Narrow Stairs

Funny story: Clayton’s son was all lit up the other day as he told me an interesting piece of trivia about his Dad’s iTunes. Narrow Stairs by Death Cab for Cutie was wrong.

Wrong!

Turns out….the…um…source….from where he imported the album several years ago was adulterated and 3 or 4 of the songs were a copycat band performing their originals. Clayton investigated the claims today and, it turns out, they were true. For years, he was sort of “meh” on some DCFC songs that I cuddled and petted and held close to my heart.

Marek and Lindsay….are you hearing this? He had never really heard Cath until today!

It turns out that the missing/fraudulent tracks on his Narrow Stairs album were Cath, You Can Do Better Than Me, Talking Bird and Your New Twin Sized Bed. ::face palm:: How he’s lived on earth this long without hearing Your New Twin Sized Bed is beyond me.

Narrow Stairs and Plans are the two DCFC albums that I tended to go to when I was in emotional crisis, especially when the crises were of a Relationship Nature. (See all the painstaking, past tense in that statement?) One certainly doesn’t have to be in a crisis to enjoy Death Cab but they do have a way of articulating sadness and desperation in an engaging and grown-up way. Not that I don’t love me some Adele on occasion.

If you don’t own this album, please go own it. That is all.

My widdle baby

House Baby

Well, this weekend the house felt more like a sick baby and by this morning I was all, “WHAT TIME DOES THE PEDIATRICIAN OPEN?!” We had a house call on Friday, home remedies all weekend and another house call this morning. By the time the week ends (I hope), I think she’ll be squared away with the basics. (Appliances fully functioning, plumbing, Internet.) It’s stressin’ me out.

Progress is being made, though. Slowly but surely. We celebrated a working washer and dryer by processing 4 jumbo loads of laundry . We celebrated the finishing of the den by opening a bottle of wine and curling up for a sci fi DVD on Saturday night. (Yes, with a film festival raging downtown.) Tomorrow the plumbers return for Round 2 of “correcting the previous resident’s shortcuts” and later this week we hope to have the new dishwasher installed. Just as soon as we buy one.

I’m jonesing pretty hard for a trip to IKEA, so that might happen one upcoming weekend if we can borrow or rent the right sized vehicle for the task. There are so many things IKEA has that are so inexpensive and delightfully simple. There is no peer in Oklahoma. Also, I am out of lingonberry jam.

Friday, June 1.

May 31st winded down to a melancholy ending. There were a million things happening that day and the kids and I were scrambling like mad to get to my step daughter’s play that evening. Clayton had made reservations at a nice restaurant afterward to celebrate the end of school and our families merging with homeownership the following day.

Earlier in the week the anger of the gods unleashed all manner of hailstones on Oklahoma City. In the wee hours one morning I awoke to hail and listened to it land, off and on, for over 2 hours. The longest stretch of time the ping pong balls of frozen water fell was about 30 sickening minutes. I miraculously maintained all of my windows, but my roof wasn’t so lucky.

Last Thursday I raced home to meet a repair man on a honey-do item I wanted fixed before closing on Friday then raced to get my kids from their summer program. Then raced to get a green smoothie and we picniced a late afternoon snack in Classen Curve while I phoned in my hail claim. I promptly called my real estate agent to let him know I’d done my due diligence on the house I was about to sell the next day and he said, “Have you checked your email?”

“No.”

“Well…” he said. Then Peter went into the details as he knew them and it was becoming clear that someone was about to rob me of my third close date. Prime Lending was jacking with my buyer for the umpteenth time in the last few weeks and it was derailing my plans.

I broke it to Clayton then sat down to watch his daughter’s play. We made it through dinner without trying to explain the confusion to the kids but there was no hiding the less-than-celebratory ambiance at the table. I told my stepson later that they must’ve noticed that us adults seemed like we were sitting at a funeral a lot of the time that night.

The house ups and downs had worn us out and this latest news was just about more than we could stand. I was emotionally blown out and I really wanted to give up on the whole thing because I knew that surrender would bring Peace and Certainty, things I hadn’t seen much of lately.

We left dinner, went to our two homes, chatted briefly on the phone, then went to bed. I couldn’t think much more that night. I needed a new day.

I awoke the next morning and after a half of cup of coffee, I wrote a blog post.

Then I opened my email program and went through all my records. I made notes of every soul involved in these transactions, where they worked, their role in that company and their phone numbers. I didn’t write down emails because I was fucking done being passive. I wanted a house, dammit, and I needed real people to talk with me on how to Make Shit Happen.

After I had a list of 8 or so people to call, I started at the top of the food chain: the closing officer at my title company. I was nice, but clear and agressive about my plight. About 9:30 am I learned that I *might* be closing at 3 pm. That’s all the wiggle room I needed. I stayed in constant contact with my realtor, my new house’s realtor, the  lender and the title company. Ran around and signed papers. Ran home to meet the movers. Begged a friend to come sit with the movers while I ran to close. Begged Clayton to stop the packing of his moving truck to come relieve my friend who had an appointment to attend. Screeched into the Bank of Oklahoma and picked up a cashier’s check. Sauntered in to the title company and drank a real coke. Ate a Otis Spunkmeyer cookie. Bought a house. Ran to the new house to direct my movers. Ran to the ATM so I could pay them and to Conoco for twenty bucks worth of bottled water and granola bars while we unloaded Clayton’s U-Haul. Ran to dinner with family.

Stumbled home in a carby stupor to fall asleep on bare mattresses on the floor of our new home.

Our. New. Home. <3

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