The Facts of Life

Inspirational song: Let It Go (Frozen)

And just like that (poof), we are back off the market. We had a full-price offer (essentially) on the first day, and we found the terms acceptable. It took a few hours for me to insist one detail be clarified, and then we signed and went under contract. (Teaching moment: the buyer's agent ticked a box that said there was a freestanding range included, and the kitchen actually had a wall oven and cook top installed. Most people would not think twice about it. But it is a legally binding contract. The buyer could force us to provide a freestanding range in addition to the installed oven/cook top, if he wanted to be a stickler. I did not need to spend an extra few hundred dollars, just to satisfy an error.)

It is an incredible relief that it is going so fast. When we sold the Boulder condo a year ago, it languished on the market for two full months. We literally had an offer on the New Mexico house before we were listed a full day. And once it closes in a month, that will be it. We will no longer have any rental property. Thank goodness. It's a stressful business to be in. Who wants to take bets that our credit scores will take a hit when we suddenly have that mortgage paid off? I'm gonna guess they go down 20 points.

This week's game night featured a new game that was a gift from the neighbors. It's called Mind the Gap, and it is a trivial pursuit type game that divides the questions into generational groups. You have to answer questions correctly to move forward on the board, and you pass through four generation categories (Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z). Plus you can land on challenges where you have to hum or act or dance for your teammates. We had three Gen Xers and six Millennials, so we old folks were the team captains and picked our teams. There were a lot of "you had to be there" moments, but know that there is a good chance none of us will be able to think of the old TV show The Facts of Life the same way ever again. If you have the opportunity to play this (safely) in a decently-sized group, I recommend it.

Listed

Inspirational song: Money (That's What I Want) (Barrett Strong)

The house in New Mexico is officially on the market. We tried to sell it when we moved away from there in 2011, but it just never got an offer. I have had time to reflect on that initial listing period, and I can see the mistakes we made. We rented it for years longer than we wanted to hold onto that place. Being a landlord is tough enough, but being an absentee landlord is especially odious. I have been grumbling for years about wishing we could be rid of it. Well, our tenants left last week, and they left it clean and in good repair. Our realtor got photos and created the listing asap. We signed our listing contract today, and it has gone live. As with all of the country, there is low inventory and high demand even in out-of-the-way Clovis. We are already getting interest. And the realtor suggested an asking price far above my pie-in-the-sky imaginings. Think happy thoughts for us. I'm ready to turn this over to someone who wants to make it their long-term home.

I did enjoy that house while we lived there. It was the biggest house I'd had since I left Oklahoma, at a little over 2000 square feet. It sat on a half acre lot, that was nearly impossible for me to keep weed-free and well-watered. I have lots of good memories there. But I am glad to be moving on.

I'm stealing a photo for this evening. I didn't go out to lunch with the kids, but I did get sent some photos of the cutest kid in Colorado at a restaurant today, plus a video of her eating an ice cream cone by dragging her thumb through it, and eating off her hand. I'm pretty sure she knew what she was doing was unorthodox. She did it anyway.

Still On

Inspirational song: Lights (Journey)

As the evening wore on, I reclined farther and farther back in my chair, less watched videos and more let YouTube meander on autoplay as background noise, and I rested my eyes. Eventually the lamp timers darkened the room, and I was left with the faint glow of the Christmas lights that are still plugged in. I'd feel self-conscious about them being on so far into January, if half the neighborhood didn't still have theirs going too. I verified this a few hours ago when I came home from buying dog food.

It's getting less funny the longer I wait for the migraine treatment. I haven't had a hard-core killer headache yet, the kind where I have to hide in a dark room and not move a fraction of an inch. But there has been this constant undertone of just not feeling like all my pieces are in the right places, especially from just to the right of the part in my hair to the right side of my throat. I have less than 36 hours to go as I type. I can handle it. I'm definitely going to talk to the neurologist about how to mitigate this period next time.

There is more happening in my brain than just constant aching. I hope to be able to focus on that soon. I have a good old-fashioned cranky rant building up steam, and I might be interested in letting that one out. All depends on how quickly the migraines skedaddle after botox.

Nearly There

Inspirational song: Moving In Stereo (The Cars)

Just a few more days of this nonsense left to go. My next quarterly migraine injections are scheduled for this Wednesday. They usually start working so fast that I feel better by the time I reach my car. If all goes as planned, I will stop feeling the way I did today, as I have for much of the last two weeks. I was in the same chair most of the day, tense, sleepy, nauseated, and hurting. The end is in sight. 

I would probably still be in that same position, with all my body clenched tightly, if I hadn't needed to drive to get food. It was the only thing that got me moving. I feel slightly better for having done it, but I sure didn't want to do it. Now that it is over, I'm going to snuggle with my puppy and count the minutes until Wednesday morning.

