Daring Young Mom

Today has been like a mini parenting seminar unfolding of its own volition in my very home. We started the day out by going to look one more time at “the property.” We wanna-be land-holders like to call it that. After a thorough inspection by Dan (don’t worry, we’ll be using a professional inspector too), we decided to make an offer.

Now the waiting… which turns into gabbing on the phone and then magically into lots and lots and lots of work. We’re waiting right now to hear back from the seller who we’re told will be giving a counter-offer.

I feel far less stressed than I should be. Perhaps I’m channeling all of my nervous energy onto Laylee because she has gone absolutely nutso freakazoid insane today. She started by scattering the little blue shoe covers throughout the aforementioned “property,” spilling water all over the floor and then traipsing around the “property,” using the velvet beaded throw as a cape.

Honestly, I could not fault her for that one. It was a cape just waiting to be worn. Throughout the day she repeatedly abused Magoo, scraping his head with her toothbrush, writing on his head with a pointy piece of sidewalk chalk, hitting him over the head with a baby stroller…I could go on and on. She is not normally like this and I do not normally use the word “head” that many times in one sentence.

Whenever I’d stop her from what she was doing, she’d defend herself by saying, “He’s not crying yet.” Ooooohhh….he’s not crying yet? Is that the new criteria for acceptable behavior in our family?

It’s okay to wipe boogers on Mommy’s clean pants, flood the bathroom, scratch the new paint off the walls and scatter every piece of clean silverware we own throughout the house because Mommy’s not crying yet? I see. If Laylee were queen…

Actually, Laylee has become enamored with the wicked queen on Snow White. She loves her laugh, her apples, her magic powers and her fancy box with the heart in it. Laylee promises that if I give her magic powers and a fancy box, she will never use the box to kill people. I feel comforted by that. Maybe I will let her become queen someday.

When Dan got home, I pulled him aside and discretely told him all the crazy things she’d been up to, asking him to take over because I was DONE. He simply asked me, “So, what did you do about all that?”

Um…some time in her room…disapproving glances…said “no” weakly…kept talking on the phone. Yeah, I pretty much did nothing.

Dan calmly went to Laylee, sternly talked to her about her behavior and walked her around giving her instructions on how to clean things up… and it worked and they ended up cuddling on the couch reading stories with her happier than she’d been all day in my house of chaos.

Moral: Children need limits and are happier with them in place. I was freaking her out because I was letting her rule the roost and she didn’t know what had happened to her mommy. I normally don’t let her poke me with pointy red chopsticks. But sometimes on the day you’re trying to buy a house, it’s easy to turn into a slacker mom. And then they make you pay, and I ain’t talkin’ about the realtors. Luckily I have a husband who reminds me that you don’t have to be an evil villain to keep your kids in line and happy.

I got the dates wrong, even though I totally know them. The Idaho dinner is on SATURDAY night. I will be on the road Friday if you’d like to join my in a truckstop corndog somewhere in Oregon.*

*Disclaimer – you will not be allowed to pump your own gas and you’ll have to drive 60mph.

Sorry I’ve been a blogging deadbeat for a few days. Interest rates are rising, house prices show no sign of stopping their insane rise in the Seattle area and we’re feeling an itch to move from our condo to a single-family home before the price gap get’s too wide to ever cross. Having learned from Jeana, the intercontinental traveler, to “mind the gap” last week, I decided to take her advice.

It’s been enlightening so far and yes, mostly in a depressing sort of way. There are thousands of Microsoft employees, and young retired millionaire former employees, who are helping drive up house prices. Our condo has shot up 50% in value in the last 2 years and other houses in the area are doing the same.

The problem is – everyone who likes their spouse wants to live close to the city to avoid a long commute so houses in decent school districts, close to the office are too rich for our blood. We’re talking $500k for a 2000sqft, 30-year-old home with very little yard.

