Inane Chatter

The new Athleta catalog came today.  I want everything in it.  (I bought a sleeveless dress last spring – love it.)  They have a whole travel clothes section, and just looking at the pictures makes me want to pack up and GO.  I’d like to be a well-dressed (but still comfortable) traveler.  I want to go for walks in fields and hikes in forests and strolls on wintery beaches wearing the chicest of chic travel clothes.  (Hell, I’d dress like the Von Trapps crossing the Alps if I thought I’d be warm and comfortable enough.  Who needs chic?)

I would totally wear Liesl’s hat.

Of course, there are some ridiculous assumptions in their descriptions.  They’ve got a cowl neck tunic-length cashmere sweater (beautiful, of course, and not cheap), but the description assumes you’re going to want to wrap yourself in it after your workout.  Who would put that on when they’re still sweaty from a workout?  Maybe they mean you’d want to wear it after you shower, but then it’s just clothes, not post-workout clothes.  And the picture shows a woman in a yoga studio with her mat hanging from her shoulder while wearing that sweater.  I get sweaty during yoga, but maybe she doesn’t.  Maybe if I had 15 cowl neck cashmere sweaters, I’d feel comfortable designating one to be my sweaty post-workout comfy sweater.  Maybe.

Riley keeping watch for squirrels:

Riley saying hi:

Right this very minute, he’s curled up in a ray of sunshine on the floor, feet twitching while he dreams.

He’s doing really well.  Still not eating enough, but he does eat and he’s keeping it all down.  He gets tired easily, but he starts out with lots of energy, so that doesn’t seem too worrisome, either.  (Hopping everywhere you go takes a lot out of you.  I know.  I tried.)  He’s having blood drawn this evening to check on his cell counts, and the next round of chemo is next week.  I’ll keep you posted.

I’m running out of steam on this house-selling business, which is silly, really.  It’s only been seven days, and the only thing I have to do is leave work occasionally to take the dog for a walk while people look at our house.  Hardly taxing.  We’re not in any hurry to sell – we don’t have any deadlines.  It would be nice to get rid of the mortgage, but I’m okay with putting off the actual move (that’s hard work).  I’m not sure how I have any steam to run out of, actually.  What would the steam be for?  If I have steam, I should put it to better use (like to Step 4).  This steam metaphor is putting Kylie Minogue’s “Locomotion” in my head.  After years of silence, I’ve heard it twice in the last few weeks – once on my mix tape and once at IHOP (we had pancakes for dinner on John’s birthday).

Now that I’ve established how little use I have for steam where the sale of the house is concerned, I will take a deep breath, enjoy the quiet of a clean and uncluttered house, and relax.  Om mani padme hum.

I can hardly contain myself.  This is SO cute.

Found while catching up on The Bloggess (because I have free time again!  Some, anyway.  Little bits here and there.).

I’d been hoping this would happen, and it finally has!  Kind of.  Keeping the house clean is easier than emptying it, rearranging it, and cleaning it, so after what feels like forever (and what was probably only a little over a month), I’m enjoying some time to myself.  Well, restful time with John, but when we’re both happily ensconced in our own activities, that’s basically the same thing.  We spent all of Saturday hanging out together – the morning (pre-open house) cleaning, the afternoon (during the open house) having a family photo taken, and then having a cupcake and coffee at a little cupcake place with outdoor seating, so Riley could drape himself over our feet and enjoy all the attention he got from passers-by.  What’s this about a family photo, you say?  We donated to our local volunteer fire department, and as a thank you, they brought in a photographer and gave all donors the opportunity to get a free family portrait taken.  They do it every year, and even though we’ve donated every year, we’ve never remembered/bothered to go.  They allow pets, so we took Riley.  It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

Sunday we had NO plans.  It was wonderful.  There was an afternoon showing, so we disappeared to the park for half an hour, but other than that, our time was our own.  Actually, since it was John’s birthday, our time was his to do with as he wished.  And he mostly wished for free time, so I call this birthday a success.

Typing “Open House” up there made me thing of Full House the TV show, and man, are those two things not at all related.  Unless John Stamos (now, not then) is going to come over to help sell the house.  Or move in and help us raise our sassy but cute dog.

Then

Now

Anyway, we had our open house yesterday.  Our agent said we had really good turnout.  One family stayed an hour, and other another family stayed for TWO hours.  The two-hour people are the ones who lingered for 40 minutes on Thursday, the first day we were on the market.  No offers yet.  (Be pessimistic!  Your optimism is scaring them away.  Don’t tempt fate!)  We had another showing this afternoon, and we have one tomorrow, too.  I’ve said (and I keep saying) that we’re not in any hurry here, but now we’re in limbo, and I don’t want to stay in limbo.  I should be putting this time to good use (see Step 4), but I figured I deserve a couple of days of relaxing before I start obsessing over the next thing.  It’ll come soon enough.  (Also, it’s John’s birthday today, so no doing not-fun things.)

The house has been officially listed since Thursday morning.  Which I just realized was only yesterday.  Feels like forever ago.  It’s been shown four times now – three yesterday evening (day 1 on the market) and once this afternoon (day 2).  When our agent told us about the three showings yesterday, I was (still am) trying really hard not to get overly excited and be all “we’ll have a contract by the end of the day and we won’t even NEED to have an open house” while twirling around the kitchen.  That’s not likely (the quick contract – the twirling is all too likely).  Then when I come down from the over-optimisticness (and the dizziness), I go too far in the other direction.  “We’ve had four showings already and no offers yet – NO ONE is going to want to buy our house.” I mean, come on.  It’s been two days, and we’re not exactly in the middle of a housing boom.  It’s too early for the doom and gloom.  I need to find a calm, centered, serene middle ground where I can keep the house clean without obsessing over whether leaving the dog bowls out or not cleaning the windows again EVERY morning is driving potential buyers away.

Maybe I should go clean the windows again.

The open house is tomorrow.  Cross your fingers!

I had a very productive Monday, right up until I painted the door.  John had to work (he doesn’t get all of the federal holidays off like I do), so I was on my own to get a bunch of things done before the photographer came over on Tuesday to take the pictures for our MLS listing.  (MLS listing – is that redundant?  Multiple Listing Service listing?  Maybe not.)  I took all of the window screens out and took the screen door to the deck off (put them all in the basement), and then I got the ladder out and washed the outsides of all of the back windows (on the first floor – the second story windows have to remain unwashed – I’m not risking my life by hanging out those windows or off the roof to wash them) and the sliding glass door.  (I did the insides of all the windows in the house the day before, when it was still pouring down rain.)  Then I took the doorknob, the deadbolt, and the kickplate off the front door, cleaned it, and painted it black (it was already black – the HOA wouldn’t let me just randomly choose another color).  I’ve never painted anything black before, so maybe this is typical, but it took me completely by surprise.  The wet paint on the door looked navy blue, not black.  I checked the paint can at least three times while I was painting (it said black every time).  Of course, it dried black, but for a few minutes, I wasn’t sure I’d bought the right paint.  Stressful! (Except, not really.)  So then I had a door covered in wet paint.  That I couldn’t close because of the wet paint.  And even if I could close it, it didn’t have a doorknob or a lock on it because of the wet paint.  I knew going into this project that I wouldn’t be able to leave the house until the paint dried and I put the hardware back on, but I didn’t picture exactly how that would work.  I hadn’t really thought about how I’d have to leave my front door wide open for a couple of hours…  Conveniently, it was a comfortably warm day.  The next thing I had planned to do was make another run to the donation center, but that plan was out.  I found things to do, of course, but it wasn’t what I planned.  Don’t screw with my plan!

Fun fact: I wore my midshipman coveralls all day, so I looked like quite the little handywoman hauling my ladder around, washing the windows, painting the door.  Next time, I’ll get a tool belt.

It has come to my attention (again – this is something I realize anew every so often) that I could never be a vampire.  After four days of nonstop rain (it started Wednesday night and didn’t stop until Sunday night) and constant gloominess, the sun came out on Monday, and I couldn’t have been happier.  I could never live in a world where I never saw the sun.  (Also, I don’t want to drink blood or be dead.)  I don’t have to see the sun all day, or even every day, but four days in a row without it – that’s too much.  I enjoy the rain, I like listening to it, I like falling asleep to it.  I don’t particularly want to be out in it much (I got fairly well soaked running errands on Friday – I had to buy mulch in the rain – and then we did our yardwork on Sunday in a constant drizzle.  Felt very British.), but it’s nice to look at, nice to be snuggled up warm and dry while frantically prepping your house for sale.  And then came the sun.  Monday was a perfect October day, all blue skies and leaves changing colors.  Days like that make all that rain worth it.

Our plans have been made public.  In the neighborhood, anyway.  There’s a For Sale* sign in our yard, with our real estate agent’s picture on it (I wonder how many pictures she had to take before settling on that one?), so now all the world can see what we’re up to.  And now it’s real. It was always going to be real, of course, and it was never a secret, but as long as only a small number of people knew about it, it wasn’t scary.  Now…it’s a little scary.  The guy put the sign up Friday afternoon – he just appeared, and I didn’t even notice until he was done (Riley didn’t notice the stranger hammering a giant sign into our front yard, either – good guard dog), but seeing it put butterflies in my stomach.  I didn’t expect that.  They’ve mostly gone away, but I imagine they’ll be back.

*Actually, it says Coming Soon – we won’t be officially listed for a few more days.

I’m happy that it’s fall.  I like the leaves turning, and I like the weather (or I would if it felt like fall, but maybe that’ll happen this week finally).  I’ve picked up my running again recently (I’d been slacking off a lot), and since I go so early, it’s really dark when I start and still mostly dark when I get back.  Sometimes I take a flashlight, but I usually just compensate by sticking to the mostly well-lit sidewalks and paths on the main streets outside my neighborhood.  I’m not running on a road, so I won’t get hit by a car, and I’m near enough to all those people going to work crazy early in the morning that if I started screaming, I would probably be noticed.  I feel safe enough, but the dark is still a little creepy.  And it doesn’t help that I listen to Welcome to Night Vale every morning.  Welcome to Night Vale is not at all actually scary, but when all you hear is Cecil’s voice in the dark for the duration of every single run…it’s just about eerily perfect.  Makes it weird to listen to it at any other time of day.  Did you watch Eureka?  Night Vale is like the town of Eureka at midnight on Halloween.  (Thank you, Randy!)

A couple of months ago, I went to my favorite nail salon, and the manicurist talked me into trying gel nail polish on my fingers.  Mom has been talking it up to me for a long time because it doesn’t chip, so it lasts longer, and it looks nicer, and she’s right on all of those counts.  I was going to go bare (just buff up the nails) because I don’t really like color on my nails and clear nail polish chips, and the manicurist said, well, gel doesn’t chip, and it comes in a natural color.  Okay – it’s time to try it.  First, natural my ass.  It was light pink and sparkly.  Pretty, but in no way natural.  Still, it was pretty and light enough not to bother me much.  It dried super quickly (always a plus), and then the lady swiped nail polish remover across the nails and it didn’t come off!  I was impressed, and everything was great for about three weeks.  My nails were growing, but it wasn’t obvious to anyone but me that my nails weren’t all painted anymore.  After that, I was about done with the pink and sparkly and ready to go clear again, so I went back to have the gel polish removed (since I had no idea how to take it off myself).

What Mom neglected to tell me is what a HUGE PAIN it is to have it removed.  You can’t just swipe with some special gel polish remover.  Oh, no.  My nails were wrapped in acetone-soaked cotton and foil for what felt like an hour (and was at least 20 minutes in real time), and then when the manicurist removed the foil and cotton, she still had to chisel away at each nail to get it all off.  It took FOREVER.  I thought it was never going to be over.  And even once the polish was removed, my nails still felt like regular polish was fading and chipping off on its own.  Not a nice feeling.

Conclusion?  No gelicures for me.  No way.  Uh uh.  Sorry, Mom.  Can’t agree with you on this one.

My phone thinks I’m stupid.  I use the swype keyboard, and it usually works great.  The other day, though, I was trying to text John that I needed to download something, and autocorrect refused to recognize that what I was trying to type was the word “download”.  It kept correcting it to “get”.  “Get” totally worked in context, so I KNOW my phone understood what I was trying to type.  Why not just correct it for me?  Why dumb it down?  Why hurt my feelings, phone?  What’s that about?

The house is in turmoil.  We turn rooms upside down and inside out, box things up and stash the boxes or makes piles of things to get rid of, and then we do our best to put the rooms back in some sort of order so we can get through each day without feeling like we’re living inside a hurricane.  The dining room that turned into a library has been turned back into the dining room.  The family room that turned into the dining room has been mostly turned back into living space, although it’s also doubling as the dog’s room for now.  And it’s kind of empty.  We’re not moving the couch and TV back in there (they’re staying in the family room that used to be the formal living room), so we only have two cabinets in there, the two ugly green chairs, that big-ish desk we could never find space for, Riley’s food and water, and his crate.  Sounds kind of a like a lot, now that I’ve listed it all out, but it’s a big space.  Lots of open area left that won’t get filled.  The house looks weird.

We still have a couple of projects we’ll probably try to start once we get the house on the market.  We want to get the rest of our CD collection converted to mp3, and we want to scan all of the pictures we’ve developed and accumulated.  Both are time-consuming and mind-numbingly boring, but we should be able to do them while doing other things.  And that will leave us with portable backups.  Should have done that a long time ago.

We’re clearly a little obsessed.  House and dog, dog and house.  My dance classes started back up, but we have too much stuff to do in the house, so I haven’t gone back.  I had to miss zumba the last two weeks because I had to work late, and I’m planning to miss it tonight because there’s too much to do in the house.  I haven’t been to yoga in months (first dance class, then house stuff).  We’ve done the big obvious things (pack up the books, stash the bookshelves, switch the rooms), and now it’s getting a little harder to focus.  Lots of little things need to be done.  Like, hey – we haven’t gone through the coat closet to see what we can get rid of.  I know I have at least one coat in there that needs to go.  I want to box up the rest of the fiction (what’s left on that one shelf next to the TV – we’re keeping those shelves up through showing the house – we’ll just have other stuff on them), but that’s only going to fill one box.  I can make another pass through my dressers and closet for stuff to get rid of, and failing that, I can certainly box up the summer stuff and possibly even separate it into clothes that I’ll keep with me and clothes that I’ll store.  And THAT decision may (really should) prompt me to get rid of the clothes I would store.  If our plan really works out, anything that gets stored will be stored for at least a couple of years, possibly longer, and will I really wear those clothes then?  Well, maybe – I have (and wear) clothes that I’ve had for that long and longer, but still.  I should probably not plan to store a lot of clothes.  Seems silly.

Well, this has been helpful.  I think I have tonight’s to-do list all ready.  Thanks, guys!

While going through just about everything we own, John found a couple of boxes of cassette tapes.  We threw out all of the commercially made tapes (we’ve got all that stuff in other formats by now, if it’s something we still like), but then we had to go through the ones we made.  Some were easy to throw out.  Some – not so much.  I took a drive by myself over the weekend, so I popped in a pink and yellow Memorex tape labeled “Susannah’s Favorites” that I made when I was about 11 and discovered two things.

1. I haven’t changed.  The first song on the tape was “If This Is It”, Huey Lewis and the News.
2. I did not understand the concept of a mix tape.  The first FOUR songs on the tape were by Huey Lewis and the News.  The next four songs were from The Little Mermaid.  The next two songs were by Kylie Minogue, and on the other side, there were three or four in a row by Debbie Gibson and then by Paula Abdul.  Apparently, I liked my music in blocks.

Now you know too much.

What’s the point of all these changes?  The point is to have time.  We want to have more control over our time.  Right now, we are living for the weekends, and then we spend those weekends running errands and cleaning the house and mowing the lawn and doing things we HAVE to do.  Where is the time to do the things we want to do?  I have a whole list of things I’d rather be doing with my time than working and commuting and doing house-upkeep things, and John has more hobbies than you can shake a stick at.  (What is that even supposed to mean?  Why is that a phrase that means anything?  You’ve never seen me shake a stick.  I can shake a stick at all KINDS of things, and fast, too.  Why would you want to shake a stick at lots of things?  Or even one thing?  I don’t understand.  Google’s results are inconclusive.)  Yes, I’m aware that everyone feels this way, but that doesn’t mean we have to.  Not if we can do something about it.  So we are.

The point is to have time.  We’ll remove owning a house from the equation.  Suddenly, we don’t have to paint the porch columns or mulch the flower beds or mow the lawn or stain the deck.  We’ll save money, money we could use to things we WANT to do (like travel and take lessons).  Our rent will be less than our mortgage, we won’t be paying HOA fees.  Over (not too much) time, we’ll pay off Riley’s medical bills and the air conditioner we replaced in the spring.  I’ve done the math.  With an estimate for rent, just moving out of house will save us approximately $1700 a month (possibly more).  Moving out of the area (and paying off those two items) will save us another $1000.  Putting our plan in motion will eventually save us nearly $3000 a month, regardless of how much money we make in these hypothetical new jobs.  And we won’t HAVE to make as much money in those hypothetical new jobs because we won’t be living in one of the most expensive areas in the country.

With saved money and extra time, what can’t we do?

As promised, here’s a video of Riley running.  He can go faster, but he just didn’t feel like it tonight, apparently.

Riley running on three legs from Susannah Brewer on Vimeo.

People, our plan is in motion.  It’s still fairly nebulous, but that’s okay.  We have steps to take, and then steps to take after that, and at each point, we can (and will) revisit our decisions and change our direction, and yeah, okay, we’ll probably be flying by the seat of our pants a little bit, sometimes, but that’s okay, right?

Step 1: Get the house ready to go on the market.

There is SO much to do for this step.  We met with our real estate agent, she brought over a stager who made a ton of notes for us to follow to make our house look as perfect to prospective buyers as possible, and then we spent last weekend getting of SO MUCH STUFF.  The Salvation Army truck came by Saturday morning to pick up that extra dryer we’ve had in the basement since we moved in and about 30 boxes of books.  We did a sweep of the entire first floor and filled up my car with stuff for a trip to the Salvation Army Donation Center near us, and when we got back, we made a sweep of the entire second floor and repeated the trip.  Sunday, John worked on his car (because it needs to be able to go with us), and I started packing up OUR books for long-term storage.  We finished that project last night and moved all of the books that were in our dining room AND all of the shelves into the basement.  Tonight (or possibly this weekend), we’ll do the same thing with the library (the room that used to be the dining room).  The stager says we should switch those rooms back, and losing the bookshelves will make the rooms look bigger, so okay.  It’s possible that we would have ignored that advice, but those things will need to packed up in the near future anyway to go in storage (they can’t come with us!), so it helps us to get them packed up now.  We’re going to use that crib we never managed to get to Erik and Margaret (sorry, guys!) in our guest bedroom to make it look like a nursery, so we need to get the full bed that’s in there down into the basement, and once we’ve finished moving furniture around, we can call the painters and have them fix and paint the ceiling by the stairs and paint the walls and ceilings in the upstairs hallway and the stairs.  Oh, we need to paint the outside of the front door, and we need to get the guy in to paint the railings of our deck.  Those are the big things, I think.

Step 2: Put the house on the market.

We’re aiming for mid-October.  Might make it.  Once it’s listed, we just have to keep it clean.  We’re going to have to figure out what to do with Riley, though.  Maybe we run home and take him for a long walk?  Maybe he’s fine in the backyard?  He’ll make a ton of noise, though.  I don’t really want to have to crate him in the basement every day, but that might be the easiest thing to do.  We’ll talk about it.

Step 3: Find a place to live.

Once the house sells, we’ll need a place to go.  We’re planning to find an apartment or some sort of rental in the area, near enough to commute to our jobs.  Rent has to be less than our mortgage (shouldn’t be difficult), the lease needs to be short-term, and they have to allow dogs, of course.  I’ve done some preliminary searches – those places exist not far from us.

Step 4: Find portable jobs.

We’re not going to stay in the area (that is NOT the plan) long term, and we’re not ready to settle in any one area right now, so we need to have jobs that will let us work remotely 100% of the time.  Once we find those jobs (John’s current job might let him do that.  Mine will definitely not.), we can leave the area.  The job search can start any time, but will certainly start in earnest once the house has sold.

Step 5: Decide where we’re going next.

The sky’s the limit.  We have some ideas, and it will depend on our timing, but we can go anywhere.

I’m sure there are other steps, and I’m sure there will be other steps, but I think those are the main ones.  We’re doing all of this even though Riley just had his leg amputated, and even while he’s going through chemotherapy.  Dogs are portable, too, and he just wants to be with us.  It doesn’t matter where.  We’ve run out of reasons to delay – we are ready to go.

It’s time for an update.  Riley is doing really well.  His surgery was three weeks ago today, and he had his first round of chemotherapy last Thursday.  He’s got his old energy back, even if it doesn’t last as long as it used to.  He goes on daily walks (twice a day, most days), and he romps around.  I’ll get video of him in action soon, I promise.

When we took him in for chemo last week (which doesn’t affect dogs the same way it does humans – much lower doses, so most dogs don’t even get sick), the oncologist looked at him, hesitated, and asked if he’s a border collie.  Shrugs from us.  Maybe?  Partly?  Could be a problem.  The plan is to give him two different drugs, one each visit.  The first one is not an issue, but the second one is often toxic to border collies, Australian shepherds, collies, and other dogs of similar breeds.  Toxic like could actually kill him, not just make him sick.  So we’re doing a genetic test.  If it turns out he’s part border collie, our chemo plan will change.  The test results are due back in another week and a half to two weeks, and the next chemo visit (when we start that second drug) is two weeks from tomorrow.  The timing should be just about right.

The other thing we’re working on with him is his appetite.  While recovering from surgery, he didn’t really want to eat at all.  Four of his six pills (antibiotics and painkillers) had to be given with food, though, so we were quite literally shoving pills and food down his throat.  Pills that had to be stuffed into round meatballs of wet dog food so he would take food at the same time.  It was awful.  For everyone.  But he’s gotten much better about taking pills since then.  J  He still isn’t eating normally – actually, he is eating normally now, which was never all that much.  He was kind of a picky eater, and he only ate when he felt like it.  That sounds perfectly healthy (he’s not the kind of dog who will eat until he gets sick), but it’s not enough when he’s underweight.  He isn’t eating enough.  So now, we’re buying samples of all kinds of delicious wet dog food to see what he likes, and we’re adding some of that and some plain chicken to his dry food twice a day.  He eats the good stuff and leaves the dry food.  Sometimes he comes back to finish the dry food.  Mostly, though, he knows it’s going to get covered with the good stuff again at the next meal time.  I don’t care as long as the end result is that I can’t count his ribs just by looking.

He’s wearing his compression shirt, and there’s a towel stuffed under there to protect from scratching. He didn’t do much scratching.

Riley’s surgery was today.  This afternoon.  I’ve since heard from the vet, the surgeon, and a vet tech, and they all say he’s doing fine.  He just can’t come home yet.  When he does come home, he’ll be a tripod.  (One of the vet people said that to me the other day.  “One of my dogs is a tripod.”  Caught me off guard.  It’s obvious, but it never occurred to me to call a three-legged dog a tripod.)  I feel a ton better now that the surgery is over, but now I’m going to worry about how he does overnight.  What if he manages to pull out the IV and doesn’t get his fluids or his medicine?  He’ll be fine, I know, but what if he isn’t?