Friday, April 29, 2005

Eric's Animals

Eric sleeps with 2 stuffed animals in his crib. One we call his "Cow Cow." The other is a soft, floppy stuffed navy-blue elephant, that we call "The Elephant." For the most part he ignores them. We keep them in there more for consistencies sake than anything else. We bring them with us on trips, not because he's particularly attached to them, but so that he sees the same stuff in his crib from night to night.

Lately if I get up if he wakes up, I spend hours tossing around trying to get back to sleep. Lately any night trips -- event to the bathroom trigger a strange allergy attack. So, I toss, turn sneeze, blow my nose, repeat. In general Rich says good night, rolls over and if I try to ask him a question ten seconds later, he's already out. He can fall asleep quickly too if he gets up in the night. So, if E starts fussing in the night, Rich generally goes in there and gets him.

The other night I was vaguely aware that Rich brought Eric into our bed. I reached out to snuggle him and I was holding Cow Cow. I said "Thank you, Eric." and tried not to open my eyes much more and he handed me The Elephant. Dazed and mostly asleep, I had no idea how these 2 stuffed animals had ended up in my hands. The next morning we all woke up with Cow Cow, The Elephant and Eric all snuggled into our bed between us.

Rich said that when he went in there to get The Boy he was standing there holding them and didn't put them down when he picked them up.

I guess he was saving them for his Mom.

What a guy.

Sigh.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

I am in a sleepy fog
Woke up this morning to NPR at 4:30. I had to be into work for five AM to prepare for a power shutdown they need to do in our machine room as part of a major HVAC overhaul. As I suspected we were finished by 6:15, so when we put everything back on normal power tomorrow, we can start at 7 instead of 5.

We were informed yesterday afternoon that the buyer had decided not to go forward. I felt strangely relieved, and not at all surprised. I think I let my emotions get in the way of this a little as well. The whole thing got started on the wrong foot when I got home after the second showing. The buyers and their agent were huddled at the bottom of my neighbor's driveway having a summit. We smiled at them and they looked at us stony-faced. We kind of shrugged off and thought, how odd. Then the buyer's agent told our broker that we might get an offer well under asking. So, I was predisposed low expectations on this.

We have the best condo association. Everybody does stuff around the house and really enjoys keeping the place up. My neighbor ripped up our real estate sign, but that was not out of any animosity towards us. It was more about his complete love of the garden. He almost apologized for it in his gruff way when I talked to him about it last week. I felt bad about having somebody in there who seemed, I don't know. Discourteous? So, it wasn't just monitary greed that made me leery of this whole thing.

So, I think I'll continue to play Monday Morning Quarterback on this.

The weird thing is that the traffic on this blog had a big jump yesterday. I hope if the buyer did google me, he wasn't offended by anything he read here.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

A Message, A Sigh and not Enough Sleep

Eric and I swept in the door last night and he immediately ran for the pantry to get his cheerios. I plopped him into his booster seat and got his juice together and cheerios together while I checked my voicemail.

My realtor called with some news. I punched in her number and we chatted briefly. They upped their offer another 15k. I said I'd talk it over with The Husband and he walked into the door as I clicked the phone off. We conferred, I called my mother. She said to counter again. And I was like what do you know? You've never sold a piece of property. And she laughed, because she hasn't. She still owns all the houses they've ever bought.

The upshot was that I felt really free to walk away from this Buyer. It was a strange feeling. I've been so anxious about this whole thing. I looked through the real estate listings over and over again. You can't get a unit like ours for what they were offering us. You can't get a unit like this anywhere in the City for that matter. I think if we wanted to sell it for what they were offering us we'd have multiple bids. I think I was unreasonably annoyed by their first offer. Yes, there are a lot of condos on the market in Somerville right now, but come on. Nobody takes a low ball offer very seriously. It starts the negotiation off on the wrong foot. The median price of condos in Massachusetts rose 20% last year. If you're serious, make a reasonable offer, or don't waste my time.

So we sort of countered again. If they want it they'll have to get within our range. If not, we're having another open house this weekend and something good will happen. I'm in no rush, and that's what I learned from this experience. We could carry that place for over a year on the difference between what they were offering us, and what we actually think the place is worth.

I'm just annoyed because I woke up last night to check on Eric and I couldn't get back to sleep because I kept thinking about this.

Grrrr... Argh.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Looks like ARTHROSCOPY!

So, I saw the chief Orthopedics at Cambridge Hospital yesterday morning. He was only an hour and a half late. I've seen worse. He looked at my MRI and said my kneecap did look a little high. I said, it hadn't been smoking anything unusual lately and he looked at me strangely. He wants to scope my knee. In non surgical terms, that means he'd like cut holes in my leg so he can look at my the inside of my knee with a small camera and various pointy surgical intstruments. I thought he should at least take me out to dinner first. Again, with the strange looks.

So I scheduled it for 5/6. He said it's outpatient surgery and that I'd walk out of there. Some people are on crutches for a couple of days, but it's really not a big deal. Knowing my luck, they'll have to roll me out in a large barrel that's had pickles soaking in it for the last 10 years.

I may need major surgery, but I think I'd rather suffer in pain for a few more years than suffer in LOTS of pain for a few months. I'll know a lot more after the scope next week. I've been avoiding this since 1998. So, I think I'd better get this taken care of before it gets any worse.

In other news, we got an offer on the condo. And before you go applauding this and being all happy for us, DON'T. It was a BAD offer. 40k under asking price, if you can believe that? It was pretty ballsey. So, we countered them up 30k, but I'm not holding my breath. Hear that? Big sighs over here. LOTS of breathing going on. I know this low ball strategy works in some cases, but neither Rich nor I are anywhere near desperate. Rich's credit problems have been deleted from his report, so we can get a loan if we need to. We don't even have a contractor yet, so it's a bit less of an issue than it was a few weeks ago. We're waiting on 3 bids. If none of them are reasonable, we'll just do some minor repairs and wait.

I can live with that.