Unwanted House Critters

Well, it appears that I’ve got signs of at least one unwanted house critter — though you know if there’s one, there’s more.

The clues:

• Some thing’s definitely been imbibing in the bird seed I’ve got stored in the basement and it’s not the birdies I bought it for, which makes me very grumpy.
• Needy and Pugly have both been interested in some thing beneath the stove.
• Pugly has been barking at the wall between the kitchen and the living room for no apparent reason. (There goes my theory that he’s gone insane.)
• Two nights ago, Needy was very interested in the skittering of some little feet along the sloped part of my bedroom ceiling over my bed, which is just too chilling to think about.

Needy and Aloof really aren’t mousers. They really are the kind of cats that prefer to be given their kibble at regular intervals and aren’t really happy that they’ve been put on a diet. They don’t like wet food. So I don’t see them actually knowing what to do if they see an actual unwanted house critter.

Pugly is probably more likely to to be a good mouser, but that’s kind of icky to think about.

So, I guess I’ll be researching what to do about unwanted house critters.

I don’t know that I’m all that excited about the whole catch them and set them free thing because couldn’t they just come back? And wouldn’t I have to, you know touch them?

I’m not excited about the whole idea of poison or slow death either. I’d rather put up an eviction notice.

Tags: mice, rodents, rats, little red house, the cats, the puppy

Moving Right Along

O.K. Now that I’ve gotten someone (my mother) to admit that I’m probably right (the movers probably did take things from my house during the move for whatever reason — to sell on ebay), I’m ready to move on. I just wanted someone to admit that I wasn’t crazy and that there was just too many coincidences for me to somehow to just be overlooking these items in the house.

I finally got my mother to stop saying, “Well, you know, there’s still stuff I haven’t found from our move 5 years ago…” by cutting her off with “But I don’t have a big friggin’ barn out back with unpacked boxes! 99% of my boxes are unpacked. This house isn’t that big! There’s no where else to hide!”

I might have been screaming the last part a little.

Anyway, so looking around, I realized that I can’t proceed further with the unpacking the last few boxes and putting away the clutter on the shelves and tables until I have, well, shelves.

• I need to go ahead and design a wall system for above my desk in the craft room/office and buy the pieces and install it so I can finish putting away the office.
• I need to go ahead and put together that lighted display cabinet I bought two weeks ago. Now I need it for my fairies rather than everything else.
• I need some sort of coat hook rack in the kitchen for my coat, purse and Pugly’s leash. I also need to hang the key hook.
• Once those are done, then I need to examine what still needs shelf homes and what wall space is left. I have lots of pictures and lots of windows and little wall space. I wish I could figure out how to hang pictures on those slanted walls/ceilings of the cape in the upstairs.

The good news is that my electric screwdriver and my new 29-bit set came yesterday. I wish my new ladder would get here.

I also want to change all of the locks on the doors and I want to change the door going from the dining room to the garage. Some previous owner put a storm door there rather than a regular door. I think I want to put a lock on that door (there isn’t one now) and remove the lock on the door going from the kitchen to the dining room, which I’ve been using as the house lock.

Anyway, I think I’ll try to get to Lowe’s for the ClosetMaid stuff this week before Christmas. A three day weekend and two building projects…I’ll probably get nothing done this weekend but watch HGtv.

Tags: little red house, ClosetMaid

From Within The House

I’m totally freaked out this morning.

Last night, on one of my gazillion trips downstairs to pee, I was sitting on the toilet (too much info?), when I heard the oddest, distinct sound of a phone off the hook.

O.K. Well, the cats do have night wanderings.  One of them could have possibly knocked one of the phones off the hook, right?

So, when I’m finished with my personal business, I go to the only phone in the house that isn’t connected to the world by a button.  It’s sitting securely in it’s cradle.  The only other phone in the house is one of those cordless phones with talk and end buttons, but I check it too.

