flea

1. I had to leave the room while in a meeting at work, because I didn't trust my ability to keep my temper.

2. I spent most of the day working on a big spreadsheet. I've had students work in it at various times, and at some point somebody - I sure as hell hope not me - sorted one of the columns but not all of them, so that the data are now mismatched. In good news, some of it is still okay - it doesn't all have to be done from scratch - but in not so good news, you can't necessarily tell by looking whether the data in a given row is right or not. So I really ought to check everything. All 1200 items.

3. mr. flea had to call the mortgage company again. They accidentally paid $4000 from our escrow account to a random county in which our house is not located. They have been remarkably remiss in clearing up this error, and our statement for payment, due tomorrow, asks us to pay an extra $500 to start rebuilding our escrow. They said we should go ahead and pay the old amount, and they will send us a new statement eventually. My distrust of the company is such that I worry that this is some trick to declare us delinquent and make us pay huge fees.

4. Casper has been having homework fits all week. Tears and procrastination and the whole thing. Tonight is no different. Tomorrow a book report is due.

5. The uptight downstairs neighbor pounded on the ceiling, at 7pm on a Wednesday, because Dillo was dancing around in the dining room (which is uncarpeted because, hey dining room, with messy kids at the table). Dillo wasn't even wearing shoes. This is not the first incident of ceiling-pounding, and the other weekend said neighbor had a freakout at mr. flea because the children were running to and fro. At noon on a Sunday. Being, you know, kids. It makes me feel like we don;t have a right to have actual lives.

I miss our own house and my old job and our lives.

Just got back from a nice lunch with a faculty member and her visiting colleague, at which we had a pleasant discussion about academia, academic publishing, gender inequities in academia, the conservative nature of Classics and the awesome nature of archaeologists, etc.

And got, bam, bam, two emails: one from our banker saying the house appraised at enough less than we paid for it that it doesn't make sense to refinance (because we'd need mortgage insurance), and the second from the historic preservation planning office with the staff recommendation on our application, which says we can put a membrane roof on the porch and take down the back chimney as long as we keep a shingle roof on the main part of the house.

Looking on the bright side, at least we don't have to actually sell our house? And the banker is awesome, and offered the split the appraisal fee so we'd only be out $175 for the attempt. She honestly didn't expect it to appraise that low.

Also on the bright side, I was expecting this verdict from the historic preservation commission, and the staff report contained some information I didn't know about the house (the wrapping portion of the porch was added after 1960, because it does not appear on the latest Sanborn maps they have).

Still, have had better Fridays.

Apparently mortgage rates are insanely low right now - yes, even more insanely low than usual - and the people who buy up mortgages are desperate for good quality loans to buy. As a result, we currently have the opportunity to refinance at ZERO cost to us - the bank will pay all costs and recoup the difference when they sell our mortgage off. (Yes, mr. flea said, "Hang on, explain that one more time?" to our banker.) We can go from our current rather decent just-under-6% rate to something like 4.75 for free, which doesn't seem like much but cuts $150 a month off our payments and reduces the interest over the course of the loan by more than 100K. If we were willing to pay points (we aren't, because of the uncertainty of mr. flea's employment) we could get a rate as low as 4.26% (for 20% down, good credit, 30 year fixed rate.) If you've thought about refinancing, definitely look into what a reputable bank can do for you right now.

The good:
I baked chocolate chip scones, oatmeal bread, and butter cookies; cooked bistro bowtie salad with homegrown spinach, pork roast, and kale and heirloom beans. I did laundry, got the multiplying boxes (and a bird's nest with eggs in it, idiot bird) out of the laundry room, swept the pollen off both porches (again), dug over a new garden bed (yes I admitted I need more space), made a list and grocery shopped, bought frames for 3 items I've been wanting to frame, and spent $15 on beginning acrylic painting supplies for Casper.

The bad:
mr. flea worked on the plumbing all day Saturday (while it poured rain) and until 2pm on Sunday, and my job was to sit and wait for him to be done, while not killing my children. This was rather harder than you'd think, especially since Dillo is SO THREE. We need to find a better way to get house renovations done, since I actually LIKE doing things and HATE sitting around minding the children. But he has the plumbing skills and the patience and temperament to do it right (even is he is SO SLOW.)

We're not done yet; the upstairs sink is not yet plumbed, because to do it means opening up the wall, and by 2pm mr. flea was tired and sweaty and knew he wouldn't be able to get the wall closed today. So nothing's turned on, even through 2/3 of it is all hooked up. Which means we have to do it all again next weekend. Ugh.

We're talking again about the possibility of a new car - a used Toyota Matrix is looking good right now - an '04 or '05, maybe. This leads to talking about the funding of a new car. Which leads to actually setting out, with data, what our monthly income and outflows are. And of course it turns out that the reason we are finding it so hard to save anything is that they are too close together. Our absolute necessities: mortgage, child care, utilities, car insurance and gas, student loan payment, and groceries, puts us with $1200 left over for the month. I'm currently sending $250 of that to my IRA, and then there are things like two plane trips for 4 to Boston in successive months, my MLS tuition, dental care, termite treatment, etc. Some is getting frittered away in mr. flea's lunches out and unnecessary household items, but not really very much. Not enough that if we were really tight about it we'd be able to save up $6000 in the next six months for the other half of a car.

This burden should ease. mr. flea got a rather nice raise recently (6% if I am doing the math right), which was a nice surprise, since my workplace is furloughing me 6 days this year. In 10 months Dillo will start PreK, though my plan is to put the monthly daycare money into a college savings fund starting then. I should be getting a (marginally) better-paying librarian job in the next few years, assuming my workplace ever stops its hiring freeze.

But it's disappointing to see how our spending has risen to our dramatically increased income. Our mortgage is twice our rent (we had really cheap rent); our utilities are higher here (gas/electric some, because the house is bigger, but we now pay 3x as much for water/sewer/trash as we were, which is just a function of the municipality); we have a student loan payment for the first time in a while. Some luxuries are included in those "necessities": $30 a month for satellite TV, $12 a month for a cell phone, $45 for internet. Not a lot I suspect compared to some people.

Casper is attending Camp Invention this week, which is on campus. Camp goes from 9-3:30; registration started at 8:30 today. Today Casper and I got dropped off at my work at 7:45, left my work at about 8:10 to make our way down the camp, which is in a building at the other end of campus (I intended to walk but forgot how slow children are; we took the bus after walking 1/3 of the way). I registered her, chatted with an acquaintance, and booked it back up to the Main library. Then I worked, then left work at 3:15, got a bus after waiting 8 minutes (it was 90 degrees by then, no fun walking at my pace for 20 minutes), back down, picked her up, bus back, we got to my office by about 3:50. I set her up on the computer of my coworker who was out today, and she did a little playing with Teletubbies. I had to go over and help her figure out what to click approximately every 3 minutes. I got my one email drafted and mailed. We left at 4:55 and went to get picked up.

Tomorrow and Thursday a friend is taking Casper home after camp, because I have 3-4 and 3:30-5pm meetings. Because the friend has a swim lesson at 6, we have to be prompt at picking Casper up right at 5. No, I have no idea how I'm going to go to a meeting that lasts until 5 and then be across town also at 5.

I was mentally exhausted and stressed out all day about this (and also, again, still, about the stupid vacation we are having to take in 4 weeks, and money). This is why I like the YMCA, because they run from 8-6.

Also, my bedroom will never be painted at this rate. Also also, my son will be 3 in six weeks and still have NEVER peed in the potty. Am I going to fail at potty training TWICE?

Zillow currently has our house "zestimated" at $51K more than we paid for it 9 months ago. The real estate market here is strong!

(Why yes, I just came home from a child's birthday party where real estate was discussed. Athens - just like Durham, only smaller and more incestuous!)

