Whew!

So this weekend, we have been without power for most of the time. Hurricane Ike has done his damage, and mostly it was mild, in my hometown. Yes, there are a few houses with trees in their living rooms, but most of the damage wasn't too bad. It could have been much worse. The wind was howling like crazy, but we didn't get too much rain or other weather.

But we lost power Saturday afternoon, were without it all day Sunday til about 6. Then we had an hour and a half of glorious normality and it was gone again. This morning's call to the power company has them saying "Well, we hope to have everyone restored by THURSDAY." Um. Thursday. Really?! That's your reasonable response??!! ARRRRRRRRGH!

I'm hopeful that by the time I go home tonight, I will actually have power. Pray, or whatever it is you do, for us, please! I am not really very happy about the prospect of that many days power-free. There will be a generator purchase in our near future, but it may be sooner rather than later. You wouldn't think, living this far from the coast, that we'd be in this much chaos, but yes. We are. And it stinks.

But it could be worse, so I'm trying to keep perspective on that. Many, many bad things happen in the universe and me not being able to get my coffee at home this morning was not that much of a crisis.

Adventures in Home-Repair

So our rental property is all set to go. We have tenants-- a sweet couple who don't have excellent credit but who are trying. They have three cute kids and love the house and I think they have paid the same rent for a real craphole in a bad neighborhood and so are thrilled to be getting something much nicer in a better neighborhood. In other words-- they know what is out there and they know how much we ROCK. I really really wish we had thought to take "before" pictures. The place was such a mess-- dark, smelled musty and old-lady, with ugly 30 year old curtains that fell apart when I moved them that had been stapled to the walls to keep them tight, ugly ORANGE carpet in one room, blue dingy nicotine stained wood paneling in one bedroom, three layers of wallpaper from various periods peeling but stapled (seriously) to the walls in the hallway/foyer. Lamps that looked stripped, as though if you tried to change the bulb you'd get a shock. Etc, etc.

We finished up the last little things last week. I put up wallpaper, we had our handyman refinish the wood floors. Yes, when the tenants tried to move in a fridge, the movers scratched the floor a little (figures). I put up "lace curtain Irish" pretty curtains. We put up the pretty little part glass, part nice plastic chandeliers you can see in the picture-- from Lowe's, not super expensive but soooo pretty.....

It just rocks. Seriously. I love this little house. If I were living there, I would probably make some of the rooms bright, bold colors, and we did this place in white, mostly, but I still really love it. One of the things that I feel good about is fixing up a historic house from a sad state of disrepair. And when we get the roof done, that will be even more so because while the roof isn't yet leaking, it's not long til it will be and that would just trash this "diamond in the rough" home.

So I'll shut up about it and post some pictures. The first is the view down the Living Room/Dining room area. You can't really see the big awesome china built-ins. But that's allright. The other picture is Maia. While I was doing the last bits of cleanup (vacuuming, picking up shreds of the ancient wallpaper from the closets) she wanted so much to help. I put her to scrubbing up the bits of white paint that someone (Andrew, maybe?) tracked over the fresh wood shiny stuff. (It didn't work. And the place is NOT perfect. But still.) Our little Cindermaia, hard at work.

I just have to finish off saying that I truly hope the local authorities don't freak out so much about this incoming Hurricane if it isn't truly coming this way. It looks like it's going to Houston (where my sister just moved, funnily enough...) so we do not need to cancel everything here in our little town. I JUST got my syllabuses re-organized, please!!!

Momentarily

.......distracted. Happy.

A little red wine. A little buzz. A few hours of casual, pointless TV and babies being angels. Pistachios, to which I am a complete addict. (Is there a 12 step program for them?)

Babies ready for bed. Hubby getting drinks (kool aid) and diapers ready. Me, ostensibly checking email. For what reason? Not really that big of a deal. Never get anything but spam, anyway.

A moment. Or two. And then... back.

Morning Musing

I know I've been lazy about blogging lately. Anyone who has done this for a while knows that you go in waves of writing-- sometimes, you're just on every single thought for a blog. Then, you just figure-- who really wants to hear about Sean's ear infection (fine) Maia's learning her ABCs and potty training, my teaching, Andrew's daily grind and Real Estate Tycoon biz?

My mom does, but I talk to her all the time. (Cell phones and driving. It's a skill.)

But I am trying hard to reduce things in my life that do not specifically add to it. Blogging is not one thing I plan to really reduce that much; it's my little journal to myself, where a few people from the world also pop in now and then to see what's up.

Anyway; back to school again today after a week off (almost). Baby waking, time to go.

Gustav Fizzles

For us, at least. We had rain, yes, but honestly a regular thunderstorm about two months ago did more damage around here, flooding several houses down the street from us (literally down-- downhill and in a bad spot, apparently). There were some downed tree branches, and I did see a fairly large tree branch downed a few blocks away but it didn't look like it damaged the house. So we're all good. We had two days of class cancelled for it, though.

I spent those days working on restoring the rental property. We have a tenant that wants to move in on Sat, so we need to get 'er' done.

The property is a Craftsman style bungalow house and it's really quite pretty. There are so many nice features that I'm excited to rent it to someone. I would live there, myself, if we didn't have an awesome place already. Today, I put up wallpaper. It was work, and for a few minutes of several crooked corners in the walls, I was cursing a bit. But I got it done. It looks really nice.

What's weird to me is to grow up as poor as I was, and now be "the landlord." Checking people's credit (which, by the way, we mostly gave up on. The folks we're renting to admitted to not having great credit, but they're such a sweet little group of family/cute kiddos that we just want to give them a break. And we have this dream of making up some really nice places that are affordable for people who otherwise wouldn't get a nice house. It's kind of cool, but a source of much cognitive dissonance for me sometimes.

Now, tomorrow, back to school. I am going to meet with my new class, which I was just assigned a week into the semester, for the first time. The professor who was going to teach it has had to take a semester off, so they asked me to take it and I am happy about it. I love teaching survey courses. :) I'm already ON it. :) But the day off delayed us again and I had to delete one new reading. Ah well. So it goes.

Anyway. I'm TI-IRED. And I have wallpaper glue all over me.