Hi.

I’m still here, continuing to exist outside of Blog World. Let’s see, what’s been happening around here since we last chatted? Well, as you know, my exceedingly virile young husband has knocked me up yet again and I’ve been getting acclimated to all that. So far, the upside has been that I haven’t been nearly as nauseated as last time, and that my boobs are finally perky again after that whole post-baby bummer where I learned about the havoc that having a baby wreaks on your body. Total frigging destruction; at least when you’re my age.

The other thing is that with little Esmerelda on the way, there is simply no way we can stay in our house. That is, of course, an exaggeration brought on by the greedy, entitled American way of thinking that says we need to occupy as much space on the planet as we possibly can – god forbid the kids should just share a room and guests can sleep on the couch (or just not stay with us). But no, I feel the need to thump my chest and go on about how 2 professionals in their thirties should be able to give more to their kids (and by kids, I mean themselves) than a 2 bedroom, 1 bath little bungalow.

So… we’ve been looking at houses in our neighborhood, which is where we want to stay, and there is pretty much sweet FA available. There is nothing in our price range that really suits our needs, which includes 3 bedrooms on one floor (!), so we’ve decided to redo our own house. This should suck pretty badly when we’re living in some corporate apartment when I give birth to little Hermione, but we would hopefully at least be back in the house during my maternity leave. We’ve been kind of opposed to the “pop-top” thing in principle, because so many people do it in Denver and it usually looks like complete shit. Nobody seems to be capable of integrating a new story into the whole, so it always looks like some kind of cheap, crummy afterthought, like shoes from DSW.

What with R. being an awesome modern architect and all, he’s already started thinking of potential ideas. We both really like stone, so one idea is to integrate the first and second floors by covering the part of the front of the house that recedes (on the left side) with pale stone all the way up.

We would paint the brick a similar, putty-esque color, and then the rest of the top floor would probably be wood of some sort (also light-colored) to contrast with the hard surfaces of stone and brick. Loads of cool windows, something interesting with the roof, and something different about the shapes of the second story so it’s not just this massive block sitting on the site. I’ll leave that part to the architect, but neither of us will be glad to wave bye-bye to that queer, merry roof we have now and that awning thingy over the front door. When you look at the base of the house, it’s actually quite a pleasant shape to start with.

Inside, we just want to add 3 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs, and hopefully redo the kitchen. I’m not sure how much our budget will allow us to do, but even adding the top floor will be pretty nice, I think. I’m fantasizing about a fabulous bathroom with a huge tub I can soak in and drink wine and read novels.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of pictures from Eeyore's first trip to California a couple of weeks ago: