Ty Pennington, eat your heart out

So, I've talked in the past about how lucky we were to get this house, in this school district, and how the previous owners renovated it from a tiny, older home into the house we currently enjoy. And while I feel blessed with every bone in my body to have gotten this house (Hello, Mr. Elementary School Principal, glad you don't hold a grudge!) and thrilled that we didn't have to do the work, and relieved beyond measure that buying this house negated what was pretty much the greatest financial mistake of our marriage ............. still, I have been slightly confused by a few things about our house.

I love being so close to the school, and our church, and the house is without a doubt bigger than any house we could have afforded to build ourselves, and I am so, so, so grateful we're living here and not in the middle of what I'm sure would be Renovation Hell in the first house we bought ..... but it's weird. I mean, the layout and design of this house is weird.

Who builds a 3600 sq ft house with only two bedrooms? Never mind the bedrooms are big enough to hold wedding receptions in, or perhaps land an aircraft carrier in ... who does that? And who builds a pantry bigger than most bathrooms, and puts in a state-of-the-art oven/stove/grill/vented hood thing .... but puts both of those items in a kitchen, the size of which is usually found in a much smaller house? And puts a closet in the upstairs bedroom that is bigger than most bedrooms? And yeah, we've got storage out the wazoo (remember, Kellen actually sleeps in a 20 x 12 ft CLOSET) but has a teeny tiny living room?

The living room is probably my number one pet peeve about this house. I'm sure it was the perfect size for the family before us, who only had one child --- I mean, it's not *really* teeny-tiny. That was me, exaggerating (imagine that.) But once you get all five of us sprawled all over the furniture, plus any friends my kids have over, or heaven forbid any of my family come over to hang out, not to mention the piano we purchased after the kids started lessons, ..... basically, there's just not as much room as we would like in some parts of the house, and way more room than we need in others.

We decided one way to clear space in the living room would be to move the entertainment center into the master bedroom and get a smaller, simple tv stand that wouldn't take up as much space. The entertainment center was something the previous owners left behind when they moved. First, I thought it was simple generosity on their part, leaving it behind for us to enjoy. Then I thought maybe since they were down-sizing they didn't want it. Because it's not just big, it's really big. After last night, we realize the *real* reason they left it behind is because it's so freakin' monstrous they couldn't get it through the door when they left.

There are two ways to get to the master bedroom, and both paths require a u-turn in a hall. Hmmmm. How do you get an eight-foot piece of furniture through a seven-foot doorway and turn a 180 degree corner at the same time? You don't. You measure, and squint, and discuss, and measure again, but ultimately, you don't.

So just what DO you do????

Like Larry the Cable Guy might say, you grab the necessary tools, and saw that sumbitch in half.

(OK, so maybe Larry the Cable Guy wouldn't really say that. But there's just something incredibly red-neck satisfying about the word "sumbitch" and I just don't get to use it often enough!)


First you discuss how hard the wood is, ie, "real" wood vs pressboard, and whether your skillsaw will be enough for the job.

Then you talk about the merits of actually sawing this piece of furniture in half, and how you're irreparably damaging a very nice piece of furniture for all time .... but really, what are your choices?


So the heck with it .... you start cutting.


At first your sister is all squinchy because she cannot believe the two men in the family -- one of whom has an engineering degree and one of whom has a surveying degree, so they both have a firm grasp on the concept of space and structure and form and dimensions, couldn't figure out a way to get that thing into the bedroom without sawing it in two .......


But eventually she comes 'round to your OCD ways, and even volunteers to hold the wet-vac hose while the cutting is going on. (Notice *I* am not doing anything? Besides documenting the entire process with photos for posterity's sake, of course. We all have our special talents, after all .....)

(Did I mention that my brother in law was diagnosed with walking pneumonia earlier this week? I'm sure the flying wood particles were especially helpful to his lungs.)


Holy canisters of Pledge, Batman! Had we dusted under the television since we moved here???? Ummmmmm, apparently not. But look! They got the sumbitch sawed in half!!! And since Cliff only coughed up ONE lung, and he has two, then everything is ok!!

And after moving both halves into the bedroom and reassembling, you can hardly tell any damage was done.



I owe my brother-in-law a very expensive thank you gift. Something perhaps nicer than the brownie sundaes I made for their whole family before they left. Because while the entertainment center was freakin' HUGE, it was the 37 inch console television that weighed 400 pounds and gave him a hernia, moving it. Kelly and I were both trying to help (but not succeeding, since we are basically puny little wimps delicate flowers) and we were ALL trying to keep Blaine from having to lift anything (what with the radiation and all ...... lightweight that he is) and so basically my brother in law wound up doing everything. Walking pneumonia and all.

Now, if you'll excuse me, before I can shop for his gift it appears I have some dusting to do.

PS. As an aside, this is the first time in twenty-one and a half years of marriage that Blaine and I have had a television in our master bedroom. I don't know whether to be sad because it appears as though the honeymoon phase is truly over, or to be thrilled because now I can watch Dancing with the Stars, roll over and go to sleep!

The Boy They Kept In the Closet

I started to label this post “Coming Out of the Closet”, but didn’t need *those* kinds of internet rumors floating around about my son, that’s for sure! So I re-titled the post, although after reading the title again, we’ll probably have Children’s Services calling us any day. Mainly, I just wanted to share with you some photos of Kellen’s room, aka The Old Storage Closet.

No lie, this is the room the previous owners used for storage. Rubbermaid bins, paint cans, holiday decorations, etc. We looked around at the camping equipment, mattresses, ice chests and cardboard boxes, and thought, “Hey, we could put a kid in here!” And so we did. I mean, when you buy a house that only has two bedrooms, and there are five people in your family, a little creativity is in order. Even if the bedrooms are the size of Alaska.

We left the storage shelves attached to the walls and Kellen uses those as his “closet”. There’s plenty of room for his bed, bookshelf, stuffed animals, toys, and lots and lots of space in the middle for him to play. If he WOULD play upstairs, that is, which he won’t anymore, because apparently the kids were channel surfing the other day and ran across the movie “Chucky, or whatever the hell that movie is with that demonic little doll, and now none of them will go upstairs. Ever. For anything. Something tells me I’ll be learning to program the remote and block certain channels and certain shows in the near future, unless I enjoy sleeping with all three kids in my room (which I do not, just for the record) or enjoy making thirty-seven trips a day up the stairs with the kids because they are too frightened to go by themselves (repeat …. Do not enjoy.)


So anyway, here are some photos of Kellen’s closet bedroom.






What I find interesting is that door at the other end of Kellen’s room? That’s a door to another storage closet. One that separates the closet-closet from the storage space in the attic. Just how many dead bodies did they think we were planning to keep up here, anyway?

And before you feel too sorry for Kellen, having to stay in a closet, for goodness’ sake, let me point out that his “closet”, while not only bigger than my first apartment, is also directly connected to the upstairs living area/game room.






So he has immediate access to the sofas, television, dvd, vcr, Wii, karaoke machine, games, books, and treadmill. And we have an air hockey table, but can’t fit it up the damn stairs. I mean, all he needs is a mini fridge and it would be nicer than my freshman dorm room at college!

In all seriousness, we do plan on having some remodeling work done. We want to close up the wall between his room and the game room and put a door or double door between them, so he can have his privacy as he gets older. We want to close in the shelving units and make a “real” closet for him to use, replace the carpet, and {thinking big} we’d love to add in a 3/4 bathroom for his personal use. As it is now, he has to walk through the game room, across the hall, and through the girls’ bedroom to use the bathroom there. Once the girl’s rooms are separated (why yes, that is my face, with flashing dollar signs for eyeballs, considering all the work we want to do) it will be harder for him to use their restroom, and it seems a little cruel to tell him he has to hold it until he can get downstairs in the middle of the night.

But, until we win the lottery, he’ll be trudging across the upstairs to potty. And sleeping in a closet.

Home Improvement

I like our new house. I really do. In fact, if you remember, I went so far as to admit that after the stress of trying to get into this school district, and trying to live in something that wouldn’t qualify as section-8, that I burst into tears of relief when I found out our bid was accepted and we got it.

Do I love our new house? Love, love, love it with all of my heart and want to marry it? No. No partly because I am a bitter hag who wanted to build my own house with my own floor plans on our own acre of land outside the school district and I just can’t let go of the dream and get over it and instead I’ll nurse this burning ember of a grudge until the day I die …… and partly because this house isn’t anything like what we **would have** built ourselves.

The previous owners (who I am totally NOT going to bag on because although I don’t know them personally, we do have quite a few mutual friends and I just KNOW anything negative I might say would get right back to them …. Such is the joy of living in a small town**) bought this house in its original state, and remodeled it and added on to get something bigger; something a little more modern. The realtor told us they tore it down to the studs ….. the neighbor told me they didn’t. I don’t know which story is true, but overall, they managed to build a lovely home; it’s only four years old, and we are enjoying it very much.

But --- {you knew there would be a but, didn’t you?} There are parts of this house that possibly worked better for their family of three than for our family of five. The longer we are in it, the more things I see that are or are not working for us. And therefore, we have a laundry list of work we would like to eventually do to the place ourselves. Some projects are very small … a few are medium …. And a few are big. Can we live comfortably here in the meantime? Yes, easily, although I will bitch until my dying day that there is not one of those up and down shelves in the kitchen to easily store cookie and baking sheets. You know what I’m talking about? So instead I have to stack them horizontally on top of one another and it’s really heavy and awkward to pull out your muffin pan, or pizza baking stone, or whatever, because no matter which one you want it is inevitably on the bottom underneath all the others which you then have to drag out as well, such is Murphy’s Law …. (see Small House Renovation Project #1: Build Vertical Shelf Cabinet Area Thing in Kitchen to stack cookie sheets the proper way.)

One of the first, if not THE first, project we will undertake (code for: when we get the money) is the bedroom the girls are sharing. Interestingly, despite its size, this is only a 2-bedroom house. Both bedrooms are big, but one is the downstairs master and one is the upstairs bedroom that the girls are sharing. Kellen is sleeping in the storage room, although when I show you pictures of it, you won’t think it’s quite as pathetic as it sounds, and please don’t call Child Protective Services until I have a chance to explain.

Back to the girls. They are not happy sharing a room. And although they have plenty of space, you know what? I don’t blame them. I hated sharing a room with my sister growing up, too. We also had a room that my parents had added on to, so it was nice-sized, but we got on each other’s nerves and in each other’s space and in each other’s THINGS. The next-to-the-final-straw was the day I went to school and saw her best friend Stephanie with a cute shirt on, and I said, “Hey, Stephanie, cute shirt! I have one just like it!” and she smiled and said, “I know, this is yours.” The final, FINAL straw was the day that her boyfriend came to school wearing my most prized possession, a concert t-shirt from the 1984 Adam Ant Goody Two Shoes tour, that he had the audacity to CUT THE SLEEVES OUT OF, what kind of jackass cuts the sleeves off a concert t-shirt that doesn’t even BELONG TO HIM!?!?!? (Why no, I'm not still holding a grudge, why do you ask?) THAT was the day I decided I needed my own space, and ultimately, why if our girls really want their own rooms, we will try our best to make it happen. And I think the room they are in now is big enough that we can make it work. Here, you judge for yourselves:



See? Plenty of space for the girls to hang out, just reading books** (**photo totally staged) and relax.



Lots of space, the whole of one wall, for racks and shelves for clothing and shoes.



In fact, I have both their summer and winter clothes hanging here, and plenty of room left over. No more Rubbermaid bins of off-season clothes out in the garage for us! (Thank goodness, too, because how much of a hassle is that? And you always seem to get a cold front or warm front the day AFTER you swap out the clothes, you know what I mean?? And then you’re out there digging through the bins for something to wear …. Such a headache.)



There’s also enough room that they each have their own dresser for underwear, pajamas, swimsuits, etc.



And even another wall of shelves for things like books, trophies, hats, stuffed animals, etc. Really, whatever they might want to fit in here for the two of them. Yep, lots and lots of room for their stuff in this bedroom.



Wait, what’s that you say? This doesn’t look like a bedroom? There’s something missing????


OH, you mean like BEDS!?!?!?!?!?




Yeah, well, that’s because ---- (are you ready for this?) That’s because this is their CLOSET. Their closet, which I swear on the latest Jodi Piccoult, is 14 x 11 and is bigger than the entire bedroom either of them had in our previous house. In fact, I think it might be bigger than MY bedroom in the previous house.



You want to see the actual bedroom?



THIS is the actual bedroom! The door on the back far right is the door to the closet.



22 x 20 feet of emptiness, because my two girls combined don’t have enough crap to fill it up. Which I guess is a good thing, right? This is Brayden’s “side” ….




… and this is Kendrie’s “side”, although when you’re dealing with a room this size, it sounds silly to be dibbing on which “side” is yours.



And this is the view of the bedroom from the closet door. Sadly, I don’t have a wide-angle lens on my camera so I’m not sure these pictures will even do justice to the space.

And of course, that’s not including the full bath that is opposite the closet.

Our initial plan was to just put a partition down the middle of the room, with both ends open, so each girl could easily walk to the closet or bathroom, but still have their privacy. But then we realized that would simply make it two long skinny rooms, and we would still have all that extra closet space.

So now we’re leaning more towards taking out the wall to the closet and making two distinct rooms, so each girl can have her own bedroom. And making another door at the far end of the bathroom, so Kendrie could get to the bathroom without having to walk through Brayden’s room.

So I guess technically I’m not sure if this qualifies as a medium project, or a large project. It’s large-scale, to be sure, but overall I don’t think it would be Toooooo complicated (said the girl who can’t even hang a picture straight) since it wouldn’t involve any plumbing, and not much electrical. It’s basically nothing more than moving a few walls, adding a few doorways, and building closets in each room since the “old” closet would now be part of a “new” room. Clear as mud?

I don’t know … what do you think? Any home-improvement gurus out there with a suggestion on how we can maximize this space, without wasting any of it? I’d love to hear from you.

Until then, I’ll be in the kitchen, grumbling about my cookie sheets.

***************************

**I went to a funeral yesterday. A friend (and classmate my entire life) mother passed away and while I know a funeral is not the proper place or time for old-school reunions, both my 4th grade and 5th grade teachers were there -- And my junior high counselor -- And many parents of friends of mine. And my fifth grade teacher said of course she remembered me, I was the young girl with the beautiful blonde hair, and I said yes, but that was thirty years ago and I have to pay for the blond now and quite frankly, I’m not sure she got the joke --- but my gosh, how cool is it to live in a small town???

Blaine’s turn for a nervous breakdown

The scene: Our bedroom, this evening.

The prop in question: The writing desk I just purchased.

The conditions: Blaine’s hair, standing on end. Well, if he had enough to stand on end, that is.

Blaine: No, of course I don’t **mind** putting it together for you. It’s just that it’s never as easy as they say it's going to be. This is the third or fourth piece of some-assembly-required furniture that you’ve bought since we moved here. It takes, like, all day to put them together, and it never makes sense, and I always wind up with an extra bracket or a missing screw or a piece of the instruction booklet is torn out, or something! This shit makes me crazy!

Kristie: Well, I’m sure it will look great when it’s done; you always do a really good job.

Blaine: Yeah, if I don’t lose my mind first.

Kristie: Hopefully this one will go smoothly and will only take a short time.

Blaine: Uh-huh. And maybe MONKEYS will fly out of my butt.

Kristie: Well, when they do, hand them a hammer and a screwdriver and tell them to get cracking.

Home Sweet Home, the Finale. At least for now, until I find a reason to complain and whine some more.

So there we were. Owners of a home that wasn’t itself in bad shape, but in a neighborhood we hated with the intensity of a thousand burning suns didn’t like, and which was probably too old for us to afford to modernize and enlarge the way we wanted. Not willing to sell, because as far as we could see, it was the only chance we had for getting the kids in the district. The best option we could envision would be to re-build from scratch and try to get what we wanted, since after spending that much money (again, with the non p.c. talking about money) we’d certainly be living in it until our dying day, pit bulls and section 8 neighbors included.

So, to that end, we contacted Habitat for Humanity about the possibility of donating the structure (as opposed to demolishing it, which just seemed … well, wasteful.) In fact, we had even gone so far as to make an application video for “Extreme Home Makeover” but frankly, the house wasn’t run-down enough, so I never worked up the nerve to mail it in. We figured we would just bite the bullet regarding cost, donate the old house, get it off the lot, and start fresh. Whimpering every time we opened our bank account, but fresh nonetheless.

All along we’d had three goals: our kids in the school district we wanted, a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. Sure, we were going to be in debt until we were ninety, and would probably have to feed our kids canned beans forever, but hey, two out of three wasn’t bad, right?

Then, we came back from Alaska, and something funny happened. Not funny as in ha-ha, but funny as in proof that God has his hand where we need it, when we most need it. (I know! Un-p.c. talking about money and religion, all in the same journal entry! Let me somehow work in my disdain for the Clintons, and it’ll be a bonus trifecta!)

A little history: I have a childhood friend, who I’ll call J. for the purposes of this journal entry, since I didn’t take the time to ask her permission to talk about her here. She and I went to school together our entire lives, and she and her husband did pretty much the exact same thing Blaine and I were planning to do …. They gave up a brand-new home they had built, outside the district, to move into the district so their kids could go to this school. She, however, had managed to find a home in one of the “older, but better maintained” sections of the district, and was a very good sport, lending a sympathetic ear to the e-mails I would send to her, whining about how much I hated it down on the end where we had purchased.

Well, in a nutshell, when I got back from Alaska there was an e-mail awaiting me from J., telling me of a house that had recently gone up for sale in the district, that she thought I might be interested in. An home that a couple had bought so their son could get in the school, then tore down to the studs, then re-built newer and bigger (hmmm, does any of this sound familiar?) The boy had since graduated; the owners were considering down-sizing, and looking to sell the house.

I immediately looked at the date of the e-mail ---- dang it! It was a week old, and since I didn’t have e-mail service on the trip, I was just then finding out about it. Me and my paranoid tendencies, I just knew that if the house was decent at all, it would already have been snatched up by someone just like us. I drove by to look at it that afternoon, and it looked very promising from the outside. Best of all, there was no “contract pending” notice on the For Sale sign. Blaine and I made an appointment to see it the next morning and decided unless there was something drastically wrong with it, like asbestos hanging from the ceiling, or black plague mold on the walls, or a dead body still hanging in the closet, we would most likely attempt to buy it. It was as big as we wanted (actually, bigger,) on a much nicer street, all the work had already been done, and best of all …. It wouldn’t cost us the equivalent of donating a house, just to get in it.

I lay awake in bed that night, my mind racing. Could this actually be the answer to my prayers? Could a house have become available, the very week we were home on vacation, which would suit our needs perfectly? IN OUR PRICE RANGE??? It really seemed too good to be true and I tried not to get my hopes up (Although, you know of course they were ….. totally were. Higher than Pamela Anderson’s fake boobs. )

The next morning we met the realtor there with my mom and kids …. I walked in the front door, stood in the entry way, looking through the living room and dining room into the kitchen …. And I knew. This was the house for us. I could feel it in my gut. It certainly helped that the current owners had tastes and decorating style almost identical to my own (we even have some of the same pictures on our walls) so we certainly felt comfortable there immediately. It had been (re)built only four years ago so everything was shiny and fresh and new … and I knew.

We made our offer on the spot.

The realtor told us the next day to be glad we acted as quickly as we did, as they had received another offer later the same day.

We found out two days later that they accepted our offer. I cried. I literally cried, I was so happy. And as any of my friends can tell you … I rarely cry. So that should tell you something about how much this situation had been stressing me out.

There’s a little bit of work we’ll need to do, not because anything is wrong with it (in fact, we had the inspectors there last week and they were hard-pressed to find anything wrong) but simply because they were a family of three, and we are a family of five, so our needs are a little bit different. Mainly cosmetic things, minor things. But overall, the house could not be more perfect for what we wanted.

I practically have bruises on my arm from where I keep pinching myself, it’s so perfect.

Best of all, Blaine loves the house and feels good about this, which is a huge relief to me since I had bullied him into the yellow house …. Which we can now keep as rental property and consider an investment.** So really, a win-win situation. Well, except for the poor people at Habitat for Humanity, who thought they were getting a house donated to them. Um, yeah. Sorry about that.

And I’ve sat back the past week, feeling as though I’ve lost a hundred pounds (which honestly, I could stand to do, considering how much food I ate while on vacation … is there any law against LIVING in sweat pants?) and daydreaming about moving in, and where the furniture will go, and how I can walk the kids to school because it is just around the corner, and they’ll be able to ride their bikes up and down the street because it’s not a through street like the other one ……

Yes, my children. It’s all for them. All the decisions, and sacrifices, and hard work that goes into making their lives as golden as possible. The opportunities we want them to have. Best of all, they’ll be in the school I’ve always wanted for them …. A school where the teachers and staff will be kind to them, and supportive, and welcoming.

Ahhhhh. Sweet relief.

Um, wait a minute. Excuse me, Ms. Realtor? What did you just say? The other couple who made an offer on the house? The same day as us? The couple who, basically, we snaked the house right out from under, but hey, all’s fair in love and real estate, and if you snooze you lose? What about that couple?

He’s the PRINCIPAL of my kids’ new elementary school?

Oh, crap.



**It's a legitimate question, about how someone with our income could afford three houses. Truth is, we've had renters in the yellow house since the first of the year, and the current owners of our new house will rent it back from us until we move there, at which point we will sell our Georgia house. Hopefully the dual-mortgage payments won't overlap for more than a few months. So, *technically*, three houses, but not really three mortgage payments. Hopefully that clears up any wrong notions about our nation's military servicemen and servicewomen being somehow overpaid.

Home Sweet Home, Part 2

Yeah, so tonight after bunco, I had the choice of rushing home to finish this journal update, or going to see a late showing of the most recent Harry Potter movie. I love you guys and all, but bottom line, the story of our new house is just no match for the quintessential, classic battle between good and evil. And did I mention that Harry Potter totally rocks??? Also, don’t expect many updates later this week because I just got e-mail notice that my HP7 book is shipping tomorrow and I will NOT be on this computer one single solitary second until the book is completed … and if I find out Snape is indeed a bad guy and Harry doesn’t make it to the end, I will quite possibly be so crushed that I never journal again. About anything.

So, where was I?

Oh, yeah. The house. The crappy little house that we had just bought. Or, as we referred to it, “The Yellow House”, because it was indeed painted sunshine yellow, and we thought the term might be catchy and cheerful enough to lift the unease we felt over buying a house we didn’t love, in a neighborhood we hated. You think I’m kidding? Our neighbor in one direction breeds and raises pit bulls, and the house in the other direction is up for rental as a Section Eight. The house across the street has tinfoil in all the windows, and it sits on a through street for the neighborhood which means lots of traffic back and forth at all hours. The longer we owned it, the more we began to suspect we had made a mistake. A big, impetuous, what-the-hell-were-we-thinking kind of mistake.

::administrative notice:: OK, a few rules I make it a policy to follow here on my blog: No discussing politics or religion, and talking about money is normally in bad taste. But I’m going to go ahead and talk about money … vaguely …. for just a few minutes, manners be damned.

We contacted a company about remodeling and updating the house, hoping to add some square footage and modernize what was already there, but come to find out, it is darn expensive to do that. And while Blaine makes decent money and we’re not exactly in line for the free government cheese, we ARE military, after all, which means we are far from having unlimited building funds. We discovered that remodeling pretty much costs the same as building new, and the core of the house would still be seventy years old and Lord only knows what kind of plumbing, foundation, electrical, etc., problems we could have run into trying to merge the old with the new. Even the builder agreed it could potentially have been a way bigger and more complicated project than we wanted, or could afford.

So then we decided fine, if it costs just as much to build new, then that’s what we’ll do. It’s actually been done a few times in this school district already. Builders buy old crappy houses, tear them down, and then build new houses on the teeny tiny lots. We figured if they could do it, why couldn’t we? And remember, we had a lot and a HALF! So we began plans to do that very thing. Our lot wasn’t big enough, even with the extra half, for my original dream-house floor plan to fit, but we figured we could shrink things down and make a few concessions, and still get an ok house out of the deal. And, it would be new. By golly, we can make this work! (rah-rah, sis-boom-bah, blabbity-blab-blah-blah-gag)

This was about the time of my April-epiphany-I-have-seen-the-light-moment, and I tried to view building a new house in an old neighborhood as “making the best of a bad situation” or “the end justifying the means, in order to get the kids in the school” or any of a dozen other corny catch-phrases, all intended to make us feel better, none of which did. But I was determined that having my family, healthy and whole, in the house together, was more important than the view of the shitty neighborhood out the windows. And if worse came to worst? Blaine’s suggestion was that we just build a really big fence around the whole thing and then we wouldn’t have to look out the windows at anything.

Tearing down a house, just to clear a lot so you can build new? Um, yeah. We found out real quick that is an expensive thing to do. In fact, it’s a huge opportunity cost, right off the bat. And our builder wasn’t very encouraging, to be honest. We wanted to build a house that we could live in and love, and he was trying to keep us {relatively} in line with the rest of the neighborhood. In fact, the exact phrase he used, on several occasions, was “we don’t want to build the Taj Mahal in Dog Patch, USA”, which didn’t exactly endear him to me, because it made me feel that he felt my expectations were unreasonble, when I didn't think they were. We weren’t looking to build a mansion, for pete's sake, just a new house with some nice amenities.

But, he had a point. When builders tear down old houses and build new, they are doing it for cost and then selling for profit. In order for us to do it, it was looking to be way out of our price league. We were going to go ass over elbow in debt, to build a house, in a neighborhood we hated, which we could NEVER hope to get our investment out of because we were outbuilding all our neighbors.

Real estate in Oklahoma is reasonably priced … very reasonably priced, compared to our neighbors on the East and West coast. For what we *would* have been spending, we should have been building a wonderful home, most likely on a huge lot in a gated community with a pool, clubhouse, etc. … not a normal-sized house, with a postage-stamp yard, in a run-down neighborhood, with freaking PIT BULLS on the other side of the chain link fence. (And please lets not get into the whole "As long as you don't raise them to be mean, they are wonderful dogs" debate. When was the last time your heard about someone's pet beagle ripping out the throat of his neighbor's kid???)

Regarding the potential cost of this house, we had made a grave error. I knew it, and Blaine knew it, but thankfully, he was gentleman enough not to rub the “I told you so’s” into each conversation, since he never wanted to buy this house to begin with. By the time of our most recent meeting with our builder, the week before we went to Alaska, I had to acknowledge that I had talked him into a big money-pit mistake, and I had no clue, short of winning the lottery, how to fix it. We vowed to go to Alaska and just enjoy ourselves, and worry about this situation when we got back.

To be continued … again …. I know you guys think I do that on purpose, but I don't. I swear. I'm stopping because it’s after 2 am and maybe I’m the slowest typist in the world but I’ve been working on this update for over an hour and I’m going to bed now people …. BED! Where I will possibly dream about Harry Potter because although it might be a little Mrs. Robinson-ish of me to say, that Danielle Radcliffe is getting better and better looking in each movie.

Joann re comment: Joann, you were right on with your guess, but I deleted your comment and wanted to explain why. I’m making a concerted effort not to have the name of my kids school on this blog …. Not that we couldn’t be tracked down if someone wanted to easily enough, but I figure no need to just post it right out there and make it available. So no offense …. And great guessing!

Home Sweet Home

(because really, any excuse to throw some 80's rock up on this site is a good one, don't you think?)

Disclaimer: Very long post. All about me. And how the world revolves around me. Imagine that.

Now, that’s really funny that some of you would wonder if we bought a home in Alaska. I mean, I know I’m impulsive, but really? Alaska? I mean, there’s "normal-people impulsive", and "Kristie-style-impulsive" --- sure, I make travel plans at the drop of a hat, and don’t think twice (although I certainly should) about spending a hundred dollars on a great pair of boots … on second thought, maybe I’m not *impulsive* as much as I am *compulsive* … or maybe I just have a spending problem, as evidenced by the fact I NOW HAVE THREE MORTGAGES HOUSES!!! And by "I", I mean "Blaine", since, um, yeah. I don't work. At least not at a job that pays me anything that would allow me to make a mortgage payment.

Um, anyway. Going to Alaska on vacation and buying a house there would rate as "over-the-top-impulsive", even for someone as impetuous as me. Although I will totally confess to yammering at talking with Blaine, while on the shuttle bus at Mendenhall Glacier, about the fact if only we had skills in high-demand career fields, like maybe computers or nursing, we could totally move to Juneau and live there. And maybe I even tried briefly to convince him to go back to school and become a nurse so we could do that very thing. ... "because look how beautiful it is here and can you imagine living in nature’s majesty like this there’s a glacier here for pete’s sake, and hey, look, there’s another bald eagle, ooh, and a beaver’s dam, and they even have a Wal-Mart alas no Target but a Wal-Mart is better than nothing and we could totally make this work if we were both nurses!!!” but unfortunately, he shut me down. Cold. Turns out he’s completed all the graduate school he intends to. (sniff) Whatever.

No, we bought a house in Oklahoma. Remember my post awhile back, where I alluded briefly to the fact we were having a problem with our retirement plans, and then I pretty much dropped it? Because although I knew I was being a whiny brat, and could hear the whiny brat-ness in my own head, the act of actually putting the words to paper and doing the real-life, actual whining about our situation make it even more clear to me just how whiny and bratty I was being. Truthfully, I sort of hoped the whole situation would simply go away if I ignored it and pretended like I never mentioned it, and then you guys wouldn’t know exactly how whiny and bratty I really, truly am. Bloggers’ remorse, I guess you could say. Whiny, bratty, bloggers’ remorse.

But now? Now that our problem has (for the very much most part) resolved itself and I feel like singing again and spinning around and around in happy circles with my arms flung wide? Now? I’ll go ahead and fill you in.

But I promise to give you the Cliff’s Notes version, so as not to bore you to tears.

Wait. Who am I kidding? Cliff’s Notes version isn’t even a possibility with me, and you darn well know it. Hence the disclaimer about the very long, and very self-absorbed post. Which they pretty much all are, so why am I even mentioning it?

Like I mentioned in that previous post, Blaine and I have always, always wanted to move back to our hometown and have our kids go to the same school I attended. I attended, and my sister, and my mom and dad, and aunts and uncles, and cousins, and grandpa, etc. It’s not a private school, but a small public school, and I loved it growing up. I was one of those obnoxious teenagers who actually enjoyed junior high and high school. A small school, in a small town, close enough to a large city that we’re not missing anything, but overall, definitely a small-town atmosphere. Same classmates from kindergarten on .... I’m sure my rose-colored rear view mirror is painting a much more nostalgic picture than is completely true, but for me, the whole scenario was very Norman Rockwell, and I wanted my kids to have the same thing. It’s certainly not the environment that works best for everyone, but I liked it and have always, always, always wanted my own children to go there, too.

Because it’s a small school, that means it is located in a small school district. One that is land-locked, so no hope of ever getting bigger. One where 99.9 percent of the lots in the district have been occupied for years, and have houses sitting on them that are at least fifty or sixty or seventy years old. Or older. Not cute-quaint-charming-farmhouse old, but tiny-crappy-rundown-old. And small. And did I mention old? Within the district, there are “older, but well-maintained” areas, and there are “hovering between rental and hud property” areas. Just to give you an idea.

