It's been pretty busy around work. Assessments are next week, plus every senior is applying to schools and scholarships, and I have been dutifully writing their recommendation letters. It's actually one of the most rewarding parts of my job -- it's extra, and it takes a lot of time, but it has the potential to help them so much. Of course, that means I'm kind of behind on grading the other kids' work and whatnot. Mostly they seem to understand (and I'll have to get it done pretty soon anyway, as grades are due in two weeks).
Something funny happened about two weeks ago. I looked at the back of the East Sac News, as I often do, because I like to read about houses and look at the pictures (it's always a real estate ad). One had the header "Room to Roam." Man, room was exactly what we needed. I glanced a little wistfully at the rest of the description -- 5/6 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a pool, a few blocks from McKinley Park... Ah, to dream. But wait, what's that last line? $369,000? Shut. Up. I called the realtor and asked what was wrong with the place. What is wrong is that it's really, really dated. Most people want to move in to the McKinley park neighborhood and have granite countertops, and this place has laminate. People love hardwood floors, and if this place has them, they're under 60s shag carpeting.
I went to see it, just on a whim mostly, and talked to the realtor, whom I trust. He said that the market has changed enough in the last six months that our house would be unlikely to sell for more than something in the low $300k area. He did say, however, that the residents were not in a hurry, so maybe some things could change. They were elderly and looking for a smaller place. "They wouldn't want to swap, would they?" I asked with a laugh. But when I went home, I thought maybe it wasn't such a bad idea, and I emailed the realtor again. He's looking into the feasibility of the idea. It's about a 1% chance, but it's an interesting idea.
In the meantime, we had some serious conversations about future plans and needing more space and just exactly what we'd do with that space, and it seems as though we are likely to try to sell and find a bigger place within the next five years or so.
With both those ideas in mind, I've been looking at our house with a critical eye, and there's a LOT I've been ignoring. Deferred maintenance. I've given a few rooms a deep cleaning, hired a housekeeper to come in once for a thorough cleaning, did some de-cluttering, some paint touch-ups... I painted the front door inside and out, re-painted the front rails and a column, repaired a mess-ed up spot right by our mailbox, repainted some of the siding, and painted the garage door and the trim around it. I also took out a couple dead plants and bought new ones to replace them, but I haven't planted them yet. I also have paint to do some more interior painting. The kitchen has needed it for quite a while.
And while I've been doing all this, it kind of became more about living with the place looking nice than about what other people would think of it. The garage door, for example. When we moved in, the paint job was just awful. It looked like someone had quickly painted it to cover something else and done only one coat. In fact, here is a detail shot:
So when I painted it, it was one of those things where you go, "Are you kidding me? That cost $35 and a couple hours of my life and I got THAT much improvement out of it? Why haven't I dont this before?!"
So anyway, yes, it has been nice to get some things done to the house, no matter for what purpose.
Just a few other things. Friday was my birthday, and I'm now 36. And I... kind of don't care. I mean, I enjoyed a lovely birthday dinner with my family, my mom and Boompah gave me great presents (as did my husband), we still have a Santa Cruz trip to plan, and all told, I don't feel any older or weaker or more decrepit. I admit to being vain, and I don't particularly want to look "old," so it was also a nice boost to, on the actual day of my birthday, run into someone I hadn't seen in years and have her tell me spontaneously that I hadn't aged a day.
Despite my having abandoned my cooking blog again, I have been making interesting stuff (last night's dinner excepted).
Here is something I wrote in 2004 on this very blog: "Beets. I really disklike beets, actually. People always seem to put them in our communal salads at work, and I try not to get them. They're weird and wet and taste like soil. And I'm not one of those people who are obsessive about food not touching, but I'm not jubilant about it either, and whereas if most things touch, you can kind of quietly separate them and forget it, beets leave an indelible flourescent pink stain on whatever they've touched, and usually leak a hot pink puddle around the plate, too. Bleh."
Well guess what? I've had a change of heart about beets. A friend was bringing them to work, and instead of bringing canned beets, which is what I've mostly had, she was roasting fresh ones, and people were raving about them, so I tried them. And they were quite good. I got in the habit of taking some every time she brought them, sometimes even getting seconds. I ordered a beet salad or two while out at a restaurant. And now I've started making them for myself. My newest creation is "Not yo' mama's pickled beets." I've been pickling, and it's a lot of fun and pretty easy, so I decided to make pickled beets. Pretty much every recipe I found, though, called for a lot of cookie-type spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, etc.) and a bunch of sugar. Well, I remember those kinds of beets from my childhood, and I don't like them much. So I made up my own recipe. I threw just a little sugar in the pickling mix (vinegar and water and salt), then added just about 20 dried chiles de arbol to the mix (and I put them in the jars, too). I baked the beets first, cut them into french fry-size sticks, and pickled them. I know they'll probably be best after a week, so I won't open them yet, but I tried one before it got jarred, and it tasted pretty good.
I guess that's about all for now. Z's getting bigger and funnier and hungrier and more verbal all the time. (And for this kid, "more verbal" means playing word games, writing song lyrics, and using idiomatic expressions like a pro.)