Nothing is out of place, but I can still hear the busy signal.  No radios, no t.v.s are on.

Then the busy signal fades away.

WTF?

So, now I only go downstairs to pee at night with my baseball bat in hand.

And things are missing.

Big things.

Just missing.

I think I mentioned that a pair of curtain rods still in their boxes had gone missing.  I know I brought them in and put them in the closet of what’s now the Music Room the first day — before the movers arrived.  Haven’t seen them since.  Bought new curtain rods.

Now, my two rather large wood U-shaped floating shelves (you’ve seen similar if you watch enough HGtv) that displayed my fairy figurine collection in my old apartment are missing.  My mother remembers giving them to the movers to be moved, but no one remembers seeing them at the little red house.  I’ve been completely through the house from top to basement a bunch of times.  There’s no where for them to hide.  There’s no boxes left for them to hide in.  Just poof.

Also, I had two flat floating shelves still in their boxes that were too long to fit into a packing box the day of the move.  I never saw what my mom did with them though she said she’d take care of it.  I kind of thought they’d end up in a box with the pictures, but I’ve been picture box digging and can’t find them.  Just poof.

Call the Without a Trace team!

O.K. so here’s my unreasonable paranoid delusion theory.  I think one of the movers took the items that were still in boxes that could be returned and Wal-mart takes back pretty much anything.  O.K. The U-shelves kind of blow my theory but they were in good condition and they looked like they matched, maybe the guy thought he could return those too?

*shrug*

I know I’m reaching.  I’m trying to make sense out of this.  I have things missing from my move that can’t be anywhere in my house and weren’t left behind.

Of course, none of that explains the missing Gorilla Glue…my mother and I both were using the bottle of Gorilla Glue while my parents were here, but damned if I can find it now.  I’ve been through every drawer, basket and cabinet in my apartment.  I do know that the Mover’s didn’t take it. ;)  My mother and I both saw it last sitting on my desk, but it certainly isn’t there now.

O.K. and every now and then Pugly gets really freaked out and starts barking for no apparent reason and racing around the house.  He won’t go in the basement either.

Makes me want to set up webcams for when I’m not home so people can tell me if ghosts or other people are in my home.

Tags: little red house

Snow Day @ The Little Red House

As promised here are some pictures of today’s snow fall around my new house.

Here’s the Little Red House.  I wonder if someone can Photoshop those powerlines out so that can be made into a Christmas card or is the shot too blurry, do you think?

The view from my front window:

The view from my kitchen window:

The view from my Dining Room:

Tags: snow, Maine, little red house, photo blogging

Yellow Snow

Those of us in the Little Red House woke up this morning to discover that a blanket of snow had covered our yard overnight.  (Pictures to follow tonight when I get home.)  How we discovered it is that I woke up to take little Pugly out for his morning pee-pee, put my Crocs and coat on and led him on the leash to the backdoor, which when opened revealed a great white cold from the back steps to the pine trees.

I blinked.

Pugly blinked and took a few tentative steps onto the snow covered stoop.

You must recall that little Pugly was only born last March.

He just stood there looking at this bizarre transformation of the backyard.  He seemed reluctant to proceed.

I led him down the steps and he just stood at the bottom staring at this vast whiteness like “What the hell?”

Eventually I convinced him that he had to pee-pee after much prodding.  However, this experience apparently was distasteful and no amount of convincing would lead to a poo-poo in the snow moment as well, which unfortunately led to a spanking immediately after we went inside and he poo-poo’d on my music room rug.
Poor little Pugly.  It’s going to be a long, cold, wet Winter.

Tags: Pug, the puppy, snow, little red house

First Oil Bill — Jinkies!

I got my oil tank filled for the first time in my new house yesterday. It was about 1/4th full already and they added about 188 gallons. The cost of oil according to the bill was the same as filling my gas tank yesterday — $2.29/gallon.

Go ahead, do the math.

