BoldUlysses.com

For some reason, I have the chorus of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “Who Loves You” going through my head.

Completely exhausted after quite possibly the least relaxing “vacation weekend” ever. The kids were at “Nana Camp” with Mom and Dad from Thursday evening until Sunday afternoon, and they had a blast. Some activities included the planetarium, the Life & Science Museum, splashing in the backyard pool, visiting the garden and going to church. Mom and Dad had a great time too, and were more tired than they admitted to being (Dad confessed over the phone this morning, haha).

For our part, Diane and I remodeled the kitchen cabinets. We sanded and primed them on Thursday, painted them on Saturday, and hung them on Sunday. And shopped and ran errands besides. You’d think that just painting something wouldn’t be the back-breakingly tiring endeavor that it was, but holy cow. There’s so much prep work involved, and then laying on coat after coat, touching up, etc. Not fun. But the cabinets are now Snowcap white, crowd molding has been installed at the top and our hinges, knobs and pulls are brushed nickel. Between the cabinet color change, the flooring update and the beadboard on the wall, the kitchen is really coming together. I commented to Diane that it really looks like one of her Pottery Barn catalogs now.

Longing for the beach today. Or the mountains. Actually, I’d settle for just rain. Something different. We’re visiting my parents next weekend, so that’ll be a nice change of scenery, among other things. We’ve been so house-focused over the course of the past 6 months or so; I think we need some distance to help establish perspective, and to help us keep from getting burned out. I’m looking forward to the feeling of “coming back” to our house, driving up the cul-de-sac and having it come into view. That’ll be nice.

Speaking of nice things about the house, here are a few:

1. It is, apparently, under the GSO approach flight path, like the old house. Regional jets routinely scurry overhead, and on Saturday afternoon, I saw the unmistakable silhouette of a Citation X. It’s near the practice areas of several local airports, too, so there’s always something up there.
2. No power lines. I realized yesterday whilst mowing the yard that they’re all buried. Very nice.
3. Ridiculously easy yard to take care of. Big, healthy rectangle of grass in the backyard, no maintenance trees and bushes. Only the side yard needs occasional tending, and that’s very manageable.
4. The crest of the lot. Love, love, love this. Drainage is ideal and the house is very well situated—but not “exposed” or too prominent. The two trees in the front yard help with that
5. Normalcy. After the adventure that was the old house (as grateful as we continue to be for it), it’s refreshing to be in a house with normal studs and drywall, normal doors and windows, and normal squared-up dimensions between things. That isn’t to say some things aren’t off, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.

Question of the day: Should we name our house? Would that be pretentious? Thinking of house-related words for the name of the post immediately brought to mind the names of some of the houses in P&P: Longbourn, Netherfield, Pemberley, and so on. It would be nice to be able to tell the kids, in returning from an errand, “Okay, now we’re going back to Such-and-Such,” instead of simply, “Okay, now we’re going back to the house.” But maybe it’s too much.

Sitting here at work putting off eating my turkey and cheese sandwich. Dave is out sick today, Charlie’s off to get his allergy shots, and thunderstorms are popping up here and there. The brunt of them is supposed to arrive tonight. It’ll be nice to have the rain. I love a good downpour.

Luke’s home sick, and Penelope amused herself this morning by getting into the (gas, thankfully) fireplace downstairs and emptying every last bit of dirt and soot out onto the white carpet. Diane called me in exasperation this morning and told me about it. Amazing how she chooses to ignore the dozens, nay, hundreds of toys downstairs and decides to mess with the fireplace. Unbelievable.

But we’re all well. Our latest home improvements are as follows:

1. Painted the outside shutters black to match the front door. They look awesome.
2. Spent all day Friday and Saturday putting up beadboard on the kitchen walls. Nearly cursed at my utterly useless stud finder.
3. Built a big, long work table for the garage. It fits between the cars and has storage on the bottom shelf.
4. Scored some free wood on Monday, courtesy of a crate the company was going to throw out. It’s good plywood and two-by-fours I’ll use for additional shelving in the garage.
5. Finished painting the hallway and front room Seashell Gray. It looks wonderful, cool, calm and refreshing. Love the color.

