the crater

well, if we had gotten through this whole house-buying thing without a hitch i might have been really nervous to move in. so i suppose it is good that we've just experienced the hitch. a big hole in our front yard. a coffin-sized hole covered in shiny reflective metal. no more happy grass, no more pollyana perfection, just a big ol' hole and an industrial reflecting pool on top of it.















tracy and i were both pretty upset about it at first (we heard about "the crater," which it evidently was before the dirt was dragged away, from mari and our neighbors and james before we saw it for ourselves), but after our visit yesterday we're feeling a bit better. most importantly, we finally met randy voller, the developer of chatham forest and (promising) (even liberal?) candidate for pittsboro mayor. he lives across the street from us, we learned, and doesn't want to stare at that thing either. so, he assures us, we will do something.














we also talked with tracy's father, who is an amazing designer with a great vision for landscaping. he is out to visit today, in fact, and will undoubtedly come home with several ideas about how to make this be ok. probably if this had all not been done six days from closing, we wouldn't have minded so much! it's not that much worse than the green tv box, i suppose - and we have more clout to make this one look better. welcome to homeownership! hey, but isn't the neighborhood lovely in the fall? :)














our visit to the pittsboro street fair also made everything look a bit brighter. it's an annual downtown festival with food, local music, local nonprofit and political and religious organizations (never before have i been offered so many bottles of water that say "God loves you" on them!). wish we had pictures of that. it was fantastic. what an amazing town we are moving to. more racial diversity crammed onto pittsboro's small downtown streets than i have seen in years. we registered to vote, made friends with the general manager of the new food co-op, met a few neighbors ("oh good. now there's three of us." "three what?" "three couples in town without children."), and learned how to use a marshmallow shooter (yup). it was a tremendously beautiful day. everyone was tremendously friendly. so despite the hole in our yard it made me tremendously excited to MOVE IN!

the countdown is on. pending further hitches (hope hope!) we become official pittsboro residents in FOUR DAYS. woohoo!