Another twin moment

We were just playing a guessing game with letters. It was N-man's turn. He said, "I'm thinking of something that starts with the letter N."

We all made a few wrong guesses, then N-man gave a further clue: "It's something you celebrate at night."

B-man yelled out almost immediately, "Halloween!"

"Yes!" Nate said.

We did let both kids know that Halloween starts with an H. I wonder what they think Hanukkah starts with...

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A still-not-well well update: We had our well repaired today, so the first step is done. A water sample has been taken, and results will be ready in 1 or 2 days, depending on how backed up the lab is. If by some miracle it's bacteria-free, we can start using the water. If, as is probably the case, it's contaminated, they'll have to put in chemicals to kill the bacteria. That takes 24 hours, plus a while to clear all the chemicals out. Either way, we're in the home stretch and should have usable water by the end of the week, or the beginning of next week at the latest.

I love clean water. I miss clean water. I think next time we chose a charity to donate to, it's going to be for a clean water fund or well fund. This has been pretty eye opening. I knew it would be inconvenient to live without running water, but I didn't know quite how inconvenient it would be.

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Green tip for the day: Be thankful for your water, and think of a way you can conserve water today! I'd love to hear your water conservation tips in the comments. It can be as simple as "turn off the faucets while brushing teeth" or the like!

Well...

When we moved, we went from city water to well water. Something neither TK nor I were super excited about, but most of the towns we were looking in, that was the only option. Neither of us had well water growing up, so we've been slowly learning about wells since we moved.

We're about to get a crash course.

I'm sure it's not news to anyone to hear there's been lots of flooding throughout New England this past weekend. Half of my friends' facebook status updates have been about flooded basements. While our sump pump has been running CONSTANTLY, and we spent 24 hours with our backup sump pump kicking in (and ringing the backup alarm nonstop), our basement managed to stay dry. Yay!

Then yesterday afternoon I noticed our tap water was coming in slightly discolored. It got worse the more I ran the water trying to clear it. TK changed the water filter...no help there. Parts of our yard are flooded, including the area around our well. While the well is capped, we suspect the well might have flooded. Which means the well might be contaminated. Which means we can't use the water.

TK's taking the day off today. We're going to try to find a hardware store that still has a pump in stock so we can try to pump out the yard near the well. We're going to call the well service company. We're going to get our water tested.

I started researching on google, and I had to stop. It was as bad as relying on Dr. Google when I have a runny nose. I have no idea how bad this is, but I saw on one of the first hits that it can take MONTHS to get the well back to usable condition. I'm trying not to freak out. As I started out saying, we know pretty much nothing about wells, so I'm not even trying to diagnose this one ourselves. Hopefully we'll get okay news about all this...

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So, I already miss running water. No shower today, have to brush teeth with bottled water, can't drink tap water (my main beverage of choice), can't do dishes, can't run laundry. Still can flush the toilet, though, so I guess that's the one good thing since we technically still do have running water.

You'd think, for one minute, "Oh, can't use the water! What a great chance to learn some really great water conservation techniques." Well, you might think that for a minute while you were desperately searching for the upside.

Here, so far, are all of the horrifying anti-green results of the unusable water:

• had to buy gallons of water to use for things like tooth brushing, drinking, washing, and cooking. Me, buying bottled water! Ugh!
  
• had to buy disposable diapers since I can't do laundry for the cloth diapers (yes, if this is a long term problem, I'll have to find a laundromat. Since I have to do diaper laundry every other day, this will be a HUGE drag).
• bought purell to disinfect hands.
• I suspect we'll be eating out more as it's a pain to cook (not to mention, can't wash dishes with this water). I am making corned beef and cabbage tonight, though. Can't keep this Irish-American gal down! I've got it in the slow cooker with Guinness instead of water :)
  
• I'm going to have to go out and buy disposable plates, cups, and silverware. Ick, I hate paper plates. I hate paper cups. I hate plastic forks. But again with the "can't do dishes", we're quickly going to run out of real plates, cups, and dishes.
• I'm going to have to go back to paper napkins and paper towels, because of the "no laundry" thing.
  

Hopefully, we'll find out today if we can at least boil water to use it. My problem now is that besides the worry of the water being unsafe, it's also very dirty. I mean, I can boil it to kill any germs, but that doesn't get rid of the dirt so I still can't use it. Can I? I certainly can't drink it! But even if we could use boiled water to wash dishes, that would be a huge help. Hopefully we'll be able to get a professional out today to service the well and give us some information about all this. And hopefully, the news will be better than I fear. I tend to overworry about things. Fingers crossed that this is one of those times.

For now, I'm trying to cut myself a break about how eco-unfriendly I'm having to be now, and focusing on making the best choices available given the situation. Time to test out the recycled unbleached paper products!
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Anyone know anything about wells? Anyone ever deal with a contaminated well?

