Contractors

When moving into a new (old) house, there always seem to be a million little projects that need to be completed and never get done. We hired a contractor and tried to get a bunch of little jobs done before all of our stuff started filling up the house.

Things took too long during the closing and our poor guy had to work among our chaos. Many days I would come home from work to find him busy with projects. It was almost sad when he finished all his projects and there was no one in the house anymore when I would returned from work. However, I was not sad to stop hemorrhaging money. Small jobs kept becoming complicated, time consuming ventures with this old house.

Here are my conclusions after this experience with a contractor that we both really liked and who did a great job:

1. Nobody will show up on time.
2. It will cost more than your estimate.
3. Hire someone you like b/c you will be seeing a lot of them.
4. The job will take longer than you expect.
5. Inevitably, the previous owner of your house will have done something wrong that the contractor did not foresee and you will have to pay lots of $ to fix.
6. The contractor will discover 10 other problems while fixing the 1 you hired him/her to repair.
7. Being a home owner is much more expensive than expected.
8. I wish I was more handy
9. Or that Patrick didn't have to work such long hours

Devon

Here's a cute picture I took of Devon about three weeks ago in his classroom. He's doing great (almost no seizures) and is getting adopted soon. Yea! Such a sweetie, Patrick just loved him. I've never met another person as happy as Devon.

Mom and Garrett's Birthdays

The day after my high school reunion, we went out to breakfast with my family and celebrated a few upcoming october birthdays. We are so busy trying to rent the townhouse and unpack at the new place that we may not make in back to Sac any other weekends. I had the best pumpkin pancakes with some kind of maple-y nut fluff. Mmmm. Owen was of course entertaining all of us saying his new words and smiling at the waitresses. Here are some unattractive pictures of us all.

High School Reunion

It was my reunion last weekend at good old Arden Hills. Many of my close friends did not come, but it was a trip to see those who did. It was just like stepping back in time. What is so weird is that when you have a history of friendship with someone, things just fall right back into an old familiar and comfortable rhythm when you are together, even if you don't see them often. All the girls look the same and many were still single. (Patrick said, "These girls are not like the ones who went to my high school in Wisconsin!" Good Ole Cali.) The boys were a little balder and a little rounder and many were married. I found that most of us who expanded our dating pool outside of California were married. And my husband was by far the most handsome (even though he shaved his head right before the big event and I almost had to kill him), but I am biased!

The Pineapple House

We are moving. For many reasons, including storage space, yard size and family, we have bought a new house. We have been working on this deal since the end of June and the purchase didn't close until this Wednesday afternoon. It took forever; I caution those of you tempted by foreclosures like we were. The bank and title company that we were dealing with were incompetent! They lost our contract, had us fill out the wrong forms, never returned phone calls and the list goes on.

However, in the end, it was a great deal in a really nice part of town. I am not excited about the packing and moving part, but I am excited about the more rooms part. We have to rent our current place because the market is too bad to sell - it may never sell for what we bought it and it definitely won't rent for our payment.

So, mom has been here for two weekends helping us pack, unpack, line cabinet, buy appliances, etc. She is cooking dinners and baking cookies, lucky us. We are so thankful for all her help because Patrick is exhausted from harvest and I don't have as much energy as I used to.

The new house is great; it needs work in the kitchen, yard, roof and a few other small projects. Nothing too hard for us to handle and a place we can stay for many years. Yeah! Come visit soon- y'all can help us unpack boxes.

Crash

I was in car accident last week. I was attending an autism testing conference in Berkeley. It was kind of fun because I got to see an old friend from graduate school, Michelle.

So I had to stop and get some gas and as I was driving around to get on the freeway and got crunched from the behind which led to me hitting someone else. Of course the person that hit me drove away and the person that I hit didn't speak English. It was really weird; he wouldn't give me his name, number, Driver's License or insurance information. I don't think the guy who was driving was actually the truck owner.

Anyway, AAA came to the rescue and took care of the car. I am still waiting to hear if I will be found at fault. I hope not, but I have no proof that I was hit. Hopefully my dented bumper and broken lights were enough proof. GAG, such a waste of my time! At least no one got hurt.