Neighbors

Mostly, even though we live in a pretty population dense area, the view out our windows isn't bad.  Mostly, in fact, it's trees.

This is the view from the living room, looking out the slider:

It's not the best, but it's okay.  Out the living room in the back, though, it's just trees:

Davan has a nice view from her bedroom window.  She actually chose the smaller room because of the view.  We'd told her when we moved in that she could choose because she spends more time in her room than we do and we figured we could fit into either.  It turned out to be a good thing that we got the bigger room because it came with the bigger closet that we don't think we could manage without, as it has a lot of the family stuff in it - some camping gear, the vacuum cleaner, bike stuff.  

Anyway, this is her view:

Then there's our room.  From one angle, it's very similar to Davan's view:

Licorice enjoys the view.  However, from the other angle, it's this:

 

This house is a project in work.  The guy who lives here is out often, working on it.  When he is, we are treated to a running swear filled commentary.  Sometimes he and his wife (girlfriend? partner?) argue while he's working.  And he's a sight to behold.  I should try to get a picture, but suffice it to say that he's not slender and he doesn't really believe in wearing more than shorts.

Sometimes we find him bothersome, but mostly he's sort of entertaining.  A bit of flavor in the neighborhood.  Last night, though, at midnight, when he was out with his flood lights on, rustling around with plastic (presumably to cover up some projects before the rain came last night), it was really, really annoying.  I was having trouble sleeping last night anyway and this really didn't help.

On the other hand, our downstairs neighbors seem to be gone for the weekend.  They enjoy music turned up pretty loud and movies played pretty darn loud until late at night.  So, perhaps things even out.  If it weren't for That Guy, it'd be Downstairs' People keeping me up.  Perhaps I'm just looking to blame someone for the fact that I couldn't sleep. 

After all, I've adjusted pretty well, really.  The Downstairs' People's movie usually doesn't bother me, although it does still seem to really piss Anthony off.  And, as mentioned, That Guy is sort of entertaining.  All-in-all, it's just part of getting used to moving.  It's not like we didn't have loud neighbors before (the guy who had sports watching parties out in the back yard complete with plenty of yelling until all hours comes to mind), it's just different.  

Welcome to the neighborhood.

Ranger's Bed

This may look like Davan's new bed in Davan's new room, but if you thought so, you'd be wrong. 

It's Ranger's bed.  Now, this is all Davan's fault, as Davan was the one to invite Ranger onto her bed when it was still hers.  Sleeping with Ranger was one of the things about the move that Davan was really looking forward to.  See, her previous bed, while cat friendly, wasn't Ranger friendly.

 

Ladders are not great for dogs, generally speaking.

So, upon moving, Davan invited Ranger up onto her bed.  At first, Ranger didn't believe her.  She was too well trained to not get on beds and she wouldn't get up, thinking she was maybe being tricked.  However, Davan was persistent.  She lured Ranger up with treats.  For a week or so, Ranger would only get up at bedtime, after having been invited up by Davan.

Davan, wanting Ranger up there more, started training her to get up during the day.  She had to repeat the treat lure at first.  It wasn't long, though, before Ranger realized that Davan was telling her that she had a new bed.  So much for the comforter on the floor!  (Not to mention that one of the cats, who's since had to find a new home, was making a litter box of Ranger's comforter.)  No, she had a full fledged bed!  What a deal!  

Now, most of the time, you can find Ranger on Ranger's bed.  Davan has to fight for space when she wants it.  All-in-all, Davan is pretty happy about this, enjoying the cuddle time with Ranger and feeling they've got a special bond.  There are those time, though, that Davan will complain about being rabbit kicked during the night (although, now that I think about it, she hasn't complained about that in a while - perhaps she's learned to sleep through that event) or that she goes into her room and finds the bed like this:

Ranger likes to make herself comfortable.  Davan would prefer the bed stayed made.  

Siblings.  What's a mother to do?

A Very Expensive Evening Out

Last night, feeling like our quiet family time wasn't quite enough excitement, we all went out, staying out till the wee hours and spending a whole lot 'a greenbacks.  That's right, ladies and gents, we went to the....wait for it, it's so exciting....ER!!!! 

I tell you, if you've got a few hundred spare dollars (we have a high deductible policy and an HSA that is down to the dregs due to a certain family member's orthodontist habit)

and feel like not getting a good night's sleep in your own bed, go on down to the ER.  It's tons of fun and you're sure to meet some interesting folk like, oh, say, gang members, drunks having taken a bit of spill, a poor old man who doesn't want to keep his IV in and many more.