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In the "whoa, irony" department, last week's Change the World Wednesday was about using less water, letting the tap only run a trickle. I'd been trying that out this week, until all this happened. It's amazing how much water you can waste just by letting the tap run full speed! So that was a good, easy tip last week to just run it a trickle. Of course now I'm alternating between running the taps full out trying to get the water to clear and keeping them totally turned off...

This week's challenge is:

This week, make use of returnable/reusable containers at the market. If your store takes back bottles (or any other containers), return them. If bulk shopping is available, reuse the bag/container for your next purchase. If you buy veggies and use the store's produce bags, keep the bags and reuse them on your next trip.

I try not to buy drinks that come in returnable containers as they're normally soda and/or single-serving drinks, so I don't often use the store's bottle return. None of our local grocery stores have a bulk section (an annoyance for another post), so I don't get to use any reusable bulk containers.

Veggies and fruit I've written about before. A lot of times, you don't even need a bag at all. I do carry plastic produce bags in my purse to reuse. I also recently got a couple reusable mesh produce bags, which I think is ultimately the way I'll go. Oddly, though, I'm having trouble remembering to bring them with me. I have to get a workable plan in place. I don't know how I can remember my reusable grocery bags and forget the produce bags, but somehow I manage!

House update, again

For once I finally have an update! Our house finally got an offer! We managed to talk them up to the lowest possible amount we could afford to accept. Are we awesome negotiators or what?

Today is the home inspection. Wish us luck! I'm a little worried that there'll be something that ruins the deal. It could all still fall apart!

Though we found out yesterday that ANOTHER couple wants to put in an offer on our house. Our agent had warned their agent that she thought an offer would be coming in, and they were just too late and we'd already signed the offer agreement with the first couple. But if this current offer falls apart for some reason, the other couple will probably put in an offer (of course, who knows if it'll be a good offer or not, but after so long of nothing it's kind of amazing!)

The only bad part of the current offer is that this couple wants to close while I'm scheduled to be in the hospital delivering baby boy #3. Really? That's crazy! Our agent said not to worry about it, that she'd talk to them today at the home inspection. But the reality is that we'll probably be closing and the new baby will be born right about at the same time. I'm just desperately trying to make sure it's not on the same day, though I guess what will be will be. There's only so much I can control! I was hoping we could wait until after the baby arrives to close, but this couple really wants to close before the end of August, so now we're trying to push up the closing so we can be moved before the baby comes. Who knows, though. I do have a scheduled delivery date, but I think we all know that just means I know the last possible day the baby will come...he could decide to make an early entrance, though! Once more, proof that I can't control everything. Not for lack of trying, though.

So that's it. My kind of update. We'll see if anything actually happens...

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As a related question, has anyone ever had a lag between selling a house and buying a new house? Because in theory, we could close on our current house before the baby arrives, then close on the new house after the baby arrives. We'd have two options: move all our stuff out at closing, and have the moving company store it in their van while we live in an extended stay hotel*. Or, alternately, we could sell the house, then "rent" it back from the new owners for a week or two until we close on the new house.

*Actually, this would probably be if things really overlapped with us being in the hospital. In that case, my parents are already planning to be here, so we'd probably send them and the kids down to my grandparents' house about an hour away, and then TK and I would stay at the hospital the majority of the time, with a hotel for any time that didn't overlap with our hospital stay.

I'm hoping it won't come to this, but just wondering if anyone has ever done something like this where they couldn't get closing dates perfectly aligned. It's amazing house buy/sell transactions ever work out!

House update

Well, I guess it's time for an update for where we are on the attempts to move. It's been pretty slow going, and boring, and annoying. Not great fodder for blog updates, though it takes up all my time so I don't have much else going on recently.

Oh boy, I've really talked you all into reading the rest of this post, haven't I? Do I know how to sell it, or what?? This blog post is just for anyone who's actually interested in our house search, or who has insomnia.

Okay, here's the deal: we found a house we love. It's out in one of the further-from-Boston suburbs, but it only adds two miles (or about 5-10 minutes) to TK's commute. How awesome is that? Pretty much all the houses we've been looking at add more like 30 minutes to TK's commute, which I was not looking forward to. Plus, it's a beautiful house, in a neighborhood, in a good school district. Just what we were looking for. It's not ridiculously large, but it has plenty of storage space and more than enough living space. Technically, it's not much bigger than our current house, but it's better laid out and has an attic for storage. It's a ranch, so the partially finished basement is also far larger than our current basement...more storage!! Have I mentioned storage yet? Yeah, that's because our current house has almost none. It's the one thing that drives me mad with our current house, so I was absolutely drooling at the thought of an attic and a basement, not to mention closets bigger than 2 feet wide! Mmmmm, closets!

But you haven't missed any exciting posts. We're still dealing with the biggest problem: our house hasn't sold.

