’t sell, I might), but if there’s not a market, there’s not a product. Now hit the showers and come back when you’ve invented something.
I’m catching up on a whole bunch of weekly pictures this time. I kept forgetting to get a Saturday picture from Kirsten’s mom from when Greta stayed with her to avoid our sawing and hammering and painting and everything a few weeks ago, and I didn’t want to skip any, so it’s taken me this long. But here we are. New batch of weeklies! Of note: hair!
Uvula! This is the last recorded picture of Greta while she was still living on Willows Rd.
This pictures just screams of genetics. One of Kirsten’s favorite things to do is to jump up into the frame when you’re about to photograph something*, and this one looks like it’s exactly what Greta was trying to do. “Oh, hi! You want me to get in the picture? Like this? Hi!”
This is what happens when you try to get Greta to eat food. It’s bottle or nothin’ for her, although we have been offering something every time we eat, without pressuring, and her curiosity has gotten the best of her a few times now. She’ll be eating for real pretty soon, I think. But still. This is what it has been like.
It’s Seabiscuit! She may not understand exactly the way horses work just yet, but she sure does enjoy sitting on this one!
Huck Finn gets a new car seat! How exciting! The one we brought her home from the hospital in is good for babies up to 29 inches and up to 22 pounds, and she’s closing in rapidly on both, so for safety’s sake, we had to pick up this new one. It’s so big and Barcaloungesque that it has a cup holder! Kind of ridiculously huge, but so’s she, these days, so what are you gonna do? We got one of the less outrageous ones, anyway.
This picture was chosen from this week’s candidates because holy moly, look at that hair! Compare it to this one, and you can really see what a few months can do!
She’s growing up fast! She finally got her first tooth to start coming in over the last couple of weeks (took long enough!), and she barely puts any of her weight on her hands when she stands up on stuff and walks along the edges (of the bed, the dresser, her play pen, wherever). The next step is, well, some steps (handsfree) and some more consistent eating. She’s getting close to both, so stay tuned!
* – It’s how this picture happened in Prague. It’s actually quite a cute and charming habit, which is what happens when you have a wife who knows when propriety dictates discretion and so on.
Good news! I don’t have a right hand full of stress fractures. After last week ended and I came back to work more grateful than ever in my life for the opportunity to just sit and not have to haul, install, replace, remove, paint, or pound anything at all for an entire work day (!), I was pretty sure that all the pounding I’d done putting plank floors in had really wreaked havoc on my hands. But here I am, three days later, and I’m ready to get back to work later today.
We have been improving the home with much fervor. Kirsten’s dad (hereafter: The Foreman) took a week off, and so did I, and we went nuts on the place in anticipation of moving in. We were there anywhere from 13 to 17 hours every day, and we got a TON done! We had some help along the way, too, mostly from Kirsten, but also from great friends who were very generous with their time and energy. Still a ways to go, for sure, but it was a might effort for only one week and a small cast. The would-be-inclusive-if-my-memory-was-perfect task list:
Painting everything downstairs but the kitchen (that includes the ceiling), which we’ll attack when we pull out the cabinets, etc. to replace it all.
Removing nasty carpet/prickly tack strips as well as heavy padding/endless staples upstairs and putting primer/sealant on all of the subflooring.
Painting everything upstairs except the hallway and the stairwell (again, including ceilings).
Putting down about 60 or 70% of the upstairs flooring. (Looks great, was a great deal, but takes a LONG time.)
Removing an old water heater that wouldn’t even drain out the bottom it was so full of deposits and stuff; we had to tip it over and drain it out the top, which was as tough as you would expect it to be to move a 100ish pound water heater with 40 gallons of water in it.
Installing the new one.
Working on cleaning and sealing a slate floor.
Patching, mudding, and texturing two sheets’ worth of drywall in four places altogether.
Installing a new sink/faucet and cabinet in our bedroom. The existing sink was re-e-e-eally bad and rusted and gross.
Fixing up the dryer duct down in the crawl space, which is really more like a walk space and is quite pleasingly clean, well-ventilated, and clear of frightening substances or animal-related detritus of any sort. If my previouse construction plans fall apart, I may consider relocating my bat cave down there.
Putting overhead lighting in the upstairs rooms where there wasn’t any. And really, not to go on a rant here, but why oh why would anyone build a house where a switch only turns on an outlet? It’s ridiculous, and it needed to be fixed. And so it was, and all was good.
