Not a Wasted Word

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I went back and looked at the March Photo Challenge that I posted in 2012 on my old blog, and I decided to re-post those pictures here, because why not? So here is the prompt page and the first 11 shots…

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It occurred to me at some point this winter that August of 2019 marked ten years of me blogging.

Ten. Years.

I actually went back to my old space and poked around a bit, read a few posts, skimmed a few comments. It’s CRAZY how many people commented back then. It’s crazy how much I used to comment in other people’s spaces. Blogging was such a massive part of me life; to say it was important to me just doesn’t do it nearly the justice it deserves.

In many ways, blogging was my life.

All of my best friends back then were found through blogging. Some I had met in real life, and some were even (eventually) my real life best friends. Others existed only through a screen, be that on our blogs or texting. I was on Twitter for a while but that overwhelmed me fast, and I stayed primarily in the blogosphere. I never even made it onto Instagram.

Sometimes, when I’m trying to log into something with my google account it will default to my old blogging gmail. I’m always taken aback when I see the handle. It’s like glimpsing a ghost of my former self.

It used to make me really sad when I went back to my old blog and read it. Really, really sad. I was in that space for five years. Generally I wrote a post every weekday. Some months there are 31 posts! (One February there are 31 posts!) I had those designated days where I would write a certain kind of post, like Thoughtful Thursdays and Useful Tuesdays. (I thought there were WTF!? Wednesdays but I don’t see that tag on the list. 😉 I did all these photo challenges (I should look back through those months too…). I participated in other people’s themed posts. I put up the buttons and the badges. I was a part of PAIL. Holy shit, I could go on and on. (I just found them! They were called So What Wednesdays! Ha!)

It’s just crazy to see it all there, the hundreds and HUNDREDS of posts. I took down my first paid-for space (someone actually bought the url recently and I started getting traveling posts from it in my reader! 😉 I guess I’ve been here for four years? I remember hoping this space would be something amazing… instead I just let it kind of fade away.

I’m not sure what the emotions are here. Definitely not regret. Some massive doses of nostalgia to be sure. But honestly, most I’m just grateful – grateful that blogging, and the ALI blogosphere, was there for me when I needed it most, that writing in my own spaces and reading in other people’s spaces filled a hole that otherwise would have felt bottomless. And also grateful that I don’t need it as much anymore.

It’s weird for a huge piece of my life to exist somewhere like that. I don’t have Facebook anymore and I don’t participate in any other social media, so my blogs are all I’ve got. Like all online presences there is some cringe worthy shit in my spaces, but nothing that mortifies me. It’s been long enough that I can afford myself a little bit of grace.

I guess it was from all that stumbling gracefully…

(Ha! Sorry! I couldn’t help myself…)

These next couple of months are going to be hard for me. There will be a lot of uncertainty and I will writhe against it unwittingly, despite my best efforts. It’s going to be hard and I’m going to struggle and it’s going to suck. I know all of this. But I can also take steps to tone down all of that negativity, especially since it will exist completely in my head.

Not knowing what we are going to do with that space. Not knowing what decisions we are going to make. That kind of things drives me insane. But I need to learn how to ride these things out. I need to figure out how to be okay not knowing.

There are bigger decisions I’ve learned to let reside in constant uncertainty. I still want to live abroad with my kids, but I have no idea if I’ll ever prioritize that so it might come to pass. I’ve learned to be okay with not knowing about that – I figure when the time comes I’ll know which choice I should make and I can find peace in that place of not knowing. It’s hard for me, and makes me feel uncomfortable, but I’ve learned to ride out those long moments of grasping.

In the meantime, we will keep living our lives, watching and tracking our financial decisions, gathering data before we decide what comes next.

It’s going to be hard but it will be a good exercise for me. Somehow, at 39, I still need the practice.

On Tuesday we inspected our unit, found it in acceptable condition, and wrote our tenant three checks: one for the second half of the buyout amount we agreed to, one for the entirety of his security deposit and one for the remaining days of January. Then he handed us our keys, and left.

Seven and a half years, three tenants, bedbugs and a buyout agreement later, we are no longer landlords.

I have to admit, I felt lighter than I expected after he left. I really did not like him, and I did not like sharing part of my house with him. I’m glad he’s gone.

I don’t like how much lighter our bank accounts are. We’ve decimated our emergency fund, and we’ll be on a VERY tight budget until August when we’ll have our car paid off (we took out a three year loan but have been making extra payments on it so we only have seven months left). Once the car payments are done we’ll be in a pretty good spot, as far as our monthly finances go, but obviously we’ll need to keep a better handle on our money for a while to rebuild our emergency fund.

