Home of the Snarkmaiden

Yes, it's cherry blossom time on the UW Quad again, bringing with it the hordes of flower worshipers, taking selfies or posing for friends in the branches of a tree or just against the clouds of lush, lacy white blossom. It's as reliable as swallows at Capistrano: the return of the cherry blossoms and with them, the hordes of eager photographers.

Yes, I'm obviously guilty, too. My excuse is, I'll post some of these to the department Facebook page -- pretty pictures of the Quad always attract hits.

This entry actually should have hit the airwaves on Saturday, March 1, which is when most of it was typed, but there was a small contretemps somewhere on the intertubes, and I was distracted. Here, have a picture of bread.



( Life changes and chef's knives, all under the fig leaf for length )

Along with most of the rest of the country, we've been having a chilly week. Nothing on places like Madison and Minneapolis, with temperatures in single digits, but by local standards, damn' cold. Sleeping at night is complicated by the random pile of heat-seeking mammals weighting down the comforter making it tricky to roll over in bed, and pretty much impossible to pull the covers over whatever shoulder is exposed thereby. But by pulling out all the stops in my usual cold-weather layering routine I've been managing to keep reasonably warm. I hate to guess what the electric bill will be like for December, though. And I broke down and ordered a whole suite of Thermaskin long underwear from Land's End. Of course, by the time it arrives, the cold spell will have broken and the longies will be temporarily redundant. But I expect they'll come to some use later in the winter.

Also had a hot toddy for the first time this weekend. Hal and I had meant to get to get to Cederberg Tea House to try the South African tea that friend M. raves about, but in the event the tunnel on 99 was closed making traffic on any southerly approach to Queen Anne pretty well unspeakable, and so we gave up and retreated to dear old Hudson for something warm and consoling. It being too damn' cold to have a Bloody Mary (my usual at Hudson, because they are reDONKulously good there), I decided to try a hot toddy instead. Lovely. Really quite nice. I've been playing with recipes since and have decided that whole cloves are a mistake unless you spike them into the lemon peel because otherwise you just wind up with a mouth full of cloves on the first sip, but otherwise it's a gorgeous drink to curl up around when it's too friggin' cold to do much besides huddle under a blanket and a warm dog and watch The Good Wife.

I was going to say that I may be less active with the writing here because school starts Wednesday (Wednesday! What rational school starts classes on Wednesday?) and I'm taking another run at third year Mandarin. Which always does a number on my free time (Mandarin, I mean, not the second run at third year, which, of course, I've not done before so there's no "always" about it.) But it's hard to be less active here than I've already been, thank you very much. I think my writing brain is off again. This happens sometimes. My process and focus wander hand in hand into drawing brain or language acquisition brain or having pointless arguments on the SMOFS list brain, and the writing brain just decides to take a nap. I find myself going along through my life occasionally thinking of things that would make a start of a post or an essay or even a story but then they just bubble away into the ether before I actually set anything down.

Saturday we got together with Scott and Carl, who'd looked out for the house and cats while we went down to Mariposa. They were down for the Kent Saturday Farmers Market (Scott and Carl, that is, the house and cats already being in Kent) and stopped in to drop off the keys. After the initial chit-chat, we all went down to the market. Scott picked up yet more hot peppers from the Mexican-American family farm, even though he's already made three gallons of hot sauce this season, while I settled for heirloom tomatoes, smoked cheddar, and smoked beefstick. Oh, and macrons. A new bakery selling at the market was doing Chinese-five-spice- and green-tea-and-white-chocolate macrons. Both quite nice. And much more convenient than going to Ballard (home of the very fine Honoré, noted for scrummy macrons). We then withdrew to Airways Brewing to support our local brewpub, where our waitress explained that if Scott wanted to sell any of his hot sauce, she had two eager buyers lined up, one of whom was at the bar just then. I reckon I must try this hot sauce.

Sunday we braved the successive blustery downpours to catch the State Fair on its last day. Liked the goats, especially one very sweet kid who liked having her chin skritched, and was quite impressed with the draft horse show/demo, but we had missed the rabbits and cavies and therefore only got chickens. The young 4Hers were out in force, however, and eager to 'splain all about their various fowl, including the runner ducks, which to me look like they ought to be from China, but turn out to be from India, where they developed that odd, tall stance to be able to see over the grasses in rice fields where they are kept as pest control.

Never did manage to buy any fudge or anything on a stick. I fail at fair food.

It's been almost a year since we made an offer on a house in Kent and didn't get it. It is almost a year since we first took a serious look at what became our house.

