This year, for the first time ever, we're planning to have Christmas in our own house. It's been a whole thing, involving lots of discussing and hemming and hawing (mostly by me), planning and forecasting, and taking stock of what he have and what we need. It turned out that one thing we needed was a new dining table, since our old one really only sat four people comfortably. We took a quick jaunt to the furniture store on Saturday morning, and by the time Jason woke up from his nap Sunday afternoon, it was delivered and in place.

Jason is a little unpredictable when it comes to sudden changes, so I wasn't sure whether he'd be excited, indifferent, or enraged about the new table. Fortunately, it seems to have gone over pretty well. In fact, he seems quite taken with it.

Sunday evening when we sat down to dinner, I said to Jason, "Can you say thank you to Mommy for making dinner?"

"Thank you, Mommy, make dinner," he said. Then, totally unprompted, he turned to me and said, "Thank you, Daddy, my table."

"Um, you're welcome," I replied. "Do you like the new table?"

"Yeah."

In fact, he likes it so much that every meal thereafter he has thanked one or both of us for the new table. I tell you what, I could get used to this.

Juliette has made cleaning out the office closet one of her summer projects, which meant that this past weekend I had the opportunity to go through some boxes that I haven't opened in probably five years.

I always love these little trips down memory lane, rediscovering all the little treasures from my past. Being able to touch them, having a physical connection, always brings back the associated memories much more strongly than just thinking about them.

For example, there's the rocks that I found under the deck at the cabin my family used to rent in Tahoe every year. Turning them over in my hands, I remember how fascinated I was by the flat orange color on the top and the clear, ice-like crystal structure on the bottom. More, I remember the bite of the cold air in my nose, the crunch of snow under my feet, and the layer of pine needles and fir cones that littered the ground under the deck.

I especially enjoy it when these little forays into my "treasure boxes" turn up things I thought I'd lost. I actually let out a little cry of joy when I found a big stack of old RPG manuals and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles graphic novels that I thought had been lost or donated years ago.

On the other hand, there's also a certain embarassment that comes with some of the things I find. I have a tendency toward being a packrat, and why I save some things baffles even me. A selection of some of the useless or forgotten things I don't know why I saved:

• A mostly full box of perfectly good staples, tucked in between some old harmonicas instead of, you know, being put into a stapler.
• My "Intro to Systems Engineering" notebook, completely blank.
• Ten or twelve rolls of old Pez, most of which weren't even still packaged with their dispensers.
• An old micro-butane torch I bought for a project for my high school physics class, long since empty and broken.
• A bunch of empty cigarette lighters.
• A giant pile of old homework, some of which dated back to my freshman year of high school.
• A 1985 nickel.
• A green permanent marker that looked like it was about 15 years old, completely dry.

I started having flashes of those hoarder interventions you see on TV, with the host aghast at the piles of garbage and the hoarder breaking down in tears saying "I don't know why I kept it!" I shuddered and made a silent vow never to become one of those people. Not that Juliette would ever let that happen, anyway. But still.

Anything I found that I couldn't remember at all and had no immediate use, I tossed. I actually even got rid of some stuff I did remember, deciding that I didn't really need it or wasn't going to use it. By the time I was done, I'd cut my pile of stuff by almost half.

This is a big step, people. I may actually turn into a grown-up yet.

I won.

You know, in case you were interested.

There's a little dent in my forehead just about the size of the corner of a 5/8" wrench. And, as it happens, I have a 5/8" wrench in my toolkit.  This would probably be a more interesting story if the two were unrelated, but unfortunately you get to read a relatively mundane story of frustration.

Let me back up a bit. This morning I was going about my usual morning business--feeding Jason, emptying the dishwasher, and so on. I had just given his high chair tray a quick rinse and when I went to shut off the faucet, the handle came off in my hand. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just pop over to Home Depot on my lunch break and pick up a new fixture." After all, how hard could it be? A couple of turns of a wrench, take the old one off, throw the new one on, and voila.

You can see where this is going already, can't you?

First off, I ended up having to go to three different stores to find a faucet I liked, which took almost two hours. And even then, I couldn't find anything exactly right so I ended up buying three with the intention of returning two of them. At that point I was annoyed, but relieved that it was mostly over. Which it wasn't, but I didn't know that at the time.

See, the boxes that the fixtures came each had a list of the required tools--a short list, all of which I owned. (It would have to be a short list for that to be true, but that's another story.) For some reason, though, I wasn't bargaining on it being quite so cramped under the sink. Nor was I expecting the retaining nut to be rusted tight. I struggled with different wrenches and drivers and levers for almost an hour, pulling with my fingertips, scraping my knuckles, and, of course, cursing. I cursed at great length and with a great number of obscenities. I was like the dad from A Christmas Story--and when that occurred to me I very nearly called that nut a "mundane noodle," just to complete the effect.

I kept at it for a good ten minutes after I dropped the wrench on my face before I gave up. When I came out, Juliette gasped "You're bleeding!" Sure enough, when I went into the bathroom to look in the mirror, there was a line of blood running across my forehead. It was a pretty small wound, though, once I got it cleaned up. Just a little dent now.  I still can't believe I dropped a wrench on my face, though. It was like I was in a cartoon or something.

Tomorrow I'm headed back to the Home Depot to see if I can find a metal driver to get that nut loose. (The driver included in the box was plastic and no match for that rust.) Maybe I'll manage to drop a hammer on my face in the afternoon.

This weekend, Juliette and I went out to look at houses for the first time. We've been thinking about buying now for a couple of years but the time hasn't been right and we didn't have the money. For that matter, we still don't have the money, but apartment life is getting old and we're feeling like we should start seriously thinking about our future as adults and as a family.

It's kind of a daunting task. San Diego is a fast-growing city and, consequently, there are a whole lot of houses on the market. According to one of the agents we met at an open house this afternoon, there are over 170 properties listed in our area alone. That makes for a lot of legwork, even after narrowing it down to our price range.

Speaking of price range, ours turns out to be quite on the low side. Let me give you a few numbers that I pulled off of Coldwell Banker's web site. According to them, the average sale price in San Diego is currently about $628,000, which isn't even all that much by California standards. A 20% down payment would be $125,600--quite a large chunk of change, but let's assume that somehow we were able to put together that much. That leaves a mortgage amount of $502,400. Plugging those numbers into the payment calculator gives a monthly mortgage payment of $3,262 plus a PMI payment of $133. Assuming a 1% property tax rate--in reality it would be higher, but for the sake of this example I'll lowball it--the monthly amount we'd have to put aside would be $523. All of that adds up to a total monthly payment of $3918, and that's without homeowner's insurance or HOA fees. Multiply that by 12 and you get a total annual payment of $47,016.

The whole thing is more than a little bit discouraging, especially considering that I've always wanted to do it on my own. Realistically speaking, though, there's little chance that we'll be able to buy a house without significant help from our families. It's been hard for me to admit that--independence and self-sufficiency are two of the values most ingrained in me. But real independence is kind of an illusion. As they say, no man is an island--there's no way I could have gotten to where I am without the support, both emotional and financial, of the people around me. Coming to terms with that fact and convincing myself that it's alright to ask for help has been one of the bigger issues in my adult life.

I'm trying to stay positive, even if that might not be apparent from this rant. We went to four open houses this weekend, and even though all of them were out of our reach, some of them were close. Finding the right place will be a lot of work, but it may yet be possible.