Around the House

I. Kitchen Trim
I finally put the crown molding back up in the kitchen. It came down during the Great Plumbing Disaster of 2015 (also known as Küchedammerung) and has been stored in the basement ever since the ceiling was ripped out, then put back together, then ripped out again, then put back together again, and then left in an unfinished state for several months while gigs and small children happened. This morning I went down to the basement, pulled out my drill, and started piloting holes for trim nails. (Yes, I know you're supposed to use a nail gun to fasten crown molding, but I don't have one, or an air compressor for that matter.) I climbed on top of the refrigerator, bent my head and my hammer at awkward angles, sweated profusely, and made noises worrisome to those in the next room. But all the trim is up! It's spackled and caulked, and once I put on a coat of touch-up paint tomorrow everything will be finished and we can get into the bottle of wine we've been saving "for when the kitchen is put back together." Of course, it doesn't really look great, but that depends mostly on your perspective. From the western side of the kitchen, especially in the dark, the finished crown molding could look very nice in an impressionistic sort of perspective.

In daylight and plain view, however, it looks a bit more like the subject for a brutalist painting. In fact, I think that my work this morning could be fairly classified as brutalist interior design.

II. Doorknobs
I need to order locksets for all of the rooms upstairs. It's gone from a convenience to a necessity. None of our upstairs doors close properly. You can attempt to close the door all the way, and there IS an old knob that theoretically used to latch into place, but the door always just swings back open, either from the worn-out age of the latch or from the gradual warping of the door in the frame. This happened with the bathroom too when we initially moved in, and I replaced that fairly quickly. The bedrooms, however, we've just allowed to be perpetually cracked open. For a long time we've lamented our inability to leave Owen, well, anywhere unattended for more than a few seconds. But if the upstairs doors could latch shut, we could let him play in James' room and actually go downstairs to pour another cup of coffee without worrying he was going to crawl out and fall down the stairs. We could put away laundry while he plays in his room.
But really what's making the locksets necessary is James' most recent revelation--he can get out of bed without asking. I blame Uncle Tim, as I'll explain later. For the longest time James was GREAT about staying in bed. I don't know what unknown consequences he feared if he dare put a pajama-clad foot on the floor after we'd tucked him in for the night, but even if one of his stuffed animals fell onto the ground within his reach he'd call for one of us instead of daring to get out from under his covers and retrieve it himself. He never has crawled out of bed on his own in the morning, always waiting instead for a parent to come and retrieve him. We've had it good.
Uncle Tim gave James a stuffed Pete the Cat doll for Christmas, and it was immediately added to the retinue. I'm not exactly sure how high Pete ranks...definitely not at George and Steven level, but at least as important as Woof-Woof and Meow-Meow (didn't this blog used to be about literature and theology, by the way?) and certainly important enough to merit sleeping at James' pillow. Well, James forgot Pete the Cat downstairs one night while we were in Pennsylvania. And wouldn't you know it if instead of calling to a parent, the little boy rolled out from under his covers, came down the stairs, and retrieved Pete himself.
A light bulb went off in that moment.
Since we've been back he's come downstairs after bedtime for cars, for Pete again, to ask for a drink, and to "put away books."
Yesterday morning he asked me "Were you and Mommy watching football or hockey when you were eating pizza in the living room last night?"
Given the serious problems that might arise from James crawling out of bed and sneaking around the house after bedtime, I called upon all of my parental wisdom to give him the following answer: "Get your coat on right now, we're already late for church."
Yes, locksets for all the upstairs doors are must-haves. I don't care yet to field any questions about why Mommy and Daddy were "wrestling."

III. J Running
This entry needs to be wrapped up shortly because J is going out for a run at 2:00, and it is 2:00 right now. Even though she is under a blanket reading Harry Potter, she definitely said she was going out into the cold to run at 2, and since that's a public statement she'll most certainly follow through with it. Anyone reading this right now should ask her how her run went, because now that it's 2:00 she's going to put down the book and head out. She must be SO excited!

How to Paint Tile

forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit-Virgil

The true tests of marriage are setting up a tent together and painting a room together-Darryl Smith

It had been a great week.

I was home all day long, and we'd really done a great job of cleaning the house from top to bottom. Sure, there were a couple odds and ends that we hadn't managed to take care of--J had never gotten around to pulling out the bin of Owen's 9 to 12 months clothing, and I hadn't ever swept and mopped the floor in Owen's room--but on the whole, we were feeling pretty good about how the week went. We switched the library and the family room, we scrubbed the whole downstairs, we kept up with the dishes and the laundry, we ate healthy, we took long runs as a family, and we kept faithful to our goals for August--no meals out and no unnecessary shopping expenses. In short, we were feeling happy, healthy, and clean.

Saturday was going to be the day that I repainted the tile in the tub.

We knew from the day we moved in that the bathroom was going to need some work. I think, the next time we buy a house, we're going to make sure that the previous owner's take care of all the "little things" before we move in. The threshold to the bathroom is still in sad shape, and although I'd refinished and painted the bathtub a few weeks earlier, I wasn't sure how the tile would go. I went to Lowe's to ask for help picking out the right type of paint, and they sent me to Sherwin-Williams. At Sherwin-Williams I was handed a spray-on acrylic. "Are you sure?" I asked. "I used a brush in a kit to do the tub, and that worked really well." "It will be fine. Just make sure the surface is thoroughly prepped and cleaned, and give it three days to cure."

The three days to cure would be the hard part. We'd timed the tub refinishing with our departure for Csehy a few weeks earlier. I shut down the bathroom on the Saturday afternoon before, worked all day getting the tub cleaned and painted, and then no one was allowed to use the shower or bath until we returned from camp. The only sensible day to do the tile was Saturday, the day before we all left for Pennsylvania. Everyone took their last shower/bath that morning, and then as soon as J returned home from Melissa's bridal fitting, I went to work masking the tile upstairs. "I'll work as quickly as I can." I told her. "You know that I have to be at church early today, and that I have a wedding to play afterwards, right? Do you know what you'll do with the boys if they wake up?" "I think they'll get to watch some TV. We'll figure something out."

Let it be stated publicly that I did all my research for this project. I watched Youtube tutorials, carefully reread instructions multiple times, and looked up information on brush and spray techniques. The cleaning and preparation part all went according to plan, although admittedly taking longer than I'd hoped. "That's alright," I told myself "Once I start using the spray-paint I'll be at the easy part." I was a sweaty mess (so much for that last shower) sitting in a plastic-sheeted bathtub filled with old yellow paint flecks, bits of steel wool, and dirty sponges. But the tub was ready to go.

The result of the spray-paint was this: It smelled so vile that it woke both boys and J up from their naps, and it looked terrible. The paint sagged and dripped, the film hardly covered any of the discoloration, and I looked horror-struck at a painty mess that was clearly worse than the mess I had just started with.

J came upstairs and asked what that awful smell was. With my head spinning and my heart sinking, I told her that I was going to need to go to Lowe's again and figure out how to take care of the spray mess before it dried and cured on the tub. She reminded me that she needed to leave for church in a half an hour. We heard both boys making noise in their rooms. Still feeling woozy from the paint fumes, I asked her to set James up with a movie in our room and to put Owen in the pack and play. I would figure out what to do with them after I managed to get a coat of paint on.

While I drove to Lowe's and tried to clear my head with some fresh air, J changed both boys and brought them into our bedroom. We pride ourselves on limiting their screen diet, but sometimes this works against us. For example, in a bona fide emergency situation, when you need to leave for work in twenty minutes and both boys are insisting on being held and have only one very specific movie they want to watch (VeggieTales: The Toy that Saved Christmas) it isn't very easy to remember how to set up the unhooked and unplugged DVD player to the TV in your bedroom.

There were tears, and by the time J finally managed to get the DVD player turned on and properly displaying on the TV screen, Owen was wailing from the pack and play, I was back in the bathtub sanding and re-painting, and she was already fifteen minutes past when she wanted to leave for work. Stepping back in triumph from the working TV, she grabbed the VeggieTales DVD case and opened it up. Inside, of course, was the DVD to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

"I've gotta go," she yelled "and I think Owen just pooped in his diaper."

"Okay, I can break in a second." I yelled back. "Just go, and I'll look after them."

James: "Hey, George wants to watch VeggieTales. Where are the VeggieTales? George wants to watch the Toy the Saved Christmas!"
Owen: WAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I finished painting over the last potential disaster spot, and set down the brush long enough to go and attempt to sort out the boys, only stopping for a moment to grumble about how they should both be sleeping. I stepped out of the tub, and immediately left a big white painty footprint on the floor. I took off my shoes and made a note to also clean THAT up before it dried. Apparently I'd spilled some paint on the dropcloth.

Owen was in a sad state. He'd managed to untuck the sheet from the bottom of the pack and play and wrap it around both his hand and his head, which was pinned down by his flailing hand with his butt stuck up in the air. The poopy diaper wasn't even remotely contained. In fact, it was visibly dripping down his back and up to his shoulders as he struggled and flailed in the crib. Meanwhile, James kept blearily asking about watching a movie.

I picked up Owen and brought him into his room, trying not to touch him or let him drop onto the floor. As soon as I set him down he began oozing out onto the changing pad, and I peeled his onesie off and tossed it, with the changing pad, onto the floor, making a mental note to come back with a plastic bag before anybody stepped in them. The child was absolutely covered in...well, you know. "Owen," I said "you've just gotta go right into the tub."

I think I actually took a step towards the door before I remembered what was going on in the bathroom. Owen looked at me helplessly as I held him up by his armpits and tried to figure out where to set him down. I glanced back at the changing table, still covered in his explosion, and then he grinned at me and shook his head "no." (This is his newest trick.) He's very proud of it. I set him down naked on the floor just long enough to grab a handful of wipes. And in the second that I wasn't holding him, he immediately rolled onto his back, his stomach, and began to crawl away.

"AAHHH!! Why didn't I clean your floor!" Now he was not only covered in poop, but there was a poop streak on the floor and little bits of dirt and lint and dust bunnies were stuck all over his unbatheable body. I wet-wiped his wriggling body, wet-wiped the floor, and set a squirming naked boy (much happier now that he was out of that diaper) into his crib. Knowing he wasn't remotely sanitized but would need to be put back into some clothes, I struggled in vain to get some 6 to 9 month clothing over his enormous head and then put him back in the pack and play with the too-small snaps left unsnapped. James had continued asking for TV for that entire time, and was finally quiet when I unplugged the DVD player, plugged the Wii back in, and put on a George.

"Okay, George will watch himself."

J, meanwhile, had been routed by a traffic detour onto 490 E instead of 490 W and then spat out into Henrietta when she took the wrong exit onto 390 once she got turned around. She ended up being 45 minutes late to her rehearsal for church.

I finished up the first coat of paint (which looked much better than the spray job) just as James finished his George, and I texted J "I'm pulling the emergency parachute on a Wegmans pizza." With another coat to do in three (but no more than four) hours and being already exhausted, I gave up on the resolution about eating out to make sure I could get some sort of dinner on the table. I loaded the boys into the car and picked up some frozen pepperoni pizzas and a case of beer. They shared a steering wheel cart and Owen shouted in excitement most of the time we were in the store.

As soon as we got packed, Owen had another blowout up to his shoulders. I changed him again into another too-small onesie, then laid down on the floor with all the downstairs windows open while both boys crawled on me and James sang Sunday school songs. I was covered in paint chips, tub grime, and sweat. At some point the pizza was done, and I cut James' into tiny pieces. I gave Owen a bowl full of peas and corn with torn up ham and cheese, and he mostly spread them around his tray. J came into the house shortly after 6:30, and I unlatched Owen's tray so I could hand him to her. James got up and ran circles around the table, and promptly knocked down Owen's tray, spilling peas, corn, ham and cheese bits all over the freshly mopped and swept floor.

It was good, when I went back upstairs to work on the second coat, that I'd brought back some beer.

J had some too.

Domestic Duties

We talked about turning the downstairs around for a while.

