Who put the D in organized?

For those of you who know me, you might realize I have a problem with making a decision.  Glazed or frosted?  Cheese or plain? Sharp stick in the eye or one in my butt?
So imagine my surprise when I discovered today there are a lot of decisions to make in building a house.
Color of trim.  Color of cabinets.  Color of siding.  Color of wine I am going to need to drink on a regular basis to get through this.
And the stores we have to visit:  carpet place, appliance, wood floor guy, cabinet guy, The Rouge to load up on more wine to help me cope with the stress.
Now understand Jackie and I agree on most things.  Gosh knows after 42 years of marriage we should know each other pretty well.  So how come we have different tastes in cabinet pulls, door handles, interior paint, exterior paint, carpeting, appliances, selling all our investments and buying a home in France and just visiting Emily in the summer to watch the dogs....important stuff that seems to need to be decided and fairly soon.
I was told today to start a book.  Mike at ALM said the best thing I can do is get a huge canvass bag and color samples, chips, all that stuff should go in the bag.  And I need a notebook to write down all the questions and colors and models and numbers and sizes and deliveries and ..... And a binder to put stuff in I collect.  And whenever we go anywhere to shop or gather information, take the damn bag.
In other words.... I have to be organized, Mike said.
Has he heard of my basement?  Has he seen my closet?  Did he ever see my desk?
Organized!!!  Not part of my vocabulary.
I'm an old dog....I don't think I can learn new tricks.
So Jackie went and looked for a notebook to use.  Organized.  I have at least 10 spiral notebooks, each with about 12 pages.  None of them are big enough to hold the notes and stuff we are going to have to write down.  One only had two pages and no, I don't know why I saved it.  I will use it somewhere.
And when I make a decision, sometimes it is the wrong one!  Example:  Eddie Bauer classic fit jeans do not fit the same as Eddie Bauer loose fit jeans.  That is important to know before you buy two pairs of jeans and the 20 year old extremely pretty female sales clerk oozes, "No, they don't look too tight."
Tight!  I Can't Bend Over! 
Which means I have made some poor dietary decisions along the way also.
But in that respect I am organized.  You see, I know exactly where all those extra calories are!
Oops...glass is empty.  And that's not a reference to optimist, pessimist.....merely an observation about the wine.

Onward, we blindly slog

  Houston, we have a builder!
  Jackie and I have settled on a builder for our house.  O'Rorke Construction will begin within three weeks and hopefully will be done in September.  All we have to do is sign the final papers.
  We asked for bids from three builders and all three were wonderful people to talk with, and all offered suggestions that we felt we could use.  It is too bad we are not building three houses.
  But the bottom line is dollars.  We looked at all the proposals, wrote down differences, compared similarities and tried to put apples to apples.  Builders have different suppliers, different vendors, different sources and those differences get reflected in the price.
  The palace will be a little over 2,100 square feet.  It will be one level and will be handicapped accessible throughout.  Zero barrier entrances on the front door and garage and a low barrier entrance into the shower are among the oddities the house will have.  Also, any passageway will be able to accommodate a wheelchair, not that we'll ever need one.
  But I tell you, my hips have been killing me lately.  I have stopped walking the bike path because I am so sore when I am done.  Arch supports are your friend and you should maintain that friendship throughout life.  Maybe I'll be the one needing the wheel chair........
  We will be gone in June, so we are trying to make decisions before we leave....trim color, exterior colors, wood flooring to name a few.  Emily will be around, but she tends to have more expensive tastes than we do and we don't want to leave any major decisions for her.  Plus if she opts for a purple stain on the floor, we have to live with it.  Most of that "stuff" won't be done until after we get back, but we want to have all our plans laid out just in case.
  Irony.  We both taught for years.  We always said:  Even if you don't have kids in school, you benefit from education because those kids in the classroom today are the doctors, lawyers, mechanics and local retailers of tomorrow.  Stop complaining about the cost of educating children!
  Well, we said something along those lines.
  And here we are, no children, retired teachers, and we have an impact fee to pay to the county ROE to help defray costs to schools new construction can bring.
  Am I complaining?   Not a bit, just pointing out that little tidbit of irony.
  To celebrate, I went to The Rouge last night for a glass of red.   I have a feeling I will be needing more of that as the days go by.
 

Decision time.
Sort of like The Bachelor.  Or The Apprentice.
Three builders.  Three bids.   Three prices.
Is the lowest the best?
Is the highest the best?
Is the middle the safest?
Who is gonna do the best job for the money?
This should be clear cut.
I hate decisions.  I don't like making them.  I would rather put my head in the sand and ignore the whole decision making process.
I subscribe to the theory that all things work out as long as we don't influence them by actually acting.  For instance....  Sometimes I put off answering people about doing things.  Fate intervenes and the situation gets solved without my input!  It's great!!  I don't have to really decide, Karma has done it for me.
We had a little goose hatch outiside our back window today.  Mom took 5 of the goslings and left this little one behind.  Do I try to save it?  Box it and keep it warm?  Use it as stir fry??  By the time I decided, it had already taken to the water.
Too bad it could not swim.
Nature decided.  My head was in the sand and the tactic worked.  Well it worked for me, but not for the gosling.  Jackie said, "Are you sure it's dead."
Unless it was doing a backstroke without moving its wings, yup.
Just hope our decision has a better result.

Its damn near May!!

  OK, the plan was to sell the house, and build a new house starting in March.  Well, we are almost in May and we are still waiting.  The house sold, very quickly.  And we are in a rental unit.  But the rest of the story did not go as planned.

  What's new?

  I live in constant fear the rental unit we are in will be sold and we will have to move.  We have a lease until Sept. 1, but after that we are probably homeless.  Now normally I am a pessimist, but I was really optimistic that we would be well underway with construction by now.  The townhome is nice, but I am not quite ready to give up a large lawn and neighbors more than a wall away.  Plus, I am used to hearing the sounds of night...not traffic... when I step out on the deck at night.

  We are expecting two more bids this week and I know one of them will be the right fit.  I can feel it in my weary bones.

  On the plus side, I have been making good use of the bike path.  Well, to a certain point.  I spent a week dogsitting and then I got a terrible cold, so I skipped two weeks of walking/biking.  The ham at Easter was very good, as was the cake, and potatoes, and birthday cake for Jackie, and Emily's stash of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and the Girl Scout cookies......which meant I won't be hitting 195 by my birthday.  I will get back into the exercise routine after my sub date this week.

  I have discovered a little nature.  A goose on the pond behind our house has a nest with at least 3 eggs.  Jackie said they will take 30 days to hatch, and I think she has been on them for at least 14.  The goose, not Jackie.  By the way, geese poop quite a bit and they are fairly aggressive when approaching their nest.  One morning I watched some crows peck away at the ground, eventually pulling out a baby rabbit from a nest.  Jackie was not impressed.  Despite my efforts, they birds came back several times but there are still at least two rabbits in the nest.

  Life goes on.  I've been to a couple of Cub games with mon ami Dan, gone to The Rouge a couple of times for conversation and excellent wine, met with fellow Exit 99ers to plan our lineup for the terrific show we are going to have Friday, April 20, gone to the zoo every other Friday for a mental vacation, and wondering if the next couple interested in seeing the townhouse will actually buy it.

  I had a mole on my back removed and even though I was petrified my spinal column was going to be punctured and I would no longer be the fine dancer or fleet footer runner I am known as, Dr. Mike did the whole thing in less than two minutes and suggested next time I take a Valium.  Sad thing, I did and was still a basket case.

  Methinks this is good therapy.  Maybe I'll do this more often.