Once in a blue moon

I finally learned what that expression means, a blue moon. That's when there is more than one full moon per month. So there it was this month when Ron and I went to see our Bellevue house on the second to the last day of December. The thirtieth was the eve of the blue moon. It was also our eleventh wedding anniversary. I joked that the traditional ten year anniversary gift is tin or aluminum. The traditional eleven year gift is a 130-year old house.
We walked through the house on a snowy Wednesday morning in the company of Steve Nemmers the realtor, Brent Grover the home inspector, and Dan Sieverding, a local contractor. All these people are our new best friends, especially Dan the contractor. As Brent pointed out, the house has problems with the wiring, with the windows, with the plumbing, with the insulation, with the slope of the lawn, and with the cut of the support beams. There was even a gas leak but that wasn't our problem because it is outside, and the power company will be summoned. Lest we become too discouraged, he assured us the house's problems were to be expected in a home of its age, especially one that hadn't been updated in some time.
The biggest mystery still remains the stairway, which isn't just discretely tucked behind a partition but basically hidden away like a tightly wrapped mummy. It is there somewhere, so we aren't too discouraged. The next few days will find us phone to ear, contacting Steve and Dan in particular, to see what we can get done and whether we can get some help. I'm a little concerned we won't be able to get insured because of the electrical problems, or at least not in time for our planned closing of Feb. 1. Yikes! Meantime, we're hoping interest rates drop over the next few weeks so we can get a reasonable 15-year mortgage. For that news we're relying on our other new best friend, Ashlie Schrempf of 1862 Mortgage.
One pleasant but strange coincidence took place, of the sort I predict will become more common the more we meeet folks in Bellevue. We stopped by the Bellevue State Bank to set up an account. We mentioned the home we were buying and lo and behold, were escorted into the bank president's office. Tim Daughtery's family once owned that home and he thinks various relatives might have photos of the place. Wouldn't it be fantastic to get to see some of those, to try to anchor our imaginations as we fight past the bad wiring and into the beauty and functionality we hope to restore!