A restful interlude

I'm looking forward to this week because it promises to be "normal." We're having old friends from out of town for the weekend, and the only thing I'll be thinking about is getting ready for thier visit--removing 12th Street dust from all the surfaces, planning meals and fun stuff to do. No thoughts of any houses, new or old, nor of mortgages and their rates, nor constructions or demolitions. It'll be a pleasant, relatively care-free interlude. The house and yard have been winterized, meaning all the dead annuals have been dug out of the gardens outside and the house plants have taken their accustomed spots inside. A couple of them are outgrowing their pots, and Sandy is a great plant audience, willing to take cuttings that I'd otherwise have to throw away. All to the good.

A new Pompeii exhibit that's supposed to be breathtaking has just opened in the National Gallery of Art downtown. Something in the neighborhood of 100 objects that have never been out of Italy, let alone collected in one place, is making its world-wide rounds, and DC is lucky enough to be on the itinerary. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunty, one of the rare happenings for which I'll bestir myself to brave the crane-necked throngs that usually accompany these one-off cultural events. It's the type of thing Chuck and Sandy, our friends, love to do, so it will be the centerpiece of their time here. Since they're arriving Thursday, we can shoot for going to town on Friday and, just maybe, avoid the worst crowds.

The Delaware weekend was relatively uneventful but instructive nonetheless. We finished choosing lights and fans so the builder can fill in those blanks for his final proposal. More interesting, we got enough figures to do the math and figure out what the payments on the construction loan will be for just the initial steps of clearing the land and putting in the septic system. It's now clear that after these two steps are taken, we will be unable to do more construction until this house is sold--we can't pay this mortgage and that complete loan at the same time. So now we know that additional storage is a certainty, as well as our having to rent a place to live for the interim between the sale of this house and the completion of the new one. The first half of 2009 promises to be expensive and chaotic. And we still don't know for sure exactly what we'll get for this place nor how long it will take to sell.

Aren't you glad you hitched onto this ride? You're lucky--at least you can hit "delete"!