.: angilou and tucker too :.

firestation festival

so, our neighborhood had its 33rd firestation festival this year.  in the middle of the neighborhood there is a quaint little firestation (across from the post office, actually), and during the festival they open it up for the kids, they get to climb on the firetruck, there's a little parade, etc.  the kids and  some adults dress up in their halloween costumes, too, so it's fun to see people get in the spirit.  tucker and i didn't do so good, but we'll be more prepared next year.  here are some pics:

we're in!

so, after months of looking, and weeks of negotiation, we're in!  the new house, that is.  we moved almost all the furniture over this weekend, and now just have to clean out closets and misc from the old house.  we've got about a week until my parents get here, so should be in decent shape.

our new place is in this old part of central austin called hyde park.  really quirky mix of people, but walkable and a pretty neat neighborhood.  more on the hood later...

superstition

I’ve always been interested in real estate, and even went so far as to take classes in Phoenix to become a realtor. Maybe I still will someday.  Until then, I indulge my realtor desires whenever we buy a house. So, once we started considering having a second kid, I knew we’d have to consider another house – either a bigger one for us, or another small cottage for our parents. I had always thought “Sure, we can raise two kids in an 1100 sq ft.  2 bed/1 bath house – people in NYC do it all the time. And they have to go up stairs or an elevator.”  But when you’re in Texas, where everything is bigger, and your friends and colleagues are living in 3500 sq ft+ McMansions, it’s hard to convince yourself you don’t need more room. Plus, we’ve got clutter EVERYWHERE.  So, a house-hunting we went.

I’ve been monitoring the real estate market for the last year, at first considering a bunch of neighborhoods, then narrowing it down to a select few. We came close a couple of times, but never made an offer. So, for kicks, I set up appointments to look at all kinds of things: some smaller, some more expensive than what we’re looking for, etc. And we saw this one place that we thought had promise, but it was way over our budget. We decided to make a lowball offer, and I could practically hear the buyer laughing at us through our realtor’s response of “Well, he’d like to get the asking price.” So, we gave up on that house and kept looking.  Then he lowered the price.  Still out of our range, but we thought maybe he was desperate. To make a long story short, we made an offer the week after Christmas and after 3 weeks of the weirdest negotiations ever, we had a signed contract. And then we had a loan approval, and then we had a closing date. But for weeks, it seemed too surreal: are we really getting a new house? So, Tucker and I have been overly cautious: we tell people we have a place “under contract”, but we never say “Yeah, we got a new house and we’re moving.” Until the closing when all the documents have been signed and our bank accounts emptied, I think we are both in mild denial. We haven’t even started packing.

So, the closing is tomorrow.  Tucker needs to renew his license, but we’re waiting until after the closing, so he can use our new address; he’s afraid to jinx it, even by a day. I, too, am still very cautious.  But hopefully I will have good news tomorrow.

overly domesticated

i admit, my rock-n-roll days are behind me, now that i can be affectionate over a refrigerator; but we love this thing! it's just great. loads a shelf space, the deep storage bins in the door, even little green LEDs to tell us what temperature setting is on. not to mention of course the best part, the fridge is on top of the freezer. it's great! i don't know why they even make "freezer-on-top" fridges anymore. here's an intimate look inside. can you say "condiments"?

fridge pics

hee hee, the new fridge is great.  last night, tucker and i kept opening the door and looking in and sighing.  here are some before and after pics, sorry they are so dark. we kept all the food that was in the old fridge, went grocery shopping, and still have more room left over!!!

daily ritual

so, pretty consistently, i get to the hut a couple of minutes before 6am, my first meeting.  for the last week plus, i have a daily ritual.  i get in, i sit down, turn on my laptop and connect to my messenger, mail, etc.  then i get this stinging feeling in my leg/arm and look down and find i have a mosquito bite.    the first time, i jsut brushed it off.  then day 2 the same thing happened, and this time i caught the little bugger.  then each day after that i usually caught the mosquito on me, but only after it had already bitten me!!!!  i am pretty allergic to mosquitos, so i feel it as soon as they bite: it's this stinging, burning feeling, and soon after, my skin gets these welts from the bite that last for about 10-15 minutes.

one day i killed three.  and so far since last wednesday, i have killed at least one mosquito in the morning.  but also so far from last wednesday, i have gotten at least one bite a day!  this morning i got three, two on my ankles and one on my forehead?!  these little texas ones are nasty: fast and silent.  back east and in india, they made this low buzzing sound, so you usually knew when they were close, but i don't hear these!  it's driving me crazy.

