House stuff is moving along. I've been making calls, checking my list and moving folks from the nice to naughty list. Namely our soon to be neighbors in the rear. It turns out that the guy did move the fence, but that was only one of their complaints. They actually would prefer that we rip the whole ugly thing down so that they can put up a cute little picket fence. That would be fine by me...were it not for the dog, who could clear something like that in no time. So I'm afraid that they're just going to have to get used to the ugly side of our six foot privacy fence and feel lucky that they don't have to deal with Crowley and misguided sense of territory.

So we're still waiting to resolve that little issue, but besides that, things are rolling along. They still had a few things left to do, like finish out the bath in the basement, repair a faulty wall outlet and reroute a gas line which is dangerously located behind a door in their do it yourself basement redo. I just hope that we don't find any other suprises. The radon test came back at 2.9 which is below the 4 which would require mitigation, but I'm still thinking that is a little high for a 9 month old house. Plan to look into permanent monitoring devices and do it yourself mitigation since that will be Blaine's lair and he will no doubt spend many a weekend holed up playing with his toys. Let me know if you have any experience with this. We don't have basements where I grew up, too close to sea level, so sump pits and dehumidifiers and radon are all new to me.

We went to the movies last night and saw Elf which was even funnier than it looked in the previews but we didn't want to go home afterwards. So we made a run through the Starbucks drive through and armed with Gingerbread and Eggnog lattes we took a late night drive to prowl our new neighborhood, driving very slowly past the naughty neighbors like we could glean some clue as to why they choose to stand in the way of us and our new house?!? Somehow even their house looked angry, if a house can look angry, or maybe we were seeing what we wanted to see. But the neighborhood is tiny and oh, so peaceful sitting out there in the dark quiet prairie. We hated to leave, but I know we'll be back.

- posted 11/8/2003 02:07:27 PM

So we had the house inspection and it went pretty well. The only major problem was a boundary dispute with a neighbor. They say that our fence is eighteen inches too far onto their property. My solution would be to just move the fence. I don't know if that is going to happen before we move in though.

Having a dispute with the neighbor after only living there for nine months kind of worries me. The agent said that they also called the listing agent to ask that a porch light be turned off. Are we not allowed to use our porch lights at night? It's pitch black out there at night, which is nice, but not if people are being grumpy about it. It also absolutely silent. There is no peripheral noise of traffic or anything. It's actually a pretty nice. We've never lived anywhere that we couldour windows. Our apartment in Baltimore was the worst. I had to turn up the TV full blast to hear it over the noise of the traffic when the air wasn't working, which was pretty often. The thing that worries me is Crowley's barking. I'm sure that it is only a matter of time before we hear about that.

- posted 11/5/2003 09:12:39 AM

I've been thinking a lot about a discussion I heard recently. I'm sure it's nothing new to a lot of people, but for me it was one of those 'duh' moments you have, when you wonder why it never occurred to you before. The discussion was about the difference between being passive, assertive and aggressive. I probably could have defined the three, but connecting the concepts was beyond me. Here's what I got.

To be passsive is to hide your intentions, feelings or desires. It's motivated by both a desire for approval and a fear of confrontation. You feel like you're being the nice guy by letting everyone else have their way, but the problem is that you're being dishonest and manipulative, both to yourself and to the person that you're dealing with and in the end, it hurts more than it helps. This is where I am now. I spend more time than I care to admit feeling angry, resentful and petty. I know that when that moment comes and I choose to sublimate my desires, I'm afraid. And it never occurred to me that it hurt anyone else besides myself.

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To be aggressive is to do the exact opposite. You totally ignore the other person's feelings, ideas, concerns. The only logical conclusion to a coversation when you're being aggressive is that you're right or that you win. The problem is obvious, the other person is left feeling hurt and insulted while you're left with a bad decision. Because it is a bad decision when only one person is allowed to participate in the decision making process if it effects more than that one person. Although I never really thought of myself as being aggressive, now I see that this is my obnoxious side, which I know I can be. I've used aggression when I knew that I had to make my voice heard, unfortunately I tend to drown out everyone else, leaving both hurt feelings and bad decisions. I usually picture aggressive people as really insecure. Like they have something to prove, even at your expense, but I'm not sure I'm right about that one or how it fits in with all of this. One thing I'm definitely not good at is being on the receiving end of aggression. I don't know how to defend myself without committing the same crime.

To be assertive is to achieve that happy harmony where everyone is heard and participates. It is direct and honest communication. It is two people, equally engaged in giving and taking and even though one may get their way, they both feel like winners. This one, I know nothing about. But I plan to try. It's funny how you really have to get a good picture in your head of where you'd like to be before you can start out in that direction. Making this small distinction has shed light on several relationships where I just couldn't get a grip . I knew that they were troubling, but I couldn't put my finger on why and if you don't know why, you can't fix it. Just so glad for a bright new idea, they come along so rarely.

- posted 11/4/2003 12:39:24 PM