One of the things I got for my birthday was a yogurt maker, because it sounded fun, and also because it sounded easy, and those are the two main qualifications that I look for in a kitchen appliance. We’ve already made one batch – plain with no flavoring at all, and it’s just as easy and fun as I expected. This morning I set up batch number two, this time with a little vanilla extract stirred in to provide at least some form of taste (plain yogurt is really quite…plain), and now I am pondering how to duplicate my very favorite yogurt flavor – orange and cream – for batch number three or four or whenever I get around to it. The possibilities, they are endless.

I have actually been extremely productive today, especially considering it’s just barely past lunchtime as I write this. I took the day off, but there is really no point in me ever attempting to sleep in again as long as Sebastian’s voice maintains it’s charmingly air horn-like quality, and his level of persistence remains firm. So I got up at the usual time, which meant by the time Richard had headed off to work I had already started a batch of rice, started the batch of yogurt, and whipped up broccoli and basil frittata for breakfast. And even with giving myself an hour here and there to just camp out on the sofa and knit, I’ve also managed to run two loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, vacuum the upstairs (where the where the worst of the dust bunnies always seem to lurk), and make lunch. And not once this entire morning have I played any Civ IV at all.

My birthday was Wednesday. So if my math is correct (because the older I get the less I care, so whenever anyone asks, I always have to pause to do the subtraction in my head) that makes me 38. Two more years til I hit 40, which quite frankly does not bother me as much as I suppose it should. Perhaps that is because I have always managed to avoid having any sort of freak out about my own age by having a little mini one about the age of my older sister. She is just a little over one year older than me, which means she always hits the milestone years first, and that gives me time to do the ‘holy crap, how did she get to be *that* many years, and that means I’m next’ a year early so by the time my birthday rolls around, I am so over it, and ready to just move on with life.

But anyway. I had my birthday and as my birthday usually goes, considering its close proximity to a holiday, it tends to stretch out over a few days. Richard gave me presents on Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning (including some wonderful knitting books I’d been wanting, and my very own Mr. Bento, and of course the latest version of Civilization, which I have been playing every single night since. Knitting? What knitting?) . Since the family gathering part of the birthday wasn’t going to happen til this weekend, he cooked salmon on the grill – or tried to, because we have now discovered that the stuff that looks like charcoal but isn’t (it’s made of wood or something) might burn, but it produces not nearly enough heat. So we gave up on the salmon and tossed it onto the broiler and it turned out just fine.

I have been having fun with my Mr. Bento, because it makes planning out a lunch a different sort of challenge, centered around trying to find enough different things to put in all the little boxes. I haven’t tried bringing hot food yet, but if I fill the exterior container with ice in the morning and stick it in the fridge, it can then sit on my desk all day and everything inside remains nicely cold until I’m ready to eat it. Also I am inexplicably charmed by the fact that it comes with its very own stainless steel spork, but we all know that I am easily amused, so I am sure this comes as no surprise to anyone.

Presents have arrived in the mail – a very cool cellphone holder shaped like a dragon; a book of celtic crossstitch designs that I intend to transcribe to stranded colorwork for knitting. And this evening we had the full family gathering, all of us meeting at the usual midpoint in Fairfield for dinner and chatter and presents.

So it’s been a rather nice week, as far as birthdays go. I even managed to squeeze in some knitting and a shopping trip with my mom in between work and endless games of Civ 4.

As far as three-day weekends go, this Memorial Day weekend was one of the nicest I’ve had in a very long time. We filled it with a shopping trip to get some new clothes for both Richard and I, a party involving the frying of several large turkeys with some friends, and much wandering about in hardware stores, looking at kitchen cabinets and countertops, and comparing the merits of various types of flooring, and in general doing our best to overwhelm ourselves with all the choices we’re going to be facing when we move. The shopping was not nearly as painful as it might have been, due primarily to the fact that I have the very best husband, who not only does not mind going clothes shopping with me; he is actually very good at picking stuff out for me to try on. This is extremely useful because I am *not* very good at picking stuff out for me to try on, so it’s nice at least one of us can figure it out. The turkey fry party was on a perfectly lovely day, and we got to see our friends’ newly landscaped backyard (lovely), but I did let them know how disappointed I was that the frying of the turkeys resulted in nothing more than cooked food. All those stories one hears about turkey fryers that involve great columns of flame shooing into the air, or exploding propane tanks really had me hoping for at least a little bit of excitement (okay, not really, but it was fun to tease them anyway).