Again on the plus side for this house we found: it's not at the top of our price range! That meant we had more wiggle room on what we sell our house for. So we took the plunge and slashed the price of our house. We slashed it low enough that I think it's a great bargain. It's hard to tell. I thought our house was pretty well priced before, but obviously if it's not selling, it's not good enough. Our problem is location: our house was certainly nicer than other houses in our town that were priced the same, but the location is on a busy street, so people were picking not-as-nice houses in better neighborhoods. Which I totally get. So we dropped our price, and now our house, in my opinion, is not only far nicer than the other similarly priced houses, but also in similar neighborhoods. But we'll see if anyone else agrees!

We put an offer in on the house we love. They accepted it, but with a kick-out clause. They're leaving the house on the market listed as "accepting backup offers". If they get a different offer, we have 48 hours to decide if we will match the closing date. Of course, if that happens and our house hasn't sold yet, we're out of luck since we can't afford to buy a new house before our existing house sells. So we need our house to sell fast, or we'll probably lose this house, hence the reasoning behind dropping our house price.

We went ahead and did a home inspection on the new house, despite the fact that it's far from a sure thing. We also have to go ahead with a P&S, which means paying a lawyer. So we've sunk a bit of cash into this house. It'll be a bummer if it falls through.

We had an open house yesterday for our current house, and FIFTEEN couples showed up! Usually we only get 2 or 3. So I suspect that people are noticing that the price is really good. Now one of those couples just needs to fall in love with our house. Someone has already scheduled to come back for a second look tomorrow.

It's just a waiting game, and while it's pretty stressful, it's not all that bad in the big picture. I mean, we don't *hate* our current house. We actually like it quite a bit, it just isn't perfect for us and we figured it'd be a good time to get that perfect-for-us house. I know how lucky we are for this to be our problem! And, I firmly believe things will work out for the best. If our house doesn't sell, it wasn't meant to be and we'll try again next year.

But if this house falls through, we're done for now and will take our house off the market. I'm worn out trying to keep a perfect house. TK has been working crazy hours, I'm tired from the pregnancy/chasing two crazy-busy kids who don't go back to preschool until September (honestly, I'm not sure which is the one wearing me out more!), and if we're going to stay in this house, we need to commit to it and get some stuff set up for the new baby.

So that's it. I know. Pretty boring. Don't say I didn't warn you! Here, I'll leave you with a few funny things:

• We saw a house where they'd paved the ENTIRE backyard to put in a regulation size baseketball court. I mean, they paved it from corner to corner of their lot. Who paves their entire backyard??
• We saw a house that was SOOO country. I expected a cowboy to jump out of the closet. They had posters up of country music stars. It was really weird. We've looked at tons and tons of house (probably at least 100, plus all the houses we looked at before we bought this house we're in now), and we've never seen anything like it!
• We saw a house with a horse barn right next door. I want to get out into the country, but do you have any idea what it smells like RIGHT next door to a horse paddock? I do now. That house did NOT smell good!
• We saw a house where the finished basement ceiling was less than 6' tall. Luckily TK and I are not that tall, but it was incredibly clausterphobic. In that same house, to get to the boiler/heating equip, you had to crawl through a section of the basement less than 3' tall. The homeowner had left a sign to watch your head. We decided against crawling through someone's gross basement, though not before making some Being-John-Malkovich-seventh-and-a-half-floor jokes.
• Someone called up our agent and actually did make an offer on our house. For $110,000 LESS than our asking price. That is not a typo. Now I know house prices in the Boston area are high, but we're not selling a million dollar house where maybe, just maybe, you could see offering a hundred thousand dollars less. No, someone offered a ridiculously low amount. And they were serious. People suck, and that guy can bite me.

That's it for now. I'll try to update with something more interesting soon. Our CSA starts this week... ;)

The Fine Art of Compromise

The boys are getting so good at reaching compromises. And as an added bonus, the compromises they reach, that make them so pleased, are usually absolutely hilarious. Here are two conversations we had today:

We were talking about how when the baby comes, there's no place in our house now for the baby to sleep. B-man immediately offered to let the baby sleep in their room. I explained that babies cry a lot and wake up during the night, so while it was really nice of him to offer his room, it would be too annoying for him and N-man to have a baby sleeping in their room. N-man had this awesome solution: "How about we put the baby in the closet?"

Both N-man and B-man think that's the perfect solution. The baby is small...the closet is small. It has a door so they won't hear the crying. I don't know, it's kind of hard to argue with that logic!

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Later, I was driving with the boys in the van. They were talking about a new house, asking what color it was going to be. I explained that we won't know until we find our new house. N-man said he wanted it to be yellow. B-man disagreed, demanding blue. The two started arguing back and forth with one another. Finally N-man suggested this awesome compromise: "Okay, B-man, how about the front of the house is blue and the back is yellow?" They both agreed this would work for them.

B-man then asked me what color it makes if you mix yellow and blue. I told him green, so his suggested compromise was a green house. N-man agreed that a green house would be a workable solution.

So I guess we better narrow our search to houses that are either a) green, or b) half blue, half yellow.

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I just love this age! Three and a half years old is so fun!