Gee, I wonder where to live

Our dilemma:
Median Home Cost Seattle $422,190 Berkeley$660,500
Why?
Precipitation Days Seattle 155 Berkeley 64
Sunny Days Seattle 152 Berkeley 256
Graduate Degrees Seattle 17.19% Berkeley 34.02%
Oh.
Source: Sperling’s Best Places, which is good clean time wasting fun for [...]

WTF?

We don’t get it, Naptime Writing.  Why do you claim to like moving, when we know you have a three year old child who is, shall we say, a bit needy, patience about three hours’ shy of his 15-16 hour days, and a laziness par excellence? why iis this your third cheerful move in nine [...]

Easy weekend

Two adults, one child, one 16-ft. truck, three days, and a house and garage full of stuff to move less than one mile.
I bet we’re done in  two and a half days.
Another rental, this time away from the noises and neighborhood we’re not crazy about for different noises and neighborhood until Mr. Mortgage (over at [...]

Get off thy ass and get to work

You know, I could continue to waste naptime blogging, reading other people’s blogs, and unpacking the eight-freaking-thousand boxes walling me into this new place. But I blog schlock read by an average of 50 people a day; I read awesome blogs that make me regret not doing more academic work, not writing, and not getting [...]

Peanut wants to go home.

The move went off reasonably well, and we’re hanging out in temporary digs until we either find a house we love, find a financial crisis that scares us out of the real estate market, or get tired of the utter bullsh*te of the Berkeley housing market, whichever comes first.
And we’ve been preparing Peanut for months: [...]

Moving recipes

So we’re leaving next week and I have to get rid of a lot of food. Not the bulk, dried, Lassen’s stuff. That travels well. I’m talking half-eaten stuff in the fridge that I didn’t consider a liability when I bought it, but now fully intend to avoid in the future.
I’m mostly writing this post [...]

Escrow

I’ve stopped cleaning now that we don’t have the wild beast known as the realtor-led-buyer wandering through our house every day.
It felt lovely for a day or so, but now the place looks like a hovel.
Thank you, lengthy sales process, for teaching that I actually like a tidy house.
Thanks, universe, for ensuring that we can’t [...]

Groceries and building blocks

While we were at Trader Joe’s, Peanut dictated his grocery list. He usually draws it at home before we go, but we forgot. So he proclaimed, loudly, while ticking off on his fingers, and with a great sing-song rhythm:
“Blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, soy, water, blender juice, bread, little bread, pizza.”
When we were building [...]