Things The Home Inspector Doesn't Find

My new home is lovely and really there's nothing majorly wrong with it. But there are some things that the home inspector just didn't find.

The first challenge I faced was ants. Northern Virginia is one big ant hill. I knew that from my last house where the ants once invaded so badly that there was quite literally a stream of them from my front hall closet to my kitchen, carrying bits of cat food away. Disgusting. This house clearly has the same problem, which I found out the morning before I left for Florida. I was desperately afraid that, after two days with food laid out, I would come back to the same situation as in the other house. But in the end, the ants weren't that bad. The exterminator has been here, and the situation is under control. And it's just an example of what the home inspector doesn't find.

As I've posted before, this house has very nice appointments. Some of the nicest are three amazing full baths, with tile and glass enclosures. They are truly lovely. But...the shower head in the guest bathroom on the top floor squeals about one minutes into using it. The shower head in the master bath is so high that the water gets too dispersed before it hits me. Which is why I've been using the squealing guest bath. I'm going to try the other guest bath tomorrow. We'll see how it does. There's nothing really wrong with either shower head. They work. Just not how I would ideally want them to.

Tonight, I tried to change the water filter in the refrigerator. When you open the door, the light indicator for the filter is red. Which basically means that the filter is not doing its job anymore. So I bought a new one. And I can't get the old one out. The instructions say to twist it a quarter turn counter clocckwise and pull it out. But the filter doesn't turn either way. At all. Again, not something on the home inspector's list, but something that it would be awfully nice to have work.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining really. You just wish that the home inspector could tell you everything that you might need to know.

Back To The Routine

House - settled.
Cats - settling in.
Job - started.

This past weekend was the first weekend in over a month that really felt like a weekend.

The previous weekend, the family was in Florida celebrating my parents' 60th wedding anniversary. So, hardly a normal weekend.

The previous several weekends didn't really differ much from the weeks. Being out of work will do that. I was packing and moving, and unpacking and sleeping in hotels. Hardly my normal existence either.

But this weekend, after a full week of work (including some OT of course!), life got back to its usual routine. Cat volunteering on Saturday. Grocery shopping and other errands on Sunday. Workouts both days. Much more the kind of weekend I have had for many years.

And you know what? It felt good. It felt right. Even though it was only two days, after over a month of not working.

Weird, huh?

The Epic Epic

First round. Three-day match. No fifth set tie breaker. 70-68. SEVENTY games to SIXTY-EIGHT games! In the fifth set. After more than 11 hours of play and 183 games total. Stopped twice because it got too dark. Over 100 aces from both players. More than 250 winners from each player, too. Epic doesn't seem to quite cover it. As Isner put it, it's too bad that someone had to lose.

The sad news. Isner lost his very next match. After 11 hours of play over three days, it took only a little over an hour for his next opponent to bounce him.

Still, there will probably never be another match like this one. And both players will end up in the record books regardless of what they might do in the future.

Making A House A Home

The cats and I have been in our new house for 10 days now.

I've been unpacking boxes and deciding whether the furniture is where I want it. Most of the boxes have been unpacked. The furniture seems to be in the right place, at least for the time being.

Before I moved into this home, I knew that I was going to need more stuff. After all, this house in almost twice the size of my previous one. I need to fill spaces. I have a deck, so I need patio furniture. I have three living spaces - a living room, a family room, and an open downstairs where I have put the TV. I had two couches, so I need a third or some other form of seating. And I need to figure out where to put the art that I have and what new art I might want.

Buying furniture turns out to be more complicated than I had imagined. What kind of patio furniture do I want? Wood, metal, or wicker. I hate wicker, so that much was an easy decision. Wood is harder to maintain. Metal can rust. Ultimately, it came down to taste. Clean lines. Simple lines. I ended up with metal.

Even more complicated have been the decisions about seating. I have discovered that microfiber or faux suede are the best choices for fabric because the cats don't pick at them. Or if they do, it doesn't show. Either way, I will get more life out of the furniture with those fabrics. So that's the first decision. From there, it's a question of what style of seating. Again, I want clean and simple. Almost Asian, but not. Modern. Sleek, but not cold. Functional.

