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Friday, October 26, 2007

growl.

Now that I've finally allowed myself to get my hopes really and truly up, and to start to make thoughts into ideas and ideas into plans, we get this news: The seller's bank is insistent that escrow must close by 30 days from the date on which they accepted the offer. The problem is that the executor of the estate didn't accept the offer until almost two weeks later, which makes for far too short a time for the funding to be in place by the bank's firmly-held date, even in the best of cases. Which means that now we face a good chance of having the contract become null and void, or whatever happens when escrow goes bad (heck, I can't even articulately define the stupid term, as I mentioned yesterday, so how on earth am I supposed to be able to carry on an intelligent discussion about it?), and starting all. over. again. at. the. beginning. The beginning that was, what, four or five months ago when we made our first offer.

Part of me wants to say I could just scream or I need to blow something up, or, well, actually scream or blow something up or preferably both simultaneously. Another part of me is sitting smugly with her arms folded on her chest saying I told you so. And yet a third part just feels too worn out to register any emotion about this at all. That part is winning, for the moment. Blah.

In closing, I'll remind myself of the God-breathed version of "don't get your hopes up", which has honestly been very much in our minds throughout this whole process, although it was maybe shoved toward the backs of our minds for the last couple of weeks. Or something like that. Sometimes a little bit of negativity pays off. Sometimes it's even Biblical. (See! I told you so!, she says again.)

James 4:13-15
13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit."
14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are {just} a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
15 Instead, {you ought} to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."
(NAU)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

I am too tired to think of a title.

I haven't lost anything substantial in two weeks! That's good news, right? Except that now I totally jinxed myself and who knows what I'll lose tomorrow. Probably my mind.

Also, I stayed up late in spite of a nasty miserable head cold in order to register for next semester's classes, thinking that Friday was the 27th. (Because online registration is fun, OK? No, there's no danger that the classes will fill up. Yes, I have until January to register. Just realize that I'm a nerd and move on.) Except when I looked down at the handy-dandy little date display at the bottom of my monitor I realized (as you doubtless already have) that I had made a mistake and tortured my poor sickly self for nothing. Oops.

In spite of the fact that I'm apparently a total airhead who can't remember what day it is, I am doing OK in school. Music Appreciation is an absolute blast, and I manage to keep myself from being TOO annoying without having to shut up completely. And the English class is going better than I thought. So far I am surprised at how good my grades have been; the entire grade is based on writing papers and essays, which I hate. I'm especially surprised at how lenient the instructor was when he graded my in-class essay, which had to be done in ink, as in, without a word processor, in the process of which I learned two things: 1) My handwriting is abysmal and 2) I rely a bit too heavily on revision and I need to learn to organize my thoughts more thoroughly before I start writing, or else I end up starting over after writing for about forty-five of the allotted 150 minutes, and then turning in a paper that looks like it was written by a Rhesus monkey anyway.

There is actual house news! The house is in escrow (am I the only person on the planet who says that all confidently but in actuality has only a very foggy and incomplete idea of what it means? Probably.). We are making plans for the renovations and repairs we will be doing, and I THINK maybe we can squeeze Pergo floors into the budget, which makes me a happy happy person. There will be painting to do in every single room including both bathrooms (augh), and there will also be a complete replacement of the ceiling in the living room and kitchen, but at least I will have those lovely floors to look forward to. Maybe. I hope. I think escrow closes in mid-November (hi, I'm so on top of things that I have no clear idea of exactly when I take possession of a house), but we won't be moving in right away thanks to all of this exciting stuff that we have get to do first.

I am thinking of a nice creamy, sunshiny yellow and white with lightish, warm-toned hardwoody floors. What does everyone else think? Please comment.

Some people have asked for pictures of the house. Here are a few. Sort of.

It's just a single-story fixer-upper rectangle of a house, nothing to write a magazine article about or anything, but it's ours. Or will be soon. We hope.

There's a little woodsy area below and beside the house. This is the kids' favorite tree. Someone at some point built a treehouse in it, but it's no longer usable; they have plans to build their own. Unfortunately, a lot of this old live oak is dead, so it'll have to be cut away.

I stitched together a panorama of the view from the front yard, and added silly notes; it's here.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

If My Head Were Not Bolted On, and other totally true clichés

This has been an amazing week for me. I had noticed maybe a few months ago how I seemed to be getting myself together a bit, and I wasn't kicking things or falling down or losing things nearly as much, and I kind of patted myself on the back a little and said, Rachel, you must be growing up. Good for you!

Now I am thinking this was a bit premature.

Last week on Tuesday I got my hair cut. I went to the ATM right outside the hair salon to get cash to pay the lady, because I am all organized like that, and I left my ATM card in the ATM, which I didn't realize until Thursday afternoon when I wanted to use it again. That was really no fun at all; we're still waiting for the replacement debit card to come in the mail and I am debit-cardless, and that is harder than you think when you've become accustomed to this cashless very swipy kind of society in which we now live. However, I blamed it on the fact that it's one of those archaic ATMs from the dark ages that holds on to your card until you're done with your transaction, and I'm used to the zippy ones where you put it away before you even enter your PIN, so my rhythm was all off and of COURSE I was going to leave it there. I bet it's all a big scam.

Then THIS Tuesday, I went to the post office right before they closed, and then right after they closed, I wanted to unlock my car. Except I couldn't, because my keys? Had been left in the post office. I begged a man who was loading a truck with mail out back to go inside and get the post office employee who was still lurking inside to bring me my keys, which he did, amid a hail of jokes about my hair color not being blonde. This was all very embarrassing and also not fun, but I blamed that on the fact that it was Tuesday and Tuesdays are apparently just not a good day for me.

