Hola!

Wow, I knew it had been a bit since I had dusted off the ol' blog, but September? Yikes.

Sadly, I think the timing corresponds with my daughter's decisions that a) she's a night owl and doesn't like to go to sleep before 10-10:30, and b) that she must go to sleep, and sleep all night, touching her mom. As this leaves me with precious little time to spend on stuff *I* want to do at night, the blog has been kicked to the curb in favor of the occasional tweet, paying bills and reading news. I know, my priorities are wack.


The short update to the house is that it's coming along nicely. After all the slow-pokiness in the beginning, once they broke ground the builders have really kicked it into gear. I guess that's what they do best - actually BUILD, vs. doing the building paperwork. Who knew.


I must say that the time we took in doing research on the bank and the builders up front is paying off. I've heard a couple of horror stories lately about builders absconding with people's money or using shoddy materials, and I'm confident we won't have anything like that with our guys. I've been really happy with the builder, all of the subcontractors they're using, and the bank's oversight of the budget. Except for Mr. Me's occasional propensity to have an opinion that's just plain wrong - wrong I say! - about finish choices, it's been a good experience.


Eventually I'll publish an entire series of photos of the house construction, but for now here it is in current form.


Voila! Its got walls! And a basement! And a great maw of a garage. And look - new roof!

And the inside is . . . drafty. But we're gaining on it. (shown here - the Little Man's bedroom, of which he is so proud)

In other shocking news, selling a house is a pain in the ass. It's only been on the market 3 weeks and I'm already tired of keeping a spotless house. Especially as the Little Miss likes to have a bit of chaos around her at all times, and she's currently into diapers and diapering things. Which leads to many a morning of picking this up off the floor.

Maybe it's mummification she's into, we're not quite sure.

Moving Nowhere

We are slowly passing milestones in this housebuilding business. Is it done, you ask? What colors did you pick, you say?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

Slowly passing milestones equals more that the paperwork is *almost* done, and we might start building in the foreseeable future, than that any actual work has been done.

Here's what's gone on:
County zoning requirements met - check
Houseplans complete - check
Building bids sought - check
Building bids obtained - three, painfully slowly
Builder procured - check
Houseplans revised - check
Houseplans revised again (by me so I didn't have to see the fucking houseplan lady again) - check
Financing pre-approved - check
Building contract finalized - check
Land contract finalized - check
Site plan completed - check
Financing finalized- check (oh my god we are now so poor)
Site plan provided to flood people even though our land isn't in a flood plain - check
Land purchased - check (almost - I don't have the deed in hand yet)
Perk test - in progress
Building permit - later this week

For those of you who have not yet had a crash-course in septic - or "where poo-poo go" - a perk test is where they test your land to see if water absorbs into the land at a rate that will work with a normal septic system, or if we have to use a funky expensive septic solution. We're so hoping for absorbent land. Like, Bounty absorbent. Funky and expensive is not in the budget.

The pathetic little list above represents seven months of work. And frustration. And watching things ever-so-slowly grind forwards. And second-guessing the wisdom of this project as we've watched the economy start circling the bottom of the toilet, faster and faster as the months go by.

And they haven't even started, oh, BUILDING THE FUCKING HOUSE YET. But we're close enough that I'd better get in gear and get my 'before' pictures taken.

P.S. The title of this post refers both to the state of the project and that the place we're moving has no address yet. Literally, we're moving to slightly North of nowhere.

The "I Love You" Song

The Little Man was helping me wrap a birthday present this morning for one of his buddies. His sparkling, happy eyes and general overall cuteness inspired me to sing "I love you" in a big, operatic voice.
He didn't miss a beat, singing right back "I love you too!"
to which I replied " I love you more!"
then he sang, with a nice melody, "I love you most!"
and I belted (in a this-is-the-finale sort of way) "I love you up to the moon!"
to which he came back with a very loud "I love you more than McDonald's!"

And . . . I had nothin'. His love truly knows no bounds.

P.S. Yes, when daddy's not around, we communicate in song sometimes. Mostly with an opera feel. It's what we do. Stop judging, but feel free to be happy you're not around when it's going on.