For house people, the Sanborn fire insurance maps are great. Here's Athens in 1918:

http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/sanborn/CityCounty/Athens1918/Sheet9.html

Our house isn't there, which is not a surprise since we were told it was built in either 1920 or 1928. But it's fun to go back (Athens goes back to 1885) and see which houses in our neighborhood appear when.

A series of personal anecdotes.

We have lived in GA for five months now (as of Thursday!) and have experienced 4 separate infestations.

1. Ants. We had sugar ants in the house as soon as we moved in, and they laughed at our ant baits, unlike the NC sugar ants. We never really found the solution. They waxed and waned (keeping the sink religiously free of unwashed dishes was the best success) until cold weather set in.

2. Roaches. Not the little German cockroaches that inhabit urban locations in the northeast, but "water bugs" - inch-plus long cockroaches that are native to the South and live outside. We see them, live or dead, fairly regularly in the house (like, every couple of weeks). I killed one yesterday right inside the front door. The worst incident was when one fell from the ceiling onto the face of sleeping (not for long!) mr. flea. I don't know that there's much that we can do to keep them out. I think they are mostly coming from outside, and the house is an old and leaky one. I see dead ones on the sidewalks around town regularly, even in winter. They're basically endemic. I am trying to get better at killing them. In general I am not freaked out by bugs, but I hate roaches and their scuttling, and these are so big that when you kill them they are mushy and gross.

3. Squirrels. Our house is in what was once a pecan grove, and there are 4 large trees in our back yard. Should we wish to harvest pecans, we would have to fight the very numerous and aggressive squirrels for them. Now that nut season has passed, the squirrels seem to have turned to digging up my bulbs (at least, there are suspicious-looking holes in a couple of places; we'll see come spring) and invading our attic. In our bedroom, which is the converted attic, we hear the ceiling squirrels fairly often. Sometimes they are almost certainly outside, but other times they seem to be inside. Outside, they seem to have largely eaten a piece of metal flashing below our bathroom window. Our neighbor noted that it was new flashing installed when the former owner was putting the house up for sale, so it has been half-destroyed by squirrels in less than a year. (Our neighbor also told me about the Rat Wars of '98. Shudder.)

4. Which brings us to the incident that prompted this post. Friday night mr. flea was in our downstairs bathroom, which has a one-piece tub and surround unit, the fiberglass kind. He heard scratching underneath the tub. He then went into the kitchen and hear scratching coming from one of our lower cabinets. This particular cabinet backs up against the bathroom wall and has a big hole cut into the back, presumably where someone was accessing the bathroom plumbing at some point. Inside the cabinet mr. flea discovered a large possum. He managed not to shriek, but closed the cabinet door right pronto, and locked it with a child lock. We haven't opened it since, but have also heard no noises. Perhaps Mr. Possum has exited the building through whatever hold in the crawl space he entered through. My dear friends on Facebook, however, have regaled me with tales of possums with nests of babies in the house. But it's not possum baby-having season, right? Right?

5. I also want to note that the giant prehistoric grasshoppers, known as lubbers, are evil. They probably can't be counted as vermin, since they are a native species and (so far) have not attempted to come inside the house. But they are freaky-scary and they eat garden plants, so they lose on both the aesthetic and practical fronts.

In the plus column, we acquired Christmas cards (half #5 and half #9 - the former for elderly relatives and the latter for folks with a sense of humor) (viva la Target; I sent in the order and got an email 8 minutes later saying it was ready), got the grocery shopping done, got 25 leaf bags to the curb (mr. flea), and washed, taped and cut in 1/2 of the kitchen walls (me).

In the minus column, Dillo is pretty poorly, pale, threw up all day long long after there was nothing left inside (we've given him some fluids to prevent dehydration and he throws them up). Casper was okay, not barfy but listless and low, and then fell asleep and woke with one of her night-terror-like times - loud, inconsolable crying. Both are fitfully asleep now in the living room. I sit and look at them and frown. mr. flea's turn to stay home tomorrow.