This Must Be the Place

Home - is where I want to be

But I guess I’m already there
I come home - she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place

-- Talking Heads

Home is where the heart is.

-- traditional proverb

Mama, I yike this new house!

-- Ceeya

Viva is eight years old, and she has lived in five different homes. Heck, Ceeya is not even three and she is on her third residence. That is a lot of moving.

I have been thinking a lot about what home means lately. I moved a lot as a kid—not just from apartment to apartment but from school to school as we moved. I moved away to college in Pennsylvania, and then I moved back to my hometown of Boston.   And then I moved all the way across country, to San Diego and then Los Angeles. Pre-marriage, I also moved a lot within Los Angeles, which I actually enjoyed because I got to try out a lot of different neighborhoods.

Moving sucks. At the same time, I like moving. I like finding a new place, exploring how things fit together, figuring out new routes to work and school, discovering the little gems of each new place. Now even though we have only moved about three miles away from our old place, I am learning all the ins and outs of our new neighborhood and our new space. There are so many pleasant little surprises as you go.

And at the end of the day, no matter where we are, when I open the door and hear, “Mommy’s home!”:  I am home. And I get to plop down in the middle of my grabby, yelly, huggy family and be bombarded by tales of the day and how hungry they are and look at their boo-boos and fingerpaintings and math homework and the latest photographs Sweet Dub has taken. And what could be better than that?

The Blah Blahs Have Landed

I won’t bore you with the details, but on Friday, September 9, the Blah Blah Family finally moved.

It took weeks of preparation, as we were essentially cutting our living space in half—moving from a three bedroom house with a separate studio to a two bedroom apartment. If you have never had to do something like this, well, I am not going to say you should try it. But it was cathartic, the amount of stuff we had to go through and decide what we could and could not live without. And also, with the number of times we have moved in the past five years, I have never had a decent amount of time to go through all my belongings and decide what I did not need to keep. Since I knew space was at a premium, I elected to take a week off between Labor Day and Moving Day to devote myself 100% to going through every room in the house and culling all unnecessary items. Result: this time around I was shredding tax documents dating all the way back to 1998. Can you imagine? I’ve been carting all that stuff around?! It boggles the mind.

So: lots of trips to Goodwill to give stuff away, handing over bags of outgrown clothes to Viva’s friend in second grade, a bed to Sweet Dub’s stepbrother, a couch to the Parent Center at our local elementary school—and countless trips to put stuff in storage. Sweet Dub is determined to empty out the stuff in storage (lots of baby items—stroller, car seat, etc. in excellent condition) by putting it on Craigslist/eBay. We shall see.

I have added another 15 minutes to my commute, which means I leave the house with Viva by 7:30 AM, drop her off at school at 7:45-7:50ish, and get to work by 8:15. I am trying to mellow out about it and listen to podcasts or mixes I love on 8tracks or Pandora by hooking up my phone to my car radio. It’s not the end of the world, but for those familiar with LA, I am driving from Culver City/Fox Hills to Echo Park and back during rush hour. I do not recommend it.

The kids are happy, because now we have a pool and Viva can swim every day and Ceeya can float about with her life jacket on when she feels up to it. There are long stretches of pathways and sidewalks that they can tear about on, on their bikes. We are all together, which is all that matters when it comes down to it.

Related story: the night before the move, as I was putting the kids to bed, I said, “Okay, you guys, time to sleep and not a peep. Daddy and I are really busy getting things ready for the move tomorrow so I need you guys to go right to bed and no shenanigans.”

Ceeya: (Sniff. SNIFF!)

Viva: Mom?

Mama Blah (extricating from the bedclothes): Yes, Veev?

Viva: Ceeya is crying.

Mama Blah: No she’s not, she’s fake crying, just like she fake hiccups. You know she does that.

Ceeya: (SNIFF, SNIFF!)

Viva: No, Mom, I think she’s really crying. Look at her eyes.

Mama Blah (peering in the dim light of the nightlight and realizing she’s right): Ceeya? Are you crying?

Ceeya flings herself into my lap.

Mama Blah: Oh, no! What’s wrong, baby? Are you sad?

Ceeya (wrapping her arms around my legs): Yah.

Mama Blah: Are you sad about the move? About having to leave this house?

Ceeya (mournfully): YeeeAAAAH.

Mama Blah: Aw, honey. That’s normal. We’ve had a lot of happy times in this house. But we’re also going to have a lot of happy and fun times in the new house, okay?

Viva: Yeah, Ceeya, it has a really big bathtub [the pool] for you to play in! And we’re right by the park! And lots of kids live around there!

Mama Blah: That’s right. We’re going to go swimming, and to the playground…

Ceeya : (SNIFF! SNIFF!) I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE DADDY! (breaks down completely)

Mama Blah: What??
Viva (simultaneously): Oh my God.

Mama Blah: Baby, Daddy’s coming with us to the new house. You thought we were leaving him behind?
Viva (simultaneously): Oh my God, Ceeya, you’re so weird, we’re not leaving Daddy!

Mama Blah: Viva, go get your dad. (Viva leaves the room.) Ceeya, baby, we all go together—you, me, Viva and Daddy. We are ALWAYS together. We would never move and leave Daddy, okay? We are all going to live together in the new house. (Sweet Dub arrives and we all pile in for a big Blah Blah Family hug as he reassures her.)



Man, kids are something else.

By the way, any tips for cooking on an electric stove? I’m completely useless at it.

All Over the Place

Are you still there? 

My mind is kind of running amok these days. Work has been extra busy since sometime in May. As I reached a deadline of July 15th for a major project, about to breathe a sigh of relief and expecting to take just a couple of days off, my boss informed me that she needed me to write a $500,000 proposal, due in less than two weeks, on a brand new project we are developing. “You’re not going to be able to take any time off until August—like me,” she said. I was already fried then, but I sucked it up and just kept going. It had to be done, and no one else could do it. My boss has been working every weekend since March. She is a machine! (And I say this with affection. She never asks more than she would do herself.)

So: other deadline reached. While others loom, we have both cried Uncle. She is off on vacation and I am finally going to get some time off later this week (just a couple of days to celebrate my birthday. I will be 43. Ye Gods!). I will then come back, refreshed, and work a couple more weeks before I take a full week off around Labor Day, at which point we will be moving into the hypothetical new home we are miraculously going to find this week. (Yes, I agree, not much of a vacation.)

Here’s where we are with that: given our current economic status, we need to downsize. Sweet Dub, God bless him, has been out of work since April 2010. While he has been exploring various avenues*, freelancing and the like, he does not have a regular source of income. Our house, which is awesome, is a little big for us and we could stand to go smaller. While I was hoping we could find a modest house to rent in the area, here is what I am finding:

(1) small, rundown crappy houses where I would have to buy a gun and a German Shepherd 5 minutes after moving in or, if in a reasonably safe area, houses which need major home improvements/repairs which have not yet even begun but are “planned” (e.g. installation of central heat);

(2) huge, rundown houses that would cost a fortune to heat and cool;

(3) ridiculously overpriced condos;

(4) cute houses in decent condition that are a good $500-$1000 more a month than we can comfortably spend.

An added wrinkle is that to remain in proximity to our current neighborhood—i.e. within a three-mile radius—we are looking at areas that are actually not in our school district. We are on the border of Culver City, which has a really good school system, and we are also on the border of Ladera Heights, which I just recently learned is not part of Los Angeles Unified but part of the Inglewood School District (definitely NOT good schools, from all I’ve read and heard). For many reasons, this bums me out, because Viva is happy with the magnet program at her LAUSD school and I would hate to move her. As I’ve said before, we love the neighborhood we’re in and feel very much a part of the community, so we want to stay in the general area.

We have finally faced the facts and are looking at apartments (still not in our current neighborhood, because the trend there seems to be “nice little houses not-for-rent” and “kind of crummy apartment buildings.” Not sure why this is. ). I am trying to make peace with this.

I know, woe is me with my petty little problems. I grew up in a series of cramped apartments, so I know where my resistance on this comes from. But really: “Oh noes, we have to move into an apartment!” It’s not the end of the world. I am lucky, given the continuing crappy economy, to have a job. I can still feed my family. So we will have to give up our cushy house with the yard and our illusion of suburban home living. Big freakin’ deal, right?

But honestly, I am not trying to live in the lap of luxury. I just want a place that’s clean, and safe, and peaceful. I don’t want to have to spend my first few days in a new place scrubbing to get it clean. If you know me in real life, you know I am not a neat freak. Trust when I say that too many of the places we have been seeing are grubby. I can’t believe people expect you to spend hard-earned money to move into a place that is raggedy and dirty.

This weekend I saw a house for lease which, if I had been in the market to buy, I might have considered. I might have been able to live with its flaws if I knew I could fix them. It was spacious, it had great bones, and it was in a quiet neighborhood with a decent yard. The paint on the exterior was peeling, the upstairs bathroom was godawful (bright pink tile and a baby blue bathtub), and the whole interior had a feeling of neglect. Walls needed spackling and painting, carpet should have been ripped up and replaced or maybe let the hardwood floors come out to play. In any event, I knew Sweet Dub (who was off hammering out some legal issues with prospective partners in Glendale) would hate it. I had to smile and pass.

Right now it is looking like we are apartment-bound, for sure. I am less upset about that today than I was over the weekend. Stay tuned.


* Sweet Dub has really been working hard to get a number of television projects off the ground. This is an added frustration, because while he does have interest from some major players, including a cable network, things move slowly. Everyone is very encouraging; we are hopeful that he will get a deal but it could be six months from now. Or, it being Hollywood, it could be never. He now has three projects in development, one of which looks like it will actually happen (network people have been flying out from New York to talk with him, they email back and forth constantly) but not before we move. Of course. Sigh.

