Moving East

Part of our dream: own a house.  Eventually.  Some time down the road.  Eddie and I went to several open houses over the past year to see what was out there.  What's out there is pretty scary.  We saw a basement "bathroom" that was clearly a makeshift handyman special since the toilet was up on a two-foot step in a small corner and the sink was on the other side of what seemed to be a wall but couldn't quite be defined as one.  We smelled lots of new smells that we did not want to ever smell again.  Smoke and cats prevailed over unidentifiable.  We saw a house that had a hole in the second floor.  The second floor was the "master suite" complete with chimney in the middle, the large hole next to the chimney, walls of closet space, and a new bathroom.  Apparently they thought the bathroom was the selling point.   Not if you can fall through to the first floor it isn't.  These houses were massive and needed massive overhauls.  They were priced in the high 3s to high 4s and needed at least half of that additionally in work.  Not being exactly handy (neither of us can use a paint brush let alone hang a door or take a drill to anything), Eddie and I put aside that part of our dream for a while.

Because just one town over can make a difference.  Because British lit was my specialty as an undergrad and all the streets in the neighborhood are named after places in London.  Because it was so darn cute in the pictures.  I sent Eddie an email with a link attached from Redfin saying, "I think we should look at this house."  Because we had nothing to do on that particular Saturday, we drove about seven blocks over to an open house.  It was packed.  We parked the car down the block, and when we got out, I said to him, "Now I feel like I'm in a competition and we have to have this house and no one else here can have it."  We hadn't even reached the front lawn yet, and I was devising a way to elbow people out of our path. 

We made it to the house and figured out which door to enter since we had a choice of two and we walked in and wow -- it did not smell, it was not dirty, we didn't skeeve it, and we didn't throw up our hands and give each other that look of "how do people live here?"  Instead, I called dibs on the front office while Eddie nodded in approval at every room, even in the master bedroom where there was a creepy doll sitting on a chair that we could see in the pictures online and was creepier in person.  I told him that if we were to live in the house, that doll would haunt it (more on that later).

The real estate agent showed us where we could knock down a wall and then reoriented me when I got confused with which door led to where--there was actually a third door on the other side of the house.  For a small house--one floor, six rooms, no basement--it has a lot of doors.  We talked about the neighborhood and then left. 

In leaving, the two of us got into a what if conversation and in the few minutes it took to get home, Eddie was figuring out numbers.  In half an hour, we made our way back and talked numbers.  She took all our information.  Eddie talked about mortgages in the language saved for only real estate people and mortgage people.  I ran around the house, flipping on and off light switches, turning on and off faucets, opening and closing doors.  We left in a little while with the promise that she would call us in a few hours.  We'd put a bid on the house.

In the course of a few hours, I slowly sank into the fetal position on the floor in our living room so when the phone rang, I was rocking myself to shambles and asking quite loudly, What are we doing?!?!? followed up by, We are not adult enough to own a house!!!! 

The first call was to explain that they'd gotten another offer that was for higher than what we'd offered.  We were going to wait it out.  That's when Eddie explained to me matter-of-factly,  You'd better get ready for the next phone call because that means we got the house.

I was like, But they offered more money.  Why would anyone turn down more money?

He explained, We're stronger buyers.  We're putting down more.

I answered, But it's less money.

He replied, We're better.

In any other situation, I'd be satisfied with "we're better" because that's my answer for anything else in this world. Why should I get something for free?  Because I'm the best.  Why should I go on vacation?  Because I'm so great.  Why do I get the answers right in Jeopardy?  Because I'm better than anyone.  But in this situation, it just didn't compute.

"But why would anyone take less money?"

"Because it's not guaranteed that they'll get the bigger amount with a weaker buyer."

And the debate ended there because the phone rang and I immediately dropped to the floor to roll around in the fetal position some more and I stopped rolling only to hold my breath and listen to one side of a conversation that I understood nothing about and then Eddie came into the living room and said, We're buying a house. 

I don't really remember exactly what happened next.  I was very happy.  I was very excited.  I might have blacked out because really the rest of it I simply do not recall.

Fast forward.  Eddie worked on our mortgage.  We had the inspection and our lawyer said it was the cleanest inspection he'd ever seen on a house.  We met one of the owners and her dog and were shocked that they owned a dog because there were no signs of it in the house.  We did paperwork.  I signed lots of things.  We found boxes.  We packed.  We packed.  We packed.  We packed.  Then came the closing.  We did a final walk-through and then went to sign all the paperwork.  We laughed and told stories and had a very pleasant time and I found out later that closings can take up to four hours and we were done in about an hour and a half.  We forgot to get the keys to the house and the now-prior owners forgot to give them to us so we all met up back at the lawyers' office to get them. 

