Yesterday I came downstairs to find my mom at the computer putting together an Excel spreadsheet (terrifyingly normal) of recently sold houses in our neighborhood (less normal!). I asked what she was doing and she told me that dad thought the county assessor had overvalued the house and that he wanted to appeal it. She is, as always, overworked, so I worked on the project with her until she had to take my brother out.

[Interlude: I unpacked. Also, got in touch with last summer's temp agency! I don't have to retake the Word and Excel assessments because I scored so highly last year! ]

Mom came home and we went back to work on it; managed to use a house that had we were comped to in '06 but also sold in the '08 comp period to create a ratio of our-house-to-that-house which proved that the assessor was overvaluing the property.

[ Interlude: Errands. Bedspread shopping, since my room has been painted green and the comforter my mom has in here is yellow and pink. Getting lost. Failure. Ice cream. Bought a second-hand pretty necklace. Lit one of my dad's new expensive pans on fire and panickedly tried to scrub the burnt bits off. ]

Came home. Dad came home.

[ Interlude: After nine months of using the basement as a kitchen, the pots and pans are moved upstairs. We have a functional kitchen again! However, the remodel is still not complete. ]

Dad looked at what I did and decided that he wasn't going to appeal within their strictures like I was, but that he was going to research housing trends on his own to prove that the house should have been devalued by 10% from the previous assessment period. (My figures showed a slight appreciation in value, though significantly less than the assessor's.)

[ Interlude: Mom goes out to put a box in the garage and sees someone in the garage and my dad goes yelling after them and I get to call 911 and the police come with dogs and cars and wow, they were really fast. I forgot that the police substation was right down the street. They didn't catch the guy. Now my parents will close the garage, hopefully.

Also, the whole thing was worth it for Katie coming back from cheer and getting freaked out by all the cars in front of our house.

lol. ]

And then I fell asleep while dad persisted in his drive to prove the county assessor's entire assessment scheme wrong instead of my more logical but less daring plan to show an error within their own assessment scheme.

[ Interlude: Sleep. ]

Today is my birthday and I feel old.