An answer, soon! And for real this time!

"This loan is included in the short sale bulk 8/2008 and has already been systemically reviewed & approved or countered. You should receive the letter soon if you have not already received it."


Um... and suddenly, we are getting an answer. It has already been sent, although the assistant to Mrs. Government Takeover of the Bank, Division of Short Sales, doesn't seem to be able to tell us what that letter may say.

I guess we'll know this week. Wow. I think there is hope of being in a house while we're still 25 (deadline, Oct. 1) although this letter thing could say that they want a lot more money. And then, who knows, the house could burn down tomorrow. Or perhaps we will find out that it is filled with ineradicable house scorpions. Or... something else horrible will happen because nothing has been going right for us anyways.

I mentioned this briefly on the blog, but the house is actually abandoned. Every time I'm in the area I drive by the house, feeling rather listless. (It is across the street from the teacher supply store. I had hoped to walk to this year's shopping trip.) The yard is growing ever more jungle-like, and for all I know there are homeless people starting campfires in the living room. After all, anyone can get in through the two doors that had broken panes of glass when we toured the house in May. The sad thing? This is the most solid, absolute news that we've ever gotten, and I KNOW that we will be hearing a yes or a more $$ (either of which we've been waiting for) but I'm not that excited. Could things really work out for us?

When I know, it'll be posted here.

One bit of optimism: and if we get the house, we are going to have one damn awesome party.

What I've been doing

Tomorrow is the first day of school. (Oh my goodness.) I have been in my classroom cleaning, photocopying, making nametags, moving books... I found 4 broken pencil sharpeners in my classroom! One thing I looked for and couldn't find, though? My teaching credential! I remember putting it somewhere I thought it wouldn't get bent, but it isn't in any normal place that you should put important documents. I guess I won't be starting out the year with my diploma and credential framed on the wall.

I've also been knitting a bunch as a part of the very silly Ravelympics. I finished a lace shawl I started more than a year ago, and also made 5 presents for people. (All this during the 17 days of the Olympics.)

Here is one of my favorite things.



This is the prototype for my annual Christmas ornament knitting. These turned out super cute, although each tiny mitten took an hour. I'll end up making somewhere around 16 more pairs. :o) Look at my Flickr page if you want to see the rest of what I've made recently!

Tomorrow's forecast here in Vegas? 110 degrees. Oh. My.

As I walked a few blocks down the strip at 10:30 p.m. tonight I remembered how much I love the evenings in this sort of superhot climate. It is dark and 90-something degrees, and everything seems very exciting. Perhaps I could survive out here, but I'd need to become nocturnal.

Guess what I did?

1.

2.

3.

I learned to sew! While my mom was up over the last few days we bought cute fabric, some books, and a Janome Sewist 509 sewing machine. It was relatively inexpensive and is a very good quality machine for simple sewing.

Like my first project? (It is the first placemat out of a set of four.) I personally think it is pretty darn good, plus it matches my 1950's dishes. See?



My mom was excited to see the fabrics and patterns for sale at a local shop and bought two purse patterns, fabric for a purse, and a book of apron patterns.

Impressions of sewing:
-Cutting fabric sucks
-The actual sewing part is fast
-Sewing machines aren't scary after all
-You can't watch the Olympics and sew at the same time. You can knit, though!

We leave for Vegas tomorrow for a friend's wedding, and I'm bringing my laptop and a big bag of knitting projects!

Six years- Recap

It totally slipped my mind, but July 21st was my 6th anniversary of blogging. Goodness!

To the time machine!

In the first week of August...

2002- My friends drained pasta in a bath towel and I had a milk party! (Ahh... the milk party. My best memory from that whole summer...)

2003- I rollerskated around a vintage shop on one skate with the employee who was totally flirting with me even though he was like 10 years older than I was. Mr. Vintage Shop tracked down skates for me, sold me a knit suit, an orange telephone, and the vintage dress of my dreams. (All at significant discounts.)

2004- I got ready to begin my first year teaching, including removing all trace of my maiden name from this blog. I even had to write to Google because I was the #1 special highlighted result for Sarah ______.

2005- I stole turquoise butcher paper from another school in my district because I NEEDED turquoise. Um... the stolen paper is still hanging in my room. When it needs replacing I may go back and steal more.

2006- I went to the Ice Capades.

2007- I had just gotten home from the honeymoon and I was really sick of weddings. (This still continues. I have to talk to the photo lady to get things going for the wedding album but uuuuuuggghghhghkl.)

2008- General freaking out about house stuff.


Six years ago I was subletting a room for the summer while I took an English class where we read sex literature (Brokeback Mountain among them), philosophy of religion, and a totally insane upper division Spanish literature class that was conducted entirely in Spanish. (I got a B+.) I worried about my ex boyfriend (now my husband) and ate a lot of 99 cent chicken sandwiches at Carl's Junior. I worked in a computer lab with my boyfriend Ben and one of our buddies, and spent several weekends driving to Southern California for my friend's wedding events and baby shower. My air conditioning was kind of broken and those trips were very sweaty. I was rear ended on the freeway (blogged it) and then I rear ended someone else a week later in my rental car (didn't blog it.)

In those six years I
-grew my hair from a pixie cut to the middle of my back, cut it to a pixie cut, and currently have grown it almost to the middle of my back again.
-gained 20 hard-won pounds
-studied teaching for two years and then had four classes of children, totaling around 104 kids.
-wrote 1,382 blog posts. (Whew!)

What Sarah, Age 4, Knew About Sharks

After watching shark shows on TV during the very first Shark Week on the Discovery Channel (21 years ago!) I informed my parents that I knew how you could tell the difference between girl sharks and boy sharks.

They asked how, and I told them that the girl sharks have long hair, and the boy sharks don't have any hair at all!

I was smart.

Behold... coasters!

Summer school is over, and I'm celebrating my final few weeks before the 08-09 (oh my gosh) school year with new kinds of craftyness! These are the Calla Coasters from Purl in NYC.

I've taught myself to crochet as well as knit! I've also been hand sewing backings for them. They're coming out very nice, especially considering that the sum total of my prior hand sewing experience was making a few beanbags in college.


Half of the coasters are knitted, and the other half are crocheted. I have two colors of naturally plant-dyed organic cotton yarn and five different quarter yards of fabric. The plan is to make a ton of these, but we will see how long my patience (and materials) hold out. It takes me twice as much time to do the sewing part as the knitting or crochet, unfortunately.

With my somewhat unexpected success with crochet, I've treated myself to a new book- Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts! Lacy Crochet. (Go look at the photos...)

Anyways, I am having a ton of fun and wish I still had months of summer to go. The last few weeks until school starts on August 25th are filling up fast. We're still (still!) waiting for news on the house. I drove by the other day and it looks like the owners have moved out. (The mailman also said it was vacant.) It's now been 86 days. No one at the lender returns phone calls or emails. Still no other options...