Posts filed under 'Our Pink House'
That’s right, we are soon to be the new owners of a house with lots of POTENTIAL. Actually, I should stop making it sound so awful-ut us a very cute house on a very cute street. My sister came to see it this week and pointed out that it is actually much nicer than I was letting on. Yes, there are many, many things to be done, but I hope that in several months it will be well on its way to being a house we really love.
Sadly, due to termite issues with our current house, we are moving out much, much sooner than we had planned. The Pink House is getting tented on Monday which means we are moving all of our crap out on Sunday into storage and away from the toxic fumes, and moving in with my very kind mother-in-law for 2 weeks. I pray that the cat does not scratch her couch or the dog stink up the place, but they’re not known for being particularly cooperative so we’ll have to see. Of course, she does get to hang out with her grandson for two weeks-I’m hoping that will distract her from the tabby cat hanging from the curtains.
We should be in the new house by the 11th.
This is it! Here we go, into remodel hell.
April 26th, 2007
I’ve been gone so long from Blogland that I hardly know where to start. Well, we did indeed find a house, although not the one I mentioned in my last post. That one had 7 bids and 3 of them were more than $50,000 over the asking price. Who says the housing market is in the dumps? Never in Southern California my friends, and particularly not in a good school district. We managed to find another place in the same area, for much less money (thank god) but of course it needs tons of work. We are in escrow now, but still finishing up inspections and all that, so there is still an out if we need it. The next few days should reveal quite a bit, so hopefully we’ll know by Monday if we’re going through with this or hitting the open houses again (please god, nooooo). It’s a great house, so I hope it works out, but did I mention it needs some work? I won’t get into the details, but let’s just say that if it goes through, my next post will likely be titled “The Money Pit.”
In other news, Ashok has started eating solid food. In our family, there is a ceremony held for the baby when he has solids for the first time, so we had a little party for our guy a couple of weekends ago. We dressed him up, Brian fed him some rice while our friends and family watched and Ashok made the retching sounds he likes to make when trying something new. It was lovely.
Since then, he has mastered rice cereal, carrots and green beans. I believe the next one on the list is baby back ribs, but I have to check on that.
April 15th, 2007
I think its fair to say that Kitty and I are obsessed with Knut. Why?
Do I really need to explain? Oh, and he has his own theme song, blog and podcast, just in case you need more Knut. And really, who doesn’t need more Knut? Knut, Knut, Knut…I just like to say it.
An adorable baby polar bear was just about the only thing that could get me through a day like today. At about 6:30 this evening, right at the peak of Ashok’s Super Cranky Hour, one of the trees in our backyard fell on our neighbor’s house. It was unbelievably windy here today, and I guess that’s all it took for an enormous Pittisporum tree to land on the roof next door. Luckily, no one was hurt and the damage wasn’t too extensive. Unfortunately, my husband was at a Lakers game and I was left to deal with the situation with my only helper being a tired, whiny baby (actually, he wasn’t much help). I’m proud to say that I managed to handle the situation without cursing in front of my child too much and without turning to drink. Thankfully, looking at baby polar bears can help you forget your troubles, not unlike heroin addiction. Thanks, Knut.
March 27th, 2007
If you look at Cute Overload, you’ve already seen this…but it’s worth being redundant.
The house search continues-we may have found something promising but it makes me too nervous to even start writing about it. Ok, I have to go throw up now.
March 22nd, 2007
After just about a week on the market, it looks like our house is going to be snatched up. Waaaah. (more of that later.) Last week was a crazy mess of house showings, all leading up to the big open house on Sunday. In preparation for the big day we followed a pre-set list of to-do items in order to make the house palatable to the public:
- Clean up dog poop, looking closely for stealthy poops hidden in secret places
- sweep up dog/cat/Shalini hair
- air out house to eliminate Funky Dog Smell™
- empty diaper containment system to eliminate Poopy Baby Smell (patent pending)
- hide valuables in super smart and yet somehow easily discoverable hiding places
- ask dog for better hiding places
- load dog, cat, baby, violin, computers and two adults into car, drive to mother-in-law’s house
- dump everyone/everything with blessed angel of a mother-in-law
- go have lunch and drink wine in the middle of the day-woohoo!
Guess it worked. We had over 40 people at our open house on Sunday. Our neighbors, who were out working in their yard all day, informed us that the vast majority of the lucky contestants were tattooed, brooding hipsters. Our neighbors are now worried they may not be cool enough for our street. Why do you think we’re moving?
