Life in the 'burbs with a dog and a kid

Yikes - almost a year later!

2010-08-23T19:55:00.002-04:00

Ok so obviously I suck at this whole blogging thing. I actually forgot I even HAD a blog until I did a few surveys on BzzAgent.com and one of them was about blogs. It asked if I had one. It was a head-slapping moment. I DO!! I HAVE A BLOG!! Thankfully I had it bookmarked because I honestly couldn't remember the url for it. Duh.

So, here's a quick update...

James is now 16 months old. He whines CONSTANTLY. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Honestly. I'm sorry but it's true. My kid is whiney. BUT, I believe a lot of it stems from the fact that he still doesn't say any words. So he's frustrated that he can't get his point across to us. We get frustrated because we have no idea what it is that he wants. But until he decides to open his mouth and at least attempt to talk, this is going to continue.

K is 12 1/2 and got braces put on about 6 weeks ago. They make her look so OLD! It's freaking me out.

We're leaving for a cruise in 5 days. Yes, we're taking a 16 month old baby on a cruise. We are certifiably insane. My sister and BIL, my niece and my mom are all coming too, so we'll have lots of help, but truth be told, I'm sort of dreading it a little. Mr. Whines-A-Lot could possibly make this the worst vacation EVER. Thankfully it's only 6 days/5 nights. It's to Canada so there are only 2 days where we'll get off the ship. But ugh. The pool. The dining room. The naps. The diapers. Really, how horrible is this going to be? I think I'll need a vacation from my vacation.

So that about sums up our lives right now. Nothing exciting.

On the Move

2009-10-30T13:12:00.002-04:00

So the Little Man is getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth.

{sigh}

He'll be crawling soon. Part of me is glad about that - because I'm SO not a fan of the whole infant stage. Crawling means he's getting out of it slowly but surely. But on the other hand, my days of parking my butt in front of the computer, with him on the floor next to me, are quickly fading away. I'll have to start figuring out ways to entertain him. And I'll have to baby-proof the house. Yeah, because THAT'S what I want to spend my time doing. :)

We've already discussed moving the cleaning products from under the kitchen sink into the utility closet. Makes them so convenient. NOT.

And I have a Bruce update. The other night he did this freaky thing, just like in April 08 when he did this (you can read it here - scroll down to the 10th. I don't know how to link just that one update. Sorry). I think his leg fell asleep. I heard him jump up and it sounded like he was playing. I walked into the family room and he was crouched down. When he saw me, he tried to come to me but his back legs wouldn't support him. He stumbled towards me, crashing into furniture on the way. Just like the last time.

I ran up to the 3rd floor to get J, who wasn't home when Bruce did this 18 months ago. We finally got him calmed down and I brought Bruce outside. Because I normally take him out through the basement, and we didn't want him trying to go down an entire flight of stairs, we opened the front door. He walked down the 3 front steps and went to the bathroom. He came in and seemed much better. Then about 15 minutes later, he came to me asking to go to the bathroom again. This time I did bring him out by the basement and he went again. He promptly came upstairs and went to bed. As if nothing happened.

Meanwhile it got J and I to talking -- how on EARTH would we get him to an emergency vet if something happened to him? He's down to 80 lbs (from his high of 102), which is great, but if he were unconscious, lifting him would be next to impossible. J thought we would call an ambulance. Ha! As if they'd allow a dog into the back of an ambulance! I honestly don't know what we'd do or how we'd get him to a vet. Maybe having OUR adrenaline pumping would give us the strength to be able to lift him. I hope so because I'd hate to have something really bad happen to him just because we had no way of moving him. How sad that would be!

Anyway, we're chalking this one up to a sleeping leg again. He's had his hips checked and there's no displasia (sp??), so I'm not concerned about that. I know my arms fall asleep while I'm sleeping at LEAST once a week. Who's to say that his legs can't? I can see it happening.

And that's the story I'm sticking with. Because it's the easiest to swallow.

Jealousy

2009-10-13T11:12:00.002-04:00

Ok, I know I've said before but I'm going to say it again.

Bruce is very jealous of the baby.

If I so much as TALK to the baby, Bruce comes running over and sits right in front of me, blocking the baby's view (unless I'm holding the baby).

When I put the baby on the floor with toys, Bruce brings me his toys. I have no problem with that except when it's his big honkin' bones that could break a bone on the baby should Bruce decide to drop it over him.

He's driving me NUTS.

Oh, and he doesn't do this at all when K or J are home. Only when it's just me and the baby.

Aaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!

Sorry. Needed to get that out.

Update and something I need to get off my chest

2009-10-06T12:57:00.002-04:00

First an update on James. He's still pretty miserable. Well, I shouldn't say that. For not feeling good, he's still a very easy baby. But he just sniffles constantly and the poor thing can't breathe. I feel so bad for him. Took him to the doctor's yesterday and there's really nothing more I can do besides what I'm already doing. So we'll just keep plugging along.

Ok. Now, I need to get something off my chest that's been bugging me for over a year.

When I found out I was pregnant last summer, I was shocked. And that's putting it mildly. I will admit that I had a VERY hard time accepting the pregnancy. It didn't help matters that I was absolutely miserable. Some people, I've been told, made comments about how I acted like I didn't even WANT the baby.

Well let me fill you in on something.

Unless you've gone through infertility, you honestly have NO idea how heart wrenching it is. You have no idea what it's like to take your temperature every single day for 5 years straight. You have no idea what it's like to go with your husband to a reproductive clinic while he provides a "sample" and then have that "sample" injected into you. You have no idea what it's like to find out month after month after month that, yet again, you are not pregnant. It sucks the life out of you.

