Soft markets
We have been granted a reprieve! Our realtor tells us the market is “soft,” especially in our starter-home, locationally-challenged neighborhood. This means that we may be in this house for a good, long time. We’re going to start doing the things we need to do to get it market-ready (weed properly, trim the bushes properly, pack up things, donate other things, etc.) and then put it on the market and see what happens. I know it’s a lousy time to put a house on the market but what the heck. We bought it in November (the first of, actually) and maybe somebody else will, too. Meanwhile we’re going to stop looking since we know what areas we want to consider (the top neighborhood? dropped down to third place last night) but we don’t want to fall in love with a house we can’t have.
I was fretting about this so much (and still will be fretting if I’m honest with you all) and then I thought after reading various blogs, heck, it’s a lot easier to wait for the perfect house than to wait for the perfect baby and I did that so I can do this, too. Plus I like my house so it’s not like I feel trapped here.
Madison has begun to call Noah “Whoa-wa” but not to his face. She still calls him “bru-her” or some semblance thereof but sometimes she’ll refer to him by name to other people.
This morning we were out in the yard and Noah was still inside. She went to her Little Tikes car (the red and yellow one, which one of my old bosses referred to as “the best selling car in America”) and stood next to it calling, “Bru-her! Bru-her!” Because she wanted him to come out and push her.
Oh I forgot something. Today at Noah’s baseball game I sat next to a woman I know from my temple. I met her in La Leche League but now she and her (female) partner and their assortment of children are also at our synagogue. That made me want to live there in that great neighborhood. Then as we pulled out of the park after the game, we passed a car with a bumpersticker that said, “Question Gender” and that made me want to live there, too. Next we drove down a street and saw a house where someone had a clothesline strung across the trees in their front yard next to a sign that read, “Number of American soldiers killed in Iraq” and they had hung numbers on the line so they could pull them off and change them. The sign on the other end of the line read, “Support Our Troops.” And yes, that made us want to live there, too.
Finally on the way home, we drove past a protest at one of the big intersection with many people carrying signs that read, “Impeach Bush” and “Arrest Rove.” So that was kind of the kicker and we were pratically weeping with want to live there. But we still can’t really afford it (or at least we can’t unless we jettison many of the other things we have on our “great house” list) so maybe I should just let it go.
Then again, who knows what might happen?
Where was Noah’s game? There is a teensy house that abutts my back yard that just went up for sale. But I think it is really really tiny.
I hope you get to move to where the cool and politically aligned people are. Crossing my fingers for you.
(I noticed that Jane Siberry is playing in Manhattan next week, and I thought of you!)
Did you ever find Chel’s e-mail address? In a weird Google coincidence I seemed to link up your post about classmates.com and this Chel, http://www.myspace.com/chelhamilton. I hope they are one and the same and that I’ve helped re-unite you *for free*!
Ha ha ha, the kicker for me wanting to live in my neighborhood was when I found out that there had been a protest during last year’s election of Bush fans standing in the town center asking people to honk if they supported Bush and people were telling them to get out of town and throwing things at them!!! I know I shouldn’t laugh at people throwing stuff at other people, and I certainly don’t condone the behavior, but it made me laugh. Isn’t that terrible?