Our house is a very, very, very fine house!

Unless the inspector tells us something very disturbing and deal killer-ish this afternoon, it's OUR HOUSE and it is lovely! Five bedrooms, zillions of closets, bathrooms with linen closets in them! No more running cold, drippy and naked out into the hallway for a towel! How deluxe!

And the kitchen has a nook! I've never had a nook! And the nook has a bay window looking out on the lurvely deck and backyard. And if you look carefully, you can see the top of a little mountain! And the master bedroom is as big as a basketball court and there's a jacuzzi! A fireplace in the family room! Lazy Susan cabinets in the kitchen! The porch wraps around! There is a little pond with goldfish and frogs in it! And shade, shade, shade all around!

So, let's hope, if there's a hellmouth, it's just a tiny one!

MK

Like Buttah!

I saw Julie & Julia last night and really enjoyed myself. Of course, the Meryl Streep/Julia Child part more fun than the Julie Whoever/Amy Whatsername part! You had a legend playing a legend versus a somewhat regular person played by a new-to-me actress! Yes, the Julie character was a trifle self-absorbed, but I can tell you, working in a cubicle is dull and when people call and yell at you most of the day, it's stressful, to boot. A girl needs an outlet whether it's making a perfect poached egg or crying over an aspic tragedy. I felt that both actresses played their parts well. And Stanley Tucci as Julia's husband, Paul Child was all that and a scoupcon of pomme frittes!

I have to say, though, what really what stole the show for me was all of that gorgeous butter. Big chunks of butter sizzling in a pan, soft butter being rubbed onto chicken before roasting, pounds of expensive-looking butter stacked in Julie's fridge. If I could have all the butter I wanted and not get fat or die of butter clogged arteries, I'd be one happy, happy, greasy lady! When I go, encase me in butter and slide me to heaven!

Soundtrack my life!

So, it's time to get funky! Not that I have NEWS about our house, but I'm going to affirm the positive (which makes me feel like a loved one is surely going to drop dead, but what the hell) by putting together a soundtrack for our new adventure!

Come on guys--figure out how to comment on this dang blog and help me get together a list of songs for my moving experience. House related songs, songs with the word home in them, moving on songs. I only know brilliant people, so let's get busy!

Examples:

Our House (in the middle of our street)--who did this one? Madness?
Brick House (Commodores) okay that's more about me, though my bricks are a bit more like
stucco these days)
When I think of Home (from The Wiz)
Come on-a My House (Rosemary Clooney)

I've always wanted a personal soundtrack! Help a mutha out here!

Thanks!

P.S. Kids songs are welcome!

"Wanton Soup" and "Of "Rats and Me"

Wanton Soup:

Ever try to talk to a five year-old, build dinosaurs and write up an order for Chinese food for dinner? You'll find that certain things are not on the menu! "I'll have the wanton soup, the loooooowwww mein, and the twice cooked "pork" (wink, wink)." Sometimes I think my sanity and admittedly poor ability to attend to details are returning as my boy grows up. Sometimes, not so much.

Of Rats and Men:

So, during Saturday's vermin extravaganza at a local pet store, Comet was thoughty enough to suggest that we pick up a few "real fur" mice for our cats DoDo and Mz. P. For the uninitiated, these are cat toys fashioned from the skin of an unfortunate rabbit and stuffed with cardboard with a dash of catnip for pizzazz. Most cats love 'em!

We brought them home andticipating wild feline frolic. Our indoor/outdoor cat, Dodo "Scourge of Rodentia," knocked them around a bit. If I couldn't tell she was a bit unimpressed and a little annoyed, she showed me by bringing a LARGE.DEAD.RAT home and laying it on the hall carpet. "This is what I think of your toys! THIS is what you should bring home from the pet store!"

I am usually the "whole dead rodent" detail at the house, leaving partial rodents, odd excretions, dead birds and anything that is still alive when it crosses the threshold to Gameguy. But I could tell that Ratty had heft and I don't do heft, so Gameguy to the rescue! Of course, he had to take many photos with his iphone before disposing of the creature. Someday, I'll learn to post photos and then we're all in for a treat!

Everybody Limbo!

So the house situation is like being in limbo. Not the limbo where unbaptised babies went in the horror movie that was my early religious education. It's not quite that bad. I'm talking the limbo where you have to bend over backwards and shimmy under a pole and try to pretend you're having a good time while you do it. My back ain't what it used to be folks and my patience never existed, so come on already!!!!

"The House," (that's how it appears in my mind) is owned by two banks, and banks don't have to do anything they don't want to, as we have learned. Certainly not in a timely fashion. They won't just say "yes!" Just say "yes" to us paying money for the house you want to get off your books! Just say "yes" to letting us move in while the second floor is still visible above the weeds! Just say "yes" to letting us have some paperwork to show the school district so that Comet doesn't have to change schools a week after school starts on August 25th.

Or just say "no" and put me out of my misery! I'm beginning to see my beautiful house as the weedy, dusty, abandoned stepchild of some hardhearted entities who don't care if Jack McKoi or LaKoi-a Jackson (my goldfish to be) die in their little pond home. Who don't care if everything grows together in a big tangled messy, and I spend the rest of my days playing "Weed, Not a Weed?" They don't care that I'm afraid to pack in case I have to unpack everything all over again. They don't care how many tums I have to ingest or how jumpy I've become. It's no skin off their portfolio!

So, banks, whatever your names are, hear my impassioned plea: Just say "yes, Yes, YES" to accepting our offer! Because we'd like to have the place inspected and make sure it isn't insulated with mold spores or built on a hellmouth. Come to think of it, the hellmouth wouldn't get us out of our contract.

Pet Store revelations

1. Ferret poop is surprisingly large and stinky considering the size of the producer. Their CQ (cuteness quotient) took a real "nosedive" in my book.

2. Two rodents of any kind in a cage is cute. Thirty adorable "feeder" mice in a cage become VERMIN! It was like Willard, only with mice.

Overheard in a Pet Store:

Jerry Stiller look-a-like salesman to customer: "You can't go wrong with this snake!"

To Be or to Have a Snack: the Melancholy Swede

I have never had any kind of career path. It's been more like being lost in the woods and stumbling upon occasional wildflowers and fuzzy bunnies while trying to survive the gnats, ticks and swampy areas. Throw in a lots of monotonous cicada chirping, a few ominous rustlings in the brush and the occasional howling in the distance, and you've got my working life. More "Endurer" than "Survivor." I bumbled along for years, had a baby who is now five, and I'm back in the woods already. Enough with this metaphor. Let's just say, I haven't had a clue.

Suddenly, things changed! I know what should have been my destiny! I should have been a Swedish detective. Call me Wallander. I have been reading Henning Mankell's Wallender series and I don't want to come up for air. I let Comet watch a shameful amount of Scooby Doo yesterday so that I could brave the inhospitable Swedish weather with my alter-ego, Kurt Wallander, trying to figure out who brutally murdered the elderly farmers to steal 27,000 kronor in an old briefcase. I am the fortyish melancholy, sarcastic yet brilliant, extremely tired yet tireless detective. So what if I was born in the wrong place, I'm not a work of fiction and couldn't detect my way out of a paper bag? Dammit, I should have been a police detective. Never mind that I scare easily and say things like, "Oh, well..." and, "What are you gonna do?" in the face of challenging circumstances. In my heart, I am the Chief Inspector.

I remember, years ago, when I was bemoaning my lack of life direction, a nice guy said, "Well, think of the section you head for when you go to a bookstore. I always head for the computer section and now I'm working on my degree in computer engineering. Where do you go in a bookstore?" I replied, "Fiction." He thought a moment and said, "Maybe you could be a fictional character?" I could. I really could!

Out of the mouthes of dudes...

Comet: " Mom, what's a babe?"

MK: "A baby?"

Comet: "No, a babe is a girl and a boy is a dude."

MK: "Hmm. Who told you that?"

Comet: "Nobody. I told myself."

But there's more:

Comet (to school secretary giving us a tour of his new school): "My mom looks younger than she is because she lost a few pounds."