Memorial Day itself was a quiet day, mainly because I knew I was going to be up til far too late last night (or actually, far too early this morning) , due to the fact that the women’s ensemble was scheduled for a recording session. So I tried to take a nap but wasn’t very successful and instead just decided to hope for the best. I got back home around 2 in the morning, and by that point my brain was just too wired to let me sleep much at all.

Needless to say, today my coworker (who is also part of the group) and I were a little spacey from exhaustion. Naturally this meant that we had people come in from an office across the country, and they arrived just in time to have a nice long meeting upstairs in the conference room where it’s warm and there are comfortable chairs and how I managed to *not* doze off I will never know.

A few weeks ago we bought a new cat tree for Checkers. Or rather, we bought a new cat tree to replace the one that used to be in the computer room, because the old one was looking pretty shredded and smelled pretty rank, and since my dad and I built it back when my parents lived in Roseville, that means it was getting to the point where it was just about old enough to ask for the keys to the car, so we decided it needed to go away. And while technically the new tree is not just for Checkers (because we are not so far gone that we are about to purchase expensive pieces of cat furniture for each individual little feline prima dona who lives with us), since she refuses to set one dainty toe outside the computer room except on the rare occasion that a sparkle ball HAS to be chased into the hall (followed shortly thereafter by the cat equivalent of “holy crap how the hell did I get out *here*?”), she just ends up the primary user.

We found a nifty new style that came in a box and had all kinds of interlocking parts which also happened to be on clearance, and we put it all together and then stuck it in the corner of the computer room right next to my desk, and then ‘convinced’ Checkers to sit on it by basically dragging her, mad and hollering, out of the corner shelf and plopping her on the shelf. Where she stayed only for the .23 seconds it took  her to turn and dash back to her shelf and commence with a marathon session of glaring and sulking.  It took her a day or two to get over being horribly offended by the change in furniture, but eventually she came around and decided that the new tree is actually pretty cool, and even better, after a week or so she decided that the new tree was so cool that she no longer has to live in the corner shelf unit.

I suppose only someone else who has lived with an extremely opinionated, highly nervous, overly prone to panic and hollering type of cat would understand how big a deal this all is, but trust me, this new cat tree has really been a big step forward for this little cat. She is happier. She’s gained a little weight (she was on the too-skinny side for a while there). She’s doing a lot more playing (those sparkle balls are surprisingly frisky). And the plus side of all this feeling happier and more confident is that she’s starting to stand up to the other cats a little more. When there is hissing between her and Rosie, now, nine times out of ten Checkers is the one that starts it and Rosie is the one that walks away looking nervous.

However, I am hedging my bets here. We bought this cat tree knowing full well that she will be the primary user in this house, in this computer room, but also with the pretty strong suspicion that when we move, it’s not suddenly going to become a multi-user sort of item like every other piece of furniture in the house. So it’s better that she gets used to it here, so it’s old and familiar and a safe place to hide in the new house, in the new computer room, where if she really insists on maintaining her self-imposed one-room territory, she can.

When our realtor said he was determined to sell our house before the end of the month, we smiled and nodded, but privately, Richard and I sort of assumed it was going to take a while. After all, the housing bubble definitely burst, and it is very much a buyer’s market (good for us on the ‘buying a house in Sacramento’ side of things; not so good for us on the ‘selling our current house’ side of things). We specifically set up all the financing so that we would be covered in the event our house might take a little bit longer to sell.