I spent $40 filling my gas tank yesterday. I owe my oil company $430! Jinkies! Holy Global Warming, Batman!

So, I’m wondering how long that’s going to last.

My house is heated using baseboard heat with water, though the water is heated using the oil-run furnace. The hot water for my shower, my washing machine, and my dishwasher all get their “hot” from the furnace.
Three people over the course of 10 - 12 days used about 1/8th of the tank. That’s extra showers and the dishwasher being run at least once every day and the washing machine getting run extra. My thermostat was set at the ungodly temp of 70°F for 10-12 days for the “Southern” people.

However, it’s just me know and I’ve programmed my thermostat to be 68°F from 6am - 8am and 5:15pm to 11pm and 62°F the rest of the time during the week and 68°F from 6:30am to 11pm on Saturday and Sunday. My dishwasher is likely to be run once every 2 to 3 days except on weekends. Just one person showering per day now.

So, I’m wondering how much oil I’ll use by my lonesome in a month.

Tags: heating oil prices, little red house

Back To Normal?

So, my parents departed moments ago.  Pugly is back in doggy daycare.  My space and my routine are theoretically my own again, even though it’s an entirely new space that isn’t quite sorted out yet which requires developing something of a new routine.

Back to semi-normal, maybe, I guess.

I love my parents.  I do.  Granted we have some issues.  Some conflicting quirks.  I think they still see me as twelve a lot of the time.  A twelve year old buying her own house, having her own job, trying to live her own life.  So they treat me like a twelve year old and tell me what to do and how to do things and what I need to do rather than waiting to see what my adult self does on my own.  They don’t seem to wait to see if what they’ve taught me these last 35½ years has stuck — you know, like good manners, money sense, what I should eat.  I tried to discuss this with my mother this visit and I think she finally got it maybe.  At the very least she apologized for arriving on the scene of my move into my house and sort of taking charge.  She told me that now that they’re going, I can finally put everything the way I want.

The funny thing is that it’s the small things that have been the most annoying — the fact that neither of them respects the fact that I’ve asked them to always put the toilet seat down because my cats will drink out of the bowl or that my mother can’t seem to put the coffee and it’s supplies back in the same place twice, let alone where it belongs or that my father insists on sitting in my spot on the sofa and watching the news from 5pm to 7pm and won’t allow anyone to speak during that time.  It annoys me that my mother will tell me to do something rather than ask and then once I start doing it either she or my father with call me from another room to go there to see or do something in there.  This is why dinner was so late two nights in a row.

But I’ve appreciated all of their help and generosity.  I have.  My mother made new curtains for the living room and took up the sheers in the music room/study.    My father taught me how to change a two-prong wall receptacle to a three-prong grounded wall receptacle  (only three more rooms to convert!).  He also hung curtain rods, changed my thermostat, helped me to hang some Closet Maid bookshelves in the closet and so much more.

Honestly, I couldn’t have gotten this much done without them and I’ve gotten tons of good advice.

But it’ll be nice to have some alone time in my new house, a chance to put things where I want, sit where I want, rest for an evening if I want, go to bed at 8pm if I want.

I’ve also discovered that it’s easier to be neat if it’s just you and the pets.

Tags: alone time, little red house

My Brain May Explode

I wonder why my brain doesn’t explode from the sheer insanity of contradictory messages I get from my parents sometimes — mainly from my mother.

Mind you, I write that with love and thankfulness for all the help they both have been the last few weeks. I know that I could not have done everything that’s been done regarding the move without their help.

However…with closer, constant proximity, comes more regular contradictory messages and I suspect wrinkle lines on my forehead from the almost permanent perplexed expressions on my face. Certainly the strain on my forehead and brain has not helped my headaches.