It’s All Good in My ‘Hood

The Blah Blah Family has had our fair share of crappy luck with housing. Since 2006, we have rented three houses in the Los Angeles area, and in every single case the owner has had to move back into the house due to a change in personal circumstances. This is our third house and our favorite so far, and again, we have to move.

I will miss the house itself, as we have lived here for almost two years and that is most of Ceeya’s life, so a lot of great memories were made inside these walls. The house is a good size for us—actually, a little big for us, which means more house to clean, and obviously I don’t love that aspect of it. The yard is ginormous. When people visit us they can’t get over it, and I love that aspect of the property too. But what I will miss most about it is the neighborhood it’s in.

I want to say the house is on a cul-de-sac, but in actuality it sits right at the middle part of a crescent-shaped street. You turn off of a main road, follow the street around in a loop and it takes you right back out to the main road. The local elementary school is right down the street, so we walk Viva to school. The park and recreation center is next to the school, and Viva goes to an after-school program and summer camp there, and has also played in their T-ball and Little Jammers basketball leagues. Last weekend our local Councilmember sponsored a Movies in the Park night, and I took the girls over while Sweet Dub was out working on a freelance gig. We spread out a blanket on the baseball diamond near some friends, and when Ceeya got sleepy, I had no qualms about taking her home and leaving Viva “alone” to continue to watch the movie. Another friend said she’d just drop her off at home when the movie ended. As it turned out, Sweet Dub got home twenty minutes later and just walked over to get her, but he didn’t have to.

Given our proximity to the park, and Viva’s involvement in sports, we’ve gotten to know a lot of our neighbors. People are friendly. It’s also a racially mixed neighborhood, which (with the range of skin tones in my family) makes me feel comfortable. When you go to the supermarket, there’s a mixture of black, Asian, white, Hispanic—all of which I naively expected to find in every neighborhood when I moved to LA (hey, they said it was one of the most diverse cities in the world). I would classify it as a solidly middle-class neighborhood if I had to throw a label on it.

I like when I am walking down the street either to or from the school in the morning and people honk and wave, or I stop to talk to my neighbor and his 3-year-old as they head off to preschool and work. I like that I run into people I know—friends from Viva’s old preschool, her 2nd grade teacher, the mom of a classmate—at Target, at the mall, at the market, and we stop to have a friendly chat. I love that my neighborhood is welcoming and pleasant to move about in. I love that it’s clean and has nice big trees and people walking their dogs and kids riding their scooters to the park.

Lately I have become really nostalgic about having to move and leave our little corner of the universe. We lucked into finding this house. It is really hard to find a rental in this area. We’ve looked at a couple of options in a three-mile radius but the places have been really run-down, or too small, or too big.

Sigh. The perfect place will manifest, right? I’m trying to be all about the power of positive thinking and focus on all the things I love about this situation so I can be clear about what I’m looking for. But I think I’m just trying to replicate this house and this block. Maybe that means we’ll find something even better?

Completely Bone Tired. And Not in the Way I Like.

We've moved. In the midst of 100-degree heat and horrendous air quality due to the wildfires here in Los Angeles. Dear God, my head hurts.

Posting will remain light as we get settled.

Room to Breathe

What a momentous weekend!

Celia turned 10 months! I would post a recent picture but I've been distracted because:

Viva lost her top front tooth! She was excited, if a little unsure, because some spoilsport 5^th grader at school told her "The Tooth Fairy is actually your mom." I was happy to honestly be able to tell her I have never snuck into her room to take her tooth and leave money under her pillow. (I leave that to Daddy since I generally fall asleep while waiting for Viva to fall asleep on such occasions.) I would post a picture of her newly revised smile, but I haven't had a minute because:

We found a house! And we've been approved to rent it! Thank you, thank you, everyone, for sending all your good wishes and good vibes our way. There are many simply wonderful things about this house:

• It is about the same square footage as our current house, but costs substantially less. I mean, way less. I mean, like cuts our housing costs by one-quarter.
• It sits on a 14,000 square foot lot. No, that's not a typo. It's huge, especially by LA standards. The backyard goes on forever, and it's completely gated, and it's flat! Perfect for playing soccer, tag, whatever.
• The house itself has three bedrooms and three baths, and comes with all appliances including a restaurant-grade six-burner stove. I admit to being a little intimidated by the stove, although the owner says, "On Thanksgiving, you can cook a turkey and a ham at the same time, and cook your pies – all on the same day!" That sounds a little ambitious, wouldn't you say?
• The neighborhood seems to be a very nice diverse mix of ages and racial/ethnic backgrounds: you got your Hispanic, African-American, South Asian and Asian all very well-represented on the same street, and young families with kids live side-by-side with elderly types.
• There's an elementary school down the block, which makes it a safe school zone (note that the accompanying link is not for our specific neighborhood school, but it’s still a good explanation). The park right next to the school is well-patrolled as well as being locked at night. There’s also a sheriff living right around the corner.
• It's not a cut-through to anywhere – the street curves around in a "C," taking you around the block right back to the main street from which it comes. That, combined with the speed humps peppered along, means there's no speeding through the neighborhood.
• It's less than a mile from Target! And Trader Joe's!
• The shower stall in the master suite is 5' by 5' and has three shower heads. And a separate Jacuzzi tub. "There is a danger that we could get spoiled by this house," I said to Sweet Dub this weekend. It is a little crazy. I like that the house is very modest from the outside. (Ah, that New England Puritan streak rears its ugly head at the most unexpected times.)
• It's a slightly longer commute, but still no freeway driving.
• We can get a dog. Since Viva has been asking for a puppy almost every day since she was about three, this is very welcome news. Not something that will happen right away, but fun to think about.
• Two of Dub's closest friends (who he's known since junior high) live less than five minutes away. One has two girls, ages 7 and 3, and the other has a 9-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter. Viva has known them all her life, so it is pretty much Insta-Playdate City.

We are officially moving next weekend, although the house is now vacant and we are cleared to move in at any time. We spent much of this weekend sorting, cleaning, and packing. I am relieved to have packed about half of my kitchen, which is usually one of the most time-consuming jobs. Any box which is labeled "kitchen - not everyday" can happily sit for a few weeks without being unpacked, and seeing as they don't get much use anyway, my giant roasting pan, blender, and slow-cooker will be none the wiser.

Posting may be lighter than usual (I know, how is that even possible?) over the next couple of weeks due to the moving mayhem.

And, exhale.

P.S. Apologies if you see multiple RSS-feed updates. Something is funky with the spacing so I had to keep going back to try and fix it after it already published.

P.P.S. I had to go back and tinker with the HTML again. Sorry. Something is just not sitting right with the Blogger temperament.

P.P.P.S. Ah. I just discovered that Blogger thinks I am typing this whole post as a table. Yeah, but I'm not, see?

On the move. Yeah, again.

“Your life is like a bad comedy,” the real estate agent said as she was showing us a place on Saturday.

It’s not feeling very funny right now. Let’s recap: about a year ago, our then-landlord contacted us and apologetically stated that he and his wife were getting divorced, and that he knew it was horrible timing since we were expecting a new baby, but that he would like his house back. I was 7.5 months pregnant. We found another place and, one week after getting out of the hospital from my C-section, we moved to our current rental house.

Now, our current landlord has approached us with the wonderful news that he and his wife are expecting. How exciting! Oh, and guess what – they want their house back. They’re happy to let us out of our lease early if we can find something and get the heck out.

Both times, this hasn’t given us enough time to find a place to buy, even if we were in the position to do so. This has been a rough year financially. You remember that we thought we could pay more in rent because it would be offset by having Viva in public school and not having to pay private school tuition. Oh, you remember how well that worked out. And we’re also now paying for daycare for Miss Celie. Our rate of saving has slowed down dramatically.

And moving is expensive. You have to put down deposits, you have to rent a truck, you have to pay installation fees for cable/satellite, the phone, etc. Not to mention you have to pack up all your crap.

Things are dark over here in my little corner of the universe. It will pass. We will find a place. We might manage to stay in this new place until we can afford to buy something. Think good thoughts.

Day Eight. Vinyasa Blah Blah.

1. Relieved to read “Renting still beats buying.” Sweet Dub and I have an ongoing conversation about this since we’re not convinced that a 30-year-mortgage is something we should be struggling to obtain.

2. Today is workout day and I’m actually looking forward to it! I think today might be a yoga day.

3. I discovered this new (to me) singer through the magic of NPR and today I created a Pandora station with similar-sounding artists.

4. My boss called me in to her office today and shut the door. Yikes. No, it turns out people where I work are actually fighting over me and approached her to ask if I could work on a project. She is reluctant to let me do it, but agreed I could work with this other department on one creative project a month. (Backstory: I worked with them on occasional projects as a favor until they hired someone new. Now it turns out they like my writing better. Nice!) I am more than happy to get a break from my routine to do something fun.

5. Despite (or maybe because of) the dire economic news, Sweet Dub and I have been talking about taking a REAL vacation this year. “I’ve been working for twelve years and I’ve only ever taken one real vacation,” Sweet Dub says. You know what? Yeah, life is short. Let’s hit the road!

Sandwiches and Synchronicity

When Sweet Dub and I first began dating we kept being struck by how similar we were. Naturally, some of that was just part of getting to know each other and finding out how compatible you are (or are not). At one point while we were dating, I arrived at Sweet Dub’s apartment after a horrible day at work and rather than cooking anything, he decided he would just go get us some sandwiches at Subway. Tenderly (partly because you know, these were our early days, and partly because I’d had such a crummy day), he said, “What kind of sandwich would you like, my sweetie?”

“The [sandwich name redacted because now I can’t remember it],” I said. “It’s not on the menu anymore, but if you ask for it they’ll make it.”

“Are you KIDDING me?” Sweet Dub said.

“No, I know it sounds weird, but they’ll know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“I KNOW,” he said. “That’s my sandwich.” He actually sat down, he was so thrown. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “We are so alike that we even eat the same sandwich.”

That has become a shorthand of sorts for us.

Recently, each of us unbeknownst to the other, on the same day, went on to craigslist to check rental prices in our area. While we just moved (JUST MOVED! You remember?) in November into a year-long lease, we both already went back to craigslist to look around. I think both of us were wondering in this economy whether we are getting our money’s worth in the neighborhood we’re in. The consensus: yes. Rents are not coming down, at least not here. We both independently concluded that we should continue to watch the market and possibly start looking at buying a house later this year, as our lease expires. When we discovered that we had each done this on the same day, all we could do was laugh.

“That is unbelievable,” Dub said.

Yeah. Same sandwich.

Ever So Slightly Busy

I'm on maternity leave and to most people that seems to mean that I must be lying around with my feet up, watching home shows. Perhaps that is what I should be doing, but alas, I am also one of those people who can't sit still when I have a big block of time in front of me and major life changes on the way, to wit: having the baby and moving to a new house one week later.

One week from today, at about this time, I should be in the operating room having a human being removed from my uterus. While it looked like Miss Thing might come early, now I am of the opinion that she was just teasing us, as her sister did five years ago, and she will come exactly on the day she is supposed to. If she does come slightly early, I am hoping for Thursday - which is two days from now, and is my stepfather's birthday. Since he has been having numerous health problems, I think that would be kind of nice.

In the meantime, I've been trying to tie up every loose end possible:

* Viva's Halloween costume is almost done. She will be Barry B. Benson or my name ain't Mama Blah. (Well, technically, it's not. Whatever, you get the gist.)

* I have researched all of our state propositions and figured out how I am going to vote on each one (I vote by mail, so all I have to do now is fill out my ballot).

* I am halfway through online traffic school for that damn "did not come to a complete stop" traffic ticket.

* I've paid all my bills.

* I have completed all maternity leave paperwork.

* I have done an insane amount of laundry (in fact, I have a load in right now).

* I've drafted the birth announcement, created labels and bought stamps for the mailing, and bought the announcement cards to be printed when the baby arrives.

* I've packed almost all the books in our living room.

* I've packed all unnecessary bathroom items. Today I'm moving on to the kitchen (upper cabinets - all the dishes I use for entertaining, mixing bowls, wineglasses, etc).

* I created a "baby countdown" for Viva whereby I bought 7 small gifts for her (squirtgun, Play-Doh, SpongeBob cap, etc.) and placed each in a brightly colored bag, numbered 1 through 7. She gets to open one each night starting tonight and then cross the day off on the calendar. She does not know this yet.

* I finalized my hospital bag items. Bag is packed and waiting. All I have to do is throw my toiletries in and I'm good to go.

* I went back though my emails and finally found pictures of the house for you to enjoy:

Here's the exterior...

...the living room...

...and the patio.

* And now, I think I deserve a pedicure. Quick, to the Blahmobile!

Casita de Blah

I am very pleased to announce that the Blah Blahs have secured a house! We put a deposit down yesterday on a two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath Spanish-style house about five minutes from where we currently live. We will be paying a bit more than we pay now, but we will double our space, and we are two minutes from amenities like the post office, library and a very good public school. I called the school this morning and got all the registration information to get Viva transferred into kindergarten there in December.

We will be moving about a week after the baby is born, and while this sounds hellacious, I don’t even care because at least I will be off and have time to settle in.

Sweet Dub had told Viva he’d take her to the zoo yesterday, and I had told her in the afternoon we’d do arts and craftsy type activities. What happened instead is that we came home from seeing the house again all wired up, we talked a hundred miles a minute, we ate, set Viva up on the computer with a video game, and then we both crashed. We slept for a couple of hours while Viva rotted her brain and ruined her eyes at nickjr.com. This is not, needless to say, something we would normally do.

“Why am I so wiped out?” I said to Sweet Dub.

“You know what it is?” he said. “Relief.”

Yes.

P.S. Viva had the nerve to tell me she would be happy not to be sharing a bathroom with me in the new house because my soaps and things get in the way while she is taking a bath. Like I am thrilled to have to scoop up at least 15 little toys and action figures out of the tub before I take a shower every day. The feeling is mutual, sister!

Which Will Come First?

The house or the baby? Place your bets now!

As I get closer to maybe actually having this baby, you'll find I am posting more over here and less here at Mama Blah, just because I am a wee bit precoccupied.

But let me let you in on the latest with the house search. We have one house semi-finalized -- i.e. the owners have approved our credit and offered us the house, but we haven't signed a lease yet, and the house wouldn't be ready to move in until Nov.5th, after the baby is born, while I'm recovering from a C-section.

Today, Sweet Dub found another house, further away, but for $300 less per month. We are hoping to see it tomorrow afternoon and make a decision about what to do in less than 24 hours. Hopefully you will not have to hear any more about our agonizing over our housing issues for much longer.

The Search Continues…

Regular readers know that our landlord wants, as soon as possible due to his impending divorce, to move back into the house we’ve been renting from him for the last two years. If we have to move, we’d like to move before the baby is born --although that is now in 24 days. So, we’ve been looking at houses and duplexes and apartments and everything. As usual, when home-hunting, I am appalled by how much money people want for some crap. But here’s the latest wrinkle: at a couple of places, the owner wants to leave some of their stuff in the house. Then they don’t understand why that would be a problem.

I don’t feel comfortable having your father’s treasured grand piano in a house with two small children. Not only because we're paying for the whole house, including the large area of the living room that the piano occupies, but also because God forbid it should get damaged while we live here with two small children. Note: the response to this was that we could just cover the piano with something. So we should just walk around this hulking covered-up thing in the middle of our living space. By the way, no one in the house plays piano. Sweet Dub took lessons long ago, but you know how that goes…

Last night, we saw a house which was really well-suited to us. The owners want to leave a console table in the entryway, a china cabinet in the dining room (they’d take the china with them), a large Mission-style bookcase in the living room, and a 5-burner gas BBQ on the back patio. Again, we'll be living there with two small kids. I know they’re going to wreck something, and I’d rather it be something we already own so we don’t have to hassle with the landlord over it.

Well, we’re looking at another place tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed.

It's a melting pot! No, it's a mosaic! No, it's a rainbow...

Poll: Whites, blacks in U.S. disagree about prejudice

Wow, shocking news. These folks truly have their finger on the pulse.

The highlight of the article for me is:

Kelly Edmondson, 34, of Cincinnati, is a white Democrat enthusiastic about backing Obama. …She cares for her two sets of young twins during the day and teaches college at night; most of her students are black. In the survey, Edmondson said positive words such as "hardworking" and "intelligent" describe most blacks "very well." She said a few negative traits, such as "lazy" and "irresponsible," apply "somewhat well" to most blacks.

In a telephone interview, Edmondson said those attributes apply equally to all races. [emphasis added]

Well, yes. Exactly. I wonder what percentages a different poll would come up with – a poll which asked people their opinions of what traits the general American public shares, particularly if it were one that instead focused on class. I would imagine that there would be a fair proportion of people of all races who would characterize low-income people as "lazy" and "irresponsible." (And I'm not saying that I agree with them, I'm just saying certain leading questions are going to get a pretty predictable response. And often I think that people who do not have much exposure to people of color form their opinions based on what they see in the media - wait, this is a tangent that could comprise a whole separate post, so let me get back on point.)

This ties in, somewhat, with what I've been experiencing in the past couple of months. In our most recent house search, we have pretty much given up on the areas in and around where we live, which is where we have been looking for the past several months. We’ve started looking in a middle- to upper-middle class predominantly African-American neighborhood, even though that would mean a longer commute for both of us, because (1) we’d be closer to certain family members and friends (including Viva’s friends) that we see a lot; (2) quite simply, you get more for your money over there; (3) it’s a nice neighborhood, quiet with lots of trees and close to a major park; and (4) with certain addresses, we can actually get Viva into a decent public school.

I am surprised by the number of people who have said, “Why do you want to move over THERE?” and yet seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to expect us to look into neighborhoods far east of us or deep in the San Fernando Valley, which not only are further away in terms of miles, but also have a very small percentage of African-American residents. I am not surprised, but disappointed, by people who ask me if I’ve considered areas I’ve never heard of and then when I ask, “But are there any black people there?” look crestfallen and say, “Oh, I didn’t even think about that. I guess not.”

The issue is that no one asks "Why do you want to move over THERE?”about any other neighborhood where we've been looking. Hmm...if it only happened once or twice, I wouldn't think anything of it. But most people seem to be surprised that we would consider moving to a mostly black area.

One of the things that attracts me to the neighborhoods where we have been looking up until now is that there is a diversity of people – black, white, Asian, Latino, South Asian, etc. These are mid-city neighborhoods, and since we both work in the mid-city area, it makes sense for us to look there. However, this has not been fruitful, so we had to expand our horizons. One of the things that is crucial for us is to get Viva into a fairly mixed school which will also give her a good education. Fortunately, there is one in the neighborhood we’re looking at that she would be eligible to go to that is pretty balanced between white and black, with both Latino and Asian thrown in for good measure, and it has decent test scores. Neither of us is crazy about sending her to a school that is predominantly anything – whether white, black, Latino, or Asian. That is a major issue for both of us, and one which we have discussed extensively.

On the housing search: we haven’t yet found a place. Yeah. We would like to move during the first weekend of October, since the baby will be here at the end of October and I can’t imagine moving after a C-section, with a newborn. Our landlord has already contacted us about moving some of his stuff into the storage area. He clearly needs to move ASAP, which isn’t helping matters. All I can say is that when we know, you’ll know. I can’t say anymore about it at this point because it just stresses me out. As my boss said, “You’re nesting! And you have nowhere to nest!”

Yeah, it’s like that. Major suckage.

Moving On…

When we last saw our hero, she was having a bad day and trying to turn it around. In that spirit, she said something along the lines of, “It could always be worse.”

That, my friends, is what we call ironic foreshadowing.

For lo, the next day, did her husband call her at work with the foulest of news. “Beloved Spouse,” he cried, “I have received the most foulest of news, news that will upon its hearing make you faynt and fall twitching into the Slew of Despond.”

Our landlord and his wife of less than a year are separating. He wants to move back into the house where we currently live. I am six weeks away from giving birth, and now we must find a place, pack our stuff, and move before the baby comes.

You know that we have been looking for a new place for months with no luck. Had I written this post yesterday, I thin k it would be filled with a lot more despair, and a lot of cussing.

However, the Blah Blah Family has no time for that. We have already been to look at one house and are setting up appointments for the weekend. I am trying not to focus on it unduly.

“This could all be for the best,” I said to Sweet Dub yesterday evening. Strangely, faced with the prospect of having to move on short notice, with a 5-year-old and an enormously pregnant wife, he was not receptive to such talk. In fact, he seemed a bit stressed.

“You keep saying that about everything,” he said. “Why do you keep saying that, and then nothing good happens?”

My default position, when faced with a crappy situation, generally tends to be immediate anxiety, followed by humor as an attempt to alleviate the situation, and then by an attempt to find something positive about the situation, followed closely by realistic action I can take to try and make the situation better. I am not a Pollyanna, but I do feel it’s a waste of time and energy to focus on the negative and besides, it generally only makes you feel worse.

And who says nothing good happens? As the old saying goes , God may not answer your prayers when you want Him to, but He’s right on time. Something good is coming.

Getting Housed

So a work friend of mine has had her family home on the market since sometime last year. It’s a gorgeous, huge house in an upper middle class, predominantly African-American neighborhood. The friend in question, B, owns her own home and is not interested in moving into the family home. She and her siblings have remodeled it and are trying to sell it for over a million clams. Nobody’s biting. They’re taking it off the market.

She called me Friday to ask if we’d be interested in renting it. It’s vacant, and she and her siblings would like someone living there who would take good care of it. It is much farther from work for me and Dub, but near a really good public school (thus we would save money on school tuition, but pay more in gas*). Her brother is handling the finances so she has no idea how much he would want in rent. Did I mention that while we live in an 864-sqaure-foot bungalow, this is about 3,500 square feet?

Sweet Dub is skeptical. I admit I am a bit too. Some issues:

+ How much will it cost to heat and cool a house that big?
+ Will my mother-in-law assume she can just move in?
+ How much are they going to want in rent?
+ If we live in a million-dollar house, won’t we be spoiled for living in a regular house when we eventually buy?

I don’t know. I guess it can’t hurt to talk to the guy. What do you think?

*Although we did manage to get the “Let’s Refuel America” deal with the $2.99/gallon gas for three years when we bought the new car last month, so it’s not as expensive as it could be.

Can I Get an Amen?

Today, I was browsing through the rental listings for Craigslist, when I happened across this headline:

$3000 / 3br - Rental listings over $2000 on Craigslist (Pipe Dream USA)

Well, I had to click on it. Wouldn't you? And here is the ad (I am quoting the entire thing because it is just too beautiful):

Would all the people trying to rent houses that they can not afford the mortgages on, please REALIZE that this is a free listing service. We, the readers of craigslist.org, hereby say to you, we can't afford your inflated house either!

Give it up. Walk away. You're underwater and noONE wants to rent your 'fabulous' house for more than 25% of their earnings. You really want to rent your property? Try setting a realistic rental price that someone making an average income in LA can keep up with (48K in 2005). Otherwise, list it somewhere else.

Thanks.

And to you, Anonymous Craigslist poster, sir or ma'am, I say preach on! I think I love you. You win Cranky Crackpot of the Week, and a year's supply of toilet paper!

What the...?

So for those who have been following along at home, you know that the Blah Blahs have been trying to find a larger place to live. We don't have to vacate our current digs at any particular date, but we do need more space for when Fetal Blah arrives in late October, with all the attendant baby gizmos and gear. We'd like to move this summer at the latest so I don't have to deal with packing and settling in while being gargantuan.

A couple of nights ago, we went to check out a place that was nice but too pricey for what it was and where it was. I have also been having an ongoing email conversation with someone who listed a house for rent, then when contacted told me the house wasn't ready to show*. We exchanged emails for a week or so, and then she asked me to give her a couple more weeks to get repairs made. I contacted her today to ask if the house was ready, and this is the response I got:

"At this point we have two very interested couples. Thanks, [insert name here]"

What the hell? Clearly this was not meant to be, but I'm discouraged and (I'll admit) a little ticked off.

As my friend Sploo would say, "That is some foolywang**."

So I'm a little bummed out on the house front, which means that this weekend will no doubt turn into an episode of The Blah Blahs Mix It Up, also known as To Make Themselves Feel Better, The Blah Blahs Redecorate. Tune in, while we:

• debate the merits of blank, pretty sunshine-yellow walls vs. actually hanging artwork in the living/dining area, the walls of which consist of some impossible, impassable substance which you can hammer into forever and still not get the smallest hole to stick a nail or picture hanger;
• dig up the flower bed and relocate the lantana;
• find some pavers and put them in the flower bed, which is located very inconveniently in a strip running right through the middle of the patio (aesthetically pleasing, but when you have kids running through it, not so much);
• gripe about the housing market;
• buy new bedding for the master bedroom because it is no longer sexy in there;
• lie around on the couch exhausted from our labors;
• lie around on the couch having not done any of the above;
• instead of doing any of the above, make movies in the backyard, with Viva as the star;
• instead of doing any of the above, create an art project with Viva;
• watch the NBA playoffs, which will apparently Never END (no, seriously - whose idea was it to stretch the playoff semifinals to "best of seven" instead of "best of five"? Because I like basketball, but I'm done already, and we haven't even gotten through the Eastern and Western Conference finals. Can't we just fast-forward?);
• debate going to the beach/the in-laws' (on either side)/another kid's birthday party/on vacation;
• create a simple yet stylish filing solution for the gobs of paper threatening to swallow our house;
• rag on each other for our choices of baby names;
• create a dazzling sculptural masterpiece out of all the shoes Viva has outgrown in the past couple of weeks.

Stay tuned for the soundtrack! Coming soon!

* Which should have raised a red flag anyway, since why list the house if it's not ready to show?

** Foolywang is my new favorite word. I am adding it to my list of potential baby names.

Living in a Shotgun Shack

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?
Talking Heads
“Once in a Lifetime”

So. We are not moving. We could not make the house work for us for a variety of reasons. I am really bummed and I can’t talk about it.

The breakroom where I work is stocked with a variety of teas, coffee, and hot chocolate packets. I am finding little consolation in the idea I can drink hot chocolate, “now with antioxidants!” How can hot chocolate have antioxidants in it? What kind of world are we living in?

Back to house news, because I can’t stop thinking about it. Sweet Dub and I have been watching the real estate market tank, and following forecasts which indicate the L.A. housing market won’t fully correct itself until possibly 2010. This is frustrating, because we are on the cusp of being able to buy, and yet anything we buy now would probably depreciate as soon as we bought it. It’s like buying a car!

At any rate, because I am all about the Internets, I have found a couple of LA-area blogs I like, one of which is pretty well known, and the other perhaps not so much. Check them out, if you feel like it. Now, with antioxidants!

Honey, I'm Home

I know I am a blog slacker, and I don’t write enough. This time I haven’t been writing because I didn’t want to jinx my Really Big News.

No, I’m not pregnant. At least, I don’t think so. Hmmm…(counting back through the calendar…)

Well, anyway, the Really Big News is that the Blah Blah Family is moving! We are doubling our space and moving into a new house less than a mile from our current house. It is still a rental, because we have not yet saved the big bucket of cash we would need to put down as a down payment on a house in a decent area (median home price in Los Angeles is somewhere around $500,000*, but the average home price in our ZIP code is $850,383. Yeah, you read that right.). We’re getting there, but not quite yet. However, while this house will cost us more in rent, it will actually save us money in the fall because VIVA CAN GO TO THE LOCAL PUBLIC KINDERGARTEN FOR FREE!

Yes, there was much screaming and dancing for joy on that one. We’re sending her to one of the top ten public elementary schools in Los Angeles and putting most of what we spend on preschool each month in the bank. I can not even tell you how relieved I am. Here are some lovely photos:

The view of the house from the terraced back yard!

The capacious living room!

Our squeaky clean kitchen!

By the way, we move in less than two weeks. I see a garage sale in my future.

* I am pretty sure that buys you a chicken coop. The 834-square-foot house in which we currently live is valued at $603,500 on Zillow.com. That’s actually less than when we moved in. Hey, maybe we brought down the property values!