I asked J when we returned from camp, "Do you think this is realistically going to happen, or not?" She said that she thought it would, and then it ended up happening that very night. What happened was this: We set up my library, the piano, and the desk in the front room of our house, which we ended up calling The Library, The Front Room, and The Living Room at various points. In the back room, we set up our two couches and the cube which housed toys for the boys downstairs. We called this The Family Room, The Living Room (you can see the confusion that arose from this arrangement already) and The Back Room.

There were some decent reasons for this arrangement. The back room is carpeted, the front room is not. The back room has big windows on three sides and is full of light, while the front room can be a little darker and more subdued.

But there were reasons to switch as well. J didn't like my bookshelves to be the initial sight upon entering the house, and with good reason--there isn't a matching pair among them, even the pair that is supposed to match, and many of my books are, well, more functional than beautiful. We also found that the back room was hard to keep clean, mostly because it felt too small. There was only a small carpeted area left when the two couches were in there, and James would immediately cover the whole surface of the room with toys upon getting up every morning. (On particularly difficult evenings when we didn't pick up after him he could just continue working on the previous days' mess without having to empty all his toy boxes for a fresh one.)

Attempting the room switch on Sunday night might have been foolish. We're both 30 now, after all, and at any moment we could pass by our moment of physical prime into the long, slow descent of old age. We had just arrived back from two weeks at camp the night before, the boys had both been horribly out of sorts all day, and the house was already in a state of near disaster. I brewed the rare pot of 8 PM coffee and began to pull books off shelves, stacking them perilously against the wall. We agreed to work to 11, and then we'd stop, no matter what was done or undone.

J took the opportunity to work on something else we'd talked about--reducing the toy content of the cube by about 20%. If James had 10 matchbox cars, we threw 2 of them in a box headed for the basement. If Owen had 5 stuffed friends, we retired one of them. We put away puzzles, threw out card games, and generally attempted to declutter our lives a bit. (It's amazing how much junk you pick up when you have kids.) That part went well, although there was trouble a few days later when James saw me emptying the vacuum filter into the trash bin and noticed that we'd chucked out Don't Spill the Beans. "Hey," he said "why'd you throw out Don't Spill the Beans? Are you going to throw it away." I noticed his hurt expression, remembered the wisdom of my earlier conversations with J, reflected for a few seconds about living more contentedly with fewer material possessions, and told him in a gentle and wise voice: "I guess you'll have to ask Mommy."

Once all the shelves were stripped bare and the toys had been resorted, we began to move pieces around. First we tried to move my desk (which is called "my" desk, but is really J's) into the corner. At this point we'd unloaded eight shelves of my library, excavated the furniture, moved the entire dining room into the kitchen (to clear a path for moving) and there was no going back.

"It looks awful," said J.
She was right. The desk fit horribly in the spot where we'd moved it, and the only other sensible spot would mean that we didn't have enough wall-space for the two largest bookshelves.
We tried angling the desk, and it looked even worse.

"Well, this is the nicest piece of furniture in the library. We have to make this look good, even if nothing else will."

We moved it against the back wall, and it looked better.
Then we hauled in the two tall bookshelves, and began experimenting. As the tape measure had previously confirmed, they didn't fit anywhere. I was almost to the point of suggesting that we move them to the basement when J had a stroke of genius: She tipped one of them on its side, and laid it underneath the big casement windows. We had to remove a little hardware to make it work, but the effect was striking, and the shelves look much better sideways than they ever did standing up. It opened up all sorts of additional wallspace, and gave nice long surfaces under the window for additional storage. Moving in the rest of shelves was no problem after that.

There was more trouble when we attempted to move the couches into the front room, though.
We tried the blue couch against the red wall and the brown couch against the white wall. It looked bad. So we tried the blue couch against the white wall and the brown couch against the red wall, and that looked even worse. We moved the blue couch out of the room and tried to find a place for just the brown couch. That looked bad too. I should say, by the way, that at some point an evil witch put an enchantment on both of the couches so that they grew heavier each time we picked them up. By the time we were finishing up (nearly eleven o'clock, the very witching hour of the night) we could hardly get them off the floor.

We ended up throwing out the brown couch. It sat on the curb for three days this week while we hoped for someone with a pick-up and a need for an ugly couch would come by, but I ended up breaking down yesterday morning and calling the trash company. (James still thinks "it's going to another family that needs a couch.") It served us well, that couch, for the last few years. But no matter where we moved it in the house, there was a basic problem with it--it was as ugly a piece of furniture as you'll ever see.

J didn't love the way the blue couch looked either, but she worked in the front room as the clock ticked towards eleven, and I took laundry-baskets full of books from one room to another.

We were done by 11:15, and all the furniture was moved from one room to another.

We even found Lightning McQueen, James' adored little red car which had been missing for a month. I snuck upstairs before I went to sleep and put it on his bed next to his pillow. The next morning James woke up to find Lightning next to him and excitedly showed George. I was about to get in the shower when I heard his voice calling from downstairs.

"Roy!!! Hey ROY!!!!"

I poked my head out of the bathroom door.

"James, are you trying to tell me something?"

"Hey, why'd you move all your books into the Family room? George says he doesn't like it. George says you need to move them all back, okay?"

Well, George may not like it, but we think it turned out pretty well.

The Best of the New

About this time last year I wrote about how much we were loving our new apartment in Brighton/Pittsford on a beautiful fall morning when we took a walk down to Barnes and Noble. It was on that very trip that we bought George, who is now a year old. (Sorry we missed your birthday, George.)

There's a lot to love about our new house, one year later. I love the smell of the brand new carpet, which we weren't expecting to put in, but which has drastically improved the odor of the downstairs. I don't think you could tell a cat ever lived in this house now, unless you are in one particular corner of the basement.

I love having our own laundry machine downstairs, and not needing to worry about sharing it with the neighbors.

I love going to Home Depot, and knowing that whatever it is we need to pick up is for us and our home, not something we need to haggle about with a landlord.

I love the playground across the street. It has a rock wall (apparently James can climb rock walls), a couple of big slides, and most importantly, a baseball diamond. We went over there for the first time on Sunday night, and as soon as I showed James where the baseball diamond was he took off running the bases...and he didn't stop until I told him we could come back the following day and run them some more. (Maybe I should let him stay up and watch a game of the World Series this week.)

I love gorgeous hardwood floors, and enough storage space in the garage and basement to put our boxes of stuff somewhere out of sight.

