Hole in the wall

I sit in an office without any windows.  Nada.  It’s a box of a room, though decent sized. 

I have a large desk which contains my paperwork (usually) as well as a phone and printer.  Two plastic brains, some books, a box of tissues (always found in a counselor’s room) and a basket of sweets round out what covers every inch of space.  I have a side cabinet where I keep all my personal junk, from makeup to sweatpants to notepads.  I have a huge four drawer file cabinet where I put some stuff about my students, but more information that I use to teach my psychology class.  You should see the bulging files.

To the right of me on one wall is my bookcase which is struggling to hold my array of psychology and counselling materials.  On top of the bookcase are the toys which I let the kids play with or hold, and a picture of me and my hubby smiling.  Behind me on the last wall is a cabinet for more junk, such as plates and napkins or handouts about mental health information.  I have three beanbags which the kids love to borrow.  And finally a well pillowed futon for parents and kids to sit on to chat with me. 

Despite having no windows, I still have lovely things to look at.  I have a poster in front of me of a Carribbean beach scene.  To my right are the Rocky Mountains in Canada.  Behind me are the Colorado Rockies and the red rocks of Utah.  And to my left is a Travel Magazine calendar which currently has a picture of a lavendar field in Provence near Banon Village. 

If you walked into my room, you would defintely sense the ordered chaos that prevails.  But somehow it all appeals to kids.  I guess it’s what one would term, comfortable.  A neat freak would freak here…but more people just love the colours that I’m surrounded by.  I can’t see the outside world, but I certainly always have a bright inside.

 

Becoming British?

I’ve lived in London for almost four years.  And every day I feel like I’m becoming more and more ‘British’.  I’ll never fully be there, especially working in such an American environment, but I’ll definitely keep picking up bits and bobs of the culture, etc. 

One such example is about the weather.  It’s been quite gorgeous for over a week.  Normally while living in the US I would be thrilled…and thinking, yup, spring has come and summer is on its way.  But here…I just wonder when it’s going to start raining again.  I feel a bit of anxiety that it’s still sunny and warm.  It’s weird.  And other people feel it too.

Another example are the words I use…or at least the pronounciations.  They are slowly becoming more and more British english than American english.  And I forget the American equivalents sometimes.  Like, what is clingfilm?  Oh yeah…saran-wrap.

And then there is that understanding and even playing cricket.  We have our first offical game today.  In the warm sun.  And I’m looking forward to it.  So very cool.

I guess the next thing in line will be to get my citizenship…which will happen in two years.

 

Urgh!

We’re going back on the market tomorrow.  The guy won’t budge and neither will we.  His loss…you can’t get a two-double-bedroom, two bath with a huge living room flat for the price he was originally offering anywhere else nearby - believe me, we’ve checked the websites.  He’s going to have to compromise a lot if he wants to spend less.  But we don’t have to compromise at all.  F-U Mr. H.  If you are bluffing, you’re gonna lose.

 

3:00pm

And I’m freaking out.  Neither hubby nor I have heard from our agent.  We still are in the dark as to whether our flat is going on the market or if we’re exchanging contracts next week.  I don’t like feeling like I’m not in control.  I SWEAR we will never do this to another person.  We may fight to get a price we want, but we’re not going to gazunder anyone.  I hate this.  A lot.

 

Gazundering

Gazundering entails the buyer stitching up the seller by waiting until everybody is poised to exchange contracts and then lowering the offer on the property.  We have been the hit by this.  Today we spoke to our estate agent when we went to see a property with him.  And low and behold, he said that our buyer has asked us to reduce the price by TWELVE THOUSAND POUNDS.  He already had twenty thousand less than the asking price and now he wanted to go down a further twelve.  Not for any good reason…everything he said he already knew about when he came to see the flat TWICE.  The survey came back saying he was getting the flat for a good price in the market.  So the guy is trying to be a complete shit. 

I’ve read about this.  But most online sites that talk about gazundering talk about ONLY doing it if the person is in a chain.  We’re not.  And so we’re prepared to PULL THE HECK OUT…if he’s not ready to play ball.  We can stay here.  It’s okay.  Disappointing, but okay.  And we’ll put it back on the market.  And we’ll get another sale eventually for the exact same price.

