Goodbye, places

We didn't get to visit everything we wanted to say goodbye to this weekend, but we covered a lot of territory.

(No, I didn't take the pictures!)

We're already them

Upcoming weekends

This weekend is our last weekend for tourist activities.  It's rainy, so we probably do the indoor parts of the zoo on one day and the Natural History museum on the other.  We're sick of them, but they're our haunts, and Jordan can have a last hurrah.  Dale's working half days.

Next weekend is busy.  Friday, dinner at Fanta's.  Saturday, my work party in the afternoon and Dale's work party for dinner.  (Perhaps meanwhile, the house will be overrun 

with prospective buyers?)  Sunday, goodbye brunch at the neighbors' with the whole street invited, followed by the Takoma Park Street Festival (shown), which we would normally nap through but we need to stay out of the way of the open house.  Judy chose the date to coincide with the street festival; Long & Foster has a very popular table there where people can meet all the agents, and they hand out fliers for the open houses taking place that day.  She says it gets a lot of traffic.  Sounds good to us!  good enough to miss a nap.

The stage is set!

We've been staged, and it's amazing!  Judy did an incredible job.  Jordan and I got home and were bowled over by how great the house looks.  "It's GORGEOUS!" Jordan said.  He especially loved his room, which has oil paintings of Humpty Dumpty and a poster of toucan over the Amazon.  His bed is decked out with fluffy pillows and there's a new rug.  Jordan said, "When you talk to Judy tell her it's wonderful and can it stay here always!"

The rest of the house is great too.  The palette is earth tones perked with red.  The kitchen table looked so charming, set with colorful dishes and a big silk flower arrangement in the middle - it took me several beats to realize those were our dishes.  Our furniture is still in the same places but is dressed up with accent pillows, rugs, art on the walls, and pretty baskets.  It's like the house has been brought to life.  Maybe she could come do our house in Seattle.  I guess we'd have to list it?

Judy took new photos for the listing.  We could have wished for a sunnier day, but doesn't it look cute?  Compare to here.

Anita, Gay, and Judy

These are our new realtors. Anita and Gay are the team for Glenway, and Judy is for Haddon. All of them have very good records - they get houses sold in our neighborhoods! And none of them can figure out how our former realtor possibly came up with such high initial prices. Eek. Now that we have made agreements with each of them, they are all working fast to line up the new listings, the disclosures, the photos, the internet ads, the signs, the mailings, the open houses, etc. There's a lot to do and they're all doing it.

That's some of what they have in common. In other ways they are entertainingly different. Anita and Gay are brisk, fast-talking ladies who don't want to waste their time or ours on unrealistic fantasies. They have clear and drastic recommendations about the price, and are moving fast to implement the change so that we can get the buyers in the door and have someone to talk to. Judy is also working hard on our behalf, but she is a former artist, and for her staging is very important. So she is spending the first couple of days bringing in art, accessories, plants, I am not sure what all it will be, working her interior design magic, and photographing our house in that condition. Both properties will be ready for open houses next weekend.

We are hoping Judy finds some really exciting art pieces for our house. I told her kids love glass sculptures. But I think her main interest is pottery, which is almost as good.

Jordan quote of the day

"It's very hard to put a house on the market, because it's so heavy."

Major milestone

Dale turned in his dissertation today!  Yahoo!  It's been two weeks of four-hour nights of sleep for him, but it was looking very good today, and it's DONE.  (Unless there are revisions, but never mind that.)  Dale has actually been holding up very well.  Now he has a week to prepare his defense (Oct 1); then a few days to pack, and off we go!  Two PhDs into the sunset!  And two kids, and a cat, and a large truck.

Now that's a price drop

Yeesh!  We have new realtors for Glenway, and we are dropping the price of that house by $75K.  It's painful.  But the data convinced us that we grossly overpriced it before.  Just checking Redfin in 20895 makes it pretty clear what our competition is.  

I am hopefully meeting with a Takoma Park realtor tomorrow about the Haddon house.  We're going to have a price drop here too... I wonder what she will recommend.  