Most of all, I love what I'm going to be able to do when James goes to bed tonight...practice in my very own basement without needing to drive to a church or a hall.

J looks pretty pleased as well. She got back yesterday from a checkup with a 3D ultrasound of the new baby. It's really a baby in there, with little fingers and toes and a face. A face that looks EXACTLY like his big brother's. ("It's 'nother one James!")

So right now I'm waiting out a funeral in the sanctuary where I teach lessons in Lima...and once I'm done teaching I can't wait to go home!

Homeowners

I was working on my third cup of coffee, mostly out of boredom. I drummed my fingers on the table repeatedly, glanced up at the clock again, and then grinned at J.

"I'm feeling very awake," I said "I will definitely not be asleep for this. In fact, I'll have all my best jokes ready."

She grinned back weakly. "How long do you think it will take again?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe an hour? James will be fine, I'm sure"

"Yeah, I'm starting to wish we'd just gotten a babysitter."

It had all started about three months ago when J came into the living room one morning and said "You know, I started to think last night about where we're going to put this new baby when he comes, and I realized that we have absolutely no more room in this apartment. I mean, there's no room for a bassinet in James' room...there's just no space for it. And where would we even put him in our room? Or even let's say he was going to sleep in the living room..look at this!"

The living room was in a state of semi-disaster. The "clean corner" was currently a stack of trumpet cases, and everywhere else was covered in James' mega-blocks.

"It's no big deal," I said, "The baby can sleep down in the storage unit. We'll just use a baby monitor."
"No really, what are we going to do? Should we start looking at larger apartments?"

We did. We were appalled.

"For that much money, we ought to just buy our own place."
We looked at each other.

That conversation had taken place many times before. Our current rent payment was already about what we'd expect to pay for a mortgage and other home-ownership expenses. We'd talked about the benefits of buying a place, and even did some preliminary looking. The first time we visited our bank we got laughed out when I tried to explain what my "primary" job was. ("Well, I don't really have a primary source of income, per se...")

"You know, I'm sure that our total income qualifies for a reasonable interest rate, and it's been consistent for a few years now."
"We could leave town at any time though, if you win an audition somewhere else."
"That's true, but that's just going to be the way it is until I either win one or we get some job here that rules out looking elsewhere."
"I sure wish we hadn't just spent (obscenely large amount of money) buying two cars...but we might be able to scrape together a down payment."
"It couldn't hurt to ask, right?"

So we asked.

"Yes, with your current income you would qualify. Now, tell me what you do for work?"

"Sure, I play second trumpet with the S Orchestra."
"Okay, anything else."
"Yes, I also play with the R Orchestra and the B Orchestra. And I teach at a local Christian school. And I teach at the local community music school. And I teach at H college. And I have a church job."
"....oh. And do you have paystubs from the last 60 days for all these jobs?"
"Not at all."

And so began our education of the mortgage process. I checked out a bunch of books from the local library with titles like "Mortgages for Dummies" and "How to Buy Your First Home" and "The Cambridge History of the Ancient World, Volume III: The Assyrian Empire." We also talked to lots of our similar-aged friends who had recently gone through the process, and some of our older friends who had been telling us to save our paystubs for years. We learned the meanings of words like "escrow" (somebody takes your money) and "PMI" (an insurance company takes your money) and "title insurance" (a different insurance company takes more of your money) and "origination fees" (a guy at a desk with a calculator takes your money) and "closing costs." (the bank takes whatever is left of your money.)

We sort of accidentally stumbled onto our Realtor in the early part of the process. J found a program online that offered rebates to teachers who are looking to buy houses ("I teach sometimes, if it's not an orchestra week and my students haven't cancelled!") and we were connected to a local Realtor who I will not name. She did not make a favorable impression. She had a distinctly unrefined manner. She showed up to viewings in flip flops and an oversized bermuda shirt with her tiny dog yapping in the back of her SUV. She didn't take particularly special care to pronounce her consonants, and we both had some serious doubts about whether she'd be able to decipher the enormous stacks of legal documents that were puzzling us at the first paragraph.

She was great. She brutally honest with us and with everyone we interacted with, and she asked all the rude questions to selling and listing agents that we would have been to polite to raise. She gave us candid evaluations of what she thought each place was worth when we finished looking at them, and she put us in touch with a good lawyer and a good inspector.

There were a lot of dud houses in between, though. We didn't exactly know what we were looking for, so when someone would ask us what we thought of the house we'd just visited, we'd stammer out something along the lines of. "Well, it definitely had walls...and a ceiling. I think there was a basement...funny smell...green paint?"

J found our house late one night while the baby was kicking her and keeping her awake. It was a brand new listing, and she loved the hardwood floors and the bright photos of the inside. She immediately emailed it to our Realtor. An hour later, when she still hadn't fallen asleep, she emailed her again. "We really REALLY want to look at this one as soon as possible."

12 hours later we made an offer, which was accepted later that night.

It was about here that we switched over from our bank to an independent mortgage broker. It was a good move. The bank was slow and unhelpful. Our agent at the broker was great...he worked a couple of long nights at the end to get everything ready, and he was always on top of getting us in. It was the end of August when we had our big first meeting with him.

"It looks like you should be able to hit the number that we're going to need for closing" he said "but you may need to eat peanut butter and jelly for a while. You're going to need X amount of dollars by Y date."

Thus began the daily process of checking our bank account, watching the expenses trickle out through the week, and then the paychecks replenishing on Friday. Then there were the big expenses at the beginning of the month, and we'd be two thousand short again...and then it would go back up.

There were some tense moments. The selling agent pulled some dirty tricks to try to get the process moving faster, and the date (Y) by which we needed to have X dollars got moved up by a few weeks. We saved harder. I took some extra gigs. Then we found out that the X dollars would actually need to be a higher number than we thought. So we saved even harder. Then we found out that out of my seven jobs and J's three, only five would count. This made our monthly debt to income ratio slightly outside the acceptable margin. So we called in a favor (which we won't name, but which was very generous) and we wiped out one of our small debts with a gift.

