Monday, April 6, 2009

Houses and the distant twilight

This is what we have been reading:





This is what we have been listening to:




Melissa and I got a soft ice cream maker and it is wonderful!!



So as of right now things are going well. Melissa is doing very well. She is so fucking AWESOME! Everyone told me to WATCH OUT! cause she was going to be all hormonal and other that really wanting peanut butter one night she has pretty much stayed the same. Well of course we are both changing our outlook and everything but she is as cuddly, sweet and strong as ever.
The big news is that I have been able to feel our little baby moving around inside Melissa's belly. A week or so ago I am pretty sure she responded to my voice as I spoke to the belly. A few nights ago She was squirming all around and doing flips as my hand rested there. How fucking amazing!!

We have been sort of getting anxious about having enough space in our apartment. I mean our apartment is great, really great. we only pay $400 a month and we have basically all upstairs of an old victorian house. There is one bedroom in the back that is our landlords guest room. they let us use it when we have guests like my folks visiting from Texas and that is super awesome of them. Our landlords kick total ass. last fall we had a complete rager till like four in the morning where all our friends where pouring out of the house and smoking up on the porch and chopping stuff up with a machete. it got totally out of control. people where puking and drinking so hard all night long. It ended up with Missy getting a bloody lip, puke on the street and down the block, an inexplicable head of cabbage all over the neighbors car, everyone loud and drunk singing Against Me! songs at the top of our lungs. My landlords said they didn't hear a thing and slept right through it. Amazing. Anyway we asked them if we could perhaps rent the back room and use it as our bedroom. In the end they seemed sort of ify about it. They where super nice about it but we really need more space. As of right now we don't have a nursery to put our baby in. For the first few months she will be in our room but later we want to be able to set up a place that will become her bedroom.

So-------We are looking for a house. WOW. Shit just got real right? Well shit got real about 22 weeks back. So now we are getting set to buy a house. Its crazy I know but look at the houseing market and look at the push for more liquidity in the banking system. Now is the time to buy. Prices of house are at an all time low. Around here you can get a decent house with a little yard for around $60,000! Now you tell me! Yes I am a little worried about our finances and even as I type this I feel a bit like a geezer but Melissa is getting recommended for tenure and we have a pretty good bundle saved up. I think we can just about cover earnest money and closing costs. Not to mention there is a $8,000 federal grant for first time home buyers for New Yorkers in 2009. There are also other NY programs for home buyers that can perhaps get us some additional tax credits.
Pretty soon I will be in escrow and getting a house ready for our little family of lions and that is a pretty good feeling.
I am sure we can do this. We both are really looking forward to having our own yard where we can garden. We are going to learn how to can and later we will put in some solar panels and maybe a windmill. That would be so rad.

Personally I like the idea of living with a bunch of our friends yet I know Melissa could never be happy doing that and that is more important. At the same time I would like out home to be a sort of community friendly place to hang and learn stuff. I am thinking of like sort of regular teach-ins. I think a good sense of community is a great thing to teach our little baby.
There are some good friends of ours that do this sort of "Family Dinner" potluck thing on Thursday nights and it is a pretty beautiful thing. Last time I went I had this super warm feeling as I walked in the door and was greeted by all of our friends that where there to share a meal and talk. I had been really wanting a good conversation and I got exactly that. we talked about human-computer interaction and asked the question "what defines understanding" we also talked about social jamming and self sufficiency. I guess I have missed hearing a lot of other peoples opinions.

What does this have to do with preparing to raise a child you ask? Everything. I think one of the things we are missing as a society is actual human contact and the healthy respectful exchange of ideas. Perhaps understanding others more clearly is something that can allow us to grow together and learn together and by passing this ideology on we can come closer to being better versions of ourselves. I think learning is the best thing we can do for future generations. I guess learning and teaching. People who are learning and people who are teaching have my ultimate respect. I hope that I can inspire our kid to learn because she is already inspiring me to teach and vice versa.

Melissa's belly has gotten grander!! It is so beautiful. She is positively aglow. It has been my great pleasure to come home and find her there and hug here and her belly. She has to tip so far to kiss me. sleeping has become a little bit more challenging. She got a big long body pillow that she places right in the center of the bed and she climbs on it every night so she doesn't lay on her back. So now when I go to put my arm around her I get a strange sense that I am actually hugging her pillow. The pillow itself must feel like the luckiest pillow in the northeast as we both snuggle up to it from two sides nightly. Anyway this is what the belly looks like now: