The New House

Where were we? About a month ago, we all moved into a new house. Did I mention that? It happened suddenly, sort of. Nick and I began to think about what it would be like to have a bigger house, with a yard, more room for the kids to run around inside in winter. Out of what I thought then was idle curiosity, I contacted a broker in the East End I had run across at open houses around Munjoy Hill. He came over, checked out our house, and had a conversation with us about how easy or difficult it might be to sell Two Cats. Though we weren't certain we were ready to sell, Tom is a mover and shaker, and before we knew it, we were setting up an Open House of our own for 10 days out. We cleaned Two Cats like our lives depended on it. The Open House was a smashing success. Tom and his team said it was the best one they had ever had. A couple things worked in our favor: It was a sunny, warmish, beautiful February day, and a recent snowfall blanketed the Horseman's backyard in pristine white, disguising our home's biggest eyesore. (If you haven't been following, here's a clue as to what I'm talking about: We once documented a slice of pizza that remained impaled on a tree branch in the Trott's backyard through an entire winter and into spring.) The day after the open house, we had three offers in hand. We went with the one from a young-ish couple much like ourselves, in that they weren't really all that young (like ourselves), but did have a very young son, a five-month old. They had both also lived in NYC, like us, and he wore glasses, like Nick, and she was very pretty, like...well, in the interest of modesty, I won't finish that sentence. So. There is so much that went on in the time between accepting their offer and putting in our own offer on our new house. I wish I had blogged it all, because to try to summarize it all now in one big post means I'm dropping some of the great details and stories that go along with buying a new home. I'll try to add stories as I think of them. But in sum: we have moved. Our new house is wonderful. It has a fenced-in yard, a shed, a driveway, four (4!!!) bedrooms, a living room with a wood stove, a kitchen, a dining room, an office, a playroom, several closets, and two bathrooms. And it gets lovely light that moves around as the day goes on. It's near Evergreen Cemetery, which means we have a huge swath of running paths and bike trails, and the cemetery abuts what is apparently the largest acreage of woods in Portland. Which reminds me, Sadie turned four and can ride a bike now. Yes, I know, seems like yesterday I was posting photos of my baby bump. Did I ever even mention Clover, who is 21 months old now? More to come. We plan on shuttering our other blog, 2cats.wordpress.com and starting a new one. We just can't come up with a blog title. Which is kind of a lame excuse for not blogging the whole process of moving, setting up house, etc. Because believe me, we have stories to tell....

Juice Cleanse, Day 3

By the time we go to Day 3 of the Juice Cleanse, most of the caffeine withdrawl symptoms had subsided and in their place I was simply feeling actual hunger. Not mind-numbing, I'm getting shaky, keening hunger; just rumbling stomach hunger, which felt healthy and normal.

I proposed to Nick that we eat a massaged kale salad for dinner, but he insisted we stick it out to the bitter end. So we did. Here's what I learned:

1-I drink way too much coffee. I plan on cutting down to one cup in the morning, followed by decaf if I really need some more.

2-Nutmilks are really good. The final juice of the day was a nutmilk, made by blending raw cashews with vanilla, raw cacao nibs, agave nectar and water. It is surprisingly delicious and satisfying, and makes a good substitute for a bowl of ice cream after dinner.

3-I don't if I'll ever do a full juice cleanse again, but I would consider the milder version of "juicing until dinner." The juices really were good, and if you drink 4 or 5 of them, you don't really go hungry.

And as for the plumbing, I did add some psyllium husks to my routine, and I think they did indeed help make the juicing a true cleanse. If you know what I mean.

Juice Cleanse, Day 2

I'm afraid to re-read yesterday's post, because yesterday was like having a hangover in hell. I don't want to relive it. It reminded me a lot, actually, of the days when I had horrible, devastating, terrifying menstrual cramps. I would make it through the day, but just barely.

Today was easier. The headache never really went away, but I felt less woozy and less like I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth. Hunger hasn't really been an issue, surprisingly. It's more like a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction. The grim feeling you get on the day you have to attend a funeral of someone you knew, but not that well.

My brain was still a little fuzzy. I had to bring baby C in for a check-up, and I left my keys in the ignition the whole time I was in the doctor's office (an hour!) Luckily no one noticed. I think I might have also turned left at a red light. Also, I got really short-tempered talking to my boss's boss on the phone--really unlike me be so bold as to call out a higher-up on his BS, but I just had no reserves of patience.

As for the nitty gritty details...I haven't weighed myself yet today, but last night the scale was the same. My skin does look slightly smoother, but I wouldn't call it glowing. And oddly enough, I am feeling constipated--not cleaned out. In fact, I think my stomach is pooching out more than ever as all those juices ferment in my gut. I think maybe they are....stuck?

We'll see what tomorrow, uh, brings.

Juice Cleanse, Day 1

After watching the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, Nick and I were inspired to try a juice cleanse. We started this morning, and I'm too woozy and short-tempered to write about the background, so instead, here's the play-by-play:

Day 1
7:00am. Nick puts a cucumber, 20 ounces of grapes, and 2 pears into a blender. That's breakfast. It's actually quite tasty.

8:00. Noticeable absence of coffee. I do not have to carry my to-go cup out to the car with me, along with 2 kids, 2 lunch boxes, and Sadie's naptime sleeping bag. One less thing to carry, and yet, I still forget to buckle Sadie in to her car seat. I don't realize it until I merge onto the freeway. (Immediately pull over and buckle her in.)

8:30. Arrive at daycare. Sadie doesn't want to go to school because she doesn't like her teacher's bangs. ("They go down her face!") Hustle kids inside and have trouble managing to get everyone/thing inside in one piece. In no mood for idle chit-chat with daycare teachers. Sadie and I bonk heads as I lean down to take her shoes off and I feel like I'm going to blow a gasket. I need to get out of there, pronto.

9:00am. Arrive at work parking spot on bottom of steep hill. A thick feeling has entered my head, like someone is pouring hot molasses into my brain. The molasses hurts my poor head in a vague, undefinable way. Walk up the steep hill rather slowly.

9:30am. Have much less patience for the clutter in my personal email in-box. Normally I scan the offers for things I can't afford, read about environmental news or ways to Feng Shui my home, but today I delete without opening. This is rare.

10:00am. Glance co-workers' desk and thoughts go immediately to coffee, as in, I should grab my coffee and chat with co-worker about her vacation. No coffee makes it a less enticing option.

10:30. Get some water to try to break up the thick molasses feeling in my head. See doughnuts and muffins at coffee shop near water fountain, but surprisingly don't crave them. Don't really crave coffee either, just want the day to be over. They say the first day is hardest; by Day 2, you start to feel good, euphoric even. Nick is picking me up at noon so we can go home and drink juice together for lunch.

11:00am. Can't concentrate. Nick will be here at 11:45 and it can't come soon enough.

11:11am. Get a cup of black tea. I can deal with the juices, but the caffeine withdrawl is killing me.

11:25am. A few sips in and I am feeling more human. Maybe I just need the hot liquid?

12:00pm. Home at last for "lunch." 3 carrots, 2 Granny Smith apples, and a thumb of ginger, juiced. Delicious (really). I drink very, very slowly. Feel satisfied. Re-read our juice cleanse book and realize we CAN have green tea, either regular or decaf! Yeehaw! Nick mishears me and thinks we can have either regular or decaf coffee. I have to squash his dreams.

1pm. Noticing a stiffness in my neck. Lack of caffeine? Or lack of caffeine leading to reduced jaw clenching and thus a chance for my knotted neck to relax?

2pm. Experiencing actual hunger pangs. Now? Maybe because I just went to the cafeteria for tea. Ok, time to analyze data. Maybe then I will be so bored I won't be hungry anymore.

3:30pm. Extreme feelings of hunger, coupled with temporary nausea, make me want to dig into a bag of tortilla chips I have stashed in my desk. I resist.

4:30pm. I cannot WAIT for dinner and for the final juice of the day, the nutmilk.

5:30pm. Nick and I are both cranky. Not fun to cook real food for the girls when we can't eat ourselves. I run out to Rosemont for ginger. When I return, I make a startling discovery: somehow I got it in my head that we could have 2 fruit juices, 1 green juice, and a nut milk per day, but I totally screwed it up. We are allowed 3 green juices a day in addition to the fruit and nut milk! Nick is so relieved to be allowed more juice he isn't even angry with me for being such a doofus and making this day harder than it needed to be. Meanwhile, we've subsisted on two juices all day, when by now we could have been on our sixth. Oops.

6:00pm. We drink our first "green" juice: spinach, apples, pears, and ginger. It's not bad. Nick says he wants to tear into Sadie's fish sticks. I feel like I'm on two planes--on the one hand, real food sounds like it would be too difficult. On the other, at this point I have a pounding headache and would do anything to get rid of it. If it is caffeine withdrawl, though, it's too late. Past experience tells me I need coffee by 10am or these vise-grip headaches are inevitable.

9pm. We're drinking our last meal of the day, which is actually a nut milk. Raw cashews blended with water, coconut oil, raw cacoa nibs, and some honey. Because our Cuisinart didn't blend the nuts all the way, we get to chew the leftover little nibs of cacao and cashews. We get to chew!

The idea is that the fats in the nut milk help you sleep through the night. I hope it works. I'm not feeling any of the supposed benefits of the cleanse yet, but that might be different tomorrow. I have hope that tomorrow might be easier due to 1) some of the worst of the caffeine withdrawl symptoms being over, and 2) we'll drink 5 juices instead of just 3.

Today was grim.

On Not Doing It All

I realized today that perhaps I try to do too much. I just signed up for an online medical writing course. I'm also trying to launch a jewelry line made of drilled seaglass pieces. And I want to keep up this blog, and my other one, 2cats.wordpress.com

This is all in addition to working full-time and trying to be a good mother to my two young children. S is now 3-1/2, and C is 15 months. And of course I want to be a decent wifey, now that I'm officially married and all.

But my sense of time is skewed. I left work an hour early the other day, and because it was still light out I believed I would be able to do my Tracy Anderson Post-Pregnancy workout, start fixing dinner, and do a few loads of laundry, all before N came home with the kids. Obviously, little to none of this got accomplished. I might have done 10 minutes of the workout before the girls came home and C started crawling on me.

I'm trying to be more in the moment, as they say. When I try to fit too much in to one day, I don't pay attention to any of the actual moments of the day.

Do you ever get the sense that some people climb mountains just to be able to say they climbed a mountain? I don't want to say someday that I lived a good life and have two wonderful grown children. I want to live the life. Sometimes I feel like I'm forgetting to do so.

A New Direction for Reverie in Maine

I've got a new gig: volunteer blogger at the Environmental Health Strategy Center. Check out my first blog post, here.

Oh, I'm still working full-time as a data analyst at Maine Medical Center, but I'm looking to expand my horizons a bit. Environmental health and sustainability are two things I think about a lot, and I'd like to revisit a former career of mine as a would-be writer.

So, in an effort to make all of the paths of my life converge in some meaningful way, I am hoping to reinvent this blog, dear reader, as a place where I can share what I learn about environmental health and show you how you can apply that knowledge to protecting your health. From little steps (not microwaving in plastic) to big ones (attempting a green renovation of our home), I'll let you know what works, what doesn't, what to be really worried about, and how much it all costs.

Stay tuned.

Port of Portland

Spotted at the Portland Ocean Terminal

Books

Sidewalk outside Carlson & Turner bookstore on the East End

The storm

before

after

Peace in the Valley

Amazing what makes some cats happy. Thumbs has been suspended in this bag for about an hour.

On another note, as promised, I've started a new blog to chronicle our new house renovation. Go to 2cats.wordpress.com to check it out.

House Blogging

Big plans afoot. Our mortgage was conditionally approved (pending proof of hazard insurance, and copies of some papers), so if all goes according to plan we should close before the end of June! We're so thrilled. We've both been renting now for upwards of 15 years apiece, so having a place to call our own is going to be huge. I think it will feel really, really different to be living in our own place, that we create together, and I can't wait to experience that.

Since we thought we'd be living in our current rental for the foreseeable future, we already did a lot of little DIY improvements here and there. For example, N put dimmers in most of the rooms, we painted several rooms (or painted them halfway), and added some lighting fixtures and other little details to spruce up the place. But we always did them as cheaply as possible and in a sort of comprised way, since this was a rental. So owning a place and being able to do things the right way and just the way we want to do them is going to be huge.

And in that spirit, we plan on documenting the whole process, from soup to nuts, from ripped out, pee-stained carpet to dismantled ceiling tiles. And we'll be doing it all on a new blog. Title not yet determined, nor host (I have trouble making my photos look the way I want them to on Blogger, so I'm thinking of trying out a different blogging platform--suggestions welcome!) nor launch date, although I guess we better get going ASAP. N and I will both be contributing, so stay tuned!

It's Happening

We're under contract! We walked through the house with an inspector last Friday and a contractor this morning, and the resident is already starting to move things out onto the sidewalk. Oh, which house, you ask? Oh, um, well....this one. That first one described there in that post.

Yeah, I know, I'm going to eat my words. Something compelled me to go back and look at this house, despite my initial--and, I see now in re-reading that post--overwhelming misgivings. I think part of my reluctance in thinking the single-family home could not possibly be salvageable was because I didn't think N would be on board with the renovations. But when he saw it, saw that it was in a great neighborhood (our current one), and was an actual house that we could actually afford the mortgage on, I think he got really excited. Frankly, I think he's excited to do the demolition. Ripping down the ceilings, ripping up carpet, knocking down walls. Guys love that sort of thing.

But circumstances have conspired to make this a really good time for us to buy. There is the $8,000 tax credit that Obama is giving first-time homebuyers who purchase a house before December 1, 2009. The low, low interest rate our mortgage broker locked in for us last Friday, even before we had a signed contract, because our realtor assured him we would definitely be going under contract (4.5% people!!!). And because this house does need so much work, we got it for a low, low price. We figure our sweat equity over the next 5 years will be like our second job, making the house pay off down the line if we decide to sell and move into something larger (or something with a yard). Our broker thinks that with the location we're in, we'll probably be able to sell for double the purchase price in 5-7 years. And, no matter how you slice it, the mortgage, even with property taxes and hazard insurance added in, will be less than what we're currently paying in rent. So, I think financially, we're making a wise move, despite the many, many weekends of home improvement we have coming up.

And yes, I realize I'll be trying to live down that blog post for months to come.

Second Thoughts

Okay, I just read this and now I'm feeling really nervous about buying a home. If this economics writer for the New York Times can screw up, what does that portend for me and N???

Poking Around

I looked at three houses today in my neighborhood. One, which was going for all of $124,900, smelled so badly of cat piss, I could almost taste it on my tongue 3 hours later. I'm all for DIY renovations, but there's no way I could salvage that place. Not only was the stench unbearable (and I am totally a cat person), but the layout was all wrong: a tiny, disjointed, dark kitchen; a rabbit's warren of bedrooms upstairs, a deck only accessible by pushing out the bottom part of the window. But the good thing about looking at that place was meeting the neighbor from across the street, a kitchen renovator who handed me his card with a sweet smile. He and his wife lived across the street from the house for sale, next door to his sister. He also thought the house was a good deal, and said houses for that price rarely came for sale in the neighborhood.

One of the other houses I looked at was much nicer, but was also 3x the price of the first. This one was a two-unit with a single-family house feel. An elderly woman lived there, and the decor reflected the occupant. I could see past that; what I couldn't deal with was the vague sound of Interstate 295 that hummed in the distance. There were views from the upstairs window, but I didn't want a view of the highway, even if Back Cove and New Hampshire could also be seen. When I lived in New York, I spent 5 years within spitting distance of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and to this day, the sound of highway noise stresses me out and reminds of waking up at 4am to the sound of massive semi-trucks downshifting in traffic outside my window.

Finally (well, not so finally, this was the first house I looked at, but I after I saw the other two I went back and looked at the first with a different mindset) I saw a two-unit on corner of one really nice quaint street and one sketchy not-so-great street. Besides the location, there isn't much to recommend it. The broker and I counted five layers of peeling linoleum flooring in the kitchen, there was fake wood parquet floors elsewhere, wood paneling in most of the rooms, vertical vinyl blinds, dropped ceilings, and on and on. But there was also decent light, some nice molding around the window frames, and the potential to create a really nice open concept kitchen/eating area. If we got a tenant for the downstairs, our mortgage would be eminently affordabel. But, to give you an idea of what we'd have to do to the place to get it rent-worth, here's the living room.

A Dream Deferred?

I did this preliminary mortgage application online with my bank, and the message I got said they didn't have any loans to suit my needs at this time. What does that mean? Am I screwed? I'm waiting to hear back from the loan officer I spoke with on the phone to see if he can give me any more insight.

Feeling Homey

Sadie is now 13 months old. Every day she amazes me with some new word or skill, some little something that she wasn't able to do just the day before. And with her growing independence, and the comfort of knowing that yes, she really is here to stay, I'm feeling freer to turn my attention to other things. Like--dare I use the word?--homemaking.

Right now, I am utterly obsessed with all things home-related. I dream of real estate. I'm constantly looking at blogs like apartmenttherapy.com, designspongeonline.com, and decor8blog.com. I love how spaces can make you feel a certain way--unencumbered, claustrophobic, relaxed, energized. It fascinates me to see people on those home design shows freak out and cry when their home makeovers are "revealed," because it proves just what power good design and a well-thought out space can have on the psyche. I've lived in numerous apartments through the years, in San Francisco, New York, Seville and Barcelona in Spain, in Prague, and now--in just three years--three different apartments in Portland, Maine. Some of them were special, some were just bit players in my life, some held starring roles. I wanted to dress each of them up to set the stage for the life I fancied myself living, but limited finances, uninvested roommates, and/or the knowledge that I wouldn't be staying long always seemed to conspire against me.

Well, no more! Now that N and I are settled in Portland for the foreseeable future, and now that we have a little youngun' we want to make a happy home for, I'm constantly thinking up ways to spruce up our rental apartment. And in the last few weeks, I've even been dreaming about buying something. We are madly in love with our neighborhood, the East End. Our current apartment sits across the street from an Olmstead-designed park that runs downhill to Casco Bay. We have park and water views from our bay windows. We can walk to an excellent coffee shop, a gourmet food shop, a down-n-dirty deli, three great restaurants, a playground, a dock, and a beach. Oh, and my work is a 10-minute bike ride away (45 minutes by foot). Could I ask for anything more?

Unfortunately, we're not the only people who know how great the neighborhood is. Homes here will cost you a pretty penny. Don't get me started on how some of them, that are now in the $350,000 range, were selling for closer to $100k in 1998. I know, because I've checked the tax assessor's website. So in order to get a toehold in the neighborhood, N and I have begun to think about buying a multi-unit. A place where the mortgage would be affordable with the help of a tenant. I'm on the hunt.

On Having a Baby (Excerpt From an Email I Sent to a Friend in September)

You know, I think about Sadie a lot, and she has changed my life for the better, but contrary to what I expected I don't think about her ALL the time, nor has she become the sole focus of my life. For example, I just bought a sewing machine, and am looking forward to learning how to make things and setting up my sewing space, etc. I just mention this because I thought your life essentially ended when you had children, that you loved them so much and became so wrapped up in them that you had no time to do or even think about anything else. But it's not quite like that after all--it's more like they cast your life with a different shade, or color, but they don't transform it as completely as I would have imagined. Which is a good thing!! And doesn't lessen the love or joy I feel for her and with her.

Pity Party is Over

Okay, I was definitely feeling sorry for myself in that last post. Maybe I wasn't yet ready to accept how much work--like, manual labor type of work, on your feet, getting up and down, dealing with smells and trash and junk work--goes into having a child and animals and a "house." Okay, Mom and Dad, I get it now. 

But I must say that having Nick around more has made it all a lot easier. He works 40 hours now, instead of 70, and twice this week he even brought Sadie to daycare while I sat around in my pajamas drinking coffee making myself late for work. Like right now. But it's blissful. And I can't seem to get my butt off this big, red cozy chair... 

A Day in the Life

With Nick working over 60 hours a week at his new job, I'm finding myself a bit overwhelmed by the day-to-day routine of working and caring for a baby and three animals, and trying to keep the house somewhat clean and presentable. Here's a snapshot of yesterday:

Come home from work.
Change into jeans and get stroller out.
Attach Ting Tong's recently recovered collar to her leash (the collar had been buried in my mom's couch for the last two months until it was found this weekend).
Take Sadie and Ting Tong for a walk around the neighborhood; Ting Tong hasn't been out in days.
Come home from walk, park stroller, put TT in downstairs entryway and close door.
Go back outside, gather things out of car that I couldn't carry up when I first got home from work: diaper genie inserts, a tray for Sadie's Bumbo, my breastmilk pump.
Put car seat and Sadie in downstairs entryway.
Go back outside, wheel stroller to door, collapse stroller and put in downstairs entryway.
Take Sadie out of car seat, gather up bags from car, walk up narrow, winding stairs, implore TT to follow. She doesn't.
Put stuff down all over kitchen, put Sadie in her Bumbo, wash off new Bumbo tray, prepare Sadie's cereal.
Realize I'm trembling from hunger and rip open box of crackers and start dipping them into peanut butter. The box of crackers falls on the floor but I'm too weak to pick them up.
Drink an Emergen-C.
Make Sadie's cereal.
Feed Sadie--her cute, cereal-strewn smile makes me happy.
Hear TT whimpering in the downstairs entryway because she doesn't think she make it up the stairs, even though she can.
Finish feeding Sadie and gather her up for a bath.
Hear TT barking at neighbors coming home.
Put Sadie in Bumbo on floor and go downstairs to get TT.
Push TT up first two steps then watch her bound easily up the rest.
Feed TT.
Give Sadie a bath.
Take Sadie upstairs to get her ready for bed.
Dry, dress, cuddle, read books to Sadie, nurse Sadie, and put her in her crib.
Hear Sadie cry as I walk back downstairs. She can't fall asleep without crying first.
Realize tomorrow is garbage day.
Put kitchen trash into bigger Portland City trash bag.
Empty cat litter. It hasn't been changed in days, and we have two cats.
Turn on Wet/Dry Vac to vacuum up scattered kitty litter and get sprayed with water sucked up a few days earlier during kitchen flood (requires another entry to explain)
Wipe off walls now sprayed with dirty flood water.
Tie up garbage bag and bring downstairs. Don't bother with recycling.
Walk outside and inhale the sweet, clean Maine air. The water in the bay is still and the sky is darkening.
Walk back inside, up the stairs into kitchen, and clean out pot used to heat up can of soup the night before.
Heat up another can of soup for dinner.
Play fetch with TT while eating dinner and reading story in "American Baby" magazine about how to "get it all done."
Notice that Sadie has stopped crying.
Go to bathroom and see that TT has peed on the bath mat. Rinse off bath mat.
Put dishes in dishwasher and forget to run it.
Sit down in big, red chair, intending to do freelance editing work.
Stare at big pile of unfolded laundry on the couch, and realize I'm too tired to either edit or fold laundry.
Go upstairs to bed. It's 8:30.
Wake up 1am, 3am, 4:30am. Sadie is gassy and fussy.
Wake up Nick and have him try to comfort Sadie when nursing doesn't work.
Have Nick put Sadie in her swing.
Talk to Nick about his day, since I never see him anymore during daylight hours.
Get out of bed at 6:30 and reheat yesterday's coffee in the microwave.
Start writing this post.
Sadie wakes up.
Keep writing while she fusses.
Go get Sadie out of swing.

Welcome to the Johnsons

There is a bar on the Lower East Side called Welcome to the Johnsons. From what I can remember, it's got faux-wood paneling on the walls, 70s-era couches, and maybe even a Ms. Pac-Man game. It is, of course, a totally ironic homage to the childhood homes of many 30- and 40-something hipsters, with its quintessential middle-America orange and brown 1970s decor, notable for its utter blandness. Hipsters go there to remind themselves of how far they've come since leaving the mid-West and moving to Manhattan. That they do this by hanging out in a bar that looks and feels exactly like the sort of space they killed time in back when they were still in Minnesota and dreaming of being anywhere but there is not an irony lost on anyone; in fact, it is the whole point of going to Welcome to the Johnson. I enjoyed a beer or two there in my day.

So I thought it was pretty darn funny when we got this in the mail today:

[photo to come]

A completely un-ironic welcome to the neighborhood: an envelope emblazoned with "Welcome Johnsons!", stuffed with coupons to places we'll probably never go, it's a reminder of how far we've come since leaving New York City and moving to Maine.

Another sign that you're moving in a different orbit than your younger self? Going to see your friend's babysitter's band. Happened Saturday afternoon, right here in Portland, ME.

Or getting called ma'am in the supermarket checkout line.

And not getting carded anymore. Ever.