There was so much paperwork. There were paystubs to be tracked down, tax forms to be printed, waivers to be signed, inspections to be approved, and all of it had to be scanned and sent back into the office as soon as possible. I don't know how this process worked before iPhones, but the scanner feature on my phone was a life saver. There were a few times when J found something in the mail and scanned something while I was in rehearsal. We ended up making five trips to the bank to print out copies of ATM deposits we'd made over the last two months to prove that our gig checks weren't for drug money. All of the sorts of tasks that I'd have put off until an evening off were rushed through breathlessly between lessons and before dinner so we could get them in on time.

And then there were the temptations. We've never been really big spenders, as a family, but I think we all felt the belt tighten as we cut down on any frivolous expense. There was no ordering out a pizza when we were too tired to cook. We stopped buying at Wegmans what we could get at Aldi's. The iPhone 6 came out, and I could have traded mine in if I fronted $200, but I chose not to. We packed peanut butter and jelly for lunch

And then, we were down to the wire and we were cleared to close. We waited to hear from our attorney about what the closing date might be. I got a voicemail on Wednesday from him: "Hi Mr. Smith, this is John Staples from the law office of Mitch Vericello. We've set a closing date for Friday, October 17th, and Mr. Vericello himself is going to be present for your closing paperwork. You'll need a cashier's check in the amount of X dollars."

At 1:00 today I drove to the bank and got a cashier's check drawn up in the largest amount of money that's ever been in my hands. We drove (with James, and fully caffeinated) to the law offices of Mitch Vericello, where Mr. Vericello himself gave us a terse greeting and escorted us back into a non-child-friendly room and gave us a mountain of papers to sign. His shirt was tucked into his underwear.

And then, an hour later, we emerged as homeowners. The sellers are still in the property for the next two days, and then I have a week of Die Fledermaus in Syracuse with rehearsals every single night...we're hoping we can scrounge together enough of a crew to move on Saturday. The new place still smells like the seller's cats, but we're hoping that the removal of their junk will help with that a good deal. Either way, we'll be over there during the days this week unloading books and scrubbing.

At this point, I feel surprisingly calm about the whole thing. There were some really tense moments in there. Last Friday was the day that we needed to hit our minimum amount in the account to get cleared to close, and it was a lot closer than I'd care to admit. That whole day I walked around looking worried and checking my phone every five minutes. But today, as it all wraps up, I just feel happy and relaxed. J is going to have her very own house, in which she can decorate it as she sees fit, so long as it costs less than $10. James is going to have a backyard, which is basically the best thing an almost-three-year old could ask for.

And the new baby won't have to sleep in the storage unit.

Coda: James spent most of this evening dragging his most valuable possessions (George, Steven, his toy vacuum, and a large stick) to the front door and informing us that he was ready to move to the new house. This is significant progress from the child who refused to let George and Steven leave the apartment all week after seeing the new house for the first time. We're pretty sure he was convinced that as long as they were in the apartment we couldn't move anywhere. We've had several chats since about how Mommy and Daddy and George and Steven and all of our toys are going to the new house together. This seems to have helped.

The process of getting to closing this afternoon was a roller coaster unlike anything I'd previously experienced. If we hadn't put down $X in earnest money at the very beginning I'm not sure we would have held out to the end. But hold out we did, and major kudos to our realtor, who ended up not being nearly as scary as her SUV dog would have indicated, our family, and friends who helped educate us in the process. And to the author of this blog, who truly shouldered the vast majority of the paperwork/scanning/phone calling/money making burden himself--may this house be a sweet haven of rest and provide you with a dwelling to practice in without serving as the inspiration for new apartment-complex noise regulations.

Advice

Should we buy a house?

Achilleus: Nay, spend not silver or other guerdon to make purchase of yonder house, but let us take it by force as once I sacked seven-gated Thebes and plundered it. The strength of the house shall not prevail against us, but we shall pull down its walls and despoil all the cattle of their fields, and their wives will be our concubines.
Odysseus: Even better, listen to my much-crafty counsel. We shall build to them a great gift of wood and feign our departure, as though we had conceded defeat and abandoned the high-walled house. Then in the midst of their reveling will the noble first-fighters climb down from our deceitful gift and slaughter them all in their drunkenness, and we will take the house by the cleverness of our wits.
Me: Any chance we could do this without putting anyone to the sword?
Achilleus: We came all this way, I think we need to use the swords.

Jesus: No man can serve two masters. Either he will love the one and hate the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.
Me: I was kind of hoping that your bit would be about the foundation of sand vs. the foundation of rock. Because I was just in the basement and it looks pretty good down there, aside from the smell.
Jesus: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy.
Me: Dangit

Ovid: Men say that long ago in this country there was a certain nymph who very beautiful and lovely in form, and seeing her one of the river gods was struck with a violent passion. He gave her chase, but she was devout unto Diana and would not surrender her chastity. Yet the young river god was more swift of foot than she, and as he was about to overtake her and do her violence she prayed unto Father Zeus that she be saved from the injury he meant to do her. Then even as she collapsed upon the ground she felt her knees begin to grow solid and turn into concrete, and her arms were turning into aluminum siding, and when she touched her hair it had become as asphalt shingles.
Me: This really isn't helpful
Ovid: I'm not finished yet. The river god was turned into a cat, which is what you smell when you go down into the basement. He's still trying to get into her crawlspace. <giggles>
Me: No wonder they kicked you out of Rome.

Saul: Well, I was going to wait for Samuel to get here to sign the mortgage, but I say we just do it ourselves.
Me: I think we should wait for Samuel. And perhaps the Realtor and the lawyers as well.
Saul: Nah, we've waited long enough. Let's just sign it ourselves, go beat back the Philistines, and call it a day.
Me: You aren't qualified to sign the mortgage. I mean, you're a great warrior and all, but Samuel said specifically to wait for him.
Saul: Too late. <signs "Saul, son of Kish, King of Israel, esquire> Now it's done. Boom.

Overnight

"Hi, I'm calling to make sure that I'll be able to pick up my niece from daycare this afternoon."
"Let's see. If you've been added to the release form you'll just need to bring ID. What's your niece's name?"
"Last name Smith, first name Hayden."
"Oh, HAYDEN. We know Hayden."
"Yes."
................................

