I'm baaack!

Our faithful readers might have noticed that most of the recent posts were written by Derek. But Emilie is back! After a visit from her parents (with the necessary house-cleaning frenzy), a weekend trip, a new semester, and a show with her belly dance troupe, she is back to blogging! It is kind of nice to sit down long enough to type something on the computer. Derek has been going by our home site every day, taking pictures. And, lately, it seems like something new is happening every single day.

About a week ago they were putting up the wood frames for the walls. It was a really hot day. We were sweating like crazy just watching them work! And these guys were fast, too. It looked like the old movies where everyone walks a little too fast. I have read that is because the camera had to be hand-cranked while filming. Eventually, your arm got tired and you cranked slower, meaning the film moved too slowly. When it was played back at regular speed in a movie theater, the people all looked like they were in a big hurry. Sort of like New Yorkers today.

Most of the construction workers spoke Spanish, and I got to hear every bad word I know in Spanish. Including something along the lines of "Hurry the #$%@ up! They're watching us. Let's move it!" It was very educational. :-) We were so excited to see so much work on our house that we went and bought cold drinks (soda, not beer!) for all the guys working on our house in the heat. You can see the bottles strewn around on the ground in later pictures. The lady at the grocery store looked at me very strangely for buying an armload of cold pop. Maybe she thought I didn't know they sold 12-packs?

For me, the moment our lot started to feel like a house was when the frames for the walls were up and the ceiling beams were up. Even though the house was open to the air, it still felt like it had rooms. So you could go in the hole where the front door will be and stand in each of the rooms. It was exciting. It also reminded me of one of my favorite books, Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura's father and a neighbor are building the house:

In one day he and Pa built those walls as high as Pa wanted them. They joked and sang while they worked, and their axes made the chips fly. On top of the walls they set up a skeleton roof of slender poles. Then in the south wall they cut a tall hole for a door, and in the west wall and the east wall they cut square holes for windows.
Laura couldn't wait to see the inside of the house. As soon as the tall hole was cut, she ran inside. Everything was striped there. Stripes of sunshine came in through the cracks in the west wall, and stripes of shadow came down from the poles overhead. The stripes of shade and sunshine were all across Laura's hands and her arms and her bare feet. And through the cracks between the logs she could see stripes of prairie. The sweet smell of the prairie mixed with the sweet smell of cut wood.

Wednesday, we saw that there were beautiful golden curls of wood shavings on the floor and the house smelled like fresh cut wood. I wonder if there is a Yankee Candle scented like fresh cut wood? The holes had been drilled in some of the wood to let the plumbing through. Our house hadn't smelled like wood before because most of the wood was pre-cut to the proper length before it was shipped to our lot. I guess it is more efficient that way.

The front porch also really makes it look like a house. I was standing on our new porch when we got to meet our next door neighbors. Two cute little kids and their mom. To the kids the half-built house seems like a big playhouse. They will each have their own room in the new house. Right now, they are living with family elsewhere in the same development. Seven people in one house. They must really like each other! I think it is a good sign that someone whose brother owns a house in this development would want to buy a house here, too. It suggests to me that her brother must be pretty happy with his house. I know, it is far too late to change our mind about buying a house, but I am still nervous.

It doesn't help my nerves to read the Wall Street Journal, lately, either. (We used some frequent flyer miles to get a free subscription. We will never work up to getting a free flight, anyway.) Every day there is more about foreclosures, tightening loan markets, and how it is going to be really, really hard to get a mortage. Eeek! I wish our mortage were all nailed down and signed. We wanted to go ahead and do that, but we would have had to pay the down payment, plus accept an interest rate over half a per cent higher than the current rate in order to lock in the terms in advance. Not a very good deal. I keep telling myself that, whatever the financial world does, it will be okay. If interest rates go down, then our mortage will be at a lower rate. If they go up, that will also help the stock market go up, so our mutual fund will be worth more when we cash it in to make the down payment. And if inflation increases, then we will be paying off our mortage with dollars that are easier to get and worth less than the dollars we are borrowing. This finance lesson has been brought to you by Emilie's 30-Second Over-Simplified Economics Lessons. Now available for only $19.95. Act now and we will also send you an old economics textbook that we don't want to move to the new place! Limited time offer.

I may not know much about economics, but I do know more than some people. One day in class, I said something about supply and demand. And one of my students said "Yeah, my Dad always says that. What does it mean?" So we had a short explanation, totally off-topic. Sigh. Do you realize that these students are old enough to vote to choose the next President, but don't know things like that? I think Dogbert is right: we should have an IQ test for voters. Cute, fuzzy, little dogs like Dogbert will be given bonus points. Hey, it couldn't be much worse than the current system. Just try explaining why we still have the Electoral College to a bunch of skeptical, computer-savvy eighteen year olds. The original reason was partially because it would have taken too much time for horses to deliver the ballots from each state, so the Electors needed to be all in one place. I don't think that really applies any more, do you? Okay, the Founding Fathers were also a little nervous about letting ordinary people without college educations and large plantations vote. If they had had IQ tests back then, they might have required one...

Okay, I better stop goofing off on the computer and go grade papers. Yes, I gave them homework on the very first day. Yes, I am the meanest teacher in the whole world, thank you very much.