2013年2月24日 星期日

Parental nightwatch

The glowing green numbers tell me it is 2:11 a.m. I close my eyes but cannot sleep. My ears strain to absorb the night sounds. I can hear the husband snoring. From the dog comes the muffled sound of his dream barking.

I will them to be quiet. Try to hear around and between them. I open my eyes again and turn my head back to the clock. The bright green 2:13 glows. I close my eyes but the 2:13 burns behind the closed lids. I listen. Nothing.

I am warm and comfortable in my bed. The house is quiet. But it's no good. I know I won't sleep until I see for myself. Slowly, to be quiet,Make your house a home with Border and carparkmanagementsystem Tiles. I ease off my covers and swing my legs over the side of the bed.

Glasses on,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? using my phone for light, I slip from the room, across the hall and into my daughter's bedroom. Inside the door I stop and listen. All is quiet.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose. Telling myself I'm being silly, I nevertheless walk up to her bed, bend over her silent form and watch.

It's too dark. I lean closer and shine my cell phone light on her. Finally, I see her take a breath. Her chest, under her pink and blue quilt, moves slowly up and then down. Realizing that I have been holding my breath, I join her in her next breath. Air in, and then out.

For another minute or so I just watch and breathe. Then I turn around and as quietly as I can walk back to my room, take off my glasses, set down my phone, slide off my slippers and gingerly slide back under the covers. The husband is still snoring, the dog is still dreaming (he's moved from dream barking to dream running), the clock glows 2:21. I know that I can close my eyes and sleep now.

My daughter is a newly minted teenager and she has a cold. She's been coughing all night. At 10 p.m. I took her hot tea with honey. At 12:30 a.m. I took her cold medicine.High quality chinamosaic tiles. Then I sat up in bed, reading a book, and listening to her ragged cough.

I must have dozed off at some point only to wake to silence. Silence, soothing her cough so she could sleep, had of course been the goal. But her silence woke me. What if she can't breathe? What if I gave her the wrong dose of cold medicine? What if? What if?

Thirteen years later, and I still get up in the night to watch her breathe. As an infant, she was healthy and slept well, but in the middle of so many quiet nights, like tonight, I had to go see for myself. I'd go into her room, stand over her crib, and watch her breathe. In and out. In and out.

Her younger brother was not healthy and did not sleep well as an infant. For the first 17 months of his life he didn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. Finally, his illness was diagnosed and medicine prescribed. A week later, I woke in the middle of the night in a panic.

I practically jumped out of bed and ran to his room, switching on lights as I went. There he was, so small and vulnerable and asleep. He had been asleep for four hours. Crying, I turned the lights back off and went back to bed. Over the next four hours, I got up four more times to check on him. He was still asleep. Still breathing.

I don't want my children to know that I still, occasionally, watch them as they sleep, my heart full to bursting with every soft breath they take. They are not, as I know they would scold me, babies. They are practically, in their minds,Creative glass tile and solarlamp tile for your distinctive kitchen and bath. at 8 and 13, grown up. I wonder what I will do when they are really are grown and gone. And as tired as I sometimes am, I treasure these quiet, sweet moments in the night as we breathe together, in and out, in and out.

Started as a joint venture with his dad, a 30-year veteran in the tire business, Bates opened Used Tire Warehouse to sell tires and offer customers full service replacement and repair.

But as the business grew, Bates found he was hampered by the amount of space he had available to work on customers' cars.

"Our biggest issue, that I saw, was the way customers would have to wait, because we had a limited space to work on vehicles," he said.

So, in 2012, Bates made the decision to invest more heavily in his operation and, in January of this year, he purchased an industrial building that offers triple the space he had on County Road.

Area brokers say businesses like Used Tire Warehouse that are taking the step to become building owners are a bright spot in the local commercial real estate market. Like residential real estate, commercial conditions slowly improved in 2012, a trend, many say, appears to be continuing into 2013.

"The primary driver right now is owner-user kinds of people," said John Shields, principal at Cape Cod-based Realty Advisory Inc. about market conditions. "They can own things for cheaper than they can lease it."

Commercial sales were up in 2012 and expected to continue to improve in 2013, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Nationally, sales hit $283 billion in 2012, the highest amount since 2008, said George Ratiu, NAR manager of quantitative and commercial research. And much of that activity, $98 billion worth, happened in the final quarter of the year.

Overall, just about every measure has increased, said Ratiu. Prices are up, rents are up, and absorption rates for office space, industrial, retail and multi-family properties are up.

But while national markets are seeing a rebound, secondary and tertiary markets haven't necessarily been having the same experience. Secondary real estate markets include metro areas such as Atlanta and Baltimore, according to Real Capital Analytics, a global research and consulting firm with an office in New York City. All other states, not included in major metro areas or secondary markets, are considered tertiary markets.

Ratiu said real estate data is typically tracked for property sales of $2.5 million and above. But most NAR members, about 60 to 70 percent of sales agents, sell properties that fall below the $2 million mark. And many of them are reporting that conditions are improving much more slowly.

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