Sunday Started Way Too Early

Awake at 5 am, reluctantly out of bed at 5:50.  My insomnia program has its lapses.

Here's a book I recommend for early risers, because it's fascinating and readable.  The author is an experienced journalist, a knowledgeable Catholic who gives an unflinching portrayal of the mysterious city-state.

We were in Rome for four days in 2011, coincidentally at Easter, not the best time because of crowds and because the basilica was closed so that it could be readied for Easter services, a big disappointment. This book makes me want to go back and see more than the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. 

The really interesting stuff, though, is what tourists never see but Thavis writes about.

* * * * *

Yesterday I tried on the skirt to an expensive suit I haven't worn since 2005.  I was so far from being able to zip it up that it was laughable.  At least a two-inch gap, even when I held my breath as fiercely as I could.   Sigh.  I read last week in the New York Times that women tend to gain 10 pounds in their fifties, and there it all is: around my waist. Hell.

The suit skirt compared with waist of jeans I wear now  (stretch, of course).

But then I really don't need a black suit.  I wore that one to the opera a few times, once when we took martinis in a thermos to a bench near the Opera House in San Francisco and had a picnic dinner before the curtain.  That was more fun than the opera was (Don Giovanni).

Now that suit and a bunch of Jerry's clothes are off to the West Marin Thrift Store:

Mostly clothes Jerry had forgotten he owned, some dating from the 1970's.

* * * * *

 

Conversation over lunch a few days ago:

 

Me (lamenting sleep-flattened hair):  Do you think I should blow-dry my hair before we go out?

 

Jerry (thoughtfully, not looking up from a magazine):  Well, it doesn't cost anything.

 

It doesn't cost anything? 

 

We're talking morale here, guy, not cost effectiveness.

 

* * * * **

 

Breakfast now, or back to bed?  Breakfast, I think.  And the New York Times, starting with the real estate pages in the business section.  A house near us just sold within two weeks, cash (no "pending sign"), for probably $2 million.  The listing price was $1.65, but everything around here goes over the asking price.

 

Who out there is able to do this, and why do I feel vaguely hostile that I couldn't afford to buy a house in my own neighborhood?



 

 





Department of Outrageous Real Estate Transactions

Update on the house that I reported on a few months ago: a ruin with rotting floors, non-functioning bathroom, extensive water damage,  on the market for $599,000.  To refresh your memory:

Last week, I  found out that the selling price was $973,250. 

Yes, you read right.  There were 13-18 bidders on a court-ordered sale,  according to two real estate agents I've heard from. The house is in North Berkeley, a couple of blocks from ours.

I'm astounded.  I'm faint.  How can it be?  Who wanted this house that badly?

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Also--pictures soon from the New York City trip, especially of Wave Hill, the estate 25 minutes north of Manhattan in Riverdale.  I was so entranced with the artistry of the landscaping that about a third of my photos are of that.  Here are a couple:

Overlooking the Hudson River

 

 

Beautiful colors and textures everywhere we looked

 

At a Flower Stall in Victoria Station

Two e-mails from the UK this morning.   One was from Leah, my young friend next door who just graduated from college.  The other was from my cousin, Sue, who lives outside London.

Leah was in London last week on the first leg of a six-week trip.  Sue had fabric from our aunt that she wanted to give me to incorporate into a quilt.  I was hoping they'd be able to get together for a hand-off.

 

Sue

 

 

 

Leah

 

 

They did!  They met up at the flower stall at Victoria Station, had tea/breakfast, and looked at Leah's pictures.  My two worlds met:  two of my favorite people got together thousands of miles away.  Felt bucked-up all morning.

Today I sent Sue two jpegs I thought she'd enjoy:



With Annika and Leah at a wedding, 1999

 

  

Leah's 8th birthday the same year



                                                                              2.


Yesterday Jerry had his annual check-up with the cardiologist.  All is well!  He'd had some tests, and everything looked good except his bad cholesterol, which went up 20 points.  I'm back to being a Food Nazi, and he has to take more Lipitor.

After that I had four pieces of See's candy.  Two were samples that I didn't even like.  Made no sense.

                                                                               3.