Quite a lot of changes have crowded into the intervening year. It's interesting to look back and see how my perspective has altered accordingly. The sale of the house we didn't get fell through, as far as we can tell. Neener-neener on them, I say. That other house was between the tracks anyway -- the additional noise from the trains would have been a pretty serious downside. From up on the rise of East Hill, the trains are romantically melancholy, rather than disturbing racket.

In our yard, I've discovered there are three apple trees, not just two, and in the house all the light from those window corners more than compensates for the boxiness. I haven't figured out what all the mystery plants in the garden are, but whatever the irissy-looking things under the big apple are, they're going to bloom purple. Who knows, maybe they are iris. Either way, I do like purple. Meanwhile, the upper terrace of the yard you see above has gone wild and tangly and must be beaten back into submission. It's all one big adventure.

For those vicariously following the progress of the house, here's another shot of the living room before the arbor vitae got yanked. Dark. Dark, dark, dark.

Perhaps the most wearing, and wearying, aspect of househunting is the cycle of hope, disappointment, and having to start all over again.

So, we made an offer on the house. The sellers made a counter -- too high for the area, we thought. We pondered our finances and the alternatives and decided to make a counter to the counter offer. And then we waited for another response. Which came, last Tuesday. They sold the house to someone else. We were apparently being used as leverage against another bid, one we were never told was out there. Arguably, we were never in the running at all, unless we were willing to pay over market.

We were not willing to pay over market -- we can't swing the loan if the appraisal comes in under selling price, which it well might. So we wouldn't have bid much higher anyhow. Still it's disappointing.

It's not as disappointing as it could be, because disappointment appears to be the primary feature of the househunting process, and so I've gotten a bit used to it. There's a larger pattern to it -- start with what you feel are modest goals, discover your error, recalibrate and diminish expectations, wrestle with trade-offs, decide you can live with the trade-offs, wait, hope, wait, and finally get the bad news. Then you recalibrate your expectations downwards, broaden your search criteria again, and start all over. Repeat when necessary.

Happily, just after I got the news I had a birthday lunch date with marykaykare who swept me off to the Salmon House in her jaunty new yellow convertible. There we had a grilled salmon lunch that couldn't be beat, enjoying the sunshine and the views across the water and a very nice chat. Just the thing for househunter's blues. Especially with the ginger spice birthday cupcake reserved for mid-afternoon dessert.

Later in the week, once Hal and I had pulled ourselves up off the emotional floor, we went out and looked at a couple of other houses in the same Kentish neighborhood. One shows very well -- it's been redone out from the studs, and the fit-and-finish is all good -- but it's tiny, and the space is laid out badly. Pity. The west-facing kitchen gets wonderful light, and the garden is well kept. But it's the sort of house that's ideal for the seller -- a single woman with not very much stuff. That would not be us. Wonderful light though. Still, crossed that off the list.

Now we're gearing up to maybe put in an offer on the other place we saw.

It is not the house of my dreams. It's post war, and very boxy, with a crying need for new paint, new kitchen linoleum, new appliances, and a ton of work on the garden. But because it's post war, it's built like a tank. And because it's boxy, every single major room on the main level has natural light on two sides. And because the garden has been allowed to do its own thing for years and years, it also has two mature apple trees and a mature pear, in among the dandelions. A person could do worse.

And whatever you say against it -- it's not very photogenic at the moment, for instance -- at least the house is not Yet Another Gottverdamter Mid-level Entry Ranch-style Rambler. Hates them, we does.

And, for a wonder, most everything about the house is original -- original scuffed and mellowed hardwood floors; weird, original metal-frame windows, original cedar lining on the linen closet, original weird, radiant heat furnace thingy. Yeah, okay, original is not always a plus.

In all, it's in an area we like, "well-priced" as the phrase goes, and a house we can live with. So we'll try again, put in an offer, and see what happens. What's the worst that could happen?

We repeat this cycle of diminished expectations until we wind up buying a cinderblock doghouse in Tacoma, that's what.

Whole Foods has moved in just down the hill from us, so we are starting to shop there occasionally. I'm not fully re-adjusted to their produce nomenclature. This morning, in the act of taking a banana out of the hanging basket, I thought to myself, "Mmmmm, conventional bananas."

Me: You know, I normally think of the opposite of "conventional X" as being "nuclear X".

Hal: Hmmmmm?

Me: Well, what I want to know is, where are the nuclear bananas?

Hal: Only a terrorist would want to know that.

I'm not sure the title pertains to this post. I'm not sure it doesn't.

( Long kvetch about The Morning So Far )