Wash that gray right outta my hair?

I've been thinking about my gray hair lately. Back when I was a stripling of twenty, before the the first white hair reared up, I thought I knew what I'd do. Dye it. Dye it until it reached the tipping point, then stop dying and do some form of frosted hair instead.
But now I'm unsure. I actually like my white hair, because it's coming in very silvery, and adds some interest to my hair. I also think that it's all my old copper highlights that are going first, so if I lose the silver, it will all be a dull brown.
However, I imagine that at some point soon I'll reach a tipping point. Like when you're growing out a short haircut. For a few weeks it seems an unmanageable mess, and you're sorely tempted to hack if off and forget about having long hair again. I imagine that's how I'll feel when I get to 30% gray, but once I start dying, there'd be no going back. I'll try to hold out a little longer and see how things go.

Luv, twue luv

Nathan is in Love. When I went to pick him up, he wanted to stay and "play chess" with Joelle. The game seemed to consist of them trading pieces back and forth across the board. I didn't feel like making a fuss to get him to leave, so I told him I wanted to go to McDonald's as incentive to get going. He and Joelle immediately seized upon the plan of meeting at McDonald's and eating together. Then, in the car, he told me
"I love girls. I love their hair, they're so pretty."

Luckily, Joelle's mom was very much into the idea of Micky D's too, and they arrived a few minutes after us, at which time Joelle enveloped Nathan in a big hug. The two of them sat as close as possible through dinner, talking constantly. She's five, an older woman, and according to her mom, Nathan's not her first. Heh. Now he's running around the house, picking out the toys he wants to give her for her Birthday. Had they had their way, she'd be here right now playing.

But once again, I think I blew it. I should have gotten their phone number. The Mom is a single Mom who moved here in September. She'd probably like having another Mom around who isn't busy spending nights and Saturdays with a husband. I just feel like things are going to be too crazy with the upcoming move to start a new friendship. However, if Nathan keeps talking about Joelle constantly, I may have to re-think that plan.

House Pictures

This was the first time I'd done a house inspection, so I was just about ready to back out after an hour of problems after problems after problems. But cooler heads have prevailed. I just have to keep repeating the price tag in my head to remind me not to have high expectations.

We may try to knock some more off the price because of some electrical issues. It's only wired for 100 amps, and some of the wiring in the circuit box is screwy and needs to be re-done. Plus, the part of the house that is relatively newer is all ungrounded outlets.

These are horrible pictures. Oh well.


Small country kitchen. So small, that there is not a dishwasher. Every time I bring that up, Dan points to me.

I like the little octagonal window in what will be Claire's room.

The neighbors to the right have pigs. We'll have to keep an eye on how the wind blows.

Bloody good soup

I don't talk about Dan as much as the kids, but I liked this story from the kitchen trenches that he told me last night.

He has a cook working for him, who has made progress in the past year, but was high on Dan's list of useless cooks when he first started at the restaurant. The big problem was that he insisted on making the special soup, often ignoring Dan's instructions and branching off to try something "creative". It rarely went well. Dan's talked to him in the past about it, and is encouraging his interest in pastry, but the soup issue reared it's head again last night.

Dan went in at lunchtime, and found that the soup of the day was Roasted Carrot and Apple. Ummmm. That really doesn't sound that great to me, but even if I did want to give it a try, it shouldn't be served on a spring day. Especially not the first day we'd had sun and sixty degree weather. Plus, he'd worked on it for over two hours. The customer response ranged from "I didn't not like it" to "Gawdawful".

Dan knew he couldn't serve it at Dinner too. But he was so busy with prep work, that it was after six before he could give another thought to soup. And glancing around the storeroom, there wasn't much available to use. Except for one thing. The bar had accidently gotten a case of Bloody Mary mix. Dan added some heavy cream, stirred in some goat cheese, and had a soup done in three minutes that the customers raved about all night.

