We are supposed to close on our house on Friday. I’m nervous about it, because as always, it seems like everything isn’t quite sewn up. But hopefully it’ll all go off smoothly. What time Friday you might ask? An excellent question.
Anyway, there are a fair few things I’m very excited about. First, a/c! We now have two window units in our current house. I bought a second earlier this summer figuring we’d use it in our new house as well, if we bought one. Very few houses in this area have central a/c, so I wasn’t expecting to buy one. Even with two window units, we can cool less than half our house. They are also extremely noisy, and the fans we use to try and cool a third room beyond the two with the installed units are extremely noisy as well. Last night, all three bedrooms in the house were cool, but I felt like I was living in a wind tunnel.
Second, the new house has a below-ground sprinkler system. Hurray! Currently, we have a complex arrangement of sprinklers that must be dragged around the yard and removed so B can cut the grass. July and August have virtually no rain in this state, and watering is a must if you wish to grow almost anything, including grass. It took years for my grass to recover from the summer I bought the house, when I did no watering.
We didn’t do much for the 4th this year. We’ve gone out of town every year for the 4th six of the last 9 years. The 3 years we stayed in town were when I was pregnant with L, L’s first year (when she was 5 months old), and this year. The 4th when I was pregnant with L was one of the most unpleasant nights I have ever experienced. Our neighborhood turns into a war zone. It’s really crazy. It’s partially because about half a mile away is a shopping center on a reservation. The parking lot is converted for fireworks sales, the vast majority of which would be illegal in Kent but are of course not illegal on the reservation. We also live a quarter mile from a park and from a local elementary school. This is normally great, but not on the 4th. This year, we decided we’d had enough. I am not feeling well enough for any kind of major trip, so we just went and stayed in a hotel in Belle.vue. Worth. Every. Penny. It was so nice! We had a nice dinner out. We were thinking of going to see fireworks, but they didn’t start until after 10 PM, a bit late for L, so we just had an early night. Boring, but pleasant. The debris in our neighborhood as well as comments from neighbors confirmed we made the right decision.
Isla helping me make an apple cake