And of course, there is the question of what to do with the space. At this point we just don’t feel comfortable with anyone we don’t know being down there, so we’re not even going to AirBnB it. That would require buying furniture anyway, and we need to do a lot of work to ensure there aren’t still bedbugs – I would never let anyone sleep down there until I am as sure as I can be (with bedbugs, it feels like you never can be entirely sure).

So yeah. We have this space, but… it’s not currently connected to the rest of the house. We used to dream of incorporating it into our house by making it a “master suite,” but honestly I’m struggling to get excited about the idea. I used to want those extra square feet so badly, but now, after seven years of reading about minimalism, it just feels like more that we don’t really need. Mostly it just feels like more to clean.

Except it’s not just more to clean. The second bathroom would be amazing (and that one is SO MUCH BIGGER than ours, which is so tight that you can’t open or close the door if you’re using the toilet). And having an actual wall between us and our living room?! That would be incredible (our current bedroom is supposed to be the living room and the only thing separating it from our actual living room is a Japanese shade). So yes, it’s still exciting to think about that space being ours, but I’m guessing building stairs to connect the two living spaces will cost WAY more than we’ll have any time soon, so if we’re not willing to take out a HELOC, well then… I guess that space will just sit there.

It’s frustrating because space is at such a premium in this city, I hate to see it go to waste. But when the city refuses to protect homeowners who aren’t really interested in being landlords but have space to share, well then I guess we have to just sit on it.

Or live above it. Empty. For quite a while.

So yeah. It’s nice not to have a tenant anymore. It’s nice not to have to worry about when he’ll email with some cryptic request that is barely comprehensible. It’s nice not to have to wonder when he’ll be demanding we spend thousands of dollars on another bedbug treatment when he clearly takes no steps to manage the problem in the ways he can. All of that is very nice. But it’s not nice to have this source of income pulled out from under us. And it’s not nice that now are financially strapped because we had to pay someone else a considerable sum to leave our own home. None of that is nice.

I don’t know. We bought a house with an inlaw 7.5 years ago because the ones with asking prices in our budget were going for $150K more, in cash, and they didn’t have inlaw units. So when we found this one at $100K over our budget (which was only still on the market because the kids of the original owners tried to sell it without buying out the previous tenants in the inlaw unit, which left it on the market for over a month – a death knell in a city like San Francisco), we went for it because it felt like “buy this house or buy no house.” I guess in the end we should be happy because renting the unit allowed us to pay our mortgage when we made less and were spending crazy amounts on childcare (and health care!) and now we totally can afford our mortgage without a tenant, we’re only strapped because of the buyout. And I al happy, and I recognize how fortunate we are. It’s still a bummer though, and I’m working through those feelings.

{It also doesn’t hurt that our home is worth considerably more than we paid for it – Bay Area prices are always going up.}

I don’t know if I even mentioned here that our tenant accepted our buyout agreement in October. We gave him six months to leave (because he had 45 days to reneg on the agreement after he signed and we worried that if he started looking too quickly he’d decide not to leave without a protracted legal battle) and expected him to use all of those six months, but then he left in three, which still surprises me. And I didn’t want to talk about it until it was all said and done, so here we are, now, with maybe a surprise announcement…

I am trying to focus on the positives, because there are plenty. Who knows, maybe we’ll make it work incorporating the unit without stairs. My husband seems content walking through our garage and down the long hallway to get to the unit, maybe some day I’ll get there too. Who knows, maybe this summer we’ll be making the big move.

But right now, we’re just going to sit on it.

Today we finally got someone to take care of the water damage in our daughter’s room. He took out her windows, put in aluminum flashing, sealed them tight when he reinstalled them (they don’t actually fit correctly because, like all things in our house, every expense was spared), and repaired the wall. It’s been a source of stress since the winter after we moved in, and now, seven years later, we finally got it fixed.

Our daughter really wants to paint her room – the entire house is the most boring taupe color – and now we can finally do that! Mostly it’s just nice to have a thing that was always on the back of our minds, causing stress, finally done.

(The other room that has significantly more water damage requires a complete re-do and we’re not sure what that will look like yet, or how we’ll pay the many of tens of thousands of dollars it will require to fix, so it’s being left for now.)

I also finally called the appliance repair man to see what he could do about our oven, which finally stopped working entirely after months of incredibly slow pre-heating. He came this afternoon to replace the igniter and now it works fine.

