MissMeliss: Escribition

104 Boxes.
That’s how many we’ve packed, and while we’ve packed a LOT, we still haven’t touched the kitchen, my office, the innumerable breakable things, the art.

I, who tend to spend money on books, pens, shoes, and hats, more than anything, have somehow acquired vast amounts of STUFF I never knew I had.

Some of the boxes we’ve packed have been condensed from other boxes, long ignored, like the sweater-box full of my grandmother’s knitting (she died in December 2001, hasn’t knitted since 1999), including a half-complete lavender and silver scarf she was making for me. The yarn smelled like her favorite cologne, not strongly, but in small bits, as if part of herself was left there for me to find and embrace, all these years later. There were magazine clippings in the box as well, but I tossed those, as I was unable to figure out why they were relevant. Probably they were meant to be included in some unsent letter to one of us - her granddaughters, or her daughters. With knitting becoming a fad among my friends, I’m suddenly inspired to pick up where I stopped at the age of nine, and finish her work.

Another box was filled with books leftover from my childhood. Not the hardcover Winnie the Pooh collection that has graced my shelves for years, my pre-Disnefied stuffed Pooh Bear sitting near them for company, but older books, like In the Night Kitchen, and Where the Wild Things Are, classic childrens’ literature with art sophisticated enough to be appreciated by adults. Fuzzy and I are in the ‘trying’ stage of becoming parents - as in trying to conceive - and I know it’s wrong to bring a child into the world for selfish purposes, but there’s a lot of really good kiddie lit out there I’d love to have someone to share with.

Yet another unremembered box yielded treasures from Junior High School. Fuzzy insisted I keep my 8th Grade yearbook, even though I attempted to add it to the trash. I laughed at hard evidence of my first science fiction geekery: The entire series of novels related to the mini-series (and later regular series) V - the one about lizards masquerading as humans, who come to Earth to harvest humans as food. Very ’80’s.

Tomorrow - later today really - we’ll be packing most of the day, and working in party prep betweeen the boxes. This last gathering of close friends will be a nice break in a weekend of work, with the clock ticking louder and louder as we approach 8/31. The movers come in the morning on that day, and while I generally hate hotel rooms, I’m looking forward to spending that evening in a room I don’t have to clean, with air conditioning I don’t have to pay for.

For now, even though my mind is wide awake, and crying, “Write, write,” and my version of J.K. Rowlings’ Severus Snape is whispering enticing bits of dialogue into my inner ear, forming the next installment in my self-indulgent foray into fanfic, I am going to go steal two more hours of sleep.

::Cool, blue mornings::

Onesome: Cool– Well, summer is almost gone (except for those Down Under who are expecting it soon), and the cooler weather is coming. …and other than those who live in places like Hawai’i, things are about to change. Which do you prefer, the coolness of Winter where you live or the warmth of your Summer?

I love California winters, because rain is my favorite weather, although the nearly ceaseless rainstorms can be a bit much at times. Truly though, my favorite seasons are spring and fall. I love the lingering bite in the air winter turns into spring, and the first crispness, later in the year, as summer morphs into fall.

Twosome: Blue– Today’s softball: blue or green? Pick one! …okay, if it’s a tie (high or low), what color do you prefer for decorating or accents?

Both! As long as they match in tone and temperament, I love mixing blue and greem. Mediterranean Blue and Lime, for example, is a combination that I love (though the lime has to be in small punches).

Threesome: Mornings– Mornings, afternoons, evenings, nights… What’s your favorite time of day? …and what makes it so for you?

On the rare occasions when I’m up before seven, I like the stillness of early morning hours. As much as I claim I’m nocturnal, some of my best writing comes from those times. But I really love evenings. The time after work, when dinner’s done, and you’re curled up on the couch - precious!

How about you? When you’re ready, post your answers in your own space, and leave a comment at The Back Porchso they can find you!

I say… And you think… ?

1. Olympics:: trials
2. Wicked:: defying gravity
3. Intoxicating:: champagne punch
4. Radical:: junior high school
5. Misinformed:: ignorant
6. Triplets:: sheet music
7. Coronation:: Street
8. Asimov:: Isaac
9. Contemporary:: art
10. 1:: 1,000,000

Like this meme? Play along here.

We roll out of California a week from Weds. Possibly a week from Tues, if we finish loading the truck early enough.