Which means that I didn't have a valid excuse on Wednesday when I not only left my keys dangling from my ignition while I was in my music class at the high school (hi honey! I, um, hadn't told anyone that one yet! ha ha! Rachel so funny!), but I also managed to lose my wallet sometime between the moment when I was putting my change in it as I walked out of the grocery store before driving to class, and the moment when I wanted to add my Barnes and Noble membership to my Barnes and Noble online account at around midnight and I discovered that my wallet was not in my bag. And there's nobody to blame that on but myself, since it wasn't Tuesday.

I have looked all over. I have dismantled my bedroom and put it back together; I went to town (scanning the road and ditches for all sixteen miles of the route in both directions in case I had set it down on my car and driven off) and asked at the high school and even the store, where I knew I hadn't left it, if it had been found. I called the sheriff's department in case anyone had found it along the road and brought it there. I called the night janitor at his house (small town, everyone knows who the night janitor at the high school is) and asked if he had found it. I have begun the wrenching process of cancelling cards and all that fun stuff, which can't be good right now what with the whole "lenders scrutinizing our credit record with magnifying glass" home-buying thing going on. I have done this knowing the likelihood that as soon as I have called the last company and dealt with the last hassle involved in this hassle-laden situation, my wallet will jump out of wherever it is hiding and cackle gleefully at me.

This, honestly, is the kind of situation where I kind of wish I could boss God around (OK, if I could, then it wouldn't do any good because he wouldn't be God, but let's not stray into deep philosophical discussions right now). I know that He knows where my wallet is, right? His eye is on the sparrow, and my wallet is considerably larger than a sparrow and also more important, except maybe to the sparrow's babies. So wherever my wallet is, whether it's sitting beside the road, or in some unscrupulous person's hands, or kicking back at the bar with everyone's lost socks talking about the good old days -- God knows. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just make Him TELL me? I have asked nicely, but He apparently has a really good and important reason to withhold that information from me at this time.

Maybe it's so that I can reconsider my chosen career path. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. I mean, it's one thing when I lose my own belongings; would you want a nurse who, for all her gentle, skillful attention, instantly lost everything she set down? Who left behind her a trail of Room 103B's bedpan and Room 106D's medication and Room 115A's pitcher of water? Or, worse yet, who mixed them up? I'm thinking maybe I'll change my major to English. A scatterbrained librarian is a lark, and a ditzy, talkative English teacher may be the joke of the sophomore class, but at least she's not going to kill anybody.

I think I'd at least better stick to the general ed breadth requirements at this point, pending further smacks about the head from God. Right? sigh.

********** update! deet! deet! deetdeetdeetdeet! update! **********

We found it. It was on the highway. Apparently I left it on the rear fender when I got in the car after class. We actually saw it on our trip by in the morning but failed to recognize it, which I'm sure is some kind of object lesson for how sometimes God puts the answer to our problems SQUARE IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR FACES and we still miss them. Because we did. By the time we found it in the afternoon, it was shredded to pieces and the contents had been spread over about a quarter-mile debris field, but we found a surprisingly large majority of them. So I can undo the "temporary closure" of our credit card account, and I don't have to memorize a new library card number for each of us. I think my driver's license is even still usable. Some of the other cards were so badly damaged that they will have to be replaced, but that is no big deal. I still feel like a complete and utter fool, but then, what's new about that?

P.S. T says he won't let me be anything but a nurse and that's that. He points out that nurses have systems and checklists and do lots of practicing in school before they practice on poor unsuspecting patients, which seriously reduces the stupid-mistake frequency, and he says if anyone was ever meant to be a nurse, it's me. So blame him if I empty 103B's bedpan into your IV someday.

Friday, October 05, 2007

WOOOOOT!!

OFFER ACCEPTED!!

finally! [happy dance]

wait a minute.

[stifled scream]

Must remind myself that what seems like a fat mortgage payment right now will seem really slim compared to rents in thirty years. Right?

yay!

Thursday, October 04, 2007

books for September

Oh, goodness, forgot about this. I've no idea why; it's not like I have anything else going on right now.

Really you didn't miss much. I read a few Mitford books (comfort reading at its best). I've rated and reviewed them here before.

Also, I listened to Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster, recorded for librivox.org by several fine readers. LOVE this book, LOVE LOVE LOVE, even though there are little bits about socialism that made me kind of roll my eyes in a smug "you early 20th-century socialists didn't really know what you were getting yourselves in for" way. Those don't interfere with the story, really, and the story is BRILLIANT. Also I think I'm the last girl in Western Civilization not to have read it, but oh well. The Librivox recording is really good too.

Aaaand I read a really weird book that I don't recommend at all, not even to my parents who like Christian fiction which is what this book was (sort of). It's called Sky Blue, by somebody Thrasher (I really hope he doesn't Google his way here -- hello, Mr. Thrasher! It's nothing personal!) and it was just ... weird. It's a well-known fact that Christian fiction is usually not as good as ordinary fiction because the demand is high but the supply of writers is slim, so it's easier for mediocre people to get published. In the case of this book, I'm almost inclined to think that maybe the author knew about this easier way into print and added the Christian bits here and there in order to take advantage. Anyway. The suspension of disbelief required by the storyline was just too substantial, and the metaphors were strained, overused, and kind of ugly (words like stew that spatter?). So. Um. Don't bother. I've read worse, I will say that.

And I think that's it for September -- I've been just a wee bit busy -- except for a book I read for English class which I'm not going to review right now. I'll post an essay about it later when I'm sure the instructor won't find it and think I borrowed it from here instead of the other way around.