I’ve been really itching to start on the Datsun restoration, even though I know

• It’s a multi-year project,
• It’ll be far more expensive than we can budget for now,
• Home improvements are the first priority, and
• I really should be focusing more of my time and attention on my family, given where they all are.

So that’ll definitely have to wait. I might just move it to our house, though, just to help Mom and Dad by freeing up some space in their garage. And there might be little things I can tackle without spending any money. Ahh…we’ll see.

The wind is really blowing outside now. I can see the pollen and leaves come off the trees. Storm’s coming.

A few little things to update you with:

1. Home improvement continues apace. Diane and I (mostly Diane, whilst I tended the kids) completely painted the family room downstairs, and she’s been painting other things like the TV cabinet, doorknobs, picture frames, decorations, etc. I installed stick-down vinyl tile flooring in the main bathroom upstairs, and it looks surprisingly good considering what it is. We think we might actually install stick-down vinyl “hardwood-look” flooring in the kitchen as a cheaper, lower-maintenance alternative.
2. There have been a few car repair successes to report. The ripped PCV hose on the Minkevan (causing a check engine light and very rough running) was repaired by using a copper pipe, heater hose and hose clamp pliers to remove the old unit. The E34’s ICV hoses, throttle body gasket and intake boot have all been replaced, along with its fuel pump and filter (after it failed to start on me last Monday morning). So things are good on the car front. If only I could get a longer hose so I could give them a proper bath…
3. Luke continues to be obsessed with stars and planets, but particularly stars these days. I want him to learn the constellations before I pull out the telescope, and I plan to use the H.A. Rey kids book to teach him, the same book I used when I was only a little older than he is. There’s a local astronomy club I want to take him to as well. I think he’d like that.

We got it.

The house, that is. We closed on our new house last Friday. The aftermath was completely surreal as we stumbled out of the attorney’s office and out to the car. Even driving over there and visiting immediately afterwards, it didn’t feel like “our home,” though I don’t think it will until we actually move in and experience life there.

Speaking of moving in, we might actually do so sooner rather than later. The logistical difficulties of driving back and forth to work on it, the “separate-ness” and particular the fact that the kids don’t understand why we can’t be there now… All those factors are good reasons to just move. The idea is that the inconvenience of working around family life is less than the inconvenience of essentially living two places and constantly driving back and forth. So, we might actually move over there this Friday.

It was a busy weekend. Diane spent a lot of time over there testing paint and various stains for the kitchen cabinets. I watched the kids and borrowed the work van to empty out the storage unit, an achievement which felt fantastic. It’s awesome not to have to worry about that any more, and $46 more a month besides. The contents of the storage unit are in the garage at the moment, which I think will become a staging area of sorts for the move into the rest of the house. Well, staging and triage—we’re definitely taking the opportunity that moving affords to weed out the junk we’ve accumulated.

Moving right along…

Thumbing through iTunes yesterday, I stumbled upon my copy of Nichole Nordeman’s “Every Season.” Call me a sap, I really do enjoy the song. And it’s the most cliché sentiment in the poetic universe, but the personification of nature in the song really resonated with me this time around.

Especially considering we’re closing on our new home tomorrow, the thought of the house, the yard, the trees and bushes standing vigil over the empty, “hoping” one day they’ll get a family, owners who will care for them and enjoy them… It’s the most overused device in song and poetry, but the idea that the inanimate objects we’re about to enter into a “relationship” with have active wills and desires of their own and “want” good caretakers… For whatever reason, I felt strong sense of responsibility when I considered those ideas.

Is it just me giving in to some treacly Disney-fied notion about “my brothers and sisters the wind and the waves?” Or did the song evoke, for a fleeting moment, some primordial sense of our God-given stewardship of the Earth and the attendant responsibilities and joys of the Great Commission? I’d like to think it was the latter.

Very full of chili at the moment. I had to supplement the cheese topping with crushed tortilla chips instead of crackers, since we were all out of the latter. It’s a big lump in my stomach at the moment, but it’ll keep me going all afternoon.

Good Christmas and New Year’s holiday. Diane and I agreed last night that we’re happy to be through it, so we can focus on the house purchase and just returning to “normalcy” as a family. Every December seems like it’s more of a roller coaster than the last.