I will admit that in the past, I was not always financially responsible. There was a dark time where I succumbed to the American Dream of Hopeless American Credit Card Debt. It was at the end of college and it kept building for a few years until it got a bit too large for me to handle as I was extremely underpaid while I struggled to find that American Dream IT job I was promised were the jobs of the 21rst Century that would make me rich. I kept hoping that I’d get that job and everything would work out and I’d be able to pay off the growing debt and everything would right itself.

I wasn’t financially stupid, mind you. I had a good idea of what was going on. I understood how interest rates and late fees and minimum balances worked and I’d read the fine print, but I was digging through my sofa cushions when my friends left in hopes that they left change behind. You can read all of the experts’ books and you can memorize every word Suze Orman ever wrote and dutifully read and discuss The Millionaire Next Door that your parents gave you for your birthday instead of something really useful like groceries or paying your overdue electric bill which has been turned off twice that year already.

Anyway, I eventually worked up the courage, hard as it was, to ask my parents for financial help and admit that I had failed somehow out on my own to manage my money — a huge sin for the daughter of a CPA. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how or that I’m not smart enough to do it, but just that I got caught up playing that game that so many people play these days — “The Credit Game.” You think to yourself that you’ll have the money next month so you put it on your card but then next month you’re in the same boat or worse and then the boat keeps taking on water. Kind of like that scene with Captain Sparrow and the sinking boat at the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean but not as funny and there’s no dock to step off of; you end up in the middle of the ocean with Davey Jones, basically, and you remember how nice a guy he was.

So, there’s that back history. It took me years to bale myself out of that little sinking ship, but I did do it. I applied what I could from all of those books and articles my parents had been feeding me. I even applied some tricks they told me not to do…and apparently it didn’t hurt because my credit score was 816 when I went to buy my house. But it did take years. It wasn’t overnight. And it was frustrating and it felt hopeless most of the time. There were other things I wanted to do with my money like buy things, invest, buy a house. I was particularly frustrated when I was given a book on investing in the stock market to read but of course couldn’t afford to do so because of my debt.

So, I’ve got all of this knowledge, and I’ve applied some of it. I’m 35 years old. I’ve just bought a house.

What do my parents do? They each, separately, aggressively got on my case within the first two days of moving into the house about paying it off early, about making extra payments.

I haven’t even made my first mortgage payment yet. I haven’t even had a chance to see the reality of my new budget.

Basically they’re treating me like a child, telling me what to do with my money and my house.

So two nights ago while I was unpacking books with my mother, I asked her if she thought I was incompetent. She was surprised and said no. I told her that when she and my father act like they are dictating to me what I should do with the house or my money or how I should pay my bills, etc., it feels to me like they think I don’t know what I’m doing. I held up some of those books they gave me years ago and I said, “You know, I’ve been paying attention all these years. I do have a clue and when I don’t, that’s when I ask.”

She told me that they were just worried because I’d been talking about all kinds of things I wanted to buy for the house and I’d been spending money on the house. I told her that I was keeping an eye on my bank account.

Now, here’s where the contradictions come in. My father gave me some extra money before the move to buy some extra things for the house like curtain rods and garbage cans. The things I’ve bought for the house have pretty much been basic stuff like curtain rods, shades, garbage cans, a plunger, three-prong outlets…it’s not like I’m out redecorating the house. The only thing I splurged on was a breakfast bar because I don’t have a kitchen table.  So then every time I turn around, she’s telling me that I need to get this or that for the house.  I didn’t buy new bookshelves, though the three I have need to be replaced and badly — the shelves actually sag, which she’s commented on.  I know I can’t afford it right now.  So I told myself I’ll just replace them in a year maybe.  For now,  these still hold the books off the floor…mostly. ;)  And my craft supplies can stay in boxes another six months or so.  But now she’s telling me I need to replace the bookshelves and buy metal shelving to hang on the walls of the craft room/office to put my craft supplies on.  Well, gosh, I’d also like a Dining Room table, a new bedroom set, chairs for the Music Room/Study, a mattress set for the guest room…

Not to mention that every time she tells me to start working on some part of the unpacking, she then interrupts me within two minutes to do something else.