Updates on recent posts:

 

 1.  There were 30 bids on the ruin of a house Jerry and I went to see in June.  Thirty people who want to deal with this: 

 

 

Asking price:  $599,000

 

 

 

2. My friend Ellen, who moved to Connecticut because she needed to be near family when she was diagnosed with early dementia, likes where she finds herself:  a assisted living facility near her brother's house.  The food is good, she likes her apartment, the staff is kind. 

 

 

Ellen, center, moved from Oakland to Connecticut in April

 

The description of the dining room, though, made me think of traveling alone on a cruise and not knowing where to sit.  A bit clique-ish, but she likes her tablemates now.

 

I think this is the best Ellen could have hoped for.  She longs for a cat and may get one from the pound. 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

Real Estate-ese

So, yesterday Jerry and I went to an open house a few blocks away.  Here's what the real estate brochure said:

"While away those super summer days working in the garden, selecting veggies for today's lunch.  The creek [behind the house] is a perfect place for kids to play.  Start with the built in cabinets and large bonus space downstairs.Create a playroom or A/V room with french doors out to the sunny backyard.  Have the entire family over for get-togethers.  There is room to spare!"

Here's what we saw:

One of three bedrooms

Kitchen

Living room

The price?  $599,000.

Starter House

In  2012

This was our first house, which we bought in 1976.  The selling price was $42,000 for three bedrooms and one bath in El Cerrito.  We looked at many houses in our price range before settling on this one, and we spent a lot of time in Spenger's bar drinking Manhattans AFTER looking at, say, ten houses on a Sunday afternoon.  It was a depressing business.  There were some really dreary houses,  including one on Hopkins Street in Berkeley where the dining room and living room floors  had simply rotted away.

This house, which Jerry referred to as "the box," was clean and well-cared for, but  tarted-up in a style that wasn't ours.  The kitchen had white plastic brick on one wall, the master bedroom was intensely blue, and my study had fake white wood halfway up the walls and then bright pink plaid wallpaper to the ceiling.  Jerry's study was baby-blue and white.  The lawn was so miniscule that I'd mow it by using hand clippers.  We lived there 18 months and used the equity to leap to Berkeley, closer to our jobs.

But before we moved, we spent numerous evenings sitting on our St. Vincent de Paul sofa bed thingie (not the typical type) drinking Manhattans and coming up with ideas on how to improve this house.  Oh, we thought about removing the linen closet and replacing it with French doors leading to a backyard deck.  We'd take down the wall between the dining area and the kitchen and have an open plan.  And we'd definitely add a dishwasher.  The next morning we'd come to our senses. We never even got rid of the plastic brick.

About 15 years later, when the house was on the market yet again (no one stayed very long), we went to look at it.  We were amazed to see that someone had drunk enough Manhattans to actually DO some of the remodeling we'd talked  about.  They'd taken out the linen closet and replaced it with French doors to a deck, and they'd taken down the wall between dining area and kitchen.  They must have gotten even drunker than we did because they'd turned the tiny room with the water heater into a half-bath.  Plus put up a white picket fence and a very short but slightly winding brick path to the front door.  Then they'd run out of money and been foreclosed on.  There was a spot for the dishwasher, but it had never been installed.

The other day I drove out The Arlington to take at look at the place.  I wish I'd had the courage to knock on the front door to hear what the new plans are.

Addendum:  According to Zillow, this house last sold in September 2008 for $477,000.  It's now valued at $388,000.

Moving with Velveeta

This weekend I helped my friend Suzanne move into her new house.  My area of expertise is unpacking boxes in the kitchen.  I like to get in there and organize the hell out of it--where silverware? where plates? where glasses?  And will this kitchen work for the poor frazzled person directing moving men with furniture?

In this case, the kitchen is circa 1928, the year the house was built, and there are few built-in cupboards, though there is an old Wedgewood stove with mysterious, greasy-dark storage compartments.  I didn't venture much into those. There was way more stuff than could be fit  in the kitchen, and I made a lot of executive decisions about what would go to temporary shelves in a small breakfast room.  Suzanne was totally hands-off in all this. My sister, a designer, was pacing around measuring the kitchen for an eventual remodel and didn't interfere, either.  Bliss.

The first boxes I unpacked were so organized it was scary:  all the grains together, all the baking stuff,  all the dried legumes in a handsome basket.  But the last-packed boxes were a random collection of  things: dishtowels, coffee table books, a sponge, a corkscrew.  At the bottom of one box I found a treasure: a slim booklet called, "Creative Cooking with Velveeta."  All action stopped while Suzanne, my sister, and I marveled at this.

"Creative cooking?" my sister said in wonderment.  Velveeta, described in the booklet as "Pasteurized Processed Cheese Spread," was a staple in our house when we were growing up.  My mother loved it.  We always had a box in the fridge.  I probably ate my last slice in 1968.

Suzanne had no idea where this booklet had come from.  I flipped through it.  Every single recipe was creamy-gooey, with names like "Crab Grandee,"  "Creamy Clam Dip," and, of course, "Buenos Nachos."  It was the memento of the day.

After that, I ran around the house placing clocks and Kleenex boxes and figuring out reading lights and switching out rugs.  I wanted it to feel homey ASAP, and to some degree it worked.  Suzanne seemed very pleased.  The bed was made, her cosmetics were on the bathroom shelves, a small desk was set up. Her cats, though, cowered in a downstairs closet, unpersuaded, poor things.

Follow-ups...

Several people have asked if I really worried about an earthquake while having a root canal. Yes, I did. I've had the same worry while having fillings. I wish a dentist could be stashed in a "secure, undisclosed location," like Cheney, just in case.

Judy Hanlon says someone has knitted a cover for a SmartCar.

I got an infection after my root canal and am now taking giant blue pills every six hours, four times a day. It's getting better.

Suzanne has come up with a price, chosen a realtor, and is going to list her house for sale. Watch this space for a link to the website. House B that we viewed is now in contract to someone. I am envious.

Houses and homes

My friend Suzanne and I went to look at open houses on Sunday. She has a big house in the Berkeley hills that she wants to sell, and we were checking out the comps to give her an idea of pricing. Which is always weird. Some houses are so unappealing that you want to shoot yourself at the idea of living in them (Jerry and I still talk about a "suicidal green box" on Everett Street that we looked at in 1976), but SOMEBODY buys them. And then for the same price, there'll be a house that's easy to imagine yourself living in, given some paint and maybe some new light fixtures.

Sunday's houses were no different:

House A--Old and enormous, but not in a pleasing way. There were stairs and steps and numerous odd roomlets, as though a drunk had laid it out and thought, oh, what the hell, how about a useless little room HERE? The house was elegantly staged on the first two floors and featured the original unpainted wood trim, but it had none of the fashionable and expensive finishes you'd expect in a house that cost more than $2 million. Eventually, semi-lost, we found ourselves in a renovated attic where you'd have take off your head to wash your face, so steeply angled were the bathroom walls. Really. You could not bend over the sink without knocking yourself out. There was a deck off the living room, but a live oak blocked the bay view, and unless someone felt brave enough to whack it in spite of stringent Berkeley tree laws, so much for THAT.

House B--A mid-century house so drastically remodeled that it is virtually new AND on a status street. Gorgeous wood floors; broad hallways; a logically laid-out floor plan; bay view; mature and inventively landscaped back garden; decks; and in the middle of the house, like a jewel, a courtyard viewed through floor-to-ceiling windows from nearly every room. Evidence of thought, taste, and money everywhere. We managed to pump the realtor for her opinion of the price and the history of offers. She seemed bored enough to tell us, maybe because she's hosted Sunday open houses there for a period of 150 days. Too expensive for the current market, apparently, and the owners don't want to back down on the price.

We switched to houses Suzanne could possibly move into, smaller and not so high in the hills:

House C--A mercifully un-tampered with mid-century with a bay view and a water feature bubbling away in the backyard. Not as pristine as House B, finishes not as recent nor as elegant, realtor not as well-dressed but very thin. The house would work for Suzanne, but first she has to sell her own. House D bordered on suicidal: a small bungalow right on top of its neighbors, no view, one cramped room after another, tiny kitchen, and the bathroom smelled. Suzanne wanted to leave right away.

See what I mean about pricing? The first two houses were comparable in price, but only the second one (the dreamy "B") was livable. The second two houses were priced within $100,000 of each other, but House C was do-able and House D definitely was not.

Suzanne is still puzzling over what price to ask for her house. I'm wondering who bought that house on Everett in 1976 and WHY?