Relative Something

In the middle of the night, between Saturday and Sunday, we experienced a fairly intense storm. There was a lot of lightning and thunder, strong gusts of wind, and heavy rain. I woke and listened to the deck furniture tumbling, while watching the trees out our bedroom window strain against the blasts of wind.

In the morning, I went about my business, traversing the levels of our house, wandering room to room, engaged in a simultaneous batch of multiple chores. It was my second trip to the basement that brought a sense that something was amiss.

I decided to do a brief audit to make sure no leaks were occurring from the frequent downpours we have received in the last week. I was pressing my hand against the carpet along the walls, when I worked my way up to the piled furniture. The floor was good, but I noticed something about the wall. It looked like a bubble under the paint, the brand new paint job just completed. I reached behind the stuff stacked there and put my finger on the bubble. It was wet.

It appeared like water was underneath the paint. I stood up to see how the water was getting in.

It took me a few seconds to realize that there was no window in the opening. The storm had blown the window in. It was laying on the piles of stuff below.

Two steps forward, one step back.

I continue to plug away at the list of tasks we have assigned ourselves toward preparing the house for sale. As each day passes, I am feeling more of a mind that we should have just shown it the way it was, and taken what people think it’s worth. Days pass, and progress is being made, but it is beginning to feel like we will never be as ready as we are trying to accomplish being.

I suppose a part of that is a result of “we” being mostly, me. When Cyndie was home for the weekend, a couple of weeks ago, we made some big progress. Since that time, things have slowed dramatically. Anyone who knows her, recognizes the dynamic of that. I do things at a lot slower a pace than she does.

I am impressing myself with a new level of effort to address things in a more immediate manner. In the past, I didn’t feel a need to fix things as soon as they were discovered. I am now making improvements on things that have lingered for so long, I accepted them as normal. Seems a bit dysfunctional, in hindsight.

You pick your battles.

It is driving me a little nuts, though, that for each improvement I complete, there are two more issues, a level down in visibility, that are suddenly revealed.

Finally fixing the long-standing, nuisance issues, reminds me of the time we decided to sell the old brown Datsun B210 that Cyndie owned when we got married. I had struggled with the parking brake for the entire time we had that car. The day that I was doing the final clean up, to put the “For Sale” sign in the window, vacuuming up the birdseed under the seats from our wedding day, years prior, I decided to lay on the ground and look into that parking brake problem.

I ended up sliding myself completely under the car, in my quest to follow the cable and figure out how it was supposed to work. From the looks of it, it couldn’t work, the way the spring was attached. It seemed totally illogical. The spring should be pulling from the other side. I detached the spring, moved it around and hooked it where I thought it should be connected. It worked perfectly.

With minimal effort, mostly just getting down there and spending a few minutes looking into it, I got that parking brake working like new on the day we sold the car. It should have been an obvious lesson for me.

Apparently, I didn’t learn well enough. I’m experiencing the same lesson again, now with my home.

This is how it goes: I wrote at length in yesterday’s post about the weeds I found in the lawn when I mowed Wednesday evening. With minimal forethought, moments after I woke yesterday morning, I looked at the weather forecast. The prediction was for a chance of isolated thunderstorms all week. It was less than a 50% chance, and the radar looked clear to the west. I decided to take that chance.

I sprouted into action and rushed out to apply the fertilizer/weed control that we had purchased. The instructions stress to apply only when a period of 24 hours without rain is anticipated. I had just a few minutes available to get it done and still make it to work at a decent hour. With my intense work load lately, both at home and at the day-job, sneaking this in before work would be a real plus for me.

I had only been at work for a short while when an employee approached to show me the radar image on his phone and warn me that we were about to get a strong downpour. Yep, the orange/yellow blob on his display reached well down to the location of my yard on the map.

I lost that gamble.

This is the other way it goes: Last night, I needed to find some documents to provide to our lender who is determining what amount we qualify for, and get us pre-approved. I was lucky to be able to catch Cyndie with our FaceTime app. While I had her on the line, I tried to give her a tour of the last two bedrooms, with their fresh, new carpet. It was too dark to show. I asked Cyndie where I might find the needed documents. She was able to direct me to the pile we had created in the basement, of furniture and belongings.

After some rearranging, I reached the tote which held the key pieces we needed. I found our W2s right away. I had no luck with a pay stub for Cyndie in Boston. I called her back and re-confirmed what I was searching for. She pulled out an example of one she had on file, and held it in front of the iPad camera to show me what I was looking for. I searched through the whole bin, repeatedly licking my finger to move each and every piece of paper. Because I don’t trust myself enough, I did it a second time, to be sure.

Coming up empty, I composed a text message to alert Cyndie that she would need to scan one and send it to me. Then I began putting the papers from the W2s, which I pulled out first thing, back into the bin. Of course, that is when I found the pay stub I had been searching for all along.

I texted an addendum that I’m hoping Cyndie will find before she goes through the trouble to hunt for a scanner tomorrow.

This morning, for the first time in about three weeks, I don’t have to get up early and unlock the front door to let in drywallers or painters. We are not completely done with the renovations yet. There are still two rooms that will be getting new carpet. That happens tomorrow morning. Then we are done. Except for the cleaning. And the window washing. And the staging.

I don’t know. Will we ever be done? I’ve grown so weary that it is feeling like this process goes on indefinitely.

We are approaching a point where the fairy tale dream vision that Cyndie and I have about a future horse property is going to merge with the hard reality of the amount of financing we will qualify to receive. I spoke with a representative of a lending company on Monday and provided the initial information to begin the process. Very quickly, the questions she asked, pointed to the challenge we may be facing to base our qualifying on a job Cyndie currently has in Boston.

Yeah, it is a little convoluted.

“No, she doesn’t come home on weekends.”

“Yes, she pays rent there every month, over twice what our current home mortgage payment is.”

It’s hard to tell the lender that magic will happen and our dream can be realized beyond the normal constraints that limit usual finance business decisions.

It will be interesting to see what number the lender offers. What do you bet, whatever it ends up being, it won’t limit which properties Cyndie scopes out in search of our dream. It’s a good thing I have her, because I would actually limit my search to properties it appears we can afford.

We make a great pair. I wouldn’t have chosen to have all this work done on the house if it was only up to me. Cyndie continues to push me to greater rewards than I would ever reach on my own.

I’m having visions that very soon, my reward may be that this house sells and I become homeless. The fancy dreams don’t bother with addressing the nitpicky details like where John lives in the interim between current house and future farm. We might be getting closer to finding out shortly.