The kids got many good toys. Luke’s big item this year was his long-awaited violin. I’m still in the process of lining up lessons, but it was enough for him this year just to have the instrument. Penelope’s big things were her kitchen set (with a veritable deluge of toy kitchen foods and cookware) and her dollhouse. Both kids have been playing with all the toys (except for the violin, which is exclusively Luke’s).

New year’s was just another night. Diane’s been sick the past two weeks, and Friday was a particularly bad night, so I think we went to bed around 9:30 PM. The next morning we greeted each other with an absent-minded “Oh, happy new year’s.” Pretty low-key.

The house purchase is moving forward. There was a bit of an incident a few weeks ago in the aftermath of the home inspection. The house passed with flying colors, except for a few ticky-tack kinds of things. Until, that is, the inspector returned two days later to pick up his radon testing equipment, whereupon he discovered a big pool of water in the kitchen and sizable stains on the basement ceiling immediately underneath the kitchen floor. Turns out the dishwater had sprung a leak from not having been run in a year or so (since whenever the previous owner vacated the house). Thank goodness the inspector ran the dishwasher or we’d have been up a creek (pun intended).

The silver lining to the situation is that we’re getting a new dishwasher (replacement being cheaper than repair in this case) and the seller is going to foot the bill for ceiling repair in the basement, along with all the other standout issues on the home inspection report. Lord willing, we’ll be closing in less than two weeks!

We had a bit of a scare on Saturday evening when looking
at pictures of the house on Google Maps. Here’s the satellite view:

The area of concern is just on the other side of the Leyland
Cypresses on the northeast side of the yard, indicated by the red arrow.

What does it look like, upon first glance?

Yes, a cemetery.

Diane (understandably) was freaking out; I was upset, and kicking myself that I hadn’t thought to investigate what was on the other side of the privacy trees before putting an offer on the house, something we did last week.

We fretted for a good half hour…until we looked at the same area with Bing Maps:

There you can see the area at more of an angle, which made it clear it’s a dressage course for horses. The objects are gates and obstacles for the horses to jump over and go around. Of course, then the lightbulb went on and, having lived in the immediate area for 25+ years, Diane remembered that she had seen horses on that lot many times before.

A lot better than some centuries-old, creepy cemetery, no?

The moral: When you have privacy trees all around your backyard, look to see what’s on the other side before bidding on the house. Goodness.

Busy Thanksgiving weekend. We ate at Diane’s parents’ on Thursday (it was their turn this year) spent Friday and Saturday mulling around the apartment and setting up Christmas things, including the tree, and Sunday the major activity was re-visiting the Sedgewick house.

For that last part, Diane’s parents and siblings and their families were on hand to see the house and provide a few more pairs of eyes checking of potential issues (with additional experience as well). They liked the house a lot but pointed out some stuff that, while not game-changing, is definitely worth investigating. Luke and Pen ran around the house too, excited about the new experience. Luke understood in the implications better than his sister; for her it was just some new adventure with her extended family, which was fine. At the moment many things are happening at once: We’re “discovering” the house we’re interested in at the same time we’re realizing the gravity of the decision we’re about to make, the loan process moves forward, all sorts of variables enter the equation and we just want to make a wise decision, at the end of the day. It’s tough.

It’s hard to wait for the house, whichever house we end up getting (hopefully the one we’ve had our eye on). Diane’s been busy virtually redecorating and remodeling the entire house. We’ve had lots of conversations about it. We share the anticipation of just “having all our ‘stuff’ in one box;” the feeling of being in the house and knowing that all our worldly possessions—kids, things, cars, memories, etc—are neatly tucked away in their “cubbies.” That contrasts with the current situation, with our neighbors downstairs and next door sharing our “box,” our cars in the parking lot 100ft away, the storage unit, and so on. We feel very sprawled out, as it were.

There are so many angles to consider. I know I’ll feel occasionally trapped or constrained by the psychological stability of being in a house, whether or not that stability is mirrored in our life situation at any given time. I mean, the one overarching emotion attendant most house purchases is one of putting down roots, anchoring your family to that spot for the purpose of providing them a foundation upon which to grow and change. Life happens; jobs are lost and won, tragedies, successes, but The House retains a sense of permanence. On the surface it feels like I’m knowingly restricting myself, but I’ve made enough decisions in my life to know that every one actually opens up a whole array of new possibilities invisible from this side of the choice. So that tempers the feeling a bit.