But it looks like our realtor might have managed to pull it off anyway. Right now we’re sitting on a confirmed offer; an offer that puts us in the range we wanted to get for the house. The only downside is that this particular offer is contingent on them selling their own house, which means that while we’re one step further down the road, we’re not quite there yet.

So just in case they’re not able to get their house sold in the time we’ve given them, the house is still being shown and it is still technically for sale, and we are still soliciting offers. Except that now these would be back-up offers, just in case the first offer falls through. And what all of that means is that we are still having to keep on top of the dust bunnies and the smudges on the bathroom mirror and the scrubbing and the clearing and the keeping the current house in a state of ‘clean’ that makes it feel strange and empty and not remotely like home. And of course the lovely irony in all of this is that we have, so far, had more interest in the home (three showings so far in the last four days alone), now that there is the possibility it might be already off the market, than we did when things were free and clear.

I am trying very hard not to stress about all this. I am trying to instead think positively; to send lots of house-selling vibes to our potential buyers, and to distract myself by looking up all things kitchen, in preparation for the rather massive remodeling project we intend to kick off about ten seconds after the house in Sacramento is officially ours. And this means that I have to go through the process of wondering why the heck kitchen designers the world over are so obsessed with speckles when I so very much do not like speckles, and debating the merits of every possible type of countertop available, and pouring through Consumer Reports to find the best appliance options and crossing my fingers that the wall we are hoping to knock out is not, in fact, a structural one, and looking forward to the day when all this is over.

Our current house feels less and less like it’s ours as the days go on. For one thing, with all the work done on it, it no longer looks like it did even just one month ago.

There are railings on the front porch, we moved the porch swing, and all the dragons are packed up and hiding in the garage.

There are railings on the back porch (notice the inclusion of the lovely patio set we found a few weeks ago, plus all the brand new plants and landscaping around the porch itself. Until we decided to put this house on the market, that was still all bare, ugly dirt.

The tree on the wall of the breakfast nook is finally complete. Considering that my friend came over to do the trunk and get the whole thing started about three years ago, it’s more than past time I finally got it finished. In answer to the obvious question, no, we will not be painting a tree on a wall in the new house. As gorgeous as this thing is, once was enough. The thought of having to duplicate all of those little leaves makes me a little weepy.

Of course, on the plus side, even as the current house feels as if it is starting to slip away, the new house feels as if it is coming more and more into focus. Thursday morning we met our realtor and several inspectors at the house in Sacramento and while Richard and the realtor and I sat in the dining room and went over a whole stack of paperwork, the inspectors walked around the house and poked and prodded and peered and took copious notes so that we will know exactly what we are getting into in the new place. Thankfully, the verdict is – nothing we didn’t already expect (with the possible exception of the carpenter bees munching on the back deck – and holy crap but those suckers are big and ugly – but since the deck’s going to undergo some serious renovation, the bees aren’t a problem anyway).

Yesterday afternoon Richard and I headed off to Sacramento for the East Sacramento garden tour, which was a self-guided walking tour of nine gardens in the Fabulous Forties, a neighborhood just across the freeway from where we’ll be, full of huge, gorgeous old houses, tree-lined streets, and soe rather nicely decorated back yards. We could not have asked for better weather for an afternoon spent wandering around looking at gorgeous houses.

Afterwards, Richard asked if I wanted to go swing by the new house and I made some comment to the effect of ‘duh!’ so we headed over in that direction in a circular route, tracking down the location of several more stores, coffee shops, and interesting places to go explore once we move in. Then we stopped at the new house and got out to ponder additional possibilities for the driveway we’re going to be putting in, and while we were doing that, someone came out from the house next door, and before we knew it, we were introducing ourselves to our soon-to-be new neighbors. So what was meant to be a quick little stop quickly turned into a much longer visit, involving a nice long chat with our neighbors, who are delightful people who are maybe just the slightest bit excited about our proposal to take out the inappropriately placed pine tree that stands between our property and theirs. We stood out in the front and talked about the neighborhood and they told us about some of the other neighbors, and then they showed us what they’ve done to their backyard (it’s absolutely lovely and I am hoping we can pick their brains for ideas for our own backyard) and it was the perfect way to end a day in what will soon be our home town.