James, J, and I are walking past the playground. James asks to go play, but we say no. Also, stay out of the mud. It's just a little breezy out, and it looks like it might start to sprinkle. A church bell chimes softly. We walk through the cool and silent portico, and in through the air-conditioned hum of the first set of double doors. We enter the empty foyer through the second double doors.
"Well, I'm not sure where she is, but I can hear Hayden."
...................................


"JAMES! ROY! AUNT JUUUULIEEEEE!"
"Hi Hayden, how are you?"
"I'M GONNA COME OVER TO YOUR HOUSE! I'VE BEEN THERE BEFORE!"
"I know, we're so excited to have you over! It's just too bad that Liam can't come too."
"Yeah, my brover has the chicken cox."
.....................................

"We need to run some errands before we go back to our apartment, Hayden."
"Are we gonna go to WEGMANS?"
"Ooh, I yike Wegmans! I wanna cookie!"
"Hey, James learned to talk! He's not a baby anymore."
"Yeah, James has been talking for a long time, Hayden."
"He doesn't talk as good as me, though."
"No, he doesn't talk nearly as much."
"George wanna ride in the cart at Wegmans too!"
......................................

"ARE WE ALMOST TO WEGMANS YET?"
"We're getting close. Remember how we talked about using an inside voice in the car."
"Hed'n, I see it. I see Wegmans--yaaaay!!!!"
"YAYYY!!!!!"
<both children applaud wildly in the backseat as Wegmans comes into view>
..................................

"I wanna ride my bike."
"Hayden's riding your bike right now. In a few minutes you can switch and she can push your mower."
"OK."
"Just a sec, sweetie, my phone is ringing."
"Stay on the path, though, James."
"It's the realtor. Hello?"
"Hayden, don't get too far ahead."
"Where's Hed'n goin'?"
"Okay."
"That's a good place to wait for us. What does she say?"
"They accepted our offer on the house."
...........................

<splash splash, giggle giggle, splash splash>
"Careful Hayden, don't get water in James' eyes again."
"AAAAHHH! THIS WATER IS IN MY BRAAAAIN!"
"AAAAAHHH!"
<splash splash, giggle giggle, splash splash>
...........................

"Okay, let's say our prayers now. Help me to be loving, obedient,"
"HEY, I KNOW THIS PRAYER TOO!"
"That's right. Do you do it with Nama?"
"I do this prayer with my Grandma. She's your Mom."
"Mm-hm, and James knows it too. Should we say it all together?"
"Help me to be loving, obedient, truthful, and kind, and to keep others in mind. Praise for your glory, thanks for your goodness, forgive me the wrongs I've done, bless my friends and family, and bless me too."
"Love you guys. Sleep so good!"





































































































"AUNT JULIE, I NEED A HUG AND A KISS!!!"

Updates

The day started well. My alarm on my phone went off at 5:45, and when I rolled over to shut it off I saw that my old C trumpet had finally sold on eBay. It's probably been listed half a dozen times by now, and I lowered the auction price by over three hundred dollars over the course of the last month and a half. Someone was messaging me a month ago asking for everything I knew about model 5 mouthpipes. He said he was going to buy it, but never did. Someone else was messaging me last week trying to negotiate a private sale, and he offered me $925. I countered with $950 plus shipping, and never heard back from him. I checked the email to see how much it sold for, and someone had used the Buy It Now...$1300 dollars, and the money had already cleared. When trying to scrape together a down payment, that's some serious good news. I had it in the mail by 11:30 in the morning, and it's off to Arizona now. I hope that whoever bought it likes it. It was a good and faithful horn for me.

We looked at two new houses today, both up in the North Winton/Irondequoit neighborhood. When we left the first place we were talking seriously about putting in a bid. The second was better than any of the locations we'd looked at previously, but not as good as the first. I'm trying not to get too attached to the place we might bid on, so I won't say anything more about it, except that James loved it. (We brought him along today. That went about as well as you'd expect.)

I swing back and forth between the exhilaration of thinking "this is actually going to happen...we're going to be homeowners. We have the income and the credit to pull it off, and we're going to have a place of our own in a few months." Then I think about trying to add closing fees on top of our down payment money (definitely not 20%) and I remember the cover letter I wrote up trying to make excuses for the fact that "even though neither my wife or I have a full time job, you can see from the total sum of our 17 W-2s that we make a comfortable living." Then I think that it just isn't going to happen. No lender in their right mind would give us a loan worth accepting.

Ah, adulthood. I spent about two hours today reading a homebuyers guide from the library and punching in numbers to an amortization schedule. If we don't get the house, the next year or so will be an anxious struggle to stabilize our earning situations, save aggressively, and take auditions. If we do get a house, I'll still be taking auditions, and I'll be constantly checking the amortization schedule and running numbers about tax assessments and equity.

The thing is, this isn't some unique and tragic set of circumstances that demands general sympathy. I think this is just normal adult life. (Maybe this is why adults look so tired.) This process makes me appreciate the people who can find genuine joy in their own skin despite the constant weather of bills and loans and responsibilities battering at their door.

My parents come to mind. Today is their anniversary, and I still hope for nothing more out of my marriage than to resemble them in twenty-odd years. I know that they don't have a perfect marriage and that there must be a hundred undercurrents and troubles I'm never aware of. But just before I got married my Dad told me that he felt sorry for friends of his who dreaded going home to their wives at the end of a long day, and were always looking for an excuse to be out of the house. "And it's always been the other way for me," he said "and at the end of the day we want to be together"

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

In some truly tragical news, James is enacting a small scale German opera whenever he gets up from his afternoon nap. He's almost always bright and bubbly first thing in the morning, but he must sleep heavier in the afternoon, and he is CRANKY lately. Here are some highlights:

"Oh NOOO my bike needs to be in'a kitchen!" <begins to cry>

"Uh-OH, my milk is gone an'I need WATER!" <begins to cry>

"Don't read that book in the yiying room, you must read it in'a kitchen."
"Why can't I read it in the living room?"
"Because...Daddy's gonna practice, and it's gonna be LOUD." <begins to cry>

"Nope, my book is not in the ottoman. I can't find it in the ottoman. Can't. No. No. <shakes head> It's not in there."