I went through it for 10 years. TEN YEARS. I stopped taking my temperature around year 5. I just couldn't do it anymore. But I still waited with baited breath every single month.

As time goes on, you get comfortable in your routines. You start to develop habits and customs with your little family of 3. You start to travel more, because you can. The pain gets less and less. It never truly goes away, but it's not a burning, aching pain anymore. You get older and you slowly start thinking that life is ok the way it is. Maybe there's a reason you were only blessed with one child. That one child is a lot of fun. She's smart and funny and easy to talk to. We can go anywhere with her and have a good time and not worry about her behavior or that she'll not get anything from that visit. She absorbs everything around her. Life is good. You're happy. You eventually breathe a little easier each month. Sure there's always that lingering doubt that maybe, just maybe, it will happen. But after years and years of it NOT happening, you slowly come to accept that this is your life. And at this point, that's ok.

And then after taking years to get to this point, after years of struggle, after years of questioning why and finally NOT expecting an answer, you find out that now you're pregnant.

But wait. This was supposed to happen years and years ago. When I was younger. When my first born was younger. When we were planning for it. When we were prepared for it.

We were NOT prepared for this. Not one teeny tiny bit.

It took my 10 years to accept the fact that I couldn't have another child. Do NOT expect me to just suddenly be jumping for joy when it happens at this stage of my life. No, I was NOT happy. I was shocked. I was scared out of my mind. What had we done? We were in our 40's! My husband had had a heart attack two years earlier! We were NOT ready to go down the baby road again.

But we did.

He's an absolute joy to us. I still don't know why he came to us now. I'll probably never understand that. But he did and he's here to stay. We love him to pieces. But it DID take me a long time to accept that this was happening to us. I had spent so many years trying to NOT want a baby that I had basically conditioned myself to feel that way. It was all I knew. How do you change that so quickly? How do you just do a complete 180 and be excited? I didn't know HOW to be excited about it. Because I worked so hard to NOT be. It was a hard emotion to block.

It didn't help that I was sick as a dog for 9 months either.

Today, I can't imagine not having the Little Man here with me all the time. I can't imagine what life would be like if I was home alone all day while K was in school. Because that's not how it was meant to be. And that's ok. Maybe some day it will all come rushing to me and I'll finally understand the reasoning for this to happen when it did, but until then I'll just enjoy the little things like rolling over, and grabbing a toy, wiping drool from a smiling face. Because THAT is my life now. And it's a good life.

Move, Bruce

2009-10-05T13:40:00.000-04:00

Some day I'm going to count how many times I say the phrase "Move, Bruce" throughout my waking hours. I started counting yesterday but lost track after either 5 or 6, and it wasn't even noon yet.

See, Bruce likes to be anywhere where there's food. So that basically means the kitchen. But he KNOWS when food is about to be prepared (and honestly, I don't know how he knows this, but he does) so he goes into the kitchen and waits. And he inevitably will lay down in front of the sink or in front of the area of counter space where I usually work. This results in me having to say, "Move, Bruce". Then he moves to the next spot, where I need to go next, and I again have to tell him, "Move, Bruce". Then he'll sit in front of the refrigerator. But I need to get IN the refrigerator. Do you see where this is going?

Move, Bruce

And the cycle repeats itself. Over and over.

Then there's the baby on a blanket. I'll lay a quilt out on the floor and put the baby on it. Bruce MUST touch the blanket at all times. I tell him to move - because I don't want dog hair on the baby's blanket (can't there be just ONE place in my house that is dog-hair-free?? I didn't think so). So he shifts. But always always has at least one paw on the blanket. I can say, "Move, Bruce" 800 times but he'll make sure some part of his body remains.

Once in a while J will bring Bruce upstairs at bedtime. And where does Bruce prefer to sleep on these special occasions? On my side of the bed, of course. When I come into bed, I can NOT budge him. I start by being nice, telling him to scoot over, shift, whatever. Eventually I have to come right out and say, "Move, Bruce!"

I should just record it and press a button when I need to have him move. But then again, the batteries would probably never last.

Oops - guess I really wanted everyone to know

2009-09-29T20:58:00.000-04:00

See - I don't blog for months and then I come and put 3 postings in a week and 2 of them are the same. Sorry about that. Guess I really wanted to get the word out that James is sick. :)

Our first cold

2009-09-29T20:52:00.002-04:00

The Little Man is sick. He has a cold. He even started getting a little fever today (100.9). He can hardly breathe and as a thumb sucker, he really needs his nose for breathing.

He took 3 naps today (would have taken 4 if I had actually put him down at 6:00 when he was clearly ready for bed) totaling about 4 hours.

I have the vaporizer running in his room with some Vicks in it. I hope that helps to clear him up a bit.

But I have to say that as miserable as he looks, he's still happy as a clam at high tide. Honestly - he just giggles and smiles all day. When he's ready to go back to sleep, he just puts his head down wherever he is (swing, walker, floor, etc). The thumb goes immediately into his mouth and he "scratches" at whatever fabric he can get his other hand on. I just pick him up, put him in his bed, and I never hear a peep out of him. I swear if he could talk, he'd say something along the lines of, "hey - why are you making me sit here?? I'm tired! Can't you see that? Put me to BED woman!"

:)

So I have a sick, but happy little boy.

And he can thank his older sister for this one.

He's sick

2009-09-28T18:10:00.002-04:00

It is currently 6:10 p.m. James has been sleeping for 30 minutes. Yes, I put him down for a nap at 5:30 in the afternoon. Poor little guy has a cold and is sniffling, sneezing, and just looking downright miserable. I feel so bad for him. I can't give him anything - there's nothing out there to give to infