One bright spot in all the mess of late is that the blueberry-pecan biscotti we made over the weekend came out really well. Better than we expected. It’s nice to be able to do some baking now that we’re not showing the house (though I fear we’ll be back to that soon).
Well, the showing happened. The agent called from the Waffle House nearby and said her client should be meeting her there in a few minutes. So we got ready and cleared out. Mr. Tldz decided we should use some of the money we set aside for this purpose and go out to lunch. We tried the pit barbecue place near campus. It’s probably been 10+ years since I’ve been there, and I think I only went the one time, so I couldn’t really remember much about it. (Though I think that was the first place I had Brunswick stew.) Pretty good basic Southern BBQ. We still like JR’s better, but this was good. And pretty cheap, too.
We had a fun time picking on Monday, and couldn’t have picked better weather – the end of a stretch of sunny but (relatively) cool, low humidity days. Due to scheduling necessities, this was later in the season than we’ve gone in the past, and it showed. The picking was a little harder — really had to get to the underside of the branches and such, but we still did pretty well and have a reasonable haul of berries frozen to get us through the year. We’ll have to pace ourselves with these more than we did last year, since we did two days of picking last year; but still.
Unfortunately, the place in Social Circle we’d hoped to go picking (because they have the bluebelle variety, that we discovered makes fabulous cobbler) was already closed for the season. They had a poor crop this year. So we went down to Fayetteville instead, which meant we got to got to City Cafe and Bakery. We really like it there. It’s too bad it’s so far away. The German food, as usual, was wonderful; and of course, the desserts. And we brought some goodies home with us. (The folks at the farm were a bit rude, so we didn’t get any extra produce there and just spent that money at the bakery instead.) We got a great loaf of German rye bread to go with our stew this past week. And we’ll have it for sandwiches this week. Agent Murphy liked the bread, too. Gotta love that kid!
Last Saturday night, L. babysat for The Agent while Mr. Tldz and I went out to dinner with RW and S. It was goofy how giddy I got about it in the days leading up to it. Wow — I could actually get a little dressed up, spend time with adults, and eat a meal that didn’t involve keeping an eye on a toddler and his meal. (Do you think maybe I’m feeling the isolation and lack of conversation of being stuck at home with a toddler all day? And a non-verbal toddler at that?) Mr. Tldz and I tried to remember the last time we went out somewhere without the Agent. We were horrified at that thought that maybe it was our anniversary in November; but then we remembered that we’d had dinner at the home of some friends from church in March or early April. L. stayed with the Agent then, too, and we went over after our friends’ daughter was down for the night. Okay, that’s not as pathetic as its having been November, but still.
Anyway, we met RW and S at Athens Pizza. I’d had their pizza, but never been to the restaurant to check out the rest of the menu. Good Greek food. Including gyros. Why didn’t I know about this before?!? And fabulous desserts, too. And always fun to see them. Unfortunately, the conversation turned to politics — the proposed government healthcare plan, in particular — and I found it depressing to see in living color in front of me the stranglehold Leftist thought has on mainline Protestantism and academia. As Mr. Tldz said, it’s just further proof of the old academic joke about a Ph.D. being just “piled higher and deeper.” Oh well.
So I just had Agent Murphy help me wash a head of lettuce and tear up some of it for our salad tonight. He did pretty well with it, though I had to keep a close eye on him so he wouldn’t tip over the bowl of water. We already had a water event this morning when he got into the bathroom and dumped The Dog’s water bowl. You’d think after that I would have avoided more water games. But I’m glad I let him try this. He really seemed to like it.
Now I’m off to get our pasta sauce ready.
We had dill peas and Mr. Tldz’s famous lemon oven potatoes for dinner tonight. (And some Trader Joe’s grape leaves in a jar that had been hanging around for a while. The Agent didn’t have those.) Agent Murphy did well with his dinner, though he was slow to pick up on the potatoes. Happy to report that the potatoes are back to their best — the recipe with which I was wooed.
Then it was cranberry pie for dessert. There were no walnuts to be had at the store this week, so we went with pecans. We were a little dubious about how that would work, but at least at first try we think we like the pecans better. (Hey, this is Southern cranberry pie after all!) Due to the nuts, the Agent couldn’t have pie for dessert but he had vanilla ice cream, which he slurped down to the last drop. That’s our boy!
It was lovely. We stuffed ourselves with all sorts of yummy food — huge burgers (I went a little overboard with the meat!), homemade slaw (red – Carolina style), homemade watermelon milk shakes (If you can’t get to Cookout, bring Cookout to you!), blueberry pie (the last of the berries we picked last year)… The evening of the Fourth we watched Bull Durham, accompanied by a big bowl of popcorn and some root beer. All in all a very relaxing weekend. And Mr. Tldz and I are freshly coiffed as of yesterday afternoon. (Agent Murphy will wait until next time to get his next haircut.)
The new listing of the house is up. (Can’t say the same for the new yard sign. Mr. Tldz and I made a couple of futile attempts, even after a little rain when we thought the ground might be softened up a bit. Obviously there’s some trick to this that we’re missing, because brute force isn’t working.) Had a showing yesterday afternoon. Here’s hoping we get this place sold!
Mr. Tldz and I had a lovely, lazy, relaxed weekend. It has us looking forward to the upcoming long weekend!
We went out for pizza Friday night to clear out for some showings, and noticed that the ice cream parlor across the street from the pizzeria that has been “coming soon” had a banner up announcing a grand opening on Saturday. So Saturday afternoon we went over there for ice cream. Agent Murphy enjoyed his cup of strawberry for tea time very much. Though the ice cream was good, unfortunately we were a little put off by the place because they had their “best customer” out collecting signatures for a petition to turn some flashing lights outside their store back on. It didn’t really make sense, and when we didn’t just agree to sign immediately (partly, at least, because I had ice cream in both hands and Mr. Tldz had ice cream in one hand and a toddler hand in the other) she said loudly to the next group of people she approached, “They didn’t sign because they must be Communists.” Way to lose some customers when you’re trying to build business for a new venture.
We had another showing on Sunday while we were at Mass. Then in the afternoon we finished watching season 1 of Matlock while a pot of lentil and brown rice stew simmered away on the stove. We’re happy to report that Agent Murphy likes this stew, which is good since it’s a family favorite. (Tasty, and really inexpensive to make a vat.)
Although we’ve had an uptick in showings of the house since we reduced the price (6 since the change), no sign of an offer yet. Hopefully we’re beginning the process this week of listing with the new realtor so we have a seamless transition — one listing expiring on July 2, the new listing going up July 3.
Today I’ve been busy with laundry, and Agent Murphy and I went to play group at church. Small crowd today — one family of 4 kids, and a little girl just a bit older than the Agent. The 4 siblings are 3 girls and a boy, so the boy, though he’s almost 5, was happy to have Agent Murphy to play with when we arrived. (I use the phrase “play with” loosely.) It was very sweet — he asked his mom if he could tell the Agent something, and when she said yes, he went over and whispered in our little guy’s ear. His mom told me he wanted to tell the Agent that he’s going to his friend Frankie’s house. I guess he was just very excited to have another boy to talk to.
Indeed, we are blessed that Fathers’ Day cannot fall during Lent. I was treated to some really yummy french toast.
We headed off to mass while our house was shown by a couple different agents and came home to have lunch and a third showing. Hopefully the new price will get the right person’s attention and we’ll sell quickly.
Now it’s off to share some of the chocolate Agent Murphy “helped” Mrs. Tldz pick out for me.
Long time no post! We had a nice trip to Chicago at the end of May. Agent Murphy was a real trooper in the car, even though we got stuck in construction traffic on the first day coming back (on Sunday!) so our planned leisurely half-trip ended up with our getting to our hotel in Kentucky very late.
We went to Lincoln Park Zoo and had hoped to make it to the Children’s Museum, but Mr. Tldz and I were both a bit under the weather. On our penultimate day there, my mom hosted a get-together of family of friends, and it was good to see lots of folks. And Agent Murphy receieved several gifts, for which thank you notes are forthcoming. Saw my sister and her family briefly Sunday morning at Mass. Unfortunately, we ended on a bad note with my mom, but hopefully little by little we will rebuild things.
Agent Murphy had his hearing screening shortly after we returned, and as we expected, all is normal there. Last week he had his speech evaluation, and the therapist is leaning toward the idea that he has a lazy tongue. So we’ll start weekly speech therapy in a few weeks when we hear back about scheduling. Her sense is there’s no reason to think he won’t respond to therapy, that just a little boost should be enough to get him started talking. We’d sure like that! So now I have a bunch of handouts to read through with ideas to try to stimulate language, and we’ll work on that while we wait for therapy.
We had a big day yesterday. Agent Murphy and I finally made it to play group at church for the first time in a long time. He’s still pretty reserved there. Then we went to Mobile Mother Goose at the library in what we hope will be our new neighborhood. (Of course, I couldn’t resist driving by “our” house.) He wasn’t sure what to make of all that. We’ll try it again next week.
Speaking of “our” house… The price has been reduced again. It’s making me really antsy that someone will snatch it up before us. We’ve had a lowball offer on our house. We’ve countered and are waiting for the response. And we’ve had a couple more showings. But we’re on the verge of changing realtors if this current flurry of activity doesn’t yield anything this week. We met with a guy on Saturday who has ideas about actively marketing our house, rather than the “let’s list it and wait and see who shows up” approach our current agent takes.
Had RW and S. over for dinner Saturday a week ago to thank them for keeping an eye on the house while we were away. It’s always fun to catch up with them and we rather enjoy the challenge of finding onion-less recipes to serve to S., since most of our recipes start “chop 1 onion” (or more). Ah, but the pork tenderloin with poached plums that we like has no onions. Yum! We look forward to getting together with them again around mid-July.
Mr. Tldz and I both had physicals last week with our new primary care doc. We need to schedule our blueberry picking outing, and a day trip to the dairy north of here. And I need to carve out some quality time to spend in the basement getting organized down there so we can be ready for the move when the time comes. Other than that, it’s the same old same old around here.