Before we started looking, I told myself 3 things:
1. In order to move up, we have to move down.
2. I am spoiled in our luxury condo and should be prepared to move into a “fixer-upper” that I won’t be able to fix up for the next 10 years due to the staggering new mortgage payment.
3. I am totally fine with this.

Now, number three is where I start to come unhinged. I am in fact not okay paying $450K for a small dark split-level with almost no back yard that needs a ton of renovation. I will say that the home I’m referring to had a lovely patio with a great view of the potbellied neighbor guy sitting in an old lawn chair, wearing a wife-beater and smoking while the thousands of dogs across the street yapped their heads off.

Dan said that half of you are probably potbellied middle-aged sweaty male smokers, wearing wife-beaters and posing as mommy bloggers so I should be careful what I say. Sorry if I offended anyone.

The most disturbing thing about the house was actually the hearse parked on the street two houses down because they had too many beat-up cars in the driveway.

In many of the neighborhoods we visited, people didn’t park their old cars or hearses on the street. The lawn was just fine. What is the deal with parking multiple old junkers on you front lawn? Why, I ask you, WHY?

Saturday started with all 4 of us suffering from a yucky cold, getting a cavity filled and being told by a friend that the schools in the areas we were planning on looking were “scary.” We then looked at the homes with the “scary” schools and hearse-driving, yappy-dog-owning, hoopty-collecting neighbors, started getting used to it and thinking it might be okay, but decided just to take a peek at a neighborhood WAY out, so far out that I would likely never see Dan again, so far out that we actually fell in love with a couple of homes in our price range and realized that we were not at all satisfied with the things we’d seen closer in. Then by the time we drove all the way back to our condo, we realized that we were not okay with a commute that long.

So, we’re back where we started.

AARRRG! But it’s fun…right?

FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT — Several of us are meeting together for dinner this coming SATURDAY night in Boise, ID. If you plan on attending, please email me and I will send you the information. The deadline for getting our final numbers to the restaurant is Wednesday so if you’re bringing someone, please let me know that too. I’m really excited. There will be some wonderful bloggers there. I hope you’ll be one of them.

Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day.

Oh, and I am so TICKED that the West Wing is over. The 10 other remaining viewers and I should get together for a bawl fest sometime.

Oh, and does anyone want to buy a really sweet 2-year-old condo across the street from a Bambi forest and backing onto a duck pond with actual bulrushes? Moses could be in there! …or a frog or something.

When I read about Piglet being blown away, I wonder what gauge weapon will be used and who will be wielding it. Eyeore seems the most unstable mentally, although Rabbit has shown himself capable of physical aggression in the past. Kanga is right out, but Roo wants so badly to fit in. Who’s to say that he’s not planning the job, maybe earn him some respect from the whole gang? They all made nice at the end of The Heffalump Movie but I think that book

is pretty solid evidence of the rising tide of violence in their little world. Christo-Robinizzle is too high up in the food chain to take anyone out himself. He’d undoubtedly use one of his henchmen. I don’t think it would be too hard to convince T-I-double-Guh-ER to “bounce” little pink, if you knowahmsayin’. After that whole forgery of documents and posing as a member of his long lost Tigger posse, in The Tigger Movie, our boy is not exactly right with Mr. T. At least the Pooh’s got his back… for now.

Got any theories, yo?

I remember a while back Angela’s daughter was freaking her out a wee bit by telling her morbid things about her future. The past few days Laylee has been telling me what we should do when our house falls down. Has anyone told her that Seattle is expecting a major earthquake any day now or do we just read too much about the three little pork chops? I promise our house is not made of straw.

However, Laylee is fairly certain that it will be falling down soon. When it does, we are to evacuate immediately and go live at Grammy’s house until our house gets put back up again.

Then today she told me that tomorrow we are all going to die. Um, thanks for the warning. I asked her if tomorrow was the day the house was gonna fall down. She said “no”. We’re just gonna die. So if I don’t post…

Now I will share with you something else that’s been disturbing me into hysterical laughter:

So Piglet’s gonna get blown away, huh? What kind of hood is this Hundred Acre Wood?