Yesterday we managed to pack the living room books, and about half the contents of the garage. Today, the plan is to finish the garage, and pack the clothes we won’t need for the month we’re in escrow in TX, and living in a temp. apartment.

We’re debating getting a trailer hitch for Forester Gump and renting an actual towable u-haul, the teeny trailer-type, just so that we certified geeks can have our foofy computers. This is less of an issue for Fuzzy as it is for me, since I’ll be working from home, and my laptop just doesn’t have the computing power to which I’ve become accustomed.

The dogs KNOW something is up.

We left a whole bunch of stuff out on the lawn on a card table last night, with a giant FREE sign. This is a dandy way to get rid of stuff you don’t want, that you don’t have the patience to put in a garage sale, or the time to put on Ebay. People will take nearly ANYTHING for free. (In this case it was stray computer components, a plastic chest of drawers, stuff like that. Alas, no one has taken the table itself. Well. Perhaps we will find more free stuff to put out during Garage Part II, today.)

We made such progress yesterday, that I’ve gone from Completely and Utterly Overwhelmed to Just a Little Overwhelmed. Also, I’ve discovered that going off caffeine at the same time as a move is a Bad Thing. I’m certain that a good portion of my overwhelmedness had to do with a lack of macchiatos in my life.

It’s 11:21. Time to wake Fuzzy and get going.

I have a thing for sharks, and shark movies. I mean, I was raised on Jaws, and the only reason I don’t own a copy of Deep Blue Sea is that they were out when I went to look for it, and it hasn’t come up since then. And if you’ve read me for longer than a day, you know that the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is something akin to Semana Santa for me.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I chose Open Water as my birthday movie tonight. And while I suspect that the majority of audiences, like the one I saw it with, will pan it, I quite enjoyed the film.

It’s the story, loosely based on real events, of two scuba divers left behind by their boat, while on vacation in a tropical location. (It was filmed 18 miles off the coast of the Bahamas, though the story it was based on took place in Australia), and are adrift, alone, in open water.

Critics have called it “the scariest shark movie since Jaws,” but it’s not scary in a blood and guts monster movie kind of way. It’s scary because it’s a human story. It’s two people stuck in a horrible situation. There’s very little action. There are endless shots of open water. There is odd aboriginal music used to mark the passage of time. But the scary part isn’t in the toothy fish circling ever nearer the humans, it’s in the moments that all of us recognized - like when, several hours into their ordeal - the husband accuses the wife of blaming him for their predicament, and she yells at him, “I wanted to go SKIING!”

I can’t tell any more without spoiling the movie, but if you do go see it, remember this: It was shot with a hand-held digital camcorder on a budget of $120,000. There are no special effects, because there was no budget - in fact, the sharks that do appear in the movie are real sharks (read about that here) because it was cheaper to use real animals. It’s an independent film. And it is NOT a monster movie.

(Though there were some monstrous people in the theatre…like the women sitting down the aisle from us who were unable to whisper, and kept commenting that the movie was stupid. I came close to throwing popcorn at them and telling them to shut up, but that would have been more disruptive than they were being.)

If you’re a nut for shark week, independent films, and unknown actors, see this movie. Otherwise, wait for the DVD.

The Second-Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

She answered the door even as our realtor was fiddling with the electronic Supra-key, squealing in delight and then explaining that she was happy to see us, and was opening the door to let us in and then leaving. “Take as long as y’all want, sugah,” she told me in her thick voice. “Just lock up before y’all leave.” We had seen pictures of the house - so cute and charming from the outside - but we waited until she had left, taking her hair, nails, and lips (all of which had been tinted the same color as the dark cherry wood floors) with her - before we looked further than the entry.

On the net, the house was charming - gas lampposts in a woodsy front yard, cute brick house, lovely pool. We’d seen the frou-frou decor, but nothing prepared us for the reality. Everything was mauve and crushed velvet, gilt and lace and cherry wood and crystals. Chair-rail - to - ceiling mirrors filled the entry wall and the opposing wall in the dining room. Faux mauve marbelized wallpaper covered the walls, and there was more swag than anyone ever needed. Scarlet O’Hara could have clothed the cast of Gandhi with the amount of fabric that was draped on every window.

The kitchen was nice, blue/gray/mauve tile and counters, the rooms were nice - master and study down, game room over the garage (with wet bar and pool table), four more bedrooms upstairs, each with it’s own wrought-iron bed right out of a bad western-movie brothel, each with it’s own special niche and altar to Our Lady of Perpetual FrouFrou. The Realtor whispered, “All the window coverings stay,” and I stared at her, and asked, my voice trembling, “Dear God, do they have to?”

Truly, if it was stripped down, and repainted, and the chandeliers had all the crystals removed, it would be an utterly charming house. THe back yard is sweet, and shady, except where the pool is, and there are just enough trees, but….it’s never been wired for cable, ever, and all the hallways were extremely narrow. Extremely. Sarah Winchester would have felt uncomfortable in those hallways.

We lingered a while, partly because we liked the layout, and partly because we were so dazzled by the glitter and swag, and then moved on to see more houses. Here are the highlights:

1. Giltin Drive, Arlington - the house had potential, but their realtor was clearly incompetent, or they’d have been told to clean the carpets. So much stuff was in the chairs and the house smelled strongly of dog urine, that even though we liked the layout, we were turned off by the house.
2. Wisteria Drive, Grand Prairie - It looked so cute from outside. Inside, the downstairs was nice, but the yard and pool were sadly neglected and the upstairs, well, it had six bedrooms, but the two that were split apart as a master suite - 200 square feet each - had no bathroom, and the medium-sized bedroom at the far end of the house had the master bath. Also, there were holes in the walls.
3. Cantrell Street, Grand Prairie - One of my favorites, it’s two blocks away from the community park in its subdivision (Westchester), even though the formal dining room’s been made into a study. The master bedroom is on the first floor. A bridge, that looks over the front entry on one side, and the family room on the other, connects the other bedrooms, two on one end the other two, plus a bathroom on the other. Fuzzy doesn’t like this one, because they had roof work after a hail storm, but its one of my favorites.
4. Starbridge, Grand Prairie - It’s in the same subdivision as Cantrell, but near the library, not the park. Also, I like the name. It has an actual study, which is nice. The formal living and dining room are really one large space. The master bedroom, upstairs, is HUGE, and lovely. The covered back porch is much like the back patio we have here in San Jose, except that there are ceiling fans. I came close to making an offer on this one, then stopped and looked at Fuzzy, and said, “We want to sleep on this,” which I think was wise. We don’t want to move again for a while.

After this house, we took a lunch break, going to a place called Mac’s where I found the note that people wearing firearms would be refused service to be amusing. The grilled ahi tuna with wasabi mayo was fabulous. After we ate, we saw some more houses:

1. Lands End, Arlington - The first of the properties near Lake Arlington, this was vacant. We liked it, but then we saw the seller’s disclosure and structural report. Scary.
2. Little Pond, Arlington - Another lake property - well priced, but there were people there with family and friends, and an inspector, and since they were clearly about to make an offer, we peeked in and left. Also, it smelled funny.
3. Lake Tahoe, Arlington- we didn’t get to see it, but Mary Lou went and took pictures and did a sketch for us, because it was accidentally dropped from our list. We really WANT to see it, and part of the reason we’ve decided to wait to make a decision, is so we can.
4. Chestnut, Arlington - It figures that the only house I really really didn’t like Chris does. This is a funky single story, remodled to the old patio is a solarium. The back yard is a bowl, and the pool is at the bottom. But the bathrooms haven’t been updated, and it seems dark and depressing.

And so, we’ve been narrowing things down to a list, going from 23 to 6. Hopefully, we’ll make a decision soon. In the interim, we’re renting corporate housing for a month. Just to give ourselves more time.

One is cuter than the last…

According to Christi Stephens, the very nice Coldwell Banker agent with whom we toured houses yesterderday, most people see 6-8 houses in a day of looking. If you’ve never gone through this process, you may not understand how tiring it can be. You drive from house to house, get out, wander through, and, if you like the place, spend several minutes picking it apart. “I’d replace the carpeting,” you muse aloud (if the owner isn’t home, and sotto voce if she is). “That swag curtain simply has to go.” And usually, also, no matter how much you’ve researched and culled your list of prospectives, there are a couple that sound promising, and turn out to be utter trash.

Knowing all of the above, you will have a better understanding of the level of exhaustion and overwhelmedness that Fuzzy and I had last night upon returning to our hotel (which, yes, we got lost trying to find, again). After all, we had barely slept the night before, and then had been up at six, gotten lost getting to Coldwell Banker (our own fault – we listened to the directions from the concierge instead of following our instincts), and I was temperamental from female stuff. And then, we saw something like a thousand houses yesterday…or maybe it was thirteen. Either way, it was considerably more than six or eight. And each one was cuter than the last.

I cannot guarantee that the following is in order. But here are the highlights.

1. A 3-bedroom house that was very nice, but had no yard. And since it also was a true 3-bedroom, was too small.
2. 4549 Jenning Drive, Plano – This is a sweet house. You can tell when you walk in that the owners love the house. It’s a 2-story traditional house. The floors on the first floor are mostly tile or pergo, and the upstairs is carpeted. Master bedroom has his&her closets separated by a mini-entertainment center designed for maximum comfort while watching tv from bed. Pool was pretty, but needs serious cleaning. There’s a lot of wood paneling, and I was afraid the rooms would feel dark, but they did not. Upstairs, there are three bedrooms, and 2nd full bath, as well as a central living area. For most of the day, this was to remain our number-one house, whenever Christi asked us to rank them.
3. Around the corner, was a vacant single-story on Nevada. The rooms were huge, and this was our number two for a while. The master bedroom was in the front though, and I didn’t like that, and some of the rooms were too big, while the secondary bedrooms were practically cubicles.
4. Next was an ultra modern house in a sea of neo-traditional houses. This is the one on teakwood that we pointed some of you toward. I knew within two seconds of walking in that the owners were Asian – black marble fire place, sleek track lighting, upstairs one of the bedrooms as big enough to be a second master, and both bathrooms were as big as small bedrooms. It was extremely monochromatic, with brush-painted tone-on-tone walls, and it was nice, if oddly misplaced, but the plumbing seemed to be done on the cheap, and we got an ‘off’ vibe from it.
5. Cardinal Drive was a house that I’d wanted to see. People I’d shown it to on the net had agreed with my description of it as retro-hunting lodge, but in person, it was more cottage than cabin. Very cute. Nice flow. The rooms all formed double figure eights, but the back yard was too much pool and not enough yard (yes, there was a dog run, but still), so while we kept it at a strong #2 for the next while, we ultimately downgraded it.
6. Next up, two huge tall houses, one on Grinelle and one on Nottingham. The first had plastic gerbera daises set into the ground. It was nice, but too much open space that served no purpose, while the rooms were not that big. Friendly dog, though. Nottingham was vacant, sponge-painted in Tuscan gold, a warm glowy color I love. It was a livable house, and we ranked it behind Cardinal.
7. We next moved on to a development called Stoneridge Ranch, a planned community with HOA dues of $600/year, that get you into the golf club, beach club (white sand and a man-made lagoon), and parks, including a lake with paddleboats. The country club is a separate membership. The first house in this neighborhood was a single-story 3 bedroom, with a see-through fireplace that flipped to a game room as big as the living room! It was lovely, but not our style (I could see my parents living in it, or the Golden Girls).
8. But the next house WAS our style, and was another of our picks – 209 Ledgenest Drive. Also in Stonebridge Ranch, this house is one of two that we’re waffling over. The entire first floor is white ceramic tile. The formal dining room is painted slate blue. The kitchen is cobalt. The master bedroom is sea-greenish-blue, and all are on the first floor. The yard is nice, with enough room for the dogs, barely. The pool cleaner was flipped over in the water, and kept attacking us – but it felt good because by that time, the day had gotten quite toasty. We could be very happy in it.
9. Wren Cove was not our pick, but was another in Stonebridge Ranch. A FSBO, this is my favorite from yesterday. It’s only got three bedrooms, but there’s a game room, formal living room, and formal dining room, and the yard is perfect. PERFECT. The pool and deck are off the kitchen, and then the yard circles around the deck, which has terraced planters at the back. There’s enough room for a play structure and still a ton of green space. Even though this house might be a bit smaller than we’d dreamed, it’s incredibly livable. I love it. (It’s my number one, and Fuzzy’s number two. Ledgenest is his one, and my two.)
10. Another one I can’t remember the name of. It’s not in Stonebridge Ranch, but ElDorado. It was lovely, if a teeny bit beyond the price we’d agreed on. And I liked it, but not as much as the previous two.

By the end of the tour, we were hot, sweaty, and exhausted. We said goodbye to Christi, and then made our way back toward the hotel, pausing, not for the coffee everyone expected of me, but for gelato. Fuzzy had raspberry and some variety of chocolate; I had violet and peach. Yes. Violet. It was good.

This morning, we’re off, as soon as Fuzzy gets showered, to Ft Worth and Arlington, for more houses. Aieeee!