In the past we've also heard:

"Oh NOOO somebody cleaned up my mess!"

"I'm hungwy for my breakfast."
"But it's almost time for dinner, little bear. Do you think it's morning?"
"Uh-OH, I need my cereal!"

Quick Hitters

We don't have cable, so whenever I check into a hotel room I put on SportsCenter. There are all sorts of amazing highlights and countdowns and special interest segments that I thoroughly enjoy for about 5 minutes as I kick off my shoes and practice trumpet for a bit. And then, after the 5 minutes are up, I remember why SportsCenter is stupid and we will never pay for cable.

SMITHS GO TO THE LIBRARY
Host 1: Okay, so the Smith Family was out at the Pittsford public library today, let's roll the highlights. Looks like Dad picked up a book on Leopold Stokowski, The Last Days of Pompeii, and in a surprising development you can see him here in the 300 call numbers picking up two books about purchasing a house for the first time. Reactions, guys?

Host 2: Yeah, I think that's a bad idea on his part. Supposedly he's already reading Froissart, and he just isn't going to have time to take care of all of those books before they're due again. I mean, the guy is trying to get up and read Homer and Ovid every morning...he's just overstretched. It isn't gonna happen. He's too old and tired, and he's not going to have time in his reading rotation--and that's not even counting how many times a day he has to read Curious George out loud.

Host 3: I disagree. You know, when I was younger and more important I read books quickly all the time. Of course the tempo of the game and the coaching were different back then, but I set records for how quickly I could read library books. I'd read seven every day. I say he finishes all of those books before they're due again.

Host 1: One other interesting note, it looks like James picked up a Curious George treasury and also Curious George in the Big City and Curious George Makes a Mess, and we can't confirm, but it looks like that DVD that he won't let go of is Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham.

Host 2: I've got a good source that says that DVD is in fact Green Eggs and Ham, and that he watched it as soon he got home.

Host 3: You know, back in my playing days I took a look through Curious George Makes a Mess, and I tell you, it's the exact same plot as the first part of Curious George Gets a Medal, down to the cow pulling the pump.

2 NEW PROPERTIES

Host 1: Now we have some highlights of two new properties that the Smiths are looking at. Looks like they're going into a yellow house north of the city up here, and then check out this blooper--they drive all the way up to Irondequoit--

Host 2:--yeah, that's not exactly a jog up the street--

Host 1: And they're LOCKED OUT of the property they're trying to visit. Look at them fumbling with the lock. So, sorry guys, you aren't getting in that house today. We'll be seeing that one on the blooper reels all night.

Host 3: Yeah, and the same thing happened to me a couple of times during one of my Pro Bowl years. I went to look at a property and just couldn't get access.

Host 2: I disagree that this was an accident. I say, that they saw how beat up that house looked on the outside and they only PRETENDED they couldn't get in.

J DRINKING COFFEE

Host 1: Well, we've got a follow up on some news that broke the other day. We can officially confirm that J is now a coffee drinker. She's been seen several times this week drinking plain home-brewed coffee in a black mug, albeit with some Bailey's creamer added. Here's a photo of her pouring a french press into a mug, and here she is looking really happy and awake. Guys, what do we think?

Host 2: Well, I can tell you that her husband must be really pleased. He probably regards it as an enormous personal victory that she's finally drinking regular coffee. I'd give him a warning, though. I'd say, "Son, you aren't gonna have enough coffee for yourself if you let your woman take a cup of it every time you brew some."

Host 3: I disagree. I think you're dead wrong on that one, and here's why--I used to make coffee all the time and share it with my wife before I went out and won lots of ball games, and there was always plenty to go around, and do you want to know why? Because if we ran out, I'd just make some more. BOOM, problem solved.

JURY DUTY

Host 1: In some surprising news, we've had it confirmed that R has received a notice of jury duty this week. Our legal team is still unraveling the fine print on this one, but it sounds like he's going to have to call in to a telephone number every night until he's either summoned to appear or he's dismissed from service.

Host 2: Yeah, and I think that there's no way he gets out of this week without having to at least appear at the courtroom. They're already within 200 jurors of his number, and it's only Tuesday--an unpleasant fact, but sorry, you're going to have to make an appearance.

Host 3: You know, I disagree. I think that when you get called for jury duty or you have some kind of substance arrest--you know, I had my fair share of them back in playing days--that all you have to do is just go out and play your game at an all-pro level week in and week out, and you just let the lawyers handle it. I don't think he has anything to worry about.

CHILD HEALTH PLUS

Host 1: And finally, we have some statistics. You can see here R made a phone call to Child Health Plus to enquire about enrollment procedures for the baby due in November, and we ended up with a final time on hold of 23 minutes and 40 odd seconds. A new record, gentlemen...how long do we think this one holds up?

Host 2: I don't think that record is going to hold. With the changes that have been made in the science of the game and the technology, I think that record is gonna be broken by next year.

Host 3: You know, I set the record for everything in every sport multiple times, and I tell ya, records are made to be broken. But you know, this one might stand. I might sound like I'm contradicting myself, but we've just got another couple seconds till we're at the commercial break.

Host 1: And we'll be right back with more gripping analysis after these shoe commercials...

Stress Test

It's interesting to see how people handle stress. Stress, in the psychological sense, is a handy fairly modern word from stringo (?) which covers a lot of phenomena. For example, I am considering buying a house this week. This decision is straining, stretching, stringing, and altogether stressing (maybe it's from distressing) me. A LOT of money rests on this decision, and it's stressful to think about sums with so many zeroes after them. The idea of being responsible for the upkeep of a property weighs heavily on me. I am keenly aware that I know very little about evaluating real estate or real estate transactions, and I'm trying not to be taken advantage of. The amount of money we'd spend in closing costs will probably tie us down the Rochester area (which we love) for several years, but if we don't buy a house we're going to waste thousands of dollars in rent that could be building equity. This all forms a roiling knot of stress in the pit of my stomach, and I'm not handling it particularly well. I'm being more than usually braggy and stupid in pretty much every conversation I have with J, and I am highly distracted.