What generation after generation has done, and what we planned to do as well, is buy or build our “forever” house (you military people know just what I mean by that phrase, don’t you?) outside the district and send our kids to the school as transfer students. My parents did it for me, my friends’ parents all did it for them, my sister is doing it for my nephews, and many of my high school friends are now doing it for their own kids. It’s the best of both worlds --- decent homes, in decent neighborhoods, and a small school setting. After moving around for twenty years, often living in military housing, the thought of getting to build a home of our own, and actually live in it for more than two years, was wonderful.

To that end, Blaine and I purchased an acre of land several years ago, about fifteen minutes from the school, had contacted a builder, had sketched and planned the floor plans we wanted, and were ready to build as soon as he got close to retirement. We had our military retirement decided in concrete --- we had a plan of action, we had been committed to the same plan for many years, and we were sticking to it, by golly. In fact, I think we were so committed to our plan, that we weren’t able to entertain any other possibilities, and our (my) inflexibility is what came around to bite us in the ass later.

So, continuing with the story, a year or two ago, we ran into a glitch. A pretty big glitch. Apparently, so many people were following the same plan on action that we intended, by living outside the district and transferring their kids in, that the school filled up. As in, there was no room for any new students. The school is legally obligated to take in-district students, so in order to control student population, they simply shut down their transfer program. As in, no more new transfer students accepted.

Period. End of story.

And there Blaine and I stood, with the deed to our land in one hand, our floor plans in the other, and most importantly, our TWENTY-YEAR, WE'VE BEEN PLANNING THIS FOR TWENTY YEARS PLAN firmly in place --- none of it doing us any good at all. There was no grandfather clause, no alumni preference …. Nothing. No way to live where we planned to live, and get our kids into the school we wanted for them. We were stuck. Or at least it felt that way. And, to be honest, we felt cheated. For all those years we had been moving around the country, people had been doing exactly what we wanted to do -- setting up house where they wanted and getting their kids into our alma matter like they wanted. And once in, students stay in. But by leaving our hometown twenty years ago, and moving around with the Air Force, we had missed the window of opportunity to do the same thing, and it felt as if we were being penalized. In case you haven’t guessed, I do NOT do well with change, and really resented the school’s transfer policy being changed in the middle of my game.

So, first I pouted. For quite some time. I do that well.

Then, decided we had two options. One was to go ahead and build our dream-forever-home on the acre we bought, and send our kids to *that* school. The other option was to somehow move into the district of the school we really wanted.

Option A: We really loved the addition our acre was in, and I was more than in love with the floor plan for our house. I had spent twenty years day-dreaming about building the perfect house, and was excited to put those plans into action. And, to be honest, it was in a good school district …. Just not the district I wanted. I’m sure my kids would have been fine going there. It’s just not what my gut told me was right for us. This, however, was the option that Blaine wanted.

So, over-riding Blaine's opinion and going with Option B: Getting into the old school district was priority number one; number two was finding a house that would be suitable for our family for the next fifteen or so years. This is the part of the story where I sound like a spoiled, snobby brat. See, a great number of the houses in this district are tiny and old and run-down. The ones that have been maintained well don’t go up for sale that often, and it’s especially hard to keep your eye on the market when you live a thousand miles away, in a neighborhood where the “good” houses are often sold by word of mouth.

Last summer, when we were home for my dad’s funeral, a house went up for sale in one of the older, more run-down parts of the district. The house itself was ok, but small, and old.

{I know I keep harping on the old thing, but you have to trust me. I'm not talking about "a little elbow grease and hard work and I bet we'll find beautiful hardwood floors under the carpet and the antique architecture is actually quite charming" kind of old. I'm talking "cracks in the walls and smells like your grandma's musty basement and window unit air conditioners and paneling on the walls and all the kids will be in one bedroom because the entire house is only 700 sq feet" kind of old. NOT exactly what we had been dreaming of, and aspiring to, for the last twenty years.}

It was actually one of the nicer homes on the street --- which should tell you something about what our potential neighbor’s houses looked like. The good thing was that it sat on a lot and a half, so we felt like there was some potential for re-modeling, or enlarging the house. Blaine didn’t like it, and I didn’t like it, and the whole thing was very discouraging, but it seemed like maybe the best we could do. We would drive up and down the street, and the sinking feeling in my stomach got bigger and bigger …. We were giving up the opportunity to build a brand-new house … in a brand-new addition … on an acre of land ….. for THIS??? But it did have the few extra feet of lot in its favor, and I convinced myself that it was a sign from above …. Since we were home for Dad's funeral on the exact day it went on the market, it was a sign that it was meant to be. So we ignored our misgivings, and bought it.

To be continued …..

(not because I enjoy the suspense, but because I’m truly lazy and still haven’t finished the laundry from vacation and if I don’t do it soon, no one in the family will have clean underwear for tomorrow …)