Monthly Archives for
April 2005

I have lived in Dobson Ranch almost my entire life. It’s a large, cozy, family oriented subdivision in Mesa. There are several community pools (one with a swim team), a library and a great community newspaper. My parents have owned two homes in Dobson Ranch and Jason and I bought our first home here two and a half years ago.

There are lots of things that I love about this area and our home, but one of my favorite things has nothing to do with our actual living space. Dobson Ranch has several man-made lakes that run around the backs of lucky homes, creating scenic views from backyard porches. In a few places along the roads that line the subdivision, the water peeks up to the edge of the road. In each of these spots, a few yards from the edge of the water sits a three or four foot square platform. At certain sunny times of the day (which, we all know, in Arizona, is almost all the time) many turtles can be seen warming themselves there in full view of all passersby. It’s a cheerful, charming sight that over the years has my neck habitually snapping toward those platforms every time I pass. Often, when Jason walks in the door from work in the afternoon, the first words out of his mouth are about the turtles he passed just before he got home. It’s one of the things that I happily pay my home owner’s association fees for.

(Photo by Robin Ross)

My dad sent me this article yesterday:

Realty Agent Who’ll Work for 0%

It both amused and intrigued me. Who are these nutty people burying statues in their yards to sell their houses? What lucid adult would actually take the time to complete this silly, pointless task? When I voiced this question to my dad (a man whose entire perception of life is based in logic and hard fact), he surprised me with the knowledge that not only my grandmother had done this, but possibly my own mother. I am still struck by the vision of my mother digging a hole in the front yard of our last home on Summit Place. I can picture her in cute Capri’s and handmade jewelry, with a statue in one hand and a spade in the other, and I am overcome with giggles.

I shouldn’t have been so shocked, though; real estate’s a game of chance. If you deal with it on a regular basis and don’t have a lucky charm, you’re probably in the minority. Even though I tend to think that I take after my father in my sense of practicality, I have to admit, a bit of my mother’s superstitious nature has definitely reared its ugly head lately. With my first transaction, we had an offer on the house we were selling within days of putting it on the market. We agreed to terms and signed the contract. The next morning, just before the deal was to go into escrow, the buyers changed their minds. It was really too close to the freeway for them, they told us. We put the house back on the market and crossed our fingers. It was a full week before we received any more offers, and by that point I had bitten my nails to the quick and my stomach turned to knots habitually every time my cell phone rang. When we finally completed a second contract I spent days knocking on every surface of wood I could find every time someone asked me how the the deal was going and I answered, “We’re in escrow…” It seemed almost too good to be true. I learned the lesson early that a real estate deal is like a house of cards: one wrong move and the whole thing comes down.

So my point is, I guess burying St. Joseph can’t hurt your property values….

My littlest was sick this weekend. He’s almost 10 months old and it’s quickly becoming apparent that he’s one of those kids who is just sick what seems like ALL THE TIME. In reality, he’s probably about average. He’s had a bunch of colds this winter and a nasty ear infection we just could not seem to shake, but he’s never had bronchitis or pneumonia or anything really nasty and hospital-visit-inducing like that. But compared to our older son, Ben, who’s never had an ear infection in his life and who didn’t even visit the doctor enough to ever learn to be afraid of him, Gray’s like a walking petri dish; growing any and every germ he comes into contact with until he’s a feverish, puking mess.

Having a sick baby, however, has allowed me to hone a genetic trait I didn’t previously know I had. It’s one of those things men and non-mothers have long dismissed as an urban legend. Even I, before I had my kids and this trait was awakened, pooh-poohed the idea of it from my own mother. It may sound silly, but I am a human thermometer.

Friday morning when I got Gray up to feed him before I dashed out the door to work, I thought he felt a bit warm. I mentioned it to Jason and he said, he’s fine, and since Gray was eating normally and seemed happy, I ignored it too. When I picked him up from the sitter’s that afternoon, she said he’d had a fine day. By the time we got home and had had a bottle, though, he was still seeming warm to me, and a little bit lethargic too. Jason was still not convinced. “He’s fine,” he kept telling me, “Stop worrying so much.” So we took him with us to dinner at a sushi restaurant. Before our drinks even arrived at the table Gray was projectile vomiting the peas I had just fed him. When I talked to our sitter again on Monday, she said she had actually taken his temperature Friday because she thought he’d felt a bit warm too, but because it was only a degree above normal and he seemed otherwise fine, she hadn’t mentioned it. By Monday night, long after his Tylenol had run out of his system, his head was cool again, and I knew he was on the road to recovery.

I think the ability to judge any small variance of child temperature comes from my love of smushing their sweet little faces against mine.