When I called the chiropractor this morning, hoping to squeeze an appointment in this week or next they had one this afternoon right after school, and I went and he saw me on time and I was out of there in under 30 minutes. My back already feels better.

Finally, I got a three day pass to the Y so I could work our while my daughter takes her two hour swim clinic today and Wednesday and a spot just opened up in the mixed martial arts aerobic class for which I was waitlisted. That class starts in 15 minutes and will be over just 20 minutes before my daughter is done. I’m stoked to take the class because there aren’t any I want to take on Wednesday and I couldn’t find my ear buds before we left today.

Today was one of those days where everything just falls into place. I really appreciate days like today.

How was your day?

I spent the night in a tent with my daughter’s class Thursday night. It was 39/40 degrees. I was so afraid of being cold that I brought TWO sleeping bags, and they served me well. It was stressful to get ready for that, especially with all the meetings I had this week, but once we got there it was great. Well, once we woke up, and the anxiety I felt about being cold, and woken up all night by kids, or my own insomnia, had abated it was great. (I ended up sleeping from 12:30 to 5pm straight, which felt like a victory.)

The moon was full and so, so bright. We could see our shadows on the night hike. I’m pretty sure moon shadows have magical powers.

The next morning was cold but beautiful. The fog was amazing (I didn’t manage to get away for a proper photo.) I’m a huge fan of the fog we get in this area. It’s one of my favorite things about living here.

This city really is beautiful in ways few places are. Taking advantage of our breath taking views seems to be a theme lately and I appreciate it very much.

Seriously. This is in our city. It’s just nuts.

Also titled: why does the WordPress app suck so bad?!

I have been trying to post this for three days. WordPress HATES posting my photos. I’m starting to hate the WordPress app, and WordPress in general.

Today (written for Monday) it’s back to real life, but my district gave us a staff day, for which I’m so grateful. Today I get to type slyly while I’m supposed to be listening, and maybe even get some time to work with my colleagues (ie get some real shit done!)

Our anniversary weekend was very nice. My husband had a whole day planned, which lots of stops for amazing food and interesting drinks along the way. We also got to revel in the beauty of where we live.

Our break is almost over. My parents are taking our kids tonight so my husband and I can celebrate our anniversary (which is today!) and then we’re back to real life next week.

I have to say, the break ended up being a lovely couple of weeks. I hesitate to use the word “lovely,” because that felt overly positive, but honestly? I think it was quite lovely. It was a good mixture of fun and relaxing and productive. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted but I also got enough done that I don’t feel much glaring regret. We didn’t spend too much time on the new screens but enough that the kids were satisfied. We got outside at least once a day (when the weather permitted – which was most days)! We had friends over, which was when I got some stuff done around the house. And some friends reciprocated, which allowed us to have play dates without sibling squabbles. We did some fun activities – Exploratorium, Muir Woods, ice-skating at Civic Center, WinterFest at the local amusement park, Spies in Disguise at the theater, hike in San Bruno Mountain Park (a new running spot to be sure! I got an annual parking pass!) but also had plenty of down time. My son and I made it to some of the few martial arts classes offered. I got some grading done, and made it to my classroom once. I took down and stored all the Christmas stuff. All in all it was a really nice break – so much better than I ultimately expected.

Besides the weather and the absence of illness, the main thing that made this a nice break is that my kids are finally old enough to enjoy a break! They can hang out at home, listening to audiobooks or podcasts (or actually reading for my daughter) when they need down time and they can navigate a day trips without a ton of managing from the adults. My husband and I seem to be better at parenting them together too, which is probably more the effect of them needing less parenting to begin with. The secret to our success then was just that our kids are getting older! As I suspected, I am a much happier parent to older kids.

I do think we are in the sweet spot right now with their ages. My daughter is already showing glimpses of tweendom, and her attitude is sure to get a lot more challenging, but right now she only flirts with the eye rolling and “you’re such a dumbass” tone. Right now she still wants to hang out with us and ultimately craves our positive attention, which I hope will last for a couple more years at least. Meanwhile our son is still cuddly and snuggily enough for me to get my “youngest kid snuggle fix,” but also independent enough to do a lot of things by himself. He doesn’t need me all the time, but really appreciates the time he does have with me. And while his moods can still be volatile, he’s learning how to manage them with fewer toys thrown and siblings hit.

So yeah. A really nice break. So nice that it gives me hope for the next couple of years. I think things could be really pleasant moving forward – at least until my kids enter adolescence. (Eek!)