Happy Halloween.

There’s nothing more horrifying than going to church and finding a flyer urging voters to “VOTE YES on ISSUE 1″ that just happens to be sponsered by my favorite library board member to hate whose initials just happen to be PB in the CHURCH BULLETIN, for god’s sake!!!!!!!!!

Isn’t that illegal?

And then, to top it off, having some flyer stuck on your car for something else I didn’t even read.

THEY MADE ME LITTER, dammit! I tossed it right on the ground I was so mad. Urgh.

Oh, and yet another nail in the coffin–the construction plans have been approved by the Archdiocese for the “addition” onto church, so that means I will not set foot inside that building after construction begins and I will not donate a damn dime to church because of this horrifying travestry.

So there.

FWIW, I am voting NO on issue 1. But I forsee it having a hard time not passing if all churches are doing this illegal crap. PB just needs to go spout off to someone who CARES. ARGH.

I have been working on craft show stuff all weekend and I’m going to have to go do some more necklaces because I’m still furious.

I had a dream last night that Bush won. But right before he could be sworn in to the presidency, he resigned. And Cheney decided to decline the position, and Colin Powell ended up being president by default.

I’m not quite sure what brought that on, because I haven’t been keeping up with the election brouhaha.

Wouldn’t this make a nice writing retreat?

Yesterday, I formatted Peace, Goodwill, and Rotten Eggs, the only Jacob Lane Christmas Story, created a cover, and sent it to Kinkos to be printed. Hopefully it won’t cost an arm and a leg. I did manage to cut it down page-wise.

I’ve been asked to be a presenter at the Maumee Valley Writers Conference this spring. I feel like a horrible fake for accepting, because what do I know about writing urban fantasy or writing YA books? Other than the fact that I write them, that is.

This whole imposter feeling comes from the usual place, of course. That place is where my fear of failure resides as well as my fear of being exposed as a fake. After all, it’s not like writing is difficult for me. Not really. And to be able to make money doing something so easy, so fulfilling seems too good to be true.

So I keep thinking that someone will stand up and expose me, or take the pleasure away and actually make it work. And I don’t want that to happen, because it would make my life miserable.

Sorry. Presenting at this conference is going to be interesting, to say the least. And it’s not until March, so I have until then to think up a plan for what I’m going to talk about. (I promise not to say ‘ummm’ too many times.)

Other than that, life continues as usual.

I currently have a kitten climbing up my back. It’s not a pleasant experience. Chloe’s nickname is “Needle Claws.”

Jenny’s housewarming party was quite fun! Homemade soup and ice cream, a bunch of good food and good conversation… I think I talk too much, but I hope I didn’t outstay my welcome. She even made breakfast the next morning! And I still like her house.

I had to go outside yesterday because the weather was so nice, and I ended up digging in the dump a bit and going creek-dumping to see what new bottles, etc., had been washed free by the rains. I found two old bottles and two spoons. I think I might have a setting for one in the one pattern now. Not quite sure, since the rest of my found silverware is in Storage.

Today I am going to clean a bit, finish up a scarf-in-progress, and probably start another one. Craft show time is approaching.

Last week, Bekah saw an foot-long baby rat snake in the basement. Just now, I went down to get some clothes out of the dryer, and I saw a very long tail that was attached to a four foot long rat snake. He looked hungry, poor thing. I think we don’t have enough mice in the house to support more than one snake.

This might have been the snake that shed the skin we found, which would mean that the skin stretched quite a bit. But I don’t know. There might be an even longer one down there.

Rat snakes are a good, natural defense against mice in houses.

I’m off to Jenny’s housewarming party and will return tomorrow. (I’m spending the night.) Bringing knitting and the Dana, since I really have no excuse not to write or knit.

What I know:

I’ve been doing some digging to try to find out how old the house is, and the earliest record I’ve discovered so far was from the 1904 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. The house shows up there, but with a very different ‘footprint’.

In 1904 (along with having an entire block in land) the house consisted of the front four rooms and a one story addition off the back. There was also something else off the back (a porch? I’m not sure) and the front porch didn’t stretch all the way across the front. (Which makes sense, because the front porch goes right across the bay window at the moment.)

Sometime between 1904 and 1912, the footprint changed again. A two story addition was built on the back, or else they build the two upper bedrooms on top of the one story addition. My dad thinks they would have just torn down the addition and built new. The porch or whatever it was off the back remained. (Now that part is the kitchen/utility room.) This makes it seem like a Foursquare, which is what I thought it was at first.

Between 1912 and 1922, the porch was extended across the entire front of the house. And between 1922 and 1929, most of the land was sold off and the house next door (still standing) bought my house and a tiny bit of the land.

Unfortunately, the courthouse suffered a fire in the 1970s, and I’ve heard they lost a lot of records, so I’m not sure what I will find when I go to look up the property records.

The latest dated fire insurance map was from 1941, and the house remained unchanged. So I’m not sure when the existing kitchen was built.

There is a house in town that consists only of the front four rooms and a smaller addition off the back (like mine was in 1904) and it does resemble a Colonial Revival. However, I’m considering putting some ornamentation on the four gables (and yes, I realize I have yet to post a pic… there’s one here.)

Redid my front page. Renamed my website, too, to keep the ‘theme’ begun with the name of this blog.

I did not want to get out of bed this morning. Ugh. The time change is soon, right?

Since I’m behind on scarves, I started one last night to match a hat I’ve already made. I haven’t decided yet if this scarf is going to be interchangable with two different hats or what. It depends on how long of a scarf I end up with when I run out of green yarn.

I really have to put in that order for Fire Mountain Gems. Must remember to do that later so I can start on the necklaces and chokers for the craft show.

And I’ve written the last two nights, which is good! Not on SCR, unfortunately, but SYWTBAV. Whatever works, I guess.

Yahooo!

Money has been wired.

The lady at the Title company didn’t know what was up with the escrow, so I said I’d call my bank and ask.

The lady at the bank said that the contingencies had been waived! Yahoooooooooo! I get my $750 back and so does the seller.

Rejoicing all around.

I think that was the last point of stress, really.

Closing was anti-climactic, considering all the drama that brought us to this point. (Wel56l, it wasn’t my drama, it was the bank’s, but still. (And Chloe says hi as she runs across the keyboard.)

Considering the people involved, I’m surprised more garbage didn’t happen.

So we closed. I signed a lot of papers. Still not sure about the contingencies; one person says they were waived, one said they were still waiting for approval. (Again, too many cooks.) I had to do an emergency fax of the insurance paperwork to Cleveland, due to the fact that one person received the insurance paperwork but the other person did not. I arrived with a minute to spare, only to wait twenty minutes in the waiting room. (Ah well.)

And the weird part: So I’m sitting there, and the lawyer is explaining the paperwork I just signed to the seller. I got the strongest sense of deja vu.

I had never been in the office before, but I’ve been there before, either in a dream or in another life. It was weird.

So the good news is that while I don’t have a definite occupancy date, it looks like it will be long before 60 days. (Well, at least 45 days, but that’s fine.) We’ll work that out as the time comes.

Hopefully nothing more will go wrong, as there are a couple of little bits that still need to fall into place. But I’m optimistic.

Oh, and a homeowner.