I looked for several weeks before I had even moved. And had found next to nothing that I actually liked. Even given that I had a bigger space to fill, and so could get one of the gi-normous couches that are around these days, nothing seemed quite right. Current styles seem to lean toward ornate furniture. So not me. Clean and simple seemed to be relegated to Ikea, and I was trying to go a little more upscale.

Then I found a sectional and coffee table that I just really liked. But that didn't really fit the space I needed to fill. The room that I really needed seating for was the living room. A sectional, even a really nice one, somehow just doesn't fit with my plans for that space. I need a more traditional couch to go with the two arm chairs I already have. But I really liked this sectional. It was clean and simple, and came in microfiber. Perfect. So I decided to get it and replace the couch that is currently downstairs in front of the TV. Or rather, move that couch to the family room upstairs and get rid of the sofabed that is both ancient (at least 10 years old) and beat up (not microfiber, very much cat-scratched). That still left a couch for the living room. I think I have found a solution there, too, though I haven't seen it in person yet and I need that. Hopefully soon.

Beyond furniture, though, to me, the touches that make a house a home are the accessories, the knickknacks, the tchotchkes. Placing the artwork is proving a more daunting tasks than the furniture. I have found a few homes for my existing pieces, but not many. And while I have quite a bit of artwork and knickknacks, I need more. And I need different types. I need more art, less box-store stuff. I need things with flair, not just the things I bought was I was 20 and that's all I could afford.

But those are not quick finds. It was much easier to walk into a box store and buy decorations at 20. At almost 50, it's much harder to be selective. To take the time to really fall in love with each piece.

So the house will be finished soon. The last of the boxes will be unpacked. The furniture will be bought and put in place. The spaces will be filled.

But the home is going to take a while longer.

Lost Cat!

As if there hadn't been enough drama in my life lately, in the middle of moving, I lost a cat.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have two cats, Mia and Brianne (Brie). They are both scaredy cats, quite literally. Most of my friends and family have seen only glimpses of them. Repair people never see them. They love me, but they really don't like other people. So they hide. Under beds. In closets. Anywhere they believe they won't be seen.

Moving day was, I'm sure, a very stressful day for cats who prefer things left alone. Most cats are not fond of change. As a general rule, cats prefer life to be very routine and comfortable. It's one of the reasons that I have people come to my hosue to feed them if I travel, rather than taking them to a kennel or something. They would rather be alone for days on end, and only fed once a day, than be uprooted. So change is not their thing.

And moving requires monumental change. First, the house had been devolving for a couple of weeks. Boxes everywhere. Paths across spaces were no longer available as boxes multiplied. Closets were being emptied, which meant not only were comfortable spots being taken away, but there were less places to hide. Quite a few strange people had come to the house to give estimates for various move-related things and to fix last-minute things that needed fixing. Lots of change. Lots of new people. Life was definitely not normal and routine.

On top of that, I was home all day. Well, most of each day. That too was change, but change they could get behind. My cats, after all, do love me. The more of me, the better.

So June 5 was move day. The movers came about 9 am, and we spent 3-1/2 hours getting everything I owned into the truck to move to the new house. The front and back doors were open for most of that time, of course. At one point, I did go looking for the cats and found them both in closets upstairs. Empty closets, but I guess still protection from the big, bad movers.

The movers and I got in our respective vehicles and traveled across town to unpack in the new place. Another 3-1/2 hours later, all was settled in. Since I wasn't really the owner of the house yet, I had only an agreement to move my stuff into the house. The cats and I were not allowed to stay there. So I had booked us a hotel for a few nights until I actually closed on the new house.

I was debating about going to the old house and getting the cats that Saturday night. I was thinking that it might be better for them to just stay where they were, even if there was no furniture to speak of in the house, just because it was familiar. While I debated, I went to get something to eat. I decided that, at a minimum, I had to go feed the cats. While I was eating, though, I got a wave of homesickness. Since I didn't have a home right then, I figured the best way to cure my homesickness was to at least have my furry kids with me. So I headed over to the old house to pick them up and take them back to the hotel.

Brie greeted me - crying of course - at the front door. One cat in carrier. Whew!