Then we drove to our new house.  We went inside.  We walked from room to room talking about colors and furniture and what would happen where and when.  We were homeowners. 

The rest is a lot of usual moving stuff.  We cleaned.  We brought boxes and boxes over.    We met the neighbors.  We had a landscaper remove more plants and trees than you could imagine would fit on our very small property.  We had the gas company visit to tell me why the burner was cycling on and off non-stop (the gas company didn't turn on the gas when I'd asked them to so with no gas is no heat is no hot water is non-stop cycling until the gas is turned on).  We had the sewer people come to blast through the sewer that apparently hadn't been snaked in 25-30 years (real home ownership).  We had all the painting completed.  We had stuff hung on the walls. We hired a moving company to move the big furniture. We put our bed together, rearranged the living room several times, unpacked everything--EVERYTHING--in all the rooms.  I feared that I would not sleep that first night because whenever I sleep in a different place for the first time like on vacation in a hotel or at a friend's house, I can't sleep.  Apparently, hours upon hours of moving day after day is the perfect remedy for restlessness.  I slept so deeply for so long and it was so good.  Eddie woke up feeling the same way.

After that, the first few days I felt like I was on vacation, renting a time share.  Even so, it already felt like home.  As soon as we'd walked in that first day, we knew this was the place meant for us.  Despite some run-ins with spiders, cave crickets, and a silverfish that came crawling across my printer in my office, we are so settled and comfy.

Of course, there's lots to do still.  We're getting new doors.  We need to buy new blinds and curtains. We still need to figure out if we want to pull out more bushes (seriously, the amount of shrubbery is insane and the prior owner loved gardening, so there was actually a tree in the living room, I shit you not--hence, the attraction of the six-to-eight-legged critters that will soon learn there's no place to live here because we've gotten rid of all the plants and if they don't learn, the Orkin Man will teach them).  We have to have some minor things fixed and then some more major things reworked (like hanging the tv on the wall in the living room--guess whose idea that is).  In time, we need to pull down a fence, knock down a tree, repave the sidewalks and the driveway.  We'd eventually like to have a kitchen dining table instead of using a folding table with a tablecloth draped over it to hide the fact that it is a folding table (though the two metal folding chairs kind of give that away).

For all that to get done, it'll take a long time.  And as we cross things off the list, we'll add more things to it because that's what owning a house is.  But we're homeowners.  We're adults.  This is dreams coming true.

As for that creepy doll that I swore would haunt us.  I'm not kidding: the radio in the bathroom has turned on by itself twice so far.  I'm interested to see what else she has planned for us.

Homeowners!

One of the treasures we found in the coat closet

Rabbit in the garden.  I named him Jesse.

Incredibly thick vine in front of our walkway, home to thousands of yellowjackets

The boy!

Rock face

A treasure we found in the linen closet

Post vine extraction.  Lots of the bushes are gone now, too.

Fun With Colors

The Color Festival is all about good vibes.  Happy times.  Finding your inner peace through a celebration of color and cheer.

Or

for some people, it's about how hard and often you can sneak up to strangers and pelt them with a handful of powder and laugh and run away.

Some people just don't get zen.

S and I headed to Staten Island by way of Eddie's car service to celebrate with colored powder while wearing white.  We'd bought white shorts from Old Navy for eight bucks each and found old white shirts that would look better with color than they looked completely white.  The sky was a bit gray when we arrived, but while standing on line, the sun came out and a breeze came off the water, and it turned out to be the right kind of day to be outside, sharing the love.

We shared the love on line for a very long time since we'd bought tickets in advance while the people who were buying tickets at the door went right in without having to wait.  Umm, something seems wrong about that.  Also wrong was that we had to buy the colored powder.  So we paid for a ticket (we got a discount because I bought them early AND I bought them with my work email and with an edu email comes an extra discount because education is fundamental) and then we had to pay for powder and still wait on a long line to get in as well as a line to get the powder.  Note to Color Festival: if people buy tickets in advance, give them a free bag of powder and an express line.

Buying the powder was a little confusing since there were no signs for prices or for what you could purchase. When we got to the table through a crowd of people -- it was more of a mob than a line -- we saw that we could buy sunglasses (good for not getting color in your eyes), stickers, t-shirts, and other trinkets.  We bought just the powder.