And as we headed home, away from the place that will soon be ours, back to the place that won’t be ours much longer, it was just one more reminder of how this decision of ours to pick up and move and make such a drastic change in our lives is good and right and meant to be.

Today we left work early to go see a flower.

This is a corpse flower (Random woman, crouching child, and ladder included in photo for scale) . It blooms only once every few years, and the bloom itself only lasts for 18 to 36 hours.

The interior is really quite lovely, if you don’t mind the distinct smell of rotten fish.

They cut ahole near the base of the blossom. I can only assume this is so the rest of us can see what the bugs the flower’s so desperately trying to attract see shortly before they die.

This is what the corpse flower plant looks like when it isn’t flowering. If not for the spots on the trunk, you would never guess they were even members of the same plant family.

This particular flower actually bloomed yesterday, so it’s already started the process of slow wilt. I am not sorry we waited until today, however, since the reason it is called a corpse flower is because it puts off a smell reminiscent of rotting meat, and the botany students manning the greenhouse and answering questions noted that by about 10pm last night the stench was so strong that people could smell it several buildings away.

It seemed like the sort of thing that was worth leaving work early to go see.

First, and perhaps most important, the house is ours. There was a bit of excitement last weekend, what with the offer, and then the counter offer, and then the counter-counter offer, and then the discovery of another offer coming in from someone else, effectively throwing a big fat wrench right in the middle of things, and then the several hours of nail-biting suspense while we waited to find out if they’d pick our offer or if they’d, instead, force us into a nightmare of multiple counter offers and uncertainty, and then finally, late at night, the phone call from our agent letting us know that we finally had an answer. Paperwork was officially signed. There was, naturally, a bit of cheering.

And since then, it’s been just a constant effort to keep the house clean and neat. Every morning when we get up we have to vacuum and straighten and make sure every surface is wiped down and then spend the day hoping that none of the cats decides to plant a particularly slimy hairball in any prime traffic zones, and then all that’s left to do is sit back and wait for someone to decide to come see it. Which did not actually happen until this morning, when Richard and I were already scrambling around getting the house ready for our first Open House, so I did the world’s fastest vacuuming job and then dashed away to choir rehearsal while Richard stayed behind to let the agent and her clients in before leaving himself.

The Open House was pretty much a dud – we only had one person show up and that was another agent who’d been unable to make it to the agents’ tour, which was disappointing., and suggests that despite my fervent wishing, we are going to probably have to do at least one more, and soon. It’s not exactly fun, because for this and for the agents’ tour, it’s not just been cleaning the house; it’s also required me to round up all the cats and then cart them off to sit, in their carriers, in my parents’ garage for the hour or two each event takes (the weather’s been nice enough to leave them in the garage; once it gets hotter, if we have to do this again, we’ll bring them inside).

So that’s how things are going right now. Lots of cleaning. Lots of wandering around the house noticing more things that probably ought to be cleaned, or put away, or fixed, or otherwise dealt with. Scheduling inspections for the new house, and singing paperwork to get all our financial ducks in a row in preparation for the new mortgage, and most of all, lots of crossing of fingers and hoping that someone comes to buy our house, so that all the pieces fall into place and we can just collapse somewhere in a little exhausted puddle and not have to worry about houses old or new any more.

The work continues on the exterior of the house. Both back and front porches now have railings down the steps, which are brand new on the back porch because the old ones were looking pretty old and ugly. The plan right now is for them to finish everything up on Monday, although they have not even touched the interior yet, so it will be interesting to see if this actually happens. As I mentioned earlier, this house has a *lot* of trim.