Mia was hiding. Big surprise. Mia is always hiding. Especially during the day. I had thought that, since it was dinner time, she might come out if I pretended to feed her. So I shook a food bag and popped open a can of food. Still no Mia.

Then I went looking.

Upstairs closets. Empty. Under the vanity. Empty. Tub. Empty. Downstairs bathroom. Empty. Now, that's really all the spaces for a cat to hide in the house. Except...behind the furnace.

Behind the furnace is actually one of Mia's favorite places in the whole world. She would sit outside the laundry room door and dry to get into that room - just so she could hide behind the furnace. In another blog entry, I talked about trying to leave for a flight to California, and Mia getting behind the furnace and not coming out for an hour or so. So once I couldn't find her in any of the closets or other rooms, I figured that must be where she was. I couldn't hear her, but if she was traumatized enough, she wouldn't be "talking". She would be very mad at me for all the commotion. Stubborn tortie.

So I left food in the laundry room and, panicking more than a little, left the house. I called my parents, crying about my missing cat. My mom drove down from Maryland to stay with me, and we formed a plan to go back to the house late that night and see if we could get Mia to come out. There was some advice, too, that if she had gotten outside - I didn't think she would have gone out, but had to be realistic about the options - that she would show up in the middle of the night. There was also a thought that she might have been packed up with the last-minute boxes. So I went to the new house and torn open every box that I hadn't packed myself. No Mia. But at the same time, I did get a blanket that would smell like me and the cats to try to lure Mia out.

Saturday night, Mom and I headed over to the house about 11 pm. We hung out on the front stairs (one of only a couple of places to sit) and just chatted amiably for a little while. I wanted to at least hear a cry from Mia. Just to know she was inside. Even if she was hiding. I went into the laundry room and called and called for her. No Mia. I thought I heard a cry a couple of times. But nothing confirmed.

I wouldn't say I slept much that night. Mom, Brie, and I were pretty restless. Brie, I'm sure, missed her sister. I was miserable thinking Mia was outside and scared out of her mind. I was thinking about how to reconcile myself to never seeing her again. To having only one cat. It was a horrible thought, but I had to be realistic. If Mia had gotten out, to a place she had never been before, there was a real possibility that she would never make it back. Or be killed by a car. Or a raccoon or fox or some other wild animal. And I would never know what happened. Also, all the information online about lost animals said it could take weeks for them to show up again. Well, this wasn't going to be my home anymore after another couple of days. I couldn't sit on the front steps in the middle of the night for a week and hope that Mia showed up.

Sunday morning, we got up early and went over to the house to see if the food had been eaten. Or the litter used. No sign that either had been touched. No crying cat. No Mia anywhere.

We went to the new house and printed up Lost Cat flyers. We posted them around the neighborhood and told everyone who was outside about the lost cat. Then Mom went home, having done all she could do to help me.

I was despondent, but still convinced that the cat was in the house. On Monday, I had an appointment at the new house, and was going to need to take Brie with me as I was changing hotels. So I went to the pet store to get a collar and leash for her, and optimistically, bought one for Mia too. While there, I talked to my animal rescue friends, and they agreed that Mia was probably inside the house somewhere. I heard lots of stories about lost cats showing up inside of homes, having been hidden in the strangest places. I called my real estate agents and told them that, at closing, the new owner may get more than just a house. She might inherit a house with a cat in it too.

Sunday night, I went back to the house and hung out in the living room. Just me and the computer, listening to some music, playing some games, and reading a book. I thought that, if I made noise like I was just hanging out, Mia would come out to see me. After a couple of hours, no Mia. I left.

But I had talked to my niece and had decided that maybe I needed to spend the night there. I went to my niece's house to get an air mattress, pillows, and blankets to camp out on the living room floor.

When I got back to the house, I heard a cry. Crying cat. But it wasn't coming from behind the furnace. It was coming from the kitchen. But we had opened every cabinet door! And then I heard it again. And I moved the fridge. And out came a cat. A very scared cat.

I grabbed her and put her in the carrier. There would be time for kisses later. I wasn't taking any more chances.

I called everyone who had helped with the search. I posted on Facebook to let everyone know Mia had finally come out.

Drama over. Sisters reunited. Lost cat found.