Let’s not even start on, you should lose weight, here have some ice cream.
I miss my routine.

Tags: dysfunctional family, move, little red house, credit card debt

So, Where Were We?

Oy.

So, the day of the big move, somehow while he was in his kennel so he wouldn’t chase around the movers, Pugly got a-hold of the power cable to my laptop, which wasn’t plugged in, thank goodness. He chewed it up until it wasn’t recognizable, rendering it useless. He just wanted to be sure to express his unhappiness at being in his kennel while such interesting things were going on.

Around 5pm, we realized that the phones weren’t working at the house and while the cable guy was installing cable and internet the night before Thanksgiving — a humongous task apparently because of some sort of water damage to the old cable, the phone company was kind enough to let everyone off early on Wednesday for a four day weekend.

Basically my parents and I were stuck with each other for four days with no way to communicate with the outside world but by cell phone (which my mother can’t hear ring and can’t figure out how to access the voice mail of) because there were no cell phones and no power to connect the laptop to the internet. Yet somehow she can hear my pager go off several rooms away and will say, “I think I hear your pager going off.” or “Something is beeping.” Every. Single. Time.

And I’ve come to realize that no matter how much you give away and throw away or donate, you still have much more than you think you have, and even though you’ve gotten rid of a lot of the stuff you had when you moved the last time,this time when you move, it still feels like you have three times as much. And I know I have less furniture and I’ve moved into way more space, but looking around the house, it doesn’t feel or look like it. It’s a strange phenomenon which I think someone should study. Maybe those paranormal investigators on Sci-Fi or Discovery Channel can come check it out.

It actually took 4 days to move, which I really don’t understand. I paid movers to move the furniture on Wednesday, but we seemed to still be packing things on Saturday. That’s never happened on any of my previous moves. It just kept going on and on…like a Twilight Zone move, The Neverending Move…it just seemed so hopeless after a while. Where was all of that stuff coming from? How had it come from that small apartment? How was it going to fit into my new house? Would it all have to go into the basement?

And as a new homeowner, I’ve discovered some other interesting phenomenon…

• My bathroom outlet apparently only works if the lights are on, so forget charging my toothbrush or using the night light.
• Lowe’s had about 5 outdoor garbage cans to choose from and only one of those was a normal person size. Target didn’t have any.
• I couldn’t find anything to sort my recycling in anywhere. I had to order bins from Amazon.com.
• I have been unable to find an appropriate plunger for my type of piping.
• Apparently not all washer and dryer hook-ups are compatible, nor do they sell conversion kits. Don’t ask me. My father tried to explain it and it went over my head. At the moment, my washing machine hookup is MacGuyvered to the 1960 hookup in the basement.
• There are only 4 grounded outlets in my entire house and one is for the washer and dryer.
• There are only 3 phone jacks in the house, and none are upstairs.
• We have been to Lowe’s 4 times trying to get the shades for the living room cut right. Today my father is taking a pair of sewing shears to one of the shades himself. If it were anyone else, I might be more scared, but he’s the only one I trust to cut a straight line.
• The two grounded outlets in my kitchen are not where I would have chosen to put my microwave and coffee maker.
• The shades in the living room had to go up ASAP because every time I drove home, I saw my father sitting on the sofa sleeping/watching T.V. and I’m sure the neighbors think that’s all we do.
• My mother’s answer to everything seems to be “It’s in a box” or “It’s in a basket” and it’s getting on my nerves just a little. I just want to know “which box” or “which basket”. My labeling system was much more clear than hers. (Though I appreciate her enthusiasm and help.)
• I thought I was being clever when I packed up my CDs and numbered the boxes in the order they were packed. Unfortunately, my mother did not unpack them according to the numbers the boxes were marked.
• I miss my organized, clean space. It’s just all a bit chaotic right at the moment. Even the unpacked, put away stuff is disorganized to me.
• The furnace chimney fluke was not where we thought it went through the first floor. We discovered this when my father went to hang a shelf in the bathroom. Fortunately, he was using a hand drill and stopped when he hit metal.