I miss Fenway

Drat. I missed this yesterday because I was a stupid work instead of doing one of my all time favorite things, watching the Patriot's Day home game at Fenway. Even if you've seen a clip of this, you have to watch the whole 4 minutes with Jerry Remy, it's toooo funny.

Dude, you said POTsdam

My kids are gonna be stoners.



See, Potsdam has always been known for it's Sandstone quarries. At some point, they picked Sandstoners as the school's nickname, with a burley guy holding a pickax as the mascot. But no one ever says the Sandstoners.



Maybe we should have bought a house in Canton.

Inspection is scheduled for Sunday.(finally) I dropped off Nathan's application for Pre-K today. I also wanted to do other errands and get their blood drawn for the yearly lead poisoning test. That was NOT fun. Nathan fought through the blood test, but then settled down quickly. Claire did not settle down quickly, but instead screamed, pulled my hair, arched her back, stole my glasses, pinched the skin on my face and flung her arms around all the way back to the car. Then the fun really began as I tried to get her in her carseat. Dan is doing it next time.

Who are you?

Not identity theft. Experian just decided that since we had the same name and lived in Lewiston at the same time, that Amy E. McFarland and I must be the same person. Never mind that we had different Social Security Numbers and that I had had a dozen different addresses while she'd been quietly paying a mortgage in Lewiston.

So, I got that untangled. Although I might regret dropping her perfect payment history on the mortgage. That probably helped my score more than the delinquent medical bill hurt it. A lesson to you all to take advantage of your yearly free credit report.

The new mortgage application will be winging it's way to the broker tomorrow. It's a slightly higher rate than the program that takes forever to close. But given how little money we're paying, the change in percentage is only adding about $20 a month.

And, I have a job interview tomorrow. Waaaaaay back in October, I took a civil service exam for the county. I finally started getting "letters of interest" in January, but it was after I'd started at the tree company and they were only for part-time work. A few weeks ago I got one for full-time, working in the purchasing department while the county builds a new prison. I'd really, really like to have employer paid health insurance again, so wish me luck.

Maybe I should shred more often

Weird stuff with the mortgage that is freaking me out.

A. We wanted to use a state mortgage program that would cover closing costs (with the cost completely written off if we stayed in the home for 10 years) and had a very low interest rate. The woman at the bank had never done a mortgage with this program before. After we signed everything, she called Dan and told him that it would take 100 days to close. She must be WRONG. Yes, it could take an extra week, but there's no way that it's going to take three months. So I think we're going to have to cancel that application. And since we don't think this woman has a clue, we'll have to go to the Mortgage broker that the realtor recommended and start all over again.

B. After getting all the signed paperwork home, I decided it would be a good idea to read it. Lo and behold, there is craziness in our liablities. It's showing that we have a $6000 loan from a bank in Lewiston, Maine and owe $100 to a firm that Google told me was a collection agency in Portland, Maine. Eeeek! Identity theft! I couldn't wait to talk to the bank tomorrow, so I ran a free credit report. Two of the agencies don't show this at all. The third wanted me to verify my identity by doing a multiple choice about which banks I had loans at. Since I didn't check off the Maine bank, they are taking 24 hours to verify that I'm who I say I am before I can see the report. It's so odd that it's in Lewiston, where Bates is, and dates to 1993. Dan thought that it could be some old student loan, but how is it possible that it didn't turn up in previous years? And I never had a Maine bank account, everything was done through Connecticut. But it wouldn't be dated to 1993 if it was identity theft, would it. So weird.

I'm dreaming of a White Easter

We didn't have snow for Christmas, but look what it did for Easter. There's been snow in the air everyday for the last week, and now there's a winter storm warning in effect for Thursday. Dan was kind enough to tell me that he once had a blizzard for Mother's day.

On to the inspection

Hmph, should have posted sooner. Now Christy's stolen my thunder. We got our offer accepted on Saturday, so we'll be in our new house soon too. Although not until the end of May. Apparently, someone else had also put in an offer before us, and we should have been told that but weren't. But we must have hit the sweet spot with what we offered because it was almost immediately accepted. Dan was bummed, thinking that we could have gotten away with offering less. But now that we know someone else was lurking, it's good we didn't. It's still going to be a criminally low mortgage, something I'll have to keep in mind as I shell out money to redo the roof.