So that’s my stupid news for the night.  I’m not happy.  But I’ll hear the final results tomorrow - the agent is going to tell him to basically shit or get off the pot…so a sale will happen next week -or- we’re back on the market.

p.s.  We loved the house we went to see today.  Irony.

 

Been a long time…

I know.  I haven’t posted in a while.  It’s been a bit crazy.  But I am keeping up with my 365 blog for the most part, though I’m two or three pics behind - I keep forgetting to bring the plug between my computer and camera.  So if you get bored, check that out: http://lianes365.wordpress.com.

The house-hunting continues.  We put an offer in for a house that needs tons of work.  It was a very fair and good offer and it was rejected.  She’s in for a long wait to get that extra £20,000.  We then were REALLY interested in another that was under offer but taking a long time…but just as we were about to put in an offer, the contracts were exchanged.  We’ve now found another house that might be a good one for us and we’re heading there tonight to check it out again and take our in-laws along.  This one is very reasonably priced, has three large bedrooms and an extension - though they didn’t do as much with it as they could have - so their is spec for improvement and making it the way WE would like it.  The downside is a smaller back yard (garden) - but ya can’t have everything can you? (not with our budget!)

School is keeping me busy - I’m in the midst of grading hell.  Only 3-1/2 more weeks of teaching and then it’s exam time.  And then…drum rolling…SUMMER VACATION!  This means a visit from my dad, step-mom, bro and sis-in-law with my nephew.  I can’t wait.  And hopefully doing some painting and other decorating of a house.

Cricket has begun - we had a long practice/training session on Sunday.  Four of us at a time were a batting group (for 16 overs) and the rest in the field.  So we were pretty much ‘on’ for about 5-1/2 hours.  A LONG but so much fun day.  I felt it the next day and yesterday!  We had training last night, which was only about 1-1/2 hours…sun, or lack thereof determines the length.

So that’s it from boring me.  I’ll try to keep on writing.  But my mind is just on making babies, buying a house, school and cricket…yeah, thrilling…I know.

 

Lost

Well…we put in an offer on the fixer-upper that we love. 

We looked at the Land Registry prices for the last few years.  They update it every month up to two months prior (so we had up through March ‘08 listed).  After getting all the house info, we walked around the neighborhoods and checked out the houses that sold - did they have a garage?  an extension?  a loft converstion?  Then we went back home and figured out how much the house was truly worth.  As not a single house in the category (house with garage but no extensions) went for more than £400,000, we decided that this would be our TOP possibility.  The place needs serious painting, carpeting/flooring, a new kitchen and some other bits and bobs of work….so it’s not even really worth THAT much. 

So Roy called the lady who is not going through an agent.  And they talked and ‘discussed’ for over an hour.  But we didn’t get it.  She is convinced that she ought to get more, because another house she is selling got an offer of £430,000…but the offer fell through - probably because the bank looked at it and the comparible ones and said, nope, we’re not giving you that mortgage as the house isn’t worth that amount of money. 

Roy is convinced that in about another month or so, she’ll come back and ask us to buy it.  Cause there really aren’t many mortgages out there to get (we’re in good shape) and the best offer she ever got for the house was £400,000 from developers.  She just doesn’t get that this was a good offer.  But she will…and we might no longer be interested.

So we’ve seen about ten properties so far.  We have at least two more this weekend.  It’s tiring and interesting at the same time.  You envision yourself in the property - what would you do to it?  What changes would you make? 

What was good about the fixer-upper?  It had a garage on the side - which means you can extend your house out that far on the side.  And then again upstairs.  It has some really good basic bones - larger rooms than many of the other houses we saw and a decent sized back garden (yard).  The neighborhood is particularly quiet.  And we’d be able to put our own mark on it fully.  If the owner accepts the lower bid, then we might have to live with some imperfections for a while, but we’d still have enough money to do a bit of what we’d like - new kitchen, carpet, painting and wardrobes.

But if we don’t get that, what shall we do?  Well…there’s one other house that we really like right now - it’s had a bunch of work done on it (walls taken down that we would have wanted), but we’d need to decorate.  It’s not as large and doesn’t have the extension potential, though we could go up into the loft.  But we could move in right away and just decorate as we wanted…cause overall it’s quite nice.  And - it’s much less expensive and the owners HAVE to sell as they are moving overseas in July…so we could get a bargain.

What to do?  What to do?  It’s on our minds every night.  Lots of food for thought.

 

Girlies

While I love the company of my husband, sometimes you just need some girl time.  And I got that in spades yesterday.

Right after school, I left for Covent Garden with a friend from work.  We were going shopping for all things Clinique…it was one of those times where if you buy two items you get a free gift.  As I haven’t purchased any makeup in a while, I thought it’d be nice to get a new lippy in a bright sunshiny colour (sometimes you need that in non-sunshiny London) and hope to find a mascara that won’t run under my eyes…we’ll see what the outcome is on that, but the lippy is a nice bright rose pink - perhaps a bit 80s but kinda fun.

Then on to Hammersmith to meet up with a few Americans in hopes of joining other at an expat meetup.  Well…we never met any other Americans, but we certainly had our share of fun, decent Indian and a few laughs.  We’re definitely heading back to the Dove as it’s a cool bar and the houseboat guys kept us on our toes.  Entertaining all around…I think my witty remarks were well regarded - then again it might have been my alcohol fueled mind perceiving it that way.  Irrespective of that, it was a night to remember.  Great time girls!!!

 

It’s almost overwhelming…

There is so much going on right now in our lives.  Not that I’m complaining cause a lot of it is very positive, but as I told a group of parents last night, even positive events can cause stress.

We found out yesterday that we have a provisional exchange date of May 14 (or at least within a day or so of that).  And then we also found out that the people buying it are a father & son combo.  The dad is going to be re-mortgaging his house instead of getting a new mortgage, which should be easier.  So we may actually be finishing everything up within one month!  That’s great news.  It also means we can seriously think about putting in an offer quite soon.

We went to see a mortgage broker yesterday.  My job pays for it so it made sense to use his services.  And it went well.  With our good credit rating (good thing I’ve lived here for a bunch of years), our salaries and what we’ll have to put down, we’re in good position for getting the mortgage we want and a decent one at that.

We have decided that we want to see the first house we viewed again.  We really think it’s a good value for the money and, in fact, they just brought the price down £10,000, so it’s even more in our range.  Which is fantastic.  Now we just have to hope that it doesn’t sell before we can get to it!

I went to see a doctor today.  We’re starting to check into our fertility.  We haven’t been using birth control for over a year and really trying for six months…so it was time to get things checked out.  I’m going to have to make an appointment for blood work and an ultrasound, while Roy gets to get his swimmers checked.  Joy.  Not so much.

So there’s tons going on.  Lots good, lots stressful.  But it’s moving us in a direction which we want…a house, a garden/yard and possibly a baby.  Fingers crossed that it all works out!

 

Friendship

I work with one young girl who is struggling a bit.  She became friends with older students, leaving behind some of her peers.  The older students are now in the midst of being, well, older and my young student is feeling left behind.  And she’s struggling more as she recognizes that she may have caused other to feel the way she is feeling right now.

Friendship is tough.  Dealing with differences, hormones, changed…it’s all quite hard.   And it gets harder as you get older, unless, perhaps, you remain in the same town with the same people for your entire life (though that could bring up other problems).

My first move was to college.  I knew no one.  And I was thrilled.  I had been around the same people for most of my life and felt it was time for a change.  I wanted to BE someone new.  The only way to make this move was to leave.  And I had a blast.  I made some good friends.  Two of which I still communicate with sporadically.

Then post-college.  I moved home for a bit and had a bunch of my old high school friends around.  It was a nice into into ‘the real world’…but I never really met anyone else cause it was too comfortable.  I didn’t have to make an effort.

I moved after that many other times, never again to be around an old friend.  In NJ, my only good friend was my boyfriend and that wasn’t a good thing.  We were too exclusive.  I didn’t have a life outside of him and hanging with my roommates once in a while.  In DC, I worked in a boarding school and became good friends over time with a few other teachers.  I still talk to them and really loved their company.  In Boston, I met a wild group of women who I will have as lifelong friends.  But again, it took some time and some effort.  It never came easy.

Here in London…well, I had one good friend who moved back to the States.  And I’m currently developing a few female friendships.  I don’t have a BFF like I did in high school…but I do have people to hang with.  But my husband, well, he’s my best friend forever.  And in some ways, that’s a really good thing.  But I do miss having one person here I can talk to about EVERYTHING and go out with regularly.  But that may come eventually…in time.  Cause it gets harder as you get older.  But the friendships you do form, can be seriously strong.