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Mothers’ Day is Complicated
Mothers’ Day (and Fathers’ Day, too) is complicated. Can we all just agree on that to begin with? There are mothers, step-mothers, women who have acted like mothers in our lives. There are mothers we talk to every day, and mothers we only call on Mothers’ Day and major holidays. There are mothers who have passed, recently or not, who we can never talk to again. Mothers we never wish to speak to again, by our own choice, because of what they have put us through. There are families with two moms in the home, and families where surrogates were used. And let’s not forget the single fathers or male…
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5/3 House Hunting: The House
The plan had been to look at open houses on Saturday, and to keep Sunday free for stuff around our house. But a little after 2:00 in the afternoon, we hit a bit of a lull. We had repaired the garage door (one of the springs had broken), and done as much lawn mowing as we could at the time (the battery for the mower was recharging). So I hopped online and glanced to see what houses were open, and were there any I wanted to go take a look at. I found one, and said to C – Hey, mind if I go look at an open house. He…
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5/2 House Hunting: House 4
House 4: $445,000 3 bed / 1.75 bath / 1,560 square feet / 5,508 square foot lot / 1 car carport The Good: Even though this house was only about a block off of highway 99, the neighborhood felt very residential, and I would not have been worried about the kids playing outside. The back yard was dog ready. There was one point of failure (a gap dogs could have gone under) which the current owners had already blocked with a log. The living room area was nice and large, plenty big enough to have people over or to play video games, even using the Kinnect. The kitchen had been…
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5/2 House Hunting: House 3
House 3: $450,000 4 bed / 1.75 bath / 1,900 square feet / 3,720 square foot lot / off street parking The Good: The public space on the main floor is EXACTLY what we are looking for. It is one giant open area with an amazing kitchen, great living room and then “extra” space off to the side currently being used as a dining room, but is really big enough to be used for just about anything. The Bad: And that was it. The biggest issue for us was that there was no way to add covered parking, and we need at least one covered parking spot and could really…
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5/2 House Hunting: House 2
We came really close to talking ourselves into putting in an offer on this house. Or perhaps I should say, we had to talk ourselves out of putting in an offer on this house. I blame the beautiful weather, and the fact that the negatives are pretty much the negatives of our current house, so even though we pretty much hate those things about our current house, we know we can live with them. House 2: $425,000 3 bed / 1.75 bath / 1,620 square feet / 7,620 square foot lot / 1 car carport The Good: On the same side of the freeway as where I work. The…
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5/2 House Hunting: House 1 (Now it’s for real)
With apologies to friends in West Seattle and on the East side, we have decided to narrow our search for a house down to North Seattle. We’re finally at the point where looking is not just academic. We have money in the bank. We have the pre-approval from our mortgage guy. We are good to go. With that in mind, we say four houses on Saturday, one with our real estate agent and three open houses. Every house had some really great things about it, but ultimately, none ended up being a contender for us, though we try awfully hard to talk ourselves into one house. The first thing to…