Prices are dropping in Seattle too, so we will still be able to buy something good there.  Depending on what happens, we might need to settle for a place that's a little smaller or a little further out.  But it'll be a huge step up from the house we live in now, and it'll be SEATTLE.

Why we love Sergio, all over again

The front door latch broke, and what inconvenient timing, right?  I'm sure it's the original lock installed in 1941, and while I'm impressed that it's lasted 67 years, it's unfortunate that it had to break just as we need to make it easy for buyers to get in.  Please, come look at our house, oh sorry, the door is broken.  We taped the latch with ductape, which is better than being locked out, but not a long-term solution.

I started to investigate having it repaired/replaced by a locksmith.  A guy came out and said, "Well, it's broken," which I (ahem) had suspected, and said he would "research the options."  A week later I hadn't heard back from him.  I went to the locksmith shop itself and had a comically frustrating experience that ended with "We'll get back to you."  I did learn rather definitively, however, that replacing our lock would not be a simple matter.  They don't make that kind of lock anymore (it's a "mortise lock"), so we'd have to replace the whole latch-doorknob-etc assembly.  That in itself is three or four hundred dollars, and then you have to get it into the door.  Six hundred dollars to fix a broken latch?  We had our whole yard done for that.  Crazy.

So while the locksmith was not getting back to me, I called Sergio.  He came out the next day and took the lock apart and determined that the latch piece was not broken after all, only worn flat from 67 years of use.  He went out to his car for a minute, then came back and reassembled the latch.  "Works fine now, and I think it'll last a while," he said.  When I asked what he did, he said, "I just made that piece a little longer."  How?  He banged on it with a hammer, like a blacksmith.  It's iron or steel or something.  Fantastic.  It took him twenty minutes, most of which was taking apart and reassembling the hardware.  

Sergio also said he'd be happy to take care of the properties once we're gone, keep the yard trimmed and keep an eye on things in storms or whatever else might come up.  Thank goodness for Sergio.

What I don't need

You know what?  I like not having a recycling bin in the house.  What does it do, anyway, but get overfilled?  And foody and moldy, in the case of the plastic and cans.  Our current system is to just accumulate one kitchen session's worth of stuff on the counter nearest the back door (where the microwave is not), and then take it right outside when we clean up.  I admit this works partly because the outside bin is right there.  But it's a little revelation, anyway.

My other revelation is how little I need the microwave.  Even with hungry children whacking their spoons on their tables to hurry me up, a pan is fine.  

However, no way would I want to attempt breakfast without the toaster.  The toaster is a necessity.

Dream house?

Now this is a very nice house.  It's almost too much house (and it is too much money, at present)... we really do not need or even want a jetted tub, and one living room is plenty.  But gosh, it sure is pretty.  The location is not perfect - it's one house away from 40th St, which is a fast-moving arterial.  But it's worth keeping an eye on.

This one is pretty too, but the location is worse, and that split-kitchen thing is weird.

Change of realtors

We have separated amicably from our original Maryland realtor and will quickly sign up with another one - maybe even two other ones, one for each house.  Our former realtor was a great buyer's agent for us, but in this market, we need a serious seller's agent.  We're looking forward to reinvigorating the sales process... things have been rather discouraging so far!  Fortunately, there hasn't been anything we've been itching to buy in Seattle.  Maybe it's all for the best.

Jordan quote of the day

"Purpose is a land where you can do anything you want, but the thing you cannot do on Purpose is hurt other people."

Establishing ourselves

Getting a new address enabled us to get new phone numbers (landline and cell) and internet service.  Whee!  The other utilities are set up by the apartment.  I arranged with USPS to forward everyone's mail.  I also got my new work address, and gave that to the mailroom here so they can forward my (90% useless) professional mail.  I arranged for our home phone and internet service to be disconnected the day we leave... we have to physically return the cable modem, which is an annoying thing to have to do at the last minute, but the alternative is to be without internet service for (gasp!) days.  How would I blog?

Remaining jobs include discontinuing the other utilities and unhooking all the bank stuff - arranging for a new account and changing over all the automatic deposits and payments.  There's nothing forcing us to close the account here... it just seems wrong, part of our Maryland past.

We have to wait until we're physically in Seattle to get driver's licenses.  That's likely to be an all-day project.

New address

I won't post it here, but we have a new address, hooray!  We are new residents of the St. Theodore Apartments at 65th and Roosevelt.  Although our lease doesn't start until Oct 1 (and we won't move in until Oct 15), we can start using the address right away for billing purposes, which is very helpful.  We can now get Seattle cell phone numbers!  Very satisfying.

The apartment of course is not our forever home, but I think it'll be a good start.  It's our old neighborhood, so it's very familiar and easy; it's about 1.5 miles to the boys' school (as opposed to the 6 miles we drive now), and it's just a few blocks from Theo's house.  It'll be an urban existence - we're in the middle of a shopping area and we won't have a yard - but there are parks nearby.  When Bekah checked the place out for us she found it to be fine, much as advertised, except that there is fairly extensive construction going on with the balconies and exterior walkways.   (They were built without enough drainage... not something you can get away with in Seattle.)  They were working on our very doorstep when Bekah toured.  I tried to use this to negotiate for a shorter lease, or a lower rent, but instead was offered free parking for both cars, worth $150 a month.  We can live with that.  We do need the parking, not only because of the rain, but because the street parking situation is complicated... two hours here,  10am-3pm there, every day but Thursday on this side, metered on that side.  Bekah thinks we'd be forking over $150 a month in parking tickets.

Bad food experiences

Unfortunately we have not even remotely succeeded in eating well while we're here.  Last night I think we did the right thing eating at the T.G.I.Friday's in the hotel, even though it was... bad; we were all very tired and it was pouring rain.  And breakfast was there too, because it's included, the usual chain-restaurant/hotel fare.  For lunch we thought we were rather clever walking over to the Whole Foods across the circle instead of eating at the museum cafe... but it was a longer and hotter walk than we expected, and we probably spent just as much money either way.  

For dinner I had a real plan, which was to get tasty local delicacies at the Reading Terminal Market.  It's only open until 6pm but that's no problem for us, right?  we eat early.  Well, Aaron woke up from his nap feeling kind of hot, so we went on a Tylenol quest, thinking "No problem!  we have a GPS!"  Ugh.  The GPS doesn't prevent you from getting mired in traffic, construction, etc, and it sure doesn't find you a parking place.  The following sequence of dinner attempts ensued:

1. The Reading Market:  we were too late & couldn't park.

2. The Sang Kee Peking Duck House, which I remember very fondly from the last time I was here: Still couldn't park.  Bailed.

3. Back to the hotel, dropped off the car.  They recommended Pietro's, a five-block walk.  But when we got there there was a wait.  Couldn't wait.

4. Tried a fancy diner-looking place we had passed on the way.  We got seated right away, but I made us leave when I saw a "small plate" of lobster mac-and-cheese for $18.

5. Across the street we got soft pretzels, which sustained us.

6. Down the block we got water ice, which we all enjoyed very much.  Lemon is better than watermelon.  The kids were then finished eating.

7. Dale and I got bad Chinese food from the place next door to the hotel.

We hope to do better tomorrow.

Franklin Institute

I'm snooty about science museums, and I thought the Franklin Institute was great.  This giant heart, for example.  You can walk all around inside it, following the path that blood takes through various atria and ventricles and the lungs and so on.  I think Dale is in the main pulmonary artery.

Jordan would not go in because the heart was full of loud heart sounds, whoosh-whoosh, lub-dub, and that was too scary.  He's against loud noises right now.  That actually ruled out a lot of the museum for him -- most of it was very Exciting and Modern and that meant loud noises.  Had we known, we might have spent more time with the historic Franklin artifacts; they don't have so many sound effects.

The hall surrounding the Giant Heart is full of pretty interesting exhibits about cardiology.  Aaron does a bang-up imitation of a blood cell.  He still flows easily through the plaque-filled artery on the right.

There was also a totally fascinating video of heart surgery, life-size, with the screen set in the chest of a mannequin on an operating table.  The guy was even surrounded by a faux OR, with all the right tools and machines.  Not for the squeamish.  But Jordan and I watched for a while.  (That was not loud.)

Jordan enjoyed the Bernoulli thingy better, where you can make the bottle stay up in the air with a blower.

Suite life

Jordan and Aaron's favorite thing inside the suite is this cabinet, which easily holds both of them and a pillow or two.  (The stain on Aaron's pants is innocent.)

The balcony, however, is the hands-down winner for kid entertainment.  We believe that Jordan here is very much in the spirit of Ben Franklin, who reputedly also enjoyed outdoor nudity. 

Down in the fountain in Logan Circle, Jordan found a friend.  Logan Circle is also called Logan Square, which seems silly, but it used to be a square.  For public executions.  

We were the lucky observers of a Hare Krishna parade.

This balloon goes up and down all day.  We don't know what it's for.  We do know what the art museum is for but we think we'll spend tomorrow at the Liberty Bell instead.

Can we just stay here?

Wow.  This is the view from our twenty-third-floor window - Logan Circle, with Swann Fountain in the middle, the Franklin Institute and the Free Library on either side of Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia Art Museum in the distance.  We are very impressed.

Our suite is perfect for our situation... lots of floor space for the kids, a toddler-safe balcony, a separate bedroom where Jordan and Aaron are sleeping even now, and a good desk for Dale to keep pounding away at his dissertation in the wee hours.  Even a sleeper sofa if he needs it.  Cooked-to-order breakfast downstairs, included in the price of the room.  Dale and I were immediately looking at each other with that should-we-stay-longer? look.  we don't think so...kids back to school and all that.  It sure is nice though.

The drive here was not too bad; three hours.  The kids did not nap and the rain was a drag, but our new GPS was a treat.  Jordan loves it.  "Mama, see that little car there?  That's like our car!"  "Daddy, are you turning left on 27th Avenue like she said?"  "Can we bring that computer to Seattle?"  Yes, indeed, all the way to Seattle.  (Jordan has learned to ask, lately, whether we are bringing items of interest to Seattle or selling them at a yard sale.)

The plan for tomorrow is the Franklin Institute in the morning and the Reading Market for an early dinner.  Sunday morning we'll do the Liberty Bell and whatever else tempts us in the Independence Hall zone.  We are not cramming our days full of activity:  we're all pretty tired already.  But we plan to enjoy ourselves.

Slow trickle

No one's visited the house in a few days.  Pretty much no one on the weekdays last week, either. Over the weekend, there were a few clients, maybe four?  We're antsy, and wondering if we've overpriced it.  On the other hand, it hasn't been very long.  On the other other hand, the first two weeks a house is up it should get the most action, right?

We are going away for the weekend, and have arranged for some neighbors to spy on the open house.

Discipline

It is a discipline, leaving the house picture perfect every day.  I think we spend half an hour each, every morning before we leave the house, cleaning up every little thing and picking up after ourselves.  Every object has to be put away, bedcovers straightened, pillows fluffed, blinds adjusted, floor swept, sink wiped.  There are no collection points.  No recycling bin in the kitchen - stuff just goes straight outside.  No dirty laundry is anywhere (it's all washed immediately), and no clean laundry either (it all gets put away before we next leave the house).  No dirty dishes in the sink, no clean dishes in the dish drain, and no dish drain on the counter.  No wet towels hanging in the bathroom (they go in the laundry).  We have switched to disposable diapers for now because we can't collect three days' worth of smelly diapers to wash, and don't want a bin taking up space anywhere; we just put the disposables in the kitchen trash and take it out frequently.

There are also fewer collection points for things we are trying to remember.  There's no visible calendar, because nothing is on the walls.  There's no dry-erase board for a shopping list because nothing is stuck to the fridge.  Thank goodness the computer always looks neat and sleek on the outside.

Countdown

Jordan and I were at a coffee shop last week (an occasional treat when I pick him up early from school) and I asked him how it feels to live in our house with all our stuff packed up.  "Does it feel a little funny, does it feel just the same, is it kind of fun, or what?"  He thought, and chewed his mini scone, and said, "It feels a little bit strange, Mama, because I don't know when we will move to Seattle."  This seemed very perceptive, to me, to be troubled by the uncertainty.  (And I love how he's calling me Mama lately.)

Now, though, we know when we're moving!  So I set up a countdown calendar for him.  It's September and October, cut out from a spare calendar his teacher had lying around, and taped to his activity table in his room.  We put a sticker on each day, and there's a big purple star on the day we fly to Seattle.  Jordan is just getting the hang of calendars and immediately asked, "What day are we going to Eli's for dinner?" "What do we do after we fill up all these boxes?" (the September ones), and "Why are there these animals here?"

Unfortunately I didn't notice until we got home that it is a 2009 calendar, so the days are one off.  I decided to just go with it.

32 days to go!

Address lust

We've been researching the rental possibilities and we found something that looks pretty great. It's close to where we used to live, right near the Whole Foods on Roosevelt and 65th. This is a good location for us - close to the boys' school, our work, and Theo's family. It's going to be an urban existence, a midrise apartment building a couple blocks from I-5; but it's also a couple blocks from two great parks, and hey, the grocery store is across the street! The apartment is 2BR/2BA with a big walk-in closet... otherwise known as Aaron's bedroom. :) It has a deck and a city view. It has more living space than we have now. It has no stairs. I think we will be quite comfortable there until we find our forever house.

The person I talked to about the apartment today was so nice and helpful and friendly and informative, and the place sounded so good, it's a good thing I wasn't there in person with a big wad of cash, because I probably would have started stuffing it into her pockets and begging for a key. The possibility of having a place to live has really awakened my lust for an address.

It's got a price tag, that is true. It's more rent than we hope to be paying in the long run... and it has an initial four-month lease (starting Oct 1), which is longer than I'm hoping we need to live there. However, we think that three months is probably realistic, given what needs to happen with both properties here as well as what we eventually find there. We'll see what we can negotiate.

Oct 11

That's the date we leave.  I bought plane tickets, reserved a U-Haul, and arranged to have the second car shipped.  It's really happening!

We don't have somewhere to live yet (except Dale's sister's place temporarily), and we think the right thing to do is to rent something basic month-to-month while we househunt.  The former plan had been to send one of us to Seattle this month, to buy a house in time for us to arrive.  But now that the time has come, there's actually not all that much exciting on the market over there.  There are some good-looking places that we're having our friends check out, but nothing that we feel like we need to race across the country and snatch up.  And, realistically, even if we got offers on the Maryland houses tomorrow, which we will not, they wouldn't close until October.  So why bother going, if there's nothing we feel super-motivated to buy and we're not in a killer hurry?

Thus, unless something changes very soon, we'll arrive in Seattle not having bought a house.  Thus, we rent.  We'll probably be in a big bland apartment complex because that's who offers month-to-month leases.  There are enough of those close to our target neighborhood that we're sure we'll find something (we're already pursuing a couple).  The kids can start school, we can start work, we can all get oriented, and we can househunt very very easily, compared to this cross-country thing where Bekah and Bob crawl through the dog door in their free time.  The big downside is having to move twice.  But a local move is a lot easier.  And when you're looking for the house you want to live in forever, a couple months of transition is not such a big thing.

Sign-ificance

We were wrong!  Two realtors have contacted us today to say they'd like to show the Haddon house tomorrow morning.  We can easily vacate long enough to accommodate them.

Maybe it's the magic of the sign, which is finally up.  I don't really know how much the sign on the lawn matters in this internet age... but it definitely matters to me.

We hear there's action at Glenway too.

Hanna

We were going to escape to Philadelphia this weekend, but we don't think anyone will be house-hunting on Saturday. I think in Maryland, Hanna is going to mean just a lot of wind and rain, not a major disaster; but still, they're saying 2-4 inches and 30-40 mph winds, which means power outages if nothing else. Even if Sunday is business as usual, it's not worth going out of town for one day. So we're postponing the trip, and at least one open house (maybe both), until next weekend.

Bummer.

It's possible.

I remember that in the distant past, I wondered if it would even be possible for our family to show the house in some acceptable state, given the kid situation. I am here to report that it's possible. It's not easy, but it can be done.

A little sign on the front door asks visitors to please keep our cat indoors. (The lockbox reports to our realtor who enters and when. No word yet.)

We keep a few selected toys in baskets that go up to the attic when we leave for the day.

The television is hidden in the bedroom closet. It's sort of like a built-in entertainment center.

The microwave and toaster are stashed in the linen closet, to make the kitchen appear to have some counter space. The rest of the linen closet is our temporary dresser - one shelf per person, with a top shelf for towels.

The toiletries all get stashed under the sink, and the garbage can too so that we don't mindlessly put something icky in it. And don't forget to flush!

Oct 15

That's the latest date that we leave Maryland.  If things line up for us to leave earlier, we will.  We're nearly packed, after all.  But on the other hand there's a lot that still needs to happen before we go...  not only house things (close accounts? rent U-Haul? ship car? sell homes?!?!?!!), but important work things for Dale that need to get done before he leaves or they might not get done at all.   And he defends his dissertation on Oct. 1.

The Oct 15 date is driven by (1) our burning desire to go, (2) an employment matter of Dale's, and (3) the need for it to be fall, not winter, when Dale drives across the country.

It would sure be nice if we had a home to move into at that point.  Kari and Danny have very generously offered for us to stay with them in Sammamish, but obviously that needs to be temporary.  We're getting serious about what's available in Seattle, and asking Bekah and Bob to screen properties for us.

Year of the [Room]

If there is something to be learned from our adventures of the past few weeks (uh, months?) it's that redoing your whole house is ... not easy.  But just letting things age forever isn't great either.  And we plan to be in our next house a long time.

  

My bright idea is to do one room per year.  So if that year is (say) the Year of the Bathroom, you have a whole year to do everything you would want to do to the bathroom: declutter, repaint, get new fixtures or fix up the old ones, redecorate, the works.  The outside of the house would need to count as a room or rooms, too.  That way, you'd cycle through the house roughly once in a decade, which is probably about how often you should do a serious update.

Cook-it-up month

To follow up on a couple of days ago, the grits/polenta were (was?) delicious.  I cooked the whole lot in the slow cooker (just the proportions on the box, cooked all day on Auto)... creamy lump-free goodness.  Stirred in a big stir of parmesan at the end.  I topped that with a Tuscan-inspired combination of lacinato kale, sliced sausages, and beans .... baked beans that I was trying to figure out how to use up, actually.  I rinsed off the sauce, and the remaining sweetness was actually a very nice contribution.  Tabasco over it all if you like that kind of thing.

The silken tofu mayonnaise, meanwhile, was so good I almost bought another box of silken tofu today!  Aaron loved it too -- I dipped broccoli in it for him, and he kept sucking off the mayonnaise and handing me back the broccoli for another dip.  I didn't even mind; after all, unlike real mayo, this was actually food.

I have decided that cooking up everything in my cabinets/freezer is a terrific idea and something I should do regularly.  I'm going to designate one month of the year to be Cook-It-Up month.  What's the right month for this?  (And can anyone think of a catchier name?)

They're on the market

Here's Haddon, and here's Glenway.  Open houses this weekend!  Anybody knows anyone who might be interested, pass it on!

We are exhausted and thrilled.  Of course, we will be even more thrilled when we get a couple of buyers, but for today, I'm just enjoying the change.  I am not working on the house; I am at work, with people to talk to; I even went to the gym this morning.  And it's a new stage in the journey.