With the floors unfinished, the trim missing pretty much everywhere, and the kitchen not being addressed at all just yet, we’re a little bit limited in what we can unpack and how much we can get settled at the moment. Kirsten expressed it well when she said that it feels like camping. But we have everything we own within the walls, and tonight, we’re going to put in the remaining four heaters (it has baseboard heat, and all of the existing heaters were recalled) and maybe make some progress on the floor upstairs.
I know you’re wondering, and plenty of people have asked: we do have pictures. Not hundreds and hundreds, but a decent amount, and enough to remember a lot of what it all looked like before. I don’t have the pictures with me at the moment, so this is a pictureless, boring post, but I just wanted to put an update on where things are at the moment. We’ll keep on working, and I’ll keep on updating as we do!
Funny turns of events the last few days. On Wednesday, after I put up the thing about the roof not quite being done and everything on the way but still a little in the air, etc., I got a message from the escrow people at about 10:30 (side note: I’d be lying if I said that I really understood what escrow is even now, after signing my life away to it, or them, or whatever you would call it [or them, or whatever you would call it, or...]). They wanted to set up a signing appointment, which I figured would be for today, our closing date. I called back, and the lady said they wanted to set one up for that afternoon. Turned out, I was thinking, that it was just to sign a few things to get everything lined up for today. We got there in the afternoon, and they brought out a gargantuan stack of paper* for us to start slogging through. Kirsten and I were both thinking it, but about ten pages in, she finally brought it up: “So… after we’re done with these, what else is there for us to sign, or take care of, or what have you?” The lady with all the papers gave us a sort of funny look and said, “No, this is everything. We just have to process it all, and you’re done.”
Oh. Turns out we were basically closing. Sort of anticlimatic, actually. No flashbulbs, no ticker tape. Oh well. No worries.
As we came to find out, in Washington, the actual closing happens on the day that the purchase and all the legal whatsit is filed with the county, and since that day is today, they needed all the whatsit in time to make that happen. As it all ended up, the roof was done in time for the appraiser to see it and get his documentation in, we paid the rest of what we needed to, and unless some of the documentation was prepared incorrectly and the problem comes out in the next couple of hours (unlikely; I got an update this morning that it was all looking great), we’ll meet our agent, Mike, at 4 PM today to get the key and start doing all the stuff to get ready to move our things in and actually live there!
There will be a lot of this…
and possibly some of this as well:
When I got home yesterday, Kirsten had gotten a bunch of cleaning supplies, including these
which we were excited to use before moving anything in since it means that we can start out all de-pested and also that we can set them off without having to cover anything, move anything out of the way, etc. If we set them off after getting the key today, though, it would mean leaving them all through the evening and not being able to start working until tomorrow. Which, duh. We needed a plan. Fortunately, I was able to arrange another “showing” with our realtor last night, and we set bombs off in a house that wasn’t ours and then ran away. That means today, we get right to work.
First target: the upstairs carpet and the pet urine therein. Have to get rid of the funky smell. Expect pictures as we go!
* The escrow person said—and keep in mind that she’s a professional who does this all the time—that she’s never seen anyone fill out as much paperwork. We were very proud.
Is it the slowly-exposed, attractively lit, tastefully columnar villa A?
Is it the ridiculous, Jetsonesque, will-look-dated-by-later-today B (click for more)?
Or is it the stately, understated, modest elegance of C?
Of course, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to pretty much anything ever, you know that it’s none of these. It’s our comfy, happy little this guy:
We’re getting a lot closer now, so I think it’s getting to be more appropriate and timely now to spill some of the house-related beans we’ve been holding onto. Not so much out of secrecy, it should be noted, but mainly because we sort of didn’t believe we were actually going to get a house, especially not on the sort of time frame this thing has run on. But we’re closing on Friday, most likely (more on the possibility of delays in a moment), so I guess it’s time for a little more of the story and then an update.
First, I mentioned that the time frame of this was kind of unexpected. I have all of the e-mails and everything, so I can sort of reconstruct the way it all went. It was something like this:
March: I got a new job, with a bit of a raise (yay!), and a couple of people said, “hey, maybe you guys could start thinking about getting a house now that your family is growing and you could maybe actually pull it off now if lots and lots of celestial bodies align just right, etc.” To which we initially responded with “eh, yeah, maybe in a couple of years or something.”
April: “Boy, it sure would be nice to not just dump money into a hole in the form of paying rent every month.” and “Hey, look, our herbs are growing well in the window sill. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an actual garden some time?”
May: “Sometimes I think about how great it would be to have a little space for my artwork that wasn’t also our dinner table.” and “Hey, it’s only not quite midnight. Let’s go online and look at the oldest cities in the world, the progress of the Virgin Galactic project, trailers for movies we probably won’t get the chance to go see, funny cat videos, and real estate listings.”
June: “Wow, real estate around here has really dropped in price!” and “Did you know it’s an actual credit on your tax return and not just one of those inscrutable deduction things?” and “Have you seen how easy it is to map and filter stuff on Redfin? That’s pretty cool.”
First part of July: Got a pre-qualification estimate just for fun and looked quickly at two places that we ruled out just about as quickly. Sat out of the game for a bit and then considered actually finding a real estate agent to have a stab at things. Who knows? If we can get in something by the end of November, we can do that tax credit thing. Otherwise, we’ll just wait another year or two, and hopefully things will stay low.
July 20/21 (Monday/Tuesday): Met with two realtors, picked the second one, went home, looked online again, and sent three listings—two reasonable possibilities and one much more remote possibility—to the guy we decided to work with. Set an appointment for the two on Thursday.
July 24 (Wednesday): “Oh, look, that other one was just reduced in price by sixteen thousand dollars!“
July 23 (Thursday): Went to the first house, called the realtor to ask him to skip it and meet at the second one. Took ten minutes to look at the second one and got ready to go home. But it turned out the one that was just reduced was right around the corner from where our realtor lives, so we were able to take a few minutes to go have a look. Short version of the story: “We’ll take it!” ([Much] Longer version: lots of paperwork and running around and concern over whether we’d be able to, etc. Because obviously, “we’ll take it!” is to home purchasing what “I declare bankruptcy!” is to actual chapter 11 filing.)
August 5: After some strange events, we had an accepted offer.
Between then and the beginning of this week: Probably the closest I’ve come, in terms of pure volume, to hand writing and publishing a book. The fax machine in my building greets me by name now. Also, in the process of everything, the seller (a bank; it was foreclosed) opted to pay for the roof replacement rather than reducing the purchase price, which made the roof completion a prerequisite for closing the deal.
This week: Suspense! Will the roof be done on time? Will the delays become too much to handle? Will Kent have to go smack the roofer (figuratively speaking)? Will the appraiser be able to come out and verify that it’s been done in time to close on the planned date? Watch this space!!
Once we actually get the place, we have a ton of work to do*, which is actually going to be a lot of fun. We were able to afford the place mainly because of the work it needs to have done, and we got this nice streamlined purchase/rehab loan (it’s called a 203(k) loan for anyone interested) to let us do it all up front over a few months rather than a piece at a time over several years or something. I’ll put pictures up from time to time. The first steps are to take out the carpet (and, simultaneously, the cat smell) upstairs and seal the floor downstairs (it’s slate), and then patch some drywall, paint, and put floors back down upstairs. We’re hoping to get that done by next weekend, when we move. If closing happens Friday, we might just pull that off. I’ll keep you all posted.
* I hear you all asking already, and yes, there will be a bat cave installed in the rehab process. Yes, I’m serious, and no, I’m not going to say anything more than that for the time being.
Closing in on nine months here! That’s pretty crazy. That means Greta’s been alive outside the womb for just about as long as she was alive in Kirsten’s tummy. Outside certainly seems like it’s gone by a lot faster, at least to me.
I thought this was a really funny expression.
This is probably the most grown up thing she does now. Usually, climbing the stairs is sort of the finishing touches on getting her all tired out before bed. She has a great time, and we just can’t believe she can do something so big!
And this is from out back in the grass, which is just so exciting!
We still have eyebrows. Some observations to keep in mind for next time, or if you decide to make some chili with this recipe.
Next time, no scotch bonnet or serrano. There was enough flavor going on that it would still be just fine without these, and it was just a little too hot. I enjoyed mine, and Kirsten got through hers (big thanks to Tilamook for the gobs of sour cream!), but we went a few inches past Cousin Sarah’s Spice Enjoyment Threshold, and that’s no good.
The cactus leaf was actually kind of boring. I was hoping it would taste a lot funkier, but the description I read about it tasting like a green bean was pretty much right on. It was good, I guess, but I just wanted it to be more weird and exotic. I sort of wanted to taste it and have to decide whether I liked it or not. Oh well.
I added some ground cumin and dark chocolate before it was done. Probably about a tablespoon (and a half?) of cumin and four squares of dark chocolate. The cumin was just right, but it could have used at least double the chocolate. I tasted it in one bit (and only one bite, unfortunately), and it was awesome. Another possibility: use a porter instead of the lager. But then the whole Dos Equis thing… Nevermind. Chocolate it is.
Dude! Those beans took forever to cook! I soaked them overnight (the black beans dyed the pinto beans purple, which was kinda nifty) and they still were dry and crumbly at 6 hours’ cook time! Amazing. They were good by the time we ate, though.
Next time, I’m cutting the stew beef into smaller chunks. It was cooked enough to be tender and all that, but the flavors didn’t really go deeply into the meat the way I feel like they should.
Need to find a way to make it less watery. The beer contributes a lot of the flavor, so I’m not sure exactly how to pull this off.
Bottom line: I think we have a keeper, but it needs some tuning to make it ready for prime time. A little toning down of the heat for mass market appeal, and some more thought put into differentiating (the chocolate is a good first step), and we may really have a winner in the future. If you want to give it a try (with the amendments here) and let me know how it turns out, I’d love to hear your story.
It isn’t Saturday, but since I’ve been off work since 4:30 PM this past Wednesday (hooray for five day weekends!), it might as well be. And in the spirit of days that are or might as well be Saturdays, I’ve taken it upon myself to experiment in the kitchen and see what comes out. I went to QFC last night and bought one of every pepper that wasn’t a bell pepper (because green bell peppers are the worst and the rest are fine but aren’t the sort you want when you make chili), as well as some other fixings, and I have a crock pot full of chili going now, which may or may not leave us with eyebrows. The ingredients list looks like this:
1 Anaheim pepper
1 cubanelle pepper
1 poblano pepper
1 tsp. minced scotch bonnet
1 tsp. minced serrano pepper
1 jalapeño, seeded
3 chipotles
1 nopal cactus leaf
1 [normal sized] bottle of Dos Equis
some sage leaves from the back porch
1 cup of dried black beans
1 cup of dried pinto beans
1 shallot
2 cloves of garlic
1 white onion
1 large and one small can crushed tomatoes
1.5 lbs. stew beef
Salt to taste
Chili powder to taste
That’s a lot of peppers, but I feel like they’re in the right proportions to make it a reasonable amount of spicy. My favorite parts are the cactus leaf, because that’s just great, and not something you eat every day, and the Dos Equis, because I don’t always put beer in my chili,but when I do,I prefer Dos Equis. (Stay thirsty, my friends.) I’ll put an update when I taste it. Hopefully it won’t destroy our insides.
Left to right, clockwise: White onion, Dos Equis, Anaheim, chipotles in adobo sauce, shallot, scotch bonnet, Cubanelle, poblano, garlic, jalapeño, serrano, nopal cactus leaf
Well, I said I’d put up some video of Greta crawling, but I forgot until tonight. We were all just sitting around minding our business when we looked over, and Greta had made it up to the second step! Of course, we had to see if she could do more. She’s always incredibly motivated by the Xbox controllers (”If I could just get to that thing and eat it, everything would be better!”), so I put one on the steps and then just kept moving it up one stair at a time. Of course, being as camera shy as she is, she managed to the bulk of the climbing when the camera wasn’t there, but we got the takeoff and landing. I guess the camera was supposed to be off during the rest of the flight (get it? flight? stairs? [gestures for a high five] anyone? guys?) anyway. You know, because electronics and all that. But anyway, she made it all the way to the top with no help at all! I was spotting to make sure she didn’t plummet to a clavicle break like my poor niece last night (I found out today, and I need a bigger :’(. Get well soon, little Rachel!), but she didn’t even need me. She nailed it. Maybe I can get the whole process another time, but here’s tonight’s video. Enjoy.
I got a few weeks behind. Sorry about that. Christopher reminded me the other day, and it’s not that I just wasn’t thinking about it at all, but I promised him I would get caught up on the weeklies, so here we are.
Greta’s already getting that suspicion that kids three or four times her age begin to have, wherein her toys are only lifeless and still when she’s awake, but when she sleeps, they party. So she was doing some investigation, and I got this picture from the tapes. Don’t tell.
Playing on the floor and, oh, hey there, dad!
We took this next one at the Redmond Saturday Market. There are two guys who sell sausage, onion, and pepper heros (that’s how they spell it), and they’re pretty amusing. They call everybody paisan and give out sausage samples and basically rake in all the money because their things are great and delicious. Anyway, Greta loves these guys and is always asking if we’re going to go see them. This particular day, they were topping their goods with parmesan cheese, and she was just going on and on about how good of a complement it was, particularly with the yellow peppers (they have different peppers every week), and how she was wondering if this particular parmesan was more on the nutty side, and whether it was salty, and on and on and on. She’s quite the connoisseur, and very curious.
And finally, here she is basking in the glow of just having gnawed on the length of one whole edge of Wes and Leslie’s coffee table. After tasting the whole edge, she offered the opinion that the part just before the far corner was, and I quote, “the most toothsome.”
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Skills!
