What News, Horatio?

There is news, and so I can write. We have in fact entered escrow. Isn't that an amazing thing? We made a ridiculously generous offer to keep the property from being foreclosed. The bank said "okay" and now we are in escrow. It's kind of like being engaged to a bad person who you don't really love, but whose promises have the potential of being good, and with a kiss could turn into a princely thing. The wariness of present day real estate is a daunting thing. A hall of mirrors, a trickery of wishes, desires that render us vulnerable. Still, we are positive that the outcome of this particular dance with the demons will be safe. If the transaction actually closes, we will emerge unscathed with land to garden and a place to put chickens, sauna, solar generators, pond, and game cam.

Roger, true to his commitment, is still not cutting his hair or beard until escrow closes.
One day we looked up the road. It was foggy. We were socked in and we could not see the future.
One day we looked down the road. The sun poured like fire that lit the western sky and rendered the pavement and trees in a halo of sensual reality. We could see a welcoming promise.

We have a pest inspection Friday; well inspection Monday; house inspection Tuesday. If all goes well, we could conceivably close escrow on the 12th. We are cautiously optimistic. Still, we are realists down to our toes.

We never sleep.

What We've Been Up To

In the past two weeks Roger and I have gone three times to look at a piece of property in the hills of northern Monterey County. Five acres; good garden area; and the plainest, most absurdly oriented house with the worst floorplan ever conceived and constructed. Despite the house, we keep going back. It's that garden space, but it's also the utter earthly quietness of the place. When we drive up the long driveway, turn off the car engine, there are no sounds except for the wind blowing the old still-standing cornstalks, sounding like the rustle of parched paper in an autumn that never quite ended. We hear songbirds singing off in the leafy canopy and a rooster somewhere crowing. Then quiet. We stand outside there just to listen to that.
Each time we've gone we've seen this red-tailed hawk flying low and lazily over the yard, hummingbirds silhouetted in the top of the madrones, and chickadees flitting in the massive oaks. Across the canyon is a 40-acre horse ranch, and the neighbor up the road let us check out his high speed internet connection that he gets via radio waves. Quite impressive.
The drawbacks are many though, and we are wondering where we'd begin if we ever bought the place. The upside is that the house is completely move-in-able, clean and only eight years old. It is utterly charmless and without character, but that wouldn't deter us. It's everything else. The house really should be picked up and moved. The south wall should have a bank of windows, instead it's got a laundry room and utility closet for the water heater and furnace, a walk-in closet for the master bedroom, and the sinks and mirror for the bath. C'mon folks, it's the south wall, what were they thinking? The living room faces north, and while it is certainly a lovely view across a wide expanse of canyon and sky, it's always going to be a dark room. Are these things surmountable? We're not sure.

So we keep going back to look, to listen. Each time we do, the hawk flies over wondering when we human interlopers will leave so he can get back to the moles, voles, and gopher holes that dot the front yard. We keep looking back at him, wondering if he'll be our neighbor? We're just not sure yet, we'll keep you posted.

PS-- We love Barack Obama more now than we did when we voted for him. His first day in office delighted us to no end. OBAMA!