We actually have one of those fancy ear thermometers that are supposed to be so accurate. I hardly ever use it for anyone but myself, though. I seem to get different readings from each ear and minute to minute. It’s just not anything close to accurate compared to my internal therMOMeter.

Spring time in Phoenix is a fleeting event. It always seems that one minute I’m rejoicing over shedding my winter windbreaker and the next I’m complaining about my flip-flops melting to the asphalt. There’s just not much there in between. Arizona is like a finely made automobile: 0 to 110 in nothing flat (OK, so it’s never actually been zero degrees here… but you catch my drift). There is, however, one actual, bona fide, non-egg-hunting spring time event to be anticipated and enjoyed here in Phoenix: The Butterfly Pavilion.

Ben and I attended this for the first time last year. We went on a Friday in early April and brought floppy hats, sunscreen and our cameras. We paid our admission to the Desert Botanical Gardens (which, I loathe to admit, that even though I’m a native, I’d never been to before) and wandered back through the desert plants and beautiful copper sculptures. We waited in line at a large, shaded green house. When it was our turn to enter, we stepped into a quiet, cool natural sanctuary. Colorful flowers and lush green plants filled it. People, young and old moved carefully and calmly through the pavilion, stopping to gaze at the hundreds of butterflies that flitted around the greenery. The butterflies seemed almost as curious as their youngest observers. They landed briefly on our shoulders and heads and then glided away to drink from the bird baths with orange slices floating in them. Ben was amazed and delighted by the spectacle. He took his first photos that day and enjoyed every moment.

Every year this event is offered. It would make for an excellent and creative date, or an amazing outing for the kids. You don’t want to miss this perk of the desert.

When Jason, Ben and I (Gray was just a twinkle in our eye, as they say) bought our home, it had had little done to it in the 20-some-odd years since it had been built. Even the paint, wallpaper and carpeting were all still in versions 1.0. Before we actually moved any of our things into the house, we began a week-long process of painting and reflooring. I have a vivid memory from that very first night, of laying down to rest a minute on a giant roll of dirty, dusty, 20-year old carpet that sat on our bare concrete floors. When we had pulled the ratty, brownish carpet up, the padding had been so old it had just disintegrated in our fingers.

Weeks earlier, Jason and I had decided to install wood flooring in the main living areas and hallway. Jason, who is always drawn to the newest, hippest products before they even become hip, wanted to do bamboo floors. But as the keeper of the budget, and practical mind of our twosome, I vetoed this idea in favor of an excellent deal we could get on maple colored engineered hard wood floors.

We are both still happy with this decision. The floors are gorgeous and easy to clean and they were relatively easy to install (I say, as though I actually installed them, when in fact, I had nothing to do with it, they were all the work of my talented husband). Engineered hardwood floors are actually a thin layer of pre-finished planks attached to tongue and grooved particle board. These floors are glued to each other but ‘floated’ on top of the sub floor; which just means that they do not need to be glued or nailed down. Jason spent about three days straight laying the approximately 700 square feet of wood floors we have, pretty much by himself. He had no experience laying that type of floor and they still turned out practically flawlessly.

On the other hand, if I had it to do over again, I would choose, instead, to go with the bamboo floors, for a few reasons. To begin with, environmentally speaking, bamboo is a much smarter choice. Bamboo grows with amazing speed in not very fertile soil. When harvested at it’s optimal maturity (4 years old) bamboo is 25% harder and just as strong as red oak, which is the most common material for wood flooring. So bamboo can be grown more quickly, with less damage to the environment, to an equal benefit to us and our floors. It’s a win/win situation.

Another reason to choose bamboo floors, is that in the last couple of years, they have become more prevalent, and therefore, cheaper and easier to install. You can buy engineered bamboo wood floors that you would install just like we (well, Jason) did ours, and at a comparable price. Cheap, easy to install, durable and environmentally conscious, how can you go wrong?

Any way you choose to go with your wood floors, a great resource (and the place that we got our excellent deal) is www.lumberliquidators.com. We went out to their showroom in Phoenix and came home with floors for $1.99 per square foot. Can’t beat that!

Jason and I saw this house as we were driving around this weekend. I have always been entranced by homes built into the sides of the mountains that encompass Phoenix. When I was a kid and we would drive by Camelback Mountain, I would gaze at the mansions dotted among the boulders and saguaros and wonder about how they were built and where the road was to get up to their driveways. I used to dream about someday living up there and looking down on the valley.

This house had a gorgeous view of wildflowers and desertscape. It looked huge and well maintained. We especially loved the long wraparound porch in front and the part toward the back left with the wall and roof of windows. The pretty mocha color of the exterior didn’t hurt either.