My dad conveniently has a project where he gets to work from home for a few weeks, so I wheedled him into playing house sitter for us for the past two days – mainly just to be here to let workmen in and out of the house as they needed. Thursday the tile guy came and ripped out the magically warping marble shower surround, and did all the necessary patching of holes in the underlying sheetrock that result from having to pry well-adhered marble slabs off of a wall. He, too, says he will have it all finished on Monday, but currently we have only about one wall of tile installed, no fixtures, no doors, and we are both using the shower in the guest bathroom in the meantime, and also hoping that miracles really will happen and everything will actually be done on time.

My dad was also here to let the pest people in this morning. They came in and climbed down under the house and did whatever magical things they do to make the termites disappear, and when they were done, they filled out a form declaring that our house has now cleared all pest inspections, which is apparently a good thing to be able to include in the ‘buy this house’ descriptions on realtor.com.

Richard and I, in the meantime, have been busying ourselves with other house things – but mainly related to the house we hope to buy, as opposed to the house we intend to sell. Yesterday after work we met with a friend who also happens to be a mortgage broker (and who also came highly recommended by a few other friends who have already worked with him for their own house purchases) and went over our financial applications (the verdict – we both have excellent credit scores and we are definitely going to be able to do the convoluted financial thing we want to do to make this whole ‘buying a house before we finish selling the first one’ thing work). Once the financial stuff was done, then all we had to do was hash out the terms of our offer. Last night our realtor filled out the forms and then emailed them to us (ah, the convenience of modern technology!) and we printed them out and then he walked through every single bit of them on the phone and even though it was technically still Thursday when we signed them, it was only because we squeaked in under the wire with a few minutes to spare. Richard dropped off the forms this morning and we have given the sellers until tomorrow night to respond. It’s all very exciting and also more than a wee bit terrifying.

I did not end up having to prime the scary yellow patches, because as scary as they might have been, they were still light enough to paint over without bleeding through. This afternoon I headed back to the hardware store, where they now recognize me, after three visits in less than a week. A very nice man at the paint counter helped me pick out a few paint cards, and then sent me home with two huge flipbooks of cards displaying every single color ever made by Benjamin Moore, and despite being completely overwhelmed by choices, I actually was able to find one that more closely resembled what I had been imagining in my head. Back to the hardware store, and then back home again with a gallon of paint in the color Elephant Tusk, and I got to painting, because at this point I figured even if I absolutely hated it, I only have to look at it as long as it takes to sell this house.

Richard enjoys painting just about as much as he enjoys being strung up by his toes, so he didn’t do any brush-wielding. However, he rescued me from the tedium of paint preparation by taping off sections of the wall for me so I wouldn’t have to do it (because the taping is the part of painting I hate most of all). It might have gone faster if I had used a roller, but my experience with rollers is that they are far more likely to splatter fine particles of paint everywhere (including on me) and I have much more control over the splattering when I use a brush. So it took me about three hours, total, to do the wall (interspersed with dinner and watching an episode of Veronica Mars on DVD), but the extra time was more than worth it when compared to the distinct lack of paint anywhere but on the wall, where it was supposed to be. And when I was done, I pulled off the tape and damn if it doesn’t look almost exactly like what I had hoped it would be. The fireplace build-out really pops out of that wall and it looks amazing.

There’s been other progress on the house as well over the past two days. A small work crew of two have been cutting and painting and fixing and replacing all the trim on the exterior (and there is a *lot* of trim on our exterior), and when we got home today, we discovered that they’d installed the new railings around the front and back porch, and also suddenly we have a great big front porch we never knew was there. It is amazing to me how a space that looked so tiny when it wasn’t enclosed can look suddenly larger simply by the addition of walls. It makes me want to put a little bistro set out there so we can drink coffee in the morning and listen to the birds in the tiny little forest in the neighbors’ back yards, and watch the picturesque farming equipment rolling around in the fields past the end of the street. Here’s hoping it makes someone else – someone with enough money to buy our house – feel the same way.