So far we’ve had 3 offers and could potentially get another. We’re happy since they are all right at or over our asking price. I’m particularly happy since it seems like no matter who we pick, our little pink house will go to someone who fell head over heels in love with it this weekend (we got lots of notes from realtors like “my client is very emotionally attached to the house”), and that’s the kind of person I want to sell to, even if they are hipsters. And now I will try not to well up with tears as I think about moving out….there, see how strong I am?
Only problem? No house for us yet. We have a contingency on this deal so we have time, but still…it’s hard to go from living in a house that you adore to thinking about moving into something that is just ok. So, we are trying not to settle and hold out for something we really like.
And if that doesn’t work, we’ll just take the cash, get everyone back in the car and head to Vegas.
March 14th, 2007
I don’t know what brought this on. Perhaps it was that poor Miss Cleo was stuck in the laundry room for the afternoon while the house was being shown that led her to protest by sleeping on the dog’s bed. But the fact that the dog just went right ahead and snuggled up next to her? Fantastic.
Our house is officially on the market now. So far so good, I won’t jinx it by saying anymore. Tomorrow morningwe hit the road again, looking for our next house. There have been a couple of possibilities so far but nothing has really floored us yet. I know the house is out there, I just hope we find it before someone else does.
Work has been picking up again which is good but tiring. For the next couple of weeks, I will be playing on two different movies, each the third installment in a series. Good thing, because once we buy a house, I’m going to need that money for our new and enlarged mortgage payment. In the meantime, I’m trying to enjoy what could be our last month in our sweet little pink house. You’re a good house, I love you.
March 9th, 2007
Because I like to jump on a good bandwagon.
The last two weeks have been crazy. This has been the most I have worked since having the baby and I’m pretty worn out. Thankfully, some big concerts are behind me now and they went pretty well. Unfortunately, all this work, combined with not much sleep and Ashok being sick most of last week has resulted in a) no exercise in god knows how long b) great consumption of Girl Scout Cookies and c) general grumpiness.
I wish I could say I’m looking forward to a week of staring at the baby and engaging in meaningful conversation with the dog, but alas, a Major Life Decision threatens to upset all that beauty. We have decided to sell our house. It goes on the market this week. Although I am excited by the prospect of a bigger house, more storage space and 2, count them 2! bathrooms, I love our little house so much that it sort of breaks my heart. We have put a ton of work into this place, particularly the backyard, which we had completely landscaped. It makes me sad that we won’t get to see our beautiful hillside cactus and succulent garden grow in, and even sadder to think that the next person who lives here might rip it all out and pave over it, but then again….TWO BATHROOMS.
This weekend, we begin the arduous task of looking at houses. Even though there is an aspect to that process that is fun, I remember how frustrating it got last time when we felt like we had to look at 25 pieces of crap before seeing anything worth considering. Hopefully we won’t poke our own eyes out or burn anything down on our first day out. Wish us luck.
March 2nd, 2007
We had a not so minor tree disaster in our backyard a couple of days ago. The gigantic carob tree that is very much the focal point of our yard dropped a rather large limb onto some power lines causing much stress and worry for Brian and I. This tree is pretty close to our house, specifically, it is right next to my little office where I usually practice and hang out on the computer, and we were pretty lucky that this break didn’t harm our house in any way. The stupid thing is, we’ve know for quite some time now that this tree is diseased-a huge, bizarre, orange, straight-out-of-Alice-in-Wonderland mushroom appeared at the base of the tree last year and several knowledgeable tree peeps came out and said, “If this was my house, I would get that tree out of here right away.” So what did we do? Nothing. In our defense, here are our excuses:
- This tree is MASSIVE (the pictures really don’t do it justice) and therefore very expensive to remove.
- The tree is really beautiful and probably a couple of hundred years old, therefore tugging at the heartstrings of tree-lovin’ folk like us.
- The tree is the only thing blocking the light for that side of the house, not to mention protecting us from the atrocious view of our neighbor’s butt-ugly yard and house.
We were conflicted. And lazy. Now however, with the bambino on the way, the threat of house-crushing seems somehow much more scary. So, tomorrow morning, the carob tree, she is getting cut down. Sorry, tree. I promise to plant another one in your place and keep the tree to people ratio where it was.
My pregnancy reading list is faring better these days. I finished My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I definitely enjoyed it and it was a quick read, but I wouldn’t say it rocked my world. Interesting subject matter though so I will give it an E for Engaging. Next up is either Blink or Cloud Atlas.
Today marks week 37 of pregnancy for me. So far no signs of this kid popping out anytime soon which right now, is fine by me. After this week the house should be a little more ready for the arrvial of the Heir to my vast estate-crib and changing table are being delivered today-and then I can start the full-on nesting process. Before I forget, congratulations to Yvonne who had a baby girl last week-I’m thinking of you guys!
September 12th, 2006