I’m quite exhausted. I couldn’t wait to go back to work just so I could sit down all day.

I must say that it’s been nice having consistent heat. My apartment had a heater in one room and the minute you left that room, you were friggin’ cold. Except for the Dining Room, which is heated by electric heat baseboards, I’ve had the gas-heat baseboards on throughout the house at a nice consistent temp. An interesting side effect is that my toilet paper is toasty warm as it’s above the baseboard in the bathroom.

I bought one of those crescent shower rods and my dad installed that and a shower massage in my bathroom.  Both made for nice improvements in my bathroom.  The shower massage will definitely help with my sore muscles with the fibro and the crescent shower rod adds about 6″ to the shower area and make things feel less claustrophobic.  I feel like I’m such a small person, I don’t know how bigger people don’t feel like they’re bumping into everything in a standard shower, personally.

Plus, I now have a laundry area in my basement with a closeline and folding table.  My mother did her clothes the other night and said everything dried overnight, which is a vast improvement over everything taking days hanging on my bathroom shower rod in the old apartment.  I’m told this is because of the furnace down there.  I’m very excited.  Can’t wait to do my own laundry, possibly tonight.

I did lose closet space in the bedroom though and I’m becoming one of those people.  I’m expanding into the hall closet and the guest bedroom closet.  I’m putting my sweaters and cardigans in the hall closet and my costumes and fancy-schmancy dresses in the guest closet so far.  Plus Summer shoes and high heals are going in the guest closet.  (In Summer, the Winter and Summer shoes will switch, of course.)

I bought one of those 5-2 day programmable thermostats.  Right now, for the cold-haters, I’m leaving it at 68°, but when my parents leave, I’ll program it so that on weekdays from 11pm to 5:30am and from 8am to 4:30pm, it’s 55° and the rest of the time it’s 65° and on weekends, it’s only 55° from 11pm to 5:30am.

I’ve got tons of projects to do around the house.  I need to put some insulation in the basement and other such things.  Plus there’s tons of unpacking.  I’m not going to bother with hanging pictures until I’ve unpacked and settled on where my furniture goes.

I want to have a potluck for the NaNo group here.  I have the space now…though it’s covered in boxes.

I’ve about decided that what I want to do for the Dining Room is find a picnic table and refinish it.  No benches.  Then get 6 mix-matched chairs with backs to put around it.  The Dining Room is all wood paneling and has a wood stove and kind of looks rustic so I thought it would be kind of neat to add to that look.

I suppose I could ramble on and on about the house.  I could tell you about my plans to get a platform for my bed and get rid of the headboard all together and to buy mix-matched furniture for the bedroom too or my plans for the patio or how I still need a ladder or how I don’t know what to do with my plants to keep the cats from eating them this Winter…

But I think I’ll leave that for another post.

Tags: little red house, moving, homeownership

Little Red Floorplans

I snagged the floor plan graphic out of the appraisal report and edited it because he had the rooms all labeled wrong and was missing a closet. The missing closet actually messes up the bathroom doorway when added back in, I’m sorry to say — possibly why he left it out.

So, here is what I’ll be moving into a week from Wednesday. (Click the graphic to enlarge.)