We also tried on flip flops to get a chance to win flip flops.  Neither of us won a pair.

There was free yoga all day, so S and I did some.  When down dog came along, S was out.  Short shorts and a pose that's ass-up is not her thing.  In a few minutes, I tapped out, too, having not done a full yoga session since Speedy Baddriverson bashed up my back real bad.

There were garbage bins everywhere!

Music is supposed to be a key part of Color Festival, and so several acts were lined up during the day with an MC between each who seemed to be preoccupied with two things: getting people to throw their colored powder on him and getting people to clean up after themselves.  Later on, I saw him picking up the powder wrappers people had thrown on the grass.  People?  Are lazy litterers.

When S and I ventured out onto the floor in front of the stage, we'd planned to start to throw powder at each other, but we had a difficult time opening our bags.  They were sealed shut with some type of super bag sealer and wouldn't open.  While we stood there, several people came by, suggesting we didn't have enough color.  Ha. Ha. Ha.  Clever.  And then?  Some little snot kid ran by and pelted me in the side of the head with a chock full of blue powder. He maniacally laughed and ran away.

And so began the string of encounters with assholes who did not quite grasp the concept of the Color Festival.  Am I an asshole for calling a little kid an asshole?  Nope.  Why not?  Here's why: an asshole is an asshole, no matter what age.  There were four guys, not children but who acted like children, who ran around all day, wrestling each other and angrily throwing powder and each other and other people, including me and S.  Here and there were the same kind of individuals or duos who clearly did not understand the difference between pretty celebration and blind rage.  So annoying.

Mango-flavored.  Delicious.

Also annoying was the advertisement for food and drinks as we could not bring our own. Their idea of food and drinks was a cart that sold water and Gatorade for thirst and potato chips for hunger.  The only stand that had a substantial choice was the yogurt drink stand, which is what S and I bought, and it was delish and somewhat filling.  The other vendor making a killing was the hot dog cart outside and across the street from the event.  Note to Color Festival: provide food and drink that is in tune with your advertising which includes a picture of a group of people standing at a stand with the word Kitchen above it, implying real food choices instead of stuff in a bag.

However, every half hour was the color launch, and while the MC was a bit perturbed at those of us in the back who went early a few times, the entire thing was really pretty to watch.  The first one we did when we were in the middle of it was a bit terrifying as we are a small people and when among a crowd of exuberant colored-powder throwers, we could get stomped on.  When all the colors launch at once, it's very pretty and then very mustard yellow.  We saw everything around us in one second and in the next, we couldn't see anything except what looked like settling smoke, and S said, this must be what it's like to witness a bomb going off, and I totally agreed. It was up my nose and in my mouth and then it got in my eye so I had to go off to the side and blink a lot to work it out of my contact.  Once we knew what it was like, however, we closed our eyes and danced around and let the powder fly.  I held my breath for as long as I could and then let it out as I left the center of the powder puff.  I'd brought wet wipes, so after we'd been covered with color, we wiped off and then we were coated a second time, so each time was a different pattern and hue.  At one point, I had so much powder on me, I looked furry and gray.  After wiping off, I was a blank canvas sans the stuff that stuck to my clothes.

Clean face

Blue face

After our first throw

After our last throw

Unfortunately, after hours in the sun, sweat started to kick in and that's when all colors ran together and started to turn brown.  S took out her baggie of contraband peanuts for snacking and she asked, do you want to stay the whole five hours?  Being that we'd witnesses and participated in several large color throws and had been subjected to the angry pelting several times as well, I was good with going on the ferry and heading home.

The ferry?  Is fabulous.  It was my first time on it and I loved every second of it.  Once we made it to the mainland, we got on the subway where inquiring minds wanted to know, What did you do today?  Refraining from responding with, Well, I did some laundry and then went for a walk, why do you ask?, I explained what the color festival was.  Some people asked if we did a color run, and I responded, something like that but with dancing rather than running.  S simply stopped answered people since all she does at work is small talk with strangers, and I took to just agreeing with whatever guess they had.

Pretty view right behind where the SI Yanks play

A view from the ferry.  Very exciting!

When I got home, I got undressed in the shower.  My scalp was caked with powder.  It was in my underwear.  It was in my ears. Best. Shower. Ever.  When I was finally clean, I looked at my phone and saw S had texted me a pic--she was back to normal as well!  As pretty as the colors had been, clean slate felt just as nice at the end of the day.