So, what prompted this fun-filled family evening out?  Well, first let me say that everyone is okay, although I'm still, sadly, in pain, it doesn't seem to be life threatening and will hopefully sort itself out.

It was all about me because that's how I roll.  So, I first thought that I'd pulled a muscle in my lower abdomen the right side.  I woke up yesterday morning when pulling my knees up to curl up resulted in a shooting pain.  It ebbed and I went back to sleep, waking to a dull ache (with occasional stabs of pain that I couldn't really predict) which lasted until about 3:30pm.  Davan and I were playing around, wrestling a bit, when the pain suddenly became very intense and overwhelming.

While it backed off again, the pain continued at an elevated level until I downed a 400mg Advil with dinner around 6:00pm.  I felt better once that kicked in right up until I was sitting totally still, not coughing or sneezing or anything, when the seriously stabbing pain started back up.  I started looking up possible diagnosis for my symptoms and the thing that kept coming up was appendicitis.

However, I wasn't convinced.  I was feeling pretty sure it wasn't just a pulled muscle at this point, but I had no idea what it was and was getting a bit worried.  We called the advice nurse.  She told us to head to the ER with some haste.  Sigh.

It wasn't appendicitis.  We don't know what it was.  But, I got to spend until 2:30am this morning peeing in a cup, having blood drawn, telling my story to about 6 different people, wearing a hospital gown, convincing Anthony and Davan to come home and get some sleep, reading in a snazzy hospital bed, having an ultrasound (both externally and, to my delight, internally) and listening to the stories of many varied peoples who also found themselves in the ER last night (this was eavesdropping through the door to my room that no one ever bothered to shut, not actual conversations or anything).

By the time I went home, exhausted and feeling stupid, the pain was pretty manageable again, as it remains today for the most part.  I do sort of feel like shooting myself when I feel a sneeze coming on (seriously painful!) and I can't really do much without pain, but I've been pretty much going about my day. 

What's going on?  I don't really know.  Right now, my strongest contender is mittelschmerz, but if the pain isn't gone by tomorrow morning, it's probably not it.  And this is something I discovered today on my own, not that the doctor came up with.  Great.  So glad I went in.  It seems that usually, doctors aren't needed.  Usually, things work themselves out.  If a doctor is needed, it's usually obvious, like when Anthony's knee was swollen up to twice it's usual size and he was running a high fever or when one's arm looks like this:

and this was the result of the hospital visit:

These things are obvious.  Otherwise, I'm just riding it out.  And hoping that abdominal pain goes away during the night.

Just Hanging

 This seems to be our plan for the afternoon - literally just hanging for some of us.

We'd talked about running a few errands, but...

We seem to be tending toward the lazy.

Except maybe for Licorice, who missed the boat on breakfast this morning and is sitting by the door to the pet food closet, making her displeasure known.

Davan looks like she's having much more fun than she would have been having at the podiatrist having an ingrown toe nail fixed, which was actually on the schedule for this afternoon.

Davan has been having some trouble with ingrown toe nails.  She had to have one cut out in the spring, just before it was performance time for Zig Zags, a dance competition and a trip to Colorado Springs.  We opted to just have it cut off, not permanently altered due to needing a shorter recovery time.  The podiatrist warned us that it would likely grow back, but Davan needed to be on her feet in less than a week, so he agreed with our choice.

This time, it was the big toe on the other foot that has been bothering her off and on.  We finally made an appointment to have a permanent slice taken off that toe nail to prevent it happening again, as it seems to be an issue for her, but three things happened.

1) Today I found some back feedback for the clinic I was taking her to.  Apparently, one of the docs is great, but one is awful and I didn't know which one this appointment was with.

2) I read up on ingrown toe nails and, with the on again off again nature of this complaint, I felt like we could let it work itself out this time.  (Last time, that was not the case, as it was supper painful and infected.)

3) Davan said she'd prefer not to go have the procedure done, as her toe isn't currently hurting, doing the procedure would be painful and she doesn't want to be out of commission for a couple weeks.

We still talked about going out.  I need to go to Trader Joe's.  I'm debating a trip to Winco (we don't have one nearby here and I've been doing most of my shopping by walking to Fred Meyer's, but Winco is a lot cheaper) and a trip to Target/Goodwill/Old Navy to look for a couple of shirts for Davan, who really only has three shirts she's happy to wear. 

But, we've decided to put all that off to tomorrow.  Tomorrow there are more medical procedures to deal with.  Davan has an ortho appointment to adjust those braces and we have to drive out to Gresham for that anyway, so we'll do our shopping then. 

Of course, we can't dawdle too much because we have to be back in our neck of the woods for a 3:00 appointment with a chiropractor.  Davan has been having some lower back pain when she does front walkovers, bridges, even cobra for most of the summer.  We need to see what can be done, other than just not doing these things 'cause that won't work for this kid.

 

So, today, though, at least this afternoon (Davan did teach for 2.5 hours at Do Jump.  I went for an hour long run with Ranger and did chores.  And filled out what turned out to be unnecessary medical forms. ), is just hanging out.  

Davan is pretty excited that she figured out how to make her swing higher so she's at tree height, which is, in addition to slowly moving in a circle, is an important prerequisite to writing in one's notebook.

Veg Fest

This weekend was all about the Veg Fest for us.  We'd actually planned on going to the beach for a night of camping, but the weather forecast was looking pretty crappy, so we scrapped that and, instead, spent the weekend grazing our way through free samples and listening to lectures on the hows and whys of being vegan.  Or, at least, Davan and I did most of the weekend.  Anthony sat out Saturday's trip, but joined us today.

I have to say that we didn't really learn anything new, but it's still motivating and fun to be around a bunch of other vegans or, at least, wannabes.  I did find a new blog, though, that I'm having fun reading.  Check out Peas and Thank You, written by a Portland mom who is going vegan.  Her kids are adorable, her recipes are tasty, particularly for new vegans, and she's pretty funny, too.

I particularly enjoyed two of the speakers.  One was Neal Barnard,who's written a whole slew of books, several of which I've read.  He's clear and entertaining speaker with a good message in my humble opinion.  And the other is Chef AJ, who, while really in your face, is also very entertaining with a good message, as well.

We ran into a family who used to come to the game group I ran for homeschoolers out of our house on Thursdays.  Those kids are not really kid-like anymore.  It's actually the second time I've run into them post game group years and the other time was at Veg Fest two years ago.  It's funny that I had no idea they were so inclined food-wise when they came to game group.

I'm feeling motivated to lean back toward more whole foods, which is something I've been slowly sliding on more and more (case in point, the Newman's Os and Rice Dream habit we've been indulging around here).  We'll see how long that lasts...and I do still eat a lot of whole foods, so it's more about convincing myself not to splurge (so often?  at all?  not sure yet) than to make sweeping changes to my day to day eating.

Independence

Now that we've moved, Davan is getting herself to and from most of her activities.  Soon it will be all of them, but for the moment, I'm going with her for first times to make sure she knows the route and to check her in when necessary. 

This is all great.  However, I can't help but fret some, being a fretting sort of person.  I try to keep my fretting from Davan, as she's angst ridden enough herself.  But, for example, right now her straps class at Night Flight is getting out.  She'll be getting on her bike and riding home.  It's her first ride home from there.  I rode over with her this evening and she was quite confident about the route home.  And she has a cell phone now, so she can call if something goes wrong.  And there is no reason to think that anything bad will happen...but, I'll be glad when she gets home.

I also know that the more that she does these things, the more relaxed I'll be about it.  And the more relaxed she'll be.  She's glad to be independent, but she is anxious about it, as well.  Routine will smooth it all out, though.

It's all just one of those things to adjust to with the move.

Obligatory Update Post

Okay, for anyone who's read before and wants to know, I should do a little update, I suppose. 

The big news is - we've moved!  We're living in just the neighborhood we wanted to and love it.  We only use the car about once a week and were on the verge of just selling it when we changed our minds mostly for camping and skiing reasons. 

We moved in late August, after a very stressful escrow period which nearly ended in us not getting the condo we're in, and we're settling in quite nicely.

Davan is starting up all her fall activities with Do Jump at the top of the list.  She walks herself to Do Jump now and it takes about 7 minutes!!!  Who-hoo!!!  She's teaching two homeschool classes, doing Zig Zags and taking two adult classes.  She's also doing an all day homeschool class every Thursday with TrackersPDX.  That is where she is today and why her room is quiescent.  It's a little odd to have her gone all day.

She's going to be taking a homeschool drama class starting next Friday.  There is also straps class at Night Flight and, of course, time with friends to round out her activities.

All this is will, after she's all settled and getting herself to and from independently, which is in the very near future as she's already riding home from Trackers today by herself, leaves me with a fair amount of spare time that I'm am contemplating how I want to use...

So, there you go, a brief updating and now we'll see where we go from here...

Checking Things Out

Quiescent

To Sell or Not To Sell

Well, really, we are going to sell, the question is what offer will work. Or, now that we've had two offer negotiations turn out to not work out, will we get any more offers? Should we have gone with one of those?

We reduced the price of the house down to the bone - the minimum amount we felt like we could walk away with, which is a sad, sad, paltry amount for having lived here for 10 years and putting in bamboo floors and fancy-shmancy triple pane windows that cost us a fortune while living here. And that brought in offers - two. However, both wanted us to pay all of their closing costs. And one of them also offered under asking, wanted a home warranty and our washer and dryer. We tried to negotiate, but it pretty much came down to they had no more money and we didn't want to be empty handed when all was said and done.

Now, we've decided to up the price, but also say upfront that we'll over a certain amount of closing costs. We'll see how that goes. Interest has continued to be there. We had someone come look yesterday and another showing on Saturday. It's less than the first week after we first did the massive price drop, but still, people are looking.

We're really hoped that we'd have an offer in the bag before I left for China, but that doesn't seem to be what will happen. So, I've left a power of attorney for Anthony so he can accept an offer while I'm gone if he thinks it's a good one.

So, the China thing. Yeah, I'm off to China for two weeks with two of my best high school friends. Being able to go is thanks to my parents who a) took care of my plane flight and b) have come to stay with my family while I'm gone.

It's hard for me to do stuff like this for myself, as I feel somewhat guilty that I'm spending money and it's just for me. It does make for mixed feelings as the date draws close, but I'm trying to just be excited.

Keeping Busy!

We've had a lot of action on the house, including one offer, but no sale yet. The one offer was from the family who looked last weekend, but we were really out of their price range, so their offer was not very good. We did counter offer, but it wasn't enough to make it workable for them, so it was a no go.

However, we had another family look on Saturday, another scheduled showing on Monday (although it appears that one was a no show), yet another scheduled for tomorrow and our realitor has spoken with another realitor about having a showing later this week, but we haven't heard from that person yet. So, lots of interest and we're feeling like an acceptable offer will come our way in the not too distant future.

Meanwhile, we're doing a little looking around for the move. We're interested in these places. They'll be ready for move in in August or September, so if we go that way, we'll definitely have to find an interim place to live, which will be challenging with all of the animals. In light of that and feeling like our cats aren't getting the sort of care and attention they deserve, we're looking for good homes for most of them. It's hard because we love them, but we do think it's best for them.

Davan's Tic Toc show kept us very busy over the weekend, especially combined with the various home shows! This is the first day we're not at Do Jump in a week. Whew. The 100 Echos show was great, though. Davan had a ton of fun doing it and loved spending so much time with her friends. She was in a lot of the pieces for the show and really enjoyed the hustle and bustle of it all. She got to do a lot of acting, which was fun and pretty new for her.

Additionally, we've been trying to get out and enjoy the last couple of days that have actually been sunny! Spring is late in coming here in the Pacific Northwest this year and we've yet to have a truly warm day. The last couple have been sunny and knocking on 60, though, so that's been nice.

House Stuff

One of the big things that has happened this year is that we've decided to move. I've blogged about wanting to move before. We've gone back and forth on this for a long time. Looking at houses the time we ended up here, we looked both here in Gresham and in SE Portland, but there were a variety of reasons for ending up here - mostly Anthony's needs in regards to size and having a garage. I didn't hugely object, so here we are.

And, really, it's been fine living here. We like our house quite well. Our neighborhood is nice. There is a park just a couple blocks away. Davan's best friend when she was 4-9ish lives about a quarter mile from here. We can walk into downtown Gresham, which I do frequently, to visit the library. We live in a good place to start long out of city bike rides. We had a great homeschool Girl Scout troop which met just a couple miles from our house for many years and provided us with good friends.

However, there are the down sides, too. Anthony's commute takes him 1 - 1.5 hours each way by bike, bus or MAX (our light rail). I hate yard work and no one else is willing to step up to it, either. The house is larger than our current needs. Most of Davan's interests take us into SE Portland, which means a lot of driving. I really like urban living. I'd love to live closer to downtown. I want to be able to ride/walk most anywhere we want to go. It's really windy here a lot and that actually goes away just 10 miles to the west of us - our target area.

All-in-all, we decided we were ready to move - to heck with the cost and inconvenience of moving. Of course, just now is a bad time to be selling a house. We put the house on the market in October, having invested several months in sprucing it up. We started with too high an asking price - $198,000.

Just after we put the house up, a house nearby, not nearly as nice as ours, went for $168,000 and we were shocked by house cheap it was. It should have been a sign to drop our price significantly. We did drop, but not that much.

Shortly there after, about a dozen houses in our immediate neighborhood went up for sale. Mostly foreclosures. Prices dropped. We've been steadily dropping.

We're now down to $165,000. If we'd started out at $175,000, we have no doubt the house would have sold. It's a bummer, to be sure, but we are so ready to move that we've just bitten the bullet and we're doing it.

The light at the end of the tunnel is this. We dropped the price to $165,000 just on Wednesday evening. Thursday, we got a call from a realitor wanting to show the place that evening. It was a last minute thing for me, not having gotten the call when it first came and ending up with a 25 minute window in which to make the house presentable and put away the groceries I'd been out buying when I finally noticed the message waiting.

The realitor called right after showing the house, wanting to set up another time to see it the next day (today). She said, "The wife is ready to go, but wants the husband to see it to make sure. He got called away at the last minute today."

So, this evening, while we're off taking Davan to her dress rehearsal for 100 Echos, the couple will be looking at our house. We're trying to not get too worked up - who knows if the husband will like it? Who knows if they'll make a reasonable (to us that means full price right now) offer? However, we are really hoping this will be it. Really hoping.

I'm Back (Again!)

We've once again got internet service at home. I've missed blogging and am planning on posting semi regularly again. I was hemming and hawing about what I should blog to start with, but decided that if I waited to make it a good one, it might not happen. So, it just is what it is.

When I was last regularly posting, it was about a year ago when Anthony was facing the set backs at work. While I posted for a while from the library, and then sporadically there after, it was all pretty hit or miss, so a brief update from the year is in order.

Anthony continued with his reduced hours into the fall, but we did fine with budgeting, didn't really suffer much in a financial way and enjoyed having him home for a three day weekend every week.

Because we were doing okay with money and the dog wanting continued, we adopted Ranger at the end of July.

Actually, as I see when I look the picture folder, July was a busy month, with a foreign exchange student for a few weeks:
(On the very hiking trip shown above, I lost our camera to the stream. It was very sad - it just rolled right down the bank and into the water. We lived without for many months, then bit the bullet and purchased another. This picture was off of our student's camera. )

Several day hiking trips - this one is to Castle Craig, which was very cool:


Two back packing trips - one was very laid back with doing 9 miles in three days up to a favorite spot - Elk Meadows:


While the other was much more hard core - 5 days and 48 miles in the Bull of the Woods area. Just to make it more challenging, Davan was sick for the first couple of days on this one:
And, last, but not least, Davan's first away camp. She was gone for a week. She loved the camp overall, but there were food issues (short version - they said they were fine with accommodating vegan, but it wasn't true):

And that was just July! Actually, most of the other months this year weren't quite so packed and some highlights I've already posted here.

We did do a fair amount of camping and hiking this summer, but that was fit around Davan's heavy camp schedule. She pretty much taught a camp or participated in a camp or sometimes both most weeks over the summer. She did several Do Jump camps, an AWOL camp, the above away camp, and then taught younger kids at Do Jump as well.

In the fall, she started up with Zig Zags again and, also, by jumping on the opportunity when a couple of kids pulled out of Tic Tocs (the younger performance troop at Do Jump) at the last minute, has been doing Tic Tocs this year as well. She's been quite busy between both troops, two adult classes at Do Jump, a class at AWOL (just in the fall), starting dance (jazz in the fall, with the addition of two classes of ballet a week this winter), a winter class at Night Flight, and teaching at Do Jump. Whew.

We've been able to pull all this off money-wise by both her and I doing work at Do Jump for work trade. She is teaching and I am doing office work. This has allowed us to pay very little out of pocket there.

Davan is into her performance season. She has a couple of dance competitions (one past, one yet to come), the Tic Toc show - 100 Echos - this weekend with last weekend being packed with extra rehearsal for said show, the Zig Zag show - Seeds of Hope - coming up for two weekends in May, plus, of course, extra rehearsals, and two dance recitals in June. One of the dance recitals will be similar to what she did in December, but the other is a whole show - Alice in Wonderland. She'll be dancing with her ballet class, but also got a part as the Jester, for which she gets to do a solo and a group dance. The solo is being crafted for her as a dance/cirque type piece and she's really excited about that. Extra rehearsals have started for that already, so we're fitting that in, too!

I've decided to do a triathlon again this summer, so I've been getting out on my bike and swimming regularly in addition to running with Ranger. When Ranger first came to live with us, I pretty much gave up bike riding in deference to taking her on walks and such, but I missed it and wanted the tri challenge again, so we're making it work.

And now, on with regular posts!

More Pictures

I took these yesterday when Davan and I were trying to get a picture for her application to the National Circus School in Montreal for their summer camp program.

Finally - Davan's Dance Recital Video

It's not the best ever videography, as I was actually watching and not minding the camera, just letting it run, but you get the idea. Davan starts in the back on the left. She's the one who is front and center by herself when the rest pair off later on. She's one of the tallest.