A couple of corrections:

• The shed is actually cut in half by a wall and there are two doors on the outside and one door on the inside of the garage near the door going outside of the garage. I think that’s so you can store even more wood in one and gardening tools in the other.
• The closet in the piano room/study does in fact have doors. Those double doors that open up wide.
• The closet in the downstairs hall is actually less deep and appears to be a pantry. (The linen closet is what the original sketcher left out of the bathroom.)
• That dotted wall between the kitchen and the living room is one of those semi-half walls. It’s got a big cut out most of it so you can see between the two rooms. There’s no breakfast bar or really any shelf to put anything much on. I imagine the only thing that will be perching there will be the cats.
• Most of the opposite wall is the window that has to be replaced because the seal was broken. Apparently that’s the only thing that’s not been fixed yet.
• There are 3 drawers built into the walls in each of the upstairs bedrooms. In the room on the right they’ll in the top right corner and in the room on the left, they are on the wall adjacent to the hall. Both rooms have sloping ceiling and the slope begins about 4′ from the ground.
• The bedroom on the right has access to both eaves storage, but the bedroom on the left only has access to the eaves storage on the bottom of the sketch. (I figure, easily moved furniture like night tables could be set in front of those access points.)
• The basement is only the size of the kitchen,living room. and two rooms.

So which upstairs room would you make your Master Bedroom?

Tags: little red house, floor plans

I Should Be Happy

I’m thirty-five years old and I am intelligent enough to know I do not need the approval of someone else to make me happy or give me self-worth. However, being brainy enough to know that is somewhat different from being able to control the emotion or the need. I’ve never quite been able to disconnect the wiring on my insides that would allow me to be free from seeking the approval of my parents in all of these years. I’ve said so many times here. That’s why even now after doing triple handstands and cartwheels I still pause at the end to look in their direction to see if they’ll clap.

O.K. Technically I’m not going to do handstands or cartwheels for anyone. I don’t think I can actually do those, but you get the point.

The thing is that for years, I’ve been hearing from my parents that I should get out of debt and buy a house.

I got out of debt last year — something that my father seems to keep forgetting because he keeps asking me how paying my debt off is coming. For me, paying off my debt was a really big deal because not only was it weighing on me financially and not only did it cause panic attacks but I felt the weight of my parents’ disappointment with each passing month that it wasn’t paid off. I felt shame. For me, paying it off was redemption. I thought as though paying it off would somehow be more satisfactory that it was. But when my father asked again last month during his visit how that debt was coming, I just felt like I was in a sinking boat.

Now the house-buying thing is something else. It’s something I’ve wanted too. I had gotten excited about it once before back in 2003 right before I lost my job. I had even gone looking at houses and had tried to get a realtor who had turned out not to really want to sell me a house because I never saw her face, kid you not. She actually never showed for any of our appointments. I even found a house I liked but I couldn’t afford to buy it at the time and then I lost my job and ended up moving to Maine, so everything works out, right?

Here’s the thing. I don’t see the point in going to all of those Parades of Homes and open houses unless you’re actually ready to buy a house. My parents have been pushing me for six months or so to start getting out and looking around at houses that are out there though I don’t have anything in savings because I just got back from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the UK and I’m in the middle of a 1 year lease on my apartment. To me, it’s a waste of my time and gas, especially when gas prices are high. I kept trying to tell them that I have no patience for it because what if I see the house I want? I am not the type of person to just ignore that and hope it’s still around in the Spring when my lease is up and I have money in the bank. I’m just not.

You have to understand. My father agonizes over every decision. There’s no such thing as an impulse buy. Everything is researched to death. He went back and forth on the moving to New Mexico thing for years before they did it. In fact, they had bought property they were going to build on in Louisiana…but they had it for like five years and he couldn’t decide on the finalization of blueprints. Every time the final prints were made, he’d back off.

My father still has a laser printer he bought in the early 1990’s. It isn’t really compatible with either of the computers he has but he can’t make up his mind about a new printer so he’s making my mother suffer. He won’t let my mother upgrade anything on her laptop. She still has Win98. Two years ago, he still had Win95.

It’s not just because he’s cheap and wants the best deal though that’s part of it. It’s because he can’t make the decision.