No Shock

Inspirational song: Thank God I'm a Man (Shock Treatment)

Football and pulled pork sliders. Yeah, it was a manly sort of day. I've fallen way behind on my sports-watching. I've been paying for PAC-12 Network but forgetting to tune in to most basketball games. I see the scores on Twitter and mentally kick myself. I bought an antenna so I could watch pro football for free, and what do I forget to do? Yeah. At least today, Mr S-P was on top of it, and invited himself (and me) next door to watch the Broncos-Chiefs game. Pretty sure he had an ulterior motive, getting T riled up enough to help him bash out the still-crumpled bumper on the truck that was damaged in the hit-and-run last month. When they went into the half with Denver in the lead, it worked like a charm. T was agitated and worked out his nerves smashing the bumper with a sledgehammer. Two problems solved. And then Kansas City rallied and came back to win, so everyone was happy (at this address, that is--not all over our area). 

The second act of the day was an entirely different genre. We were discussing the music of Shock Treatment, the sequel/not-sequel to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. T had never seen either, and A had only seen RHPS. She was intrigued, so we found it in its entirety on YouTube. At the end, she admitted to being a bit confused by it, and he burst out laughing, because he was completely baffled by the whole thing. I said mostly I just like it for the songs and costumes. It's silly and weird but so fun.

I've just realized I crawled into bed without putting my daily donation item in the bin. I picked it out, but it had lots of smudges on it, so I left it by the sink to wash. I am committed to this goal, so I will not cheat and call it tomorrow's item. I'll put in two, then put tick marks on my tally sheet. I will achieve 365 individual donated things this year. And it will make me feel amazing.

Activity

Inspirational song: Witch Doctor (David Seville)

Start the timer. See how long I can form coherent sentences. I don't expect it to last all the way to the end of this post.

I tried to do too many things today, and I really didn't think I was doing all that much. A little laundry, some dishes. A trip to the grocery store with my girls. Food prep (starting chicken roasting and pastry dough for pot pie, with GF flour in a gluten-specific recipe). A micro-nap in my chair. And then throwing together dinner to bake while the postponed game night started.

By the time I made it next door, I was so sore I couldn't function. I took a muscle relaxer, but it didn't kick in until about 3 minutes ago. I sat at the end of the table, just listening to games being played, staring at my iPad screen. It sounded like everyone had fun, but I was unable to join a fast-paced card game with everyone slapping cards down and speaking excitedly. 

The pot pie recipe was kind of a success, and kind of a disaster. The crust was orders of magnitude too dry, so rolling it out was a mess. I just kind of flipped it from the rolling mat onto the casserole dish, and then picked up the pieces that went flying. I made a smaller version with a portobello mushroom as the protein, and I added some water to the remaining crust, and it worked slightly better. The sauce base in each had a healthy dose of wine in the bechemel, which turned out to be fabulous. I'll keep practicing with this new technique until I get it down.

Okay, I made it to the end. You'll never know how many ridiculous typos I've had to fix. I leave you now with the gorgeous face of a girl who finally tolerated mommy pinning her hair back out of her eyes, for thirty whole minutes! A miracle.

Undecorated

Inspirational song: We Don't Talk About Bruno (Encanto)

The kids got me. I had moved on from the movie we watched yesterday. Didn't remember much about the songs, other than the lingering knowledge that I liked them in the moment. Then the younger daughter sends a meme of a girl trying to sleep and her brain wakes her with the earworm of We Don't Talk About Bruno. It used a lyric I didn't recognize at first, and dummy me, I asked what the reference was. It set off both daughters talking about the movie and what they thought and what they'd seen in internet rabbit holes on the topic. Now I'm stuck. I had to go pull up videos from the movie, and that same song is stuck in my head, and I will not be able to sleep without hearing it over and over. I have become the meme.

Traditionally, we have kept our holiday decorations up and lit through Twelfth Night, which is now. I meant to unplug the outside lights this evening, but I never went out into the garage to do it. Murray is in there and asleep, so I shall not be disturbing him to do it. One more night won't hurt anything. I did undecorate and disassemble the tree, but I ran out of steam before boxing up all the ornaments. Harvey thought the tree on the floor was pretty special. Before bed, I will at least get that bagged up, to keep it safe from him. 

I'm enjoying the unobstructed view to the picture window for tonight. I would leave it that way, but I am aware the swivel rocker will probably end up back in that spot. I was all prepared to donate it, but I have been overruled by the gaming group who appreciated having enough seating for us to have everyone here. Not sure whether that will really be an issue for the next month, while it is less and less safe for us to gather for games. Maybe I'll be able to donate it after all, if we can't get together much this winter.