This just in....I've learned to use a shared stream on iCloud thanks to S, and so I now have all these new pics from her phone on my phone and computer.  Technology!

Is it me, or do I look doughy in this picture?

Clearly my finest hour

Ferry! Ferry!

AMNH

That's one big dino

The thing about the American Museum of Natural History is that it doesn't really change.  I mean, it's history, it's nature, and those two things are in the past, so they stay the same.  However, as people change, our perspective of history and nature change, and as I walked the same halls seeing the same things I saw when I was younger, they seemed more amazing.  That giant slab of a tree.  That huge whale that still scares me a little bit.  The rocks and the gems--the room still smells the same.  And its entrance is pretty grand.

On a bench nearby, we ate some peanuts and left the shells.  <3 LVP

Especially helpful are the walls of the subway stop, letting you know that the museum is near:

Hyenas: because why not be a horrible animal?

In addition to the regular exhibits, however, their special exhibits intrigue with new ideas. Recently, they had an exhibit on spiders.  I did not need to see that, and neither did S.  We decided on the The Power Of Poison, which was fantastic, especially the portion that dealt with poisons in literature.  She's a fan of Agatha Christie and I like the three witches.  We both liked the apple.

Because going to the city means you can't do just one thing, I found this place:

Apologies to the man on the phone with his mouth open

To top it all off, R met up with S and me to play some Friends trivia at one of three bars that were the basis for the bar in HIMYM.  We lost.  A lot. Which I'd expected because R and I were of very little help to S, who knew most of the answers we got right, though I think I got at least one right.  Something about Monica and mocholate.  I'll call that my shining moment.  Aside from me and the witches.  That was pretty cool.

Recent Freebies

Big on beauty products and personal hygiene

The Return Of The Leases

It sucked. Everything about it sucked. We called Toyota to make an appointment to return Yolanda the Yaris because every piece of mail I received, every email, every prior phone call regarding my final inspection (which showed the car didn't have even normal wear and tear--as if it's brand new!) said to make an appointment. The woman on the phone said that they don't make appointments and that we should return it in the morning on a weekday to avoid having to be there for hours. My mom followed me to Toyota on a weekday morning, and when I said I was there to return my lease, the woman asked, Do you have an appointment?

I. Shit. You. Not.

So I said, I was told on the phone when I called that you don't make appointments. She asked who told me that. I said a very nice woman on the phone. She asked me to wait on a couch, so I waited on a couch. The lease manager appeared, and I recognized him as the salesguy who got me into the Yaris. He asked what I was doing for a car and I told him I'd bought a VW. After going out to the car to retrieve the plates, he told me that they were offering some really good deals if I wanted to buy it out. Because I obviously need a 3 year old Yaris in addition to the brand new VW. So I told him I would never buy the Yaris because the cup holders were in the dumbest place ever. My mother was mortified that I would say such a thing to a car guy, but really, it was the truth. It bugged me for 3 years.

For Chevy? I'm pretty sure they descend directly from evil spirits. They refused to accept his car back early even though he was paying through to the end of the lease. I even called and said that we were moving to another country in a week because of a work emergency, and while Chevy in general was sympathetic in giving me different dealerships that might take it back, the actual dealer we dealt with did not want it back. They said they had no room on the lot. We could not bring it back for months. Until I called on a random morning and a manager told me I could bring it in any day at any time.

I. Shit. You. Not.

So I asked, You mean even though you don't have room on the lot I can bring it back? She was like, we can take it. I was like, so why are we told every day until now that we can't bring it back? She was like, Well you can but just not tomorrow.

Eventually, Eddie just brought it there and refused to leave until they took it.

A few days later, GM called to see when he was returning his lease.

I. Shit. You. Not.

I told the woman that we'd returned it. She asked to which dealership. I told her it was Bical Chevy in Valley Stream and asked if they'd told GM. Nope, GM had no record of the car being returned. I told her that we'd been having problems with that dealership for a long time and asked what we could do. She couldn't tell me more because my name wasn't on the car, but by the time Eddie got back in touch with her, Bical had finally been in touch with GM. There was a disposition fee, however, that the folks at Bical didn't even mention ever, and the woman said there could also be charges for wear and tear. Eddie was like, I have a signed paper that says there's no wear and tear so I'm not paying any charge that shows I have any.

Thankfully, both cars are now in dealerships or with new owners somewhere out there in the universe and we no longer have to deal with that kind of car stupidity. Yeay!