Me? I know what I want most of the time where material things are involved. I may not always know the best ways to get them, but I know what I want. For big things, I generally give myself a little time to think things through, but I don’t like to agonize over the what-if-something-better-comes-along thoughts. There’s always that possiblity. You can’t help that. All you can do is make the best decision based on the information you have now.

In 1995, I wanted a green Jeep. My dad forced me to shop around. The whole process was torture. Months later, I bought one. Interestingly, in 2006, I still want and have my green Jeep.

Someone told me that there are some houses you walk in and you just know that’s the house. I know that this little red house is the house I want to live in and make my home. I can imagine myself there doing every day things — cooking, doing laundry, snuggling with my pets, playing piano, reading a book, starting a garden, getting ready for work, having friends over. I can picture where my belongings will go. I can’t imagine changing much of anything (except to add a second bathroom later). I think I can be happy there.

Mind you, I wasn’t ready to go house hunting last week, but my mother insisted that I go while she was here. I would never have seen the little red house but for her. Now I want it.

So, I talked to my parents, I talked to various people, I read up on buying a house in books and online. Mostly, I wanted to find out how to go about it. I wanted advice on the mechanics. I wanted to know the etiquette. I was sorely disappointed in the results of my research. No one seemed very helpful, especially my father. He was very evasive on the subject. He kept telling me that he couldn’t tell me specifically what to do or say. His suggestion though was of course to spend the next three weekends looking at two houses in the area each day so I got a better idea about what the houses in the area where like.

O.K. I get the whole idea about knowing what houses are selling for in the area and being able to comparison shop. However, in this day and age of the internet, it’s not hard to do that from the comfort of your living room. And I did. It’s quite clear to me that comparable houses are not selling for less than $215K, which in the end is what we agreed on, btw. (Sorry, did I give part of the story away?)

What I really wanted to know from my father is how he would handle the negotiation. What things he would ask for in the purchase agreement, etc. He never would tell me.

Friday night, I went into the negotiation for the little red house completely unprepped for the event. It’s not the same as bartering in Mexico for crystal turtles or handmade blankets — both of which I’m excellent at getting cheap. The fact is that those “How to Buy a House” books don’t really tell you what you need to know. My advice is to get a realtor. I think they’re probably worth it if they actually want to sell you a house. The fact that I’d been burned in New Orleans by that one realtor and the fact that these folks are selling without a realtor meant none of us wanted to deal with one, but probably I could have used one on Friday night. Though possibly the flippers and I might not be on as friendly terms now.

Anyway, I put down a deposit of $1K and signed a purchase agreement of $215K contingent on a building inspection and the seller putting in a garbage disposal as well as fixing a few odds and ends I noted. I was very excited though it was more than I originally offered.

My father quickly put a damper on it when I called my parents full of enthusiasm. His first response was that it wasn’t that much lower than the asking price. (Only $3K less.) Then he was upset that I hadn’t asked for things like a termite inspection. Well, gosh, I didn’t know I should ask for one. I wasn’t aware that there was a termite problem in Maine. It pissed me off too because I asked for his advice about what I should ask for and talk about at the negotiation and he didn’t have anything to say beforehand but he was sure all disappointed in how I handled it after.

Then of course, there was no cheer about the closing date, tentatively set for Nov. 27th. No cheer about hiring moving men — I don’t know how he thinks I’m getting my furniture over there. No cheer about breaking my lease. Then all of a sudden he had to get off the phone because the evening paper was arriving.

My mom just kind of went along with him. Oh they said, “Congradulations,” but I just didn’t get the satisfaction I was hoping for.

I haven’t slept well since Friday night and yet I slept all day Saturday. A bout of depression. I told my mother yesterday that it’s hard to be excited when no one else is. She at least sounded a little more excited yesterday.

I should be happy. I’m getting the house of my dreams. I’ve paid off all my other debt.

So, why do I feel like I’ve done it all wrong?

Tags: little red house, depression, parental approval, dysfunctional family