Small sorrows, bits of progress, and the usual miscellany

Sorry for the “lite” posting this week. I hope I made up for the lack of volume with the quality of Wednesday’s post. (The quality of response to that post has certainly been outstanding.)

I had some bad news Wednesday. Nothing earth-shattering, but a setback that … well, it drove me to eat four whole squares of chocolate (a huge indulgence at the very end of my month of primal-nutrition purity). It’s kept me in the doldrums since then.

You may remember that I’ve been debating options about where to live. The more I explored, the more I realized I belong back in my beloved northwest. And — blessedly — I had potentially do-able ways of getting there.

But on Wednesday, for the stupidest of reasons, the house deal I had made (after four endless, time-eating offers and much back-and-forthing) fell through — just when I was finally sure it was solid.

The house I was hoping for was absolutely a fixer, a very bottom-of-market piece of real estate. But I loved it. It had a big yard perfect for turning into a veggie garden. It had every feature I could want. It was dirt cheap. It just needed time and sweat to make it good.

It also needed a new septic tank. And eventually it was going to require a $7,000 hookup to a city sewer line. I knew I’d someday have to pay for the latter, and that was okay. I’d have a few years to get to that point. ) But the big international bank that owns the place (and should have been relieved to get it off its books) refused to fix the septic tank or lower the price so that I could afford to fix it. Instead, they proposed raising the price to cover the cost of repairs. That proposal was so bizarre — and so juuuuuuust out of my reach — that I had to drop out.

I’d already been trying for that house for two months (and felt as if it had been a year). So now I feel deflated and as there’s nothing more I can do.

While that deal was falling through, my “Plan B” house was snapped up by another buyer. And I am so bottom-of-market that there aren’t any other options — unless you count places that are pretty much falling off their foundations.

I know that good things come to those who wait. And with real estate looking ready for another fall, perhaps even that house will come to me if I’m patient.

So … God grant me patience RIGHT NOW!

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On the good news front … I finished my month of primal nutritional purity with no big cheats (unless you count those four squares of chocolate on the very last day — and do you mind if we don’t?). I committed a few small fudges — eating legumes (and what fan of Mexican or Thai food could not?) or putting a spoonful of honey into a sweet-and-sour stir fry. But overall, I stuck with veggies, meat, nuts, fruits, and a little bit of high-fat dairy for the month.

And it was great. Have lots of energy. Firmed up significantly around the middle. And I keep on feeling “light.”

I’m definitely going to continue with this style of nutrition. I’ll be a bit more relaxed about it in the future. Probably won’t fuss over eating a plateful of pinto beans or putting honey or stevia into my tea. I really think the very biggest thing here is saying no to heavy doses of wheat, sugars, or highly processed fats.

Thank you to the many people who contributed their own voices of experience. (And BTW, Greek yogurt is so much better than the other kind …)

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Okay, now the collected miscelleny …

• Here’s J.D. Tucille on the virtues of hands-on confrontations to cause discomfort to politicians and their ilk.
• Portrait of a villain.
• Yup. The Tea Party’s going all Republican on us. What’s most discouraging is hearing these same old arguments about how “third parties just help elect Democrats.” Well, yeah. But Republican Parties just help elect Republicans. So where’s the improvement?

• Been reading a lot of great comments on Daniel Okrent’s new book Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. If the damned desert berg near here had a decent library, I’d be devouring that book myself. As is, I’m enjoying the reviews — most of which make pointed comparisons to the present drug war. George Will, who calls the book “darkly hilarious” and “a timely tutorial on the law of unintended consequences” takes a different tack. He focuses on how prohibition helped saddle us with the income tax! The book is #24 on Amazon right now. Maybe that’s a good sign people are waking up.

• You probably heard about NASA’s new mission under the Obama administration. Never mind that a NASA spokesthing later desperately backpedaled; the new mandate to help make Muslims feel good about themselves because their ancestors helped invent math and astronomy is for real. Some job for a “space agency,” eh? Gads … we could have expected Obama to be many bad things as president. But so blanking clueless. Such a buffoon! Who knew? And who also knew that NASA — the government agency that did the impossible by making space exploration boring — could do even worse by making it politically correct?

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Just as I was writing this post, the one friend from my old world who knew about the fall-through of the house deal called to tell me that a mutual acquaintance might have a farmhouse to rent me outside of a small town. Maybe with a lease-to-purchase possibility. And the owner knows all about my three dogs. So we’ll see.

It’s not really where I want to be. But it sure feels wonderful to have options.