This morning at a quarter to nine, the phone rang. Our bid for the house we currently rent has been accepted! This makes life much easier. We won't be throwing our money away every month. We are no longer faced with moving out in early May. We'll be able to have rooms where the walls aren't white.
The house needs much work. The lawn needs to be started from scratch. The kitchen needs a complete makeover. The back yard needs love and care. It will take us years to get the place into the kind of condition it should be. But this house has enough room for all of us, Bumpy included, and perhaps one more. We love the neighborhood, and we both believe that we can significantly improve this house.
Of course, the tough part is still to come. The clock starts ticking Monday. Within twelve business days we have to have the house inspected. We have to coordinate the financial aspects of the deal. We have to have a termite inspection, and probably need to have the place checked for lead paint.
Oh, yeah: we have to have a baby.
Jean is now two days past her due date. She still doesn't feel like labor is coming anytime soon. While this may be the case, the baby is going to arrive any time she wants to, and we will suddenly find ourselves working on a whole new scale of time.
We're going to try to get the inspections done within the next few days (before our daughter arrives), but it is likely that an inspector will not be able to accommodate us until later in the week. Juggling Bumpy and buying a house is not going to be easy. Especially since Jean is the expert on all our contracts (all that insurance work is finally paying off). She'll be in no condition to keep up with business when she's sore and tired and needed by another.
I'm going to do my best to keep things easy, but I am afraid that there's only so much that I'll be able to do. Even if I try to run interference on all the documents, I'm still going to need Jean's interpretation of things before I'm ready to proceed.
These complexities are just beginning, but I have to go now to do the dishes.
Shhh. It's Jean again. Ha Ha! Pregnancy gets you out of doing chores like dishes. All you have to do is sigh heavily and lament all the things still to be done in the day, and the extremely nice daddy-to-be comes in to save you – tells you to get off your feet, go relax and sit by the fire, etc. It's great.
The important thing to note here is that the house we rent and are now purchasing does not have a dishwasher. Well, actually it does, but the dishwasher is extremely pregnant. I've been tempted to throw the dishes in with the laundry, but I have thus far refrained. Once we close on the house, we are buying a machine dishwasher that will eventually be integrated into the kitchen when we renovate it. Until then, though, it's Kev & me.
Of course, the daddy-to-be who is so kind about the dishes tonight was conniving earlier today to drag me all around the shopping center in order to get this labor thing started. A lot of walking is supposed to help bring on labor, and that's what we did. I've been having contractions all day (his goal), but they are still the non-productive pain-free kind (not his goal) that I've been having for over a month.
If he approaches me with castor oil, I'm going to slug him.
We've actually had a really nice day together. It was in the 60s, so we sat outside this afternoon and talked. These past few weeks, we've assumed each weekend might be the last where it was just the two of us living here, so we've spent time talking, reading, and just completely enjoying the peace and quiet. It's sort of getting to be funny that as time has gone on, the house has remained quiet, and no one else has shown up to move in with us. (Except for all the prospective buyers who toured our house several evenings this week. Boy was THAT annoying.)
We're excited and relieved about the house. However, I wouldn't necessarily recommend deciding to buy a house one day and then actually buying the house the next day, thereby completing the transaction over the 24 hour period that is supposed to be your baby's due date. Bumpy probably didn't come out Thursday because she was flat out daunted by the activity. All I did was race around to get this purchase through. I must admit it's nice to have the house thing over with so that I can play with her again.
Even still, every night this week before leaving work, one of my supervisors has come up to my desk and politely asked me not to have the baby because so-and-so was still out sick. On Friday, I asked her if I could have the baby this weekend or on Monday, but she said that another person is scheduled to be off Monday, and could I please hold off until around the 11th or 12th because the calendar appeared to be clear then!
Well, I don't usually spend this much time at the computer, and I need to relinquish it back to its rightful operator. I shall continue knitting the latest item for the Bump. Auf wiederschrieben.
Except I just heard from the TV in the other room that some woman has just been charged tonight with murdering her 4 year old daughter. How do people do that? Is it drugs? Emotional illness? How do you look into the frightened eyes of your little child and hurt them? No child deserves that or any other form of physical, emotional or verbal abuse; they can't defend themselves. (And, from my soapbox, I would add that no adult deserves to be treated that way, either.) Why can't people just run outside and hand the child to a neighbor, a friend, a relative, just ANYONE so that the child is out of reach when the parent's rage explodes? There are zillions of people who would willingly adopt an unloved child and fill that child's life with kindness.
I know children can be trying and difficult and time-consuming, but that's part of the package if you want them. Maybe I'm being simple or naïve, but if people know that they don't want to or cannot commit to that, then they should not have children in the first place. But if people plan to have children, they should approach that decision with the knowledge that they will have to invest every ounce of their soul into the child, and it's an amazing and gratifying reward.
I'm going to have Kevin kiss Bumpy for me right now. As big as my stomach is, I can't reach her, and I want to be sure she knows we love her. And her little pointy part.
It was a beautiful day today. Jean and I sat in the back yard for a time this afternoon. She continued knitting an outfit for the baby, I tossed the tennis ball around for Pasta and Neon. After a while, I decided I wanted to know how many trees are on our property. There are a couple on the border, so I'm not sure, but it looks like there are twenty four trees (eleven in the back yard and thirteen up front).
© 1999 Kevin J.T. Creamer