Thi is how our typical house-hunting conversation goes:

J: Oh, take a look at this one.
R: Which one?
J: This one. I'll send it to you.
R: Didn't you send this one earlier?
J: No, that was the other one.
R: Okay, I've got it.
J: Actually, this one is really nice too.
R: Wait a sec, I just got the other one.
J: Which one?
R: The white one.
J: Which white one? I sent you two.
R: Wait, what?
J: Oh, check out the back yard on this one?
R: The second white one?
J: No, this one's a little further north. It's by that other one I sent you.
R: Wait, what?

To be fair, this is how J remembers that conversation:

J: Oh, I like this one. I'm sending it to you now. It's a red colonial off of Winton. Will you send it to the realtor if you like it?
R: <watches the Bills game in stony silence>
J: Has it come in yet?
R: <sighs, then glances at phone and makes noncommital noise>
J: Okay, well I'm going to send you another one too. This one is towards the top of our price range, but it has a really nice yard.
R: Dangit.
J: Do you think that's too expensive?
R: No, EJ just looks terrible.
J: You know this is only the preseason
R: <watches the beer commercials in silent sorrow>

J is also stressed. She is stressed about the house, and she is stressed about pushing an enormous 30 pound baby out of 10 centimeter aperture in less than three months, and she is stressed about not fitting into any of her clothes any more. In my opinion, this should be the least stressful stressors of all the stressings, because she still looks great and she went back to being skinny really quick after she gave birth to James. But it's not my stress, so I don't get any say in how she deals with it, which is fair. For a while I was extolling the strength of her charms and in her particular the ample preparations that mother nature makes for a soon-to-be nursing mother, but then after several subtle hints (like being told directly) I discerned that constantly and tactlessly hitting on J like a randy teenager might not be particularly what she needs to feel de-stressed these days. What she needs to feel de-stressed, after four weeks of vacation food, is lots of fruits and vegetables plus daily walks and yoga. The switch from camp food and Grandma's house to fruits and vegetables brings us to our last member of the household:

James, who just got back from four weeks of vacation, is having a stressful re-entry into normal life. Between Csehy, the cabin, and Grandma's house, he ate snacks just about whenever he wanted, was always able to find a doting adult who could look after his every need, did lots of fun and exciting new things every day, and pretty much forgot about his whole schedule of going to bed at a reasonable time of night. So far he has thrown food at both of us, refused to eat three meals, and dumped every single box of neatly organized toys into heaps on the floor. (Last week's dream of a clean house seems so far away.) He screams and cries whenever I practice, he's talking back, and he's giving violent resistance to the new potty-training and healthy eating routines, and has started referring to every object that enters his brain with the possessive first personal pronoun. ("Daddy, I'm'a go into my yiying room [living room] and watch George on my TV with my George and eat my ice cream on my couch.")

So, we're going to try not to hurt each other over the next few weeks. Probably in three months time most of this will be forgotten. We'll be in a clean and spacious three bedroom house in the suburbs that looks to appreciate 10% every year, J will be a svelte and glowing mother of a beautiful boy (born perfectly healthy at 5 lbs, 1 oz) and James will be a proud big brother munching on organic vegetables as he welcomes you at the door and tells you that you are not welcome in "his" house.

Welcome to our House

Welcome to our house! Let me show you around. If you haven't been over to our apartment before, you'll have to be careful on our welcome mat, where there are several sets of snowy shoes outside the door. We only left the house once today, when James and I went up the courtyard to visit the office and then to say hello to the carwash down past the business park. (I carried him back screaming and crying, because the onset of hypothermia is not a sufficient reason to leave his carwash-observations snowbank.)

If you step into the foyer area, you'll see that two toolboxes are out and and open. Were we conducting major repairs? No, we were looking for a box-cutter and duct tape to construct a hot wheels ramp out of the remnants of a cardboard box. Don't worry, that will all get picked up for bedtime.

There is leftover pizza out in the kitchen. Friday night is pizza night at our house, and tonight we had a delicious homemade pizza courtesy of Mom. There are three wineglasses out drying, because we accidentally broke the fourth today. Oh, well. This set made it almost a whole month before the first casualty. It was a pretty scary experience. Not the breaking of the glass, mind you, but vacuuming up the shards afterwards. Whenever the real vacuum comes out, someone has to hold a two year old who is positively quaking with fear.

Off of the kitchen you can see our pantry, which is conspicuously devoid of mop, hand-broom, dustpan, and ironing board. We need all of these items out in the living room for the reading and acting out of various books. We require the mop to read "Curious George and the Carwash," in which George constructs a homemade car wash for his toy cars. It is the best book ever. The hand broom is used for "Curious George Gets a Medal" because it looks like a paint brush, and George does some painting in that one. I think the dustpan is just for fun, and the ironing board is out for use as a second hot wheels ramp.

If you come into the living room, you'll see piles and piles of books on the floor, and not all of them belong to James. But lots of them do. We went to the library yesterday and got a new Thomas book, a new George book, and three books about car washes. James got so worked up about car washes by lunchtime today that we tapped into the secret reserve of never opened Christmas presents that we hid in his closet. We decided that today, the day in which we weren't going to go anywhere or do anything, would be an ideal time to get out his mega-blocks. James took to them instantly, and requested that we build a model car wash. Once that was finished, he disappeared into his room for a minute, then came out with an unopened puzzle from the no-longer-secret stash of never opened Christmas presents that we hid in his closet.

Back in James' room you'll see an enormous cardboard box that doubles as a fort and a hot wheels garage, as well as a bookcase full of books not currently involved in the living room rotation and a falling apart photo album that he likes to look through. The most striking new feature of his room, however, is the converted toddler bed that used to be his crib. He has mostly stayed in it when he needs to, although yesterday he wandered out halfway through his nap time with a binky in his mouth and a book under his arm, saw that I was playing Madden on the Wii, and promptly began humming the CBS football theme.

Our room is currently a jungle. Literally, actually. There are zebra-striped bed sheets and two six-foot inflatable glowing palm trees, plus colored cut outs of jungle animals and a layer of construction paper grass. It's the middle of February in Rochester, and there are several feet off snow outside. The air is cold, and you can't go anywhere without getting your feet soaked. But in our apartment, we have a little tropical paradise, complete with its very own monkey. A monkey who loves car washes.