On a more fundamental level, though, why is it that I fear the loss of “options” inherent in making a choice? Why do I hoard my possibilities, as it were? I’ve written about this before, but never really asked myself why I (and others) do it. I’ve just made passing observations to the effect that “I’m feeling this way again,” like a spectator looking in on my own thought life. Do I fear I’ll make the wrong decision? Do I want to avoid the responsibility and hard work that necessarily follows from committing to a course of action and embarking on it? Is there something inherently attractive about being flexible, about having options available to me, like having money in my wallet?

As soon as I consider those explanations, though, I remember there’s never been a time when I’ve actually been paralyzed by too many choices. A decision had to be made, and by the grace of God I made a decision and embraced the effects of that decision. So come to think of it, maybe the “fear” of the loss of possibilities isn’t a fear at all, but simply an acknowledgment that at certain points in my life, there are more possibilities immediately before me than at others, like a child looking out a car window at the myriad of fast food restaurants that border the main drag of some small town. When the time comes, the choice will be made and I’ll step through it. Does this mean I’m a passive agent of my choices, as if such a thing were possible? No—I take responsibility for them; I consider them and want to make wise ones, but at the end of the day I really, truly believe that the Lord is working everything together for His glory and our good as believers. Regardless of the “surface quality” of the choice’s outcome, good or bad, our good is being more conformed to the image of His Son. That’s the bedrock.

We checked out the house this morning, and I’m pleased to report that we liked it very much. There were no “gotchas” or hidden surprises. In fact, two aspects of the house surprised us very much compared to the pictures: the size of the basement/den and the size of the back yard. The basement is finished in wood paneling and l-shaped and is just huge—perfect for entertaining, kids playing or just hanging out after they go to bed. And the back yard just keeps going and going and going. We decided the tall cypress pines lining two sides of the yard create an optical illusion that make the yard appear smaller than it is. But you could practically play baseball back there. The kids’ swing set would get lost.

The structure of the house appear solid. There were two small cracks in the painted walls upstairs, but absolutely none in the brick veneer or the cinder blocks visible in the garage. The waterproofing seems to be well-done also. The living quarters are nice; pretty standard. The appliances and decor is definitely out-of-date, which is our only guess for why the house has been on the market as long as it has (a year), considering the price, location and condition of the house. It’s weird.

I particularly like the way the house is situated on the lot; it’s essentially the highest lot on the cul-de-sac and the drainage is excellent. The two-car garage is nice and big and ready for me and my tools (that place is going to be organized), and the structure of the house—very important—appears solid. So we’ll see. Can’t really start talking money until early next month. It has been, and will continue to be, hard to wait.

We’re looking at a house on Saturday morning. It’s the one Diane and I have had our eye on for quite some time. We’ve driven by it numerous times, checked out the backyard, peered in the garage door windows, etc. On paper, it looks like it could be a perfect fit for us. Good lot, not to expensive, big enough, established neighborhood, basement + two-car garage, and so on. We’re not strictly in a position to start talking money until early next month, but we do want to see how it looks in “real life” so we can get an immediate jump on it when the money does come in.

I’m excited but cautious. This is the biggest purchase we’ll ever make, and I want to do it wisely. Fundamentally, it’s a risk for our family, and while I don’t want to totally minimize the risk (since that would mean staying where we are), I want to understand every aspect of what we’re getting into, every pending decision, and anticipate things before they arise. I’m hopeful things will go smoothly when they do, since we’re not the only ones who want this process to move forward (the realtor and seller will be “pulling” on their end as much as we “push” on ours). Also, as much as I like the house we’re going to look at, I’m instinctively a little wary of getting attached to the first house we looked at. It just feels like we’re not considering all our options, when other options could end up being even better for our family than this one. But then I remember two things: Diane’s been actively looking for houses on ListingBook for quite some time now, and the realtor probably won’t be able to do more than she will in terms of looking for a good house. Yes, there are “stashes” of houses in various states of foreclosure tucked away on bank lists, not on ListingBook, but I don’t think we’ll be overlooking very much if we decline to thumb through those. Sometimes the first one really is “it.”

We’ll see. Lord willing, soon we’ll be moving out of our large, subdivided box into a smaller, homogeneous box!