And in the "it's a small world" category, I was looking at our local Freecycle website and the current residents are chucking a lot of stuff, so I called and put in dibs on some of the decor that I liked. And that also gave me an opening to talk and get friendly with her, so that if we have questions later, it should be easy to give her a call to see why things in the house work the way they do.

If you have a local Freecycle, check into it. I'm planning to give away a lot of baby things before we move, and I always see things of interest being offered. Clean your house without going through the trouble of a tag sale!

More house stuff

Why am I buying a house in a place where it SNOWS in APRIL!!! At least it's not accumulating here, but the flakes have been flying around for two days now.

We put an offer on the house today. Contingent on inspection, well test and septic test of course. I'm really regretting not bringing a camera with me, because I'm finding that I don't remember the details, like whether or not there's a dishwasher. Or if there's carpeting in the bedrooms. Our house inspector is going to be on vacation all next week, so even if the offer is accepted, we probably won't get inside again until after the 15th. Which is probably good, because there are currently tenants in there, but they're buying a house and will be gone by then.

I'm not feeling like I'm "in love" with this house, but I think that's a good thing. I know that the type of house I would really love will cost three times more, and probably not come with a large yard. This house is a 5-15 year house, not a lifetime one. I've told Dan that when the kids are gone and my knees are gone, I want a Craftsman bungalow in the village. Whether there's another house in between this one and that one depends on how long we last with only one bathroom.

Can I just say I love technology. Anyway, here's another view of the house. Zooming in just turns everything into a green blur. But it should be pretty clear that when I say we'd be surrounded by farms, I wasn't exaggerating. To the right, you can see the St. Regis River. Just on the other side of that is a small, protected forest where I've gone walking a few times. Wonderfully fragrant scotch pines there.

Photo Album

It's been awhile since I posted pics of the kids. Enjoy.


Whenever we take a picture of Claire doing something cute, we have to take a picture of Nathan too. Even when he's being more obnoxious than cute.



Claire, really enjoying Papa's birthday cake.

These are pictures from Canton's Easter Egg hunt on the village green.

Nathan, doing a surprising good job at "bunny hopping".

Awwwwwwww

Going to the Dogs

No, we haven't gotten a dog, yet. But this picture of a dog at the local shelter is too adorable not to post. Riggs is about ten months old, Labrador/Border Collie Mix, and he's spent half his life at the shelter. They have a large outdoor yard that we visited on Saturday, but the dogs are still chained or caged and probably spend most of the winter outside. Poor guy.

The desire to get a dog is driving the desire to get a house soon. The house we saw on Saturday was really perfect for us. Although as I begin to list the problems, you're probably going to think we're crazy. But the price tag of $72,500 makes a lot of things forgivable.



It's an small 100 yr-old farmhouse on a very quiet road. Surrounded by a farm, with a few close neighbors. There are some ancient Maple trees in the yard that had full sap buckets hanging from them. It's almost one acre. The side yard is open and flat and perfect for practicing lacrosse or playing fetch with the dog. The downstairs is only three rooms, with wide plank floors and a fireplace in the living room. The kitchen is big and sunny. Upstairs is a bit cramped and "pokey". But there are three bedrooms, and the MBR is big enough for the King Bed, so that's all we care about. Although the fact that the bedroom doors were missing is something that needs to be fixed soon. Only one bathroom, oh well.

One big problem is that the back deck rotted away, so that needs to be replaced. And half of the roof was redone, so there must have been leaks, and may be more soon where the roof wasn't redone. We also don't know what the electric amparage might be. There are still homes in this area with 100 amp service, instead of the current standard of 200 amp, and I don't think our computer and microwave would like that.

We're going to take a look at a 1980's log cabin tomorrow. And another house that is in a higher price range. But we could very well put on offer on this one by the weekend.