tucker and i figure they come in the door when we walk in, so i try to close the door really fast behind me.  i think they attach themselves to me during my one minute commute.

i just got my fourth bite of the morning as I write this.   i think i am going to have to spray myself down when i leave the house...

new kitchen tile!

our kitchen floor was disgusting. the tile itself wasn't ugly, but it was so old and scarred, it would remain perpetually grungy, no matter how much we cleaned it. i despaired thinking of the dirt and bacteria that was probably lodged in all those cracks and scratches.

so we did something about it. this weekend we undertook (and completed) tiling our kitchen. now granted, our kitchen is tiny, and we used peel and stick tiles, but hey, it was still an accomplishment. taking the tile up was a royal pain, but we finished it that night, then went to dinner with josh and amber and watched charlie and the chocolate factory - packed night! the next morning we got up and cleaned it then laid down the tile. volia! it doesn't look too different in the pictures, but i can sure tell the difference.

before and after:

ok, your yard is more ghetto than ours

remember my friend kristina, the one who coined the term "ghetto yard"? she's been out of town for a couple of weeks and i just got this email from her:

"I finally had a chance to see your blog. What a great thing for everyone. Our yard by far is more ghetto than yours. It is soooo ghetto that while we were gone, our backyard received a city citation, “having too much debris and weeds longer than 12 inches.” "

ok, she wins.

Ghetto Complacency

read angi's "ghetto" post first.

i too was mortified to see our home through someone else's eyes. after angi's friend visited, and after angi told me her ghetto theory, i went to yard to see what the heck she was talking about.

it's amazing what your eyes get used to. it's amazing what builds up when you put things off. the clover patch that passes for our yard needed to be mowed; it looked like a jungle, weeds everywhere. not only was the recycle bin filled with beer bottles, there were 3 unopened beers next to it. i had meant to pour them out before recycling them. i had also left my hack saw on the steps, after installing the dog door. that's always nice. not only did we have a big brush pile, but there were other piles from my tree-trimming strewn about; mostly oversized limbs and scrap wood. i had left on old fuzzy horse hair door mat thrown over the tree; it was nice and ugly. throw in a liberated tarp, a run away wheel barrow, a lawn mower that looked like it had been consumed by lawn, and a couple of old buckets and you've got our ghetto yard.

living in the ghetto

ok, so tucker and i have a new term "ghetto" that we are applying to everything. it all came about when we were going to do a nanny share with this other couple. i had met the mom for lunch a couple of times and we thought, hey, this could work. i told her to come on over and check my place out, because she also wanted to know if there was a place she could work for an hour or so during the first week, just so she could make sure her baby transitioned ok. i thought, oh sure, you could work in the hut; you should come by and check it out so you know what i mean.

well, there's nothing like having a semi-stranger come over to see your place through their eyes. i was horrified. i mean, i know our place is old and a fixer-upper, but i thought we had it in reasonable shape. wrong. i had warned her that we were still un-packing, but i think our place is just...weird. no dining room chairs, weird folding table behind the sofa, dingy kitchen. but the house wasn't the worst of it. then we get to the yard. to get to the yard, you go through the utility room with our old hand-me-down washer and dryer. then i know i had mentioned the yard was messy, but it was really a disaster. we've already got that crazy mesquite tree growing in the middle of it, but tucker had been trimming the trees, so we had this huge 5 ft brush ball in the middle of the yard (yeah, just the kind of thing you want your kid playing with), the yard is overgrown and there are just random pieces of junk strewn about. our recycling bin is right outside the back door, and tucker had a boys night, so it was filled with beer bottles (yeah, i want my kid to be in the care of raging alcoholics).

after she left, she told me that they decided to put her baby in a daycare. tucker and i have a very strong suspicion it had to be because of the sad state of affairs of our household. heck, i wouldn't leave my child with me, based on that home tour.

so, i was telling my friend kristina about the story and we laughed and she said "oh, we have a ghetto yard, too." and that term just stuck. so tucker and i would laugh about our ghetto yard, and he actually went out and cleaned it up. kristina and i had a bet going on who had the worse ghetto yard, but now we'll never know because tucker cleaned it up before i could take pictures of it. here's the cleaned-up ghetto.  please note that this is after tucker spent hours cleaning it up.

view from the utility room to the yard.  note the decrepit dryer on the right, with the microwave and toaster oven stacked on top, since we can't run them on the kitchen circuit:

the incriminating recycle bin, now filled with innocuous diet coke cans, caffeine-free, no less: