Category Archives: My Life

Three years

I started this blog with a post about strawberries.  Fast forward three years, same date, and strawberry season has already come and gone, thanks (ha, ha) to the abnormally warm spring and summer-like month of May.

Despite infrequent posts for a few months immediately post-baby, writing here has been a nice constant in  a crazy, unpredictable twelve months, and I’ve also enjoyed watching readership grow.

Facts and stats thus far:

  • 575 posts and counting (over the past three years)
  • Moved to my own domain in November 2011
  • March 2012 was my best month ever

Ahead in year four:

  • Provide entertaining and useful content
  • Grow readership
  • Continue pondering name change
  • Move to third party hosting???

Birthdays gone by:
One year
Two year birthday

The housing hunt comes to an end — Part 2

And now, for the rest of the story . . .

The first part of this saga ended with finding a good apartment prospect.  After not so much deliberation, I wanted to submit the rental application, along with a deposit to hold the place while they processed our application, and be done with this agonizingly long and drawn out apartment/house hunt.

Matthew felt we’d put the time and energy into looking at houses for sale and wanted to make an offer on a FSBO house we’d looked at a couple of times.  I wasn’t excited about the place, but I agreed to make a low offer.

So last Friday morning, I biked over to drop off our rental application and earnest money and Matthew made some phone calls that ended with making a verbal offer on the house.  Because why have just one place to live when you could have a house AND an apartment?

Anyway, the FSBO was an estate house, and since our offer was lower than their asking price, they had to take it to probate.

Having done all we could, we headed out to a local winery for a relaxing stressful afternoon.  In the middle of our wine tasting, the trustee of the estate called back and engaged Matthew in an exceedingly long conversation, the bottom line of which was, he would take our offer before the probate judge but would not argue for it, but if we increased our offer by $5k (still $15k below their asking price), he would argue for it.

Hot, tired, annoyed that Matthew was spending most of our winery trip on the phone, and frustrated with (and physically uncomfortable because of) a fussy, refusing-to-nurse baby, I had no desire to enter into negotiations or increase our offer on a house that I wasn’t all that excited about.  So we said they could take or leave our initial offer, and they later called back to say, “no deal.”

With our new lease start-date still a few weeks away, we went ahead and pulled out the boxes and packing tape over the weekend, making an impressive amount of progress in little spurts here and there.  We started to discuss how we would arrange things in the new apartment.

And then on Tuesday afternoon, the FSBO guy calls Matthew and says they’ve reversed course and will take our offer, if we’re still offering.  For some reason, I’d kind-of expected this and was not terribly surprised.

After a bit of discussion that evening, we ultimately decided that this was not the house for us, even at our original offer price, and Matthew informed the owners of our final decision.

So.  Packing continues and we’ve scheduled movers.  In a few weeks, our almost-year-long experiment in living as a family of three in a one-bedroom apartment will come to an end, and I am ready!

Related posts:
T minus two months
Moving day
Two’s company
We ain’t goin’ nowhere
Am I asking too much?

The housing hunt comes to an end

I had the opportunity to write a “green living in St. Louis” guest post for Stacy at Every Little Thing this week.  Check it out here.  Now, on to the housing saga!

Last Wednesday, Matthew and I took some time off work in the afternoon to see another round of houses.  We only had a few on the schedule, so we tacked a recently listed apartment on to the itinerary as well.

Back in April, after over twelve months of apartment hunting, we decided to be a little crazy and throw the option of buying a house back into the mix.  We located a house and made a [very low] offer within a couple of weeks.  Despite offering $40k less than the asking price, we had decent reason to believe that they may accept the offer or counter with something closer to what we were willing to pay.

The house, which was part of an estate and had nothing owed on it, had been on the market for over 250 days this round, and vacant (and probably previously listed) for much longer than that.  While vacant, the pipes burst, and repairing that and the resulting water damage resulted in a $50k insurance claim.  You’d think this would be good reason for the estate’s trustee to consider any that came along.

We sure did, and we were wrong.  The guy didn’t even bother to counter (and apparently he was so “disgusted and depressed” by our offer that he pulled it off the market — at peak home-buying season, no less!).

Within a day or two of having our offer rejected, we spotted a realty sign on an intriguing property — a big, sunny fenced lot with two tiny houses on one edge.  I pass by it regularly and always wonder to which of the two houses the yard belongs.

A bit of research revealed that the property was a foreclosure and included the lot and both houses (each about 500 square feet — like I said, tiny).  We were immediately off and running with ideas of buying it on the cheap and doing a major renovation (which I alluded to here), combining the two tiny houses to make one nice space plus an awesome yard for gardening.  Matthew even drew up some designs.

And then we faced the reality of how much it would cost, both in dollars and in our energy making decisions and dealing with bumps along the way, and the fact that we would probably not be able to get anywhere near what we put into it back out of it if/when the time came to sell.  We decided, sadly, but probably wisely, to walk away.

A few weeks passed, with more houses, a couple more apartments, and nothing that really excited us.  One of the houses that we viewed didn’t have the double lot included as we’d hoped.  Another was somewhat interesting, but seemed overpriced, and while we were considering if and what to offer, it went under contract.

So on Wednesday afternoon, when we saw the apartment that had almost everything we were looking for, I was more than ready to be finished.

To be continued . . .

What’s goin’ on

It’s been a little quiet over here, which usually indicates that life has been a little crazy.  We’re all alive and well, or as well as can be with yet another cold virus, courtesy of Typhoid Gabriel.

Friday
In the spirit of getting the bad news out of the way first, I visited the dentist for a routine cleaning.  It was so much fun that I get to go back and see them in two weeks for “a bit of work.”  Unremarkable for many people, perhaps, but this is my First. Cavity. EVER.

The first cavity ever is the equivalent of the first A- or B+ ever, when you kiss your hopes of being the valedictorian of perfect teeth goodbye and start down the path to becoming a toothless old hag.

Saturday
We met with a realtor and made [a low-ball] offer on a house (an offer that we felt was actually reasonable based on average price per square foot, days on market, etc.).

Sunday
I spent Earth Day teaching my first ever Cycling Savvy course — despite my initial lack of enthusiasm toward working on the weekend, I had a blast.  It felt great to put everything that I learned in instructor training last year into use, and teaching others skills and helping build the confidence they need to ride their bicycles more seemed a fitting way to spend Earth Day.

Meanwhile, out at the garden, Matthew put in the tomato plants and then held his breath until Monday morning due to the somewhat unexpected frost advisory.  Fortunately the little plants escaped the evil Mr. Frost.

We also found out that the seller soundly rejected our offer on the house — according to his agent he “almost fainted” when he read it.  Ha!

To him we say, have fun continuing to sit on that property that you’ve been sitting on for over two years during which time the pipes burst due to lack of adequate heating one winter.

As for us, we now have our eyes on something that I ultimately think could work out even better (details to come once we have a bit more info, but I’m already putting the eggs WAY before the chicken).

Weekends these days

So I was all prepared to write a post comparing recent weekends to past April weekends, complaining about how I don’t get to bike or do anything anymore but after last weekend, I can’t truthfully write such a post.

Matthew, in his infinite cleverness, discovered that we don’t actually have to disassemble the trailer to get it in and out of the basement.  If we partially flatten it and remove the hitch arm, we can then take it through the door sideways, with the wheels still in place.

While carrying a bicycle up the stairs, then hauling up the trailer, then attaching said trailer to my bike is not exactly easy while keeping tabs on a nine-month-old, this new discovery makes it a bit less of a production.

Last Friday morning, I loaded Sir into his chariot for our first solo bike outing.  On previous outings (here and here), Matthew pulled the trailer, so it was also my first time pulling the trailer with him in it.

(The hardest part was getting him into the darn baby supporter — there’s this piece that you have to pull over the baby’s head, and it’s very awkward.  They really need to tweak the design to make it more user-friendly.  I think I can modify it, but I haven’t had a chance to see if my idea will work yet.)

Anyway, we biked to the park for a short visit.  On the way home, while waiting to make our left turn onto Kingshighway, I got some kind of, “You’re not seriously going to [something unintelligible] on Kingshighway . . . ?”

Why, yes, I am going to operate my vehicle on this street, just like you’re going to operate your vehicle on this street, thank you very much.  I really need to remember to carry Cycling Savvy flyers with me and be ready to hand them out.

Later that day, we were back on the bike to check out some real estate.  I looped a cable through part of the frame of the trailer for locking up, and Sir grabbed it and seemed to be using it as an “oh shit handle” during our ride.  Sir, please, I’m not that crazy of a driver.

Our new Saturday routine involves sending Gabriel out to the garden with Matthew, which gives me some much-needed time to myself.  I spent last Saturday biking around gathering ingredients for Matthew’s birthday dinner.

Despite no baby on board, I hitched up the trailer, which allowed me to easily carry my final load of a 3+ liter tin of olive oil, a half gallon of soy milk, a half gallon of dairy milk, some bulk bin dry goods, a gallon of apple cider vinegar, and  few other odds and ends.  With just my milk crate, or even my milk crate and panniers, that load would have required some stops back at the apartment between stores.

After all the biking with the trailer, my Sunday morning ride, just me and Bub was a breeze.

While life IS very different these days, I reclaimed some of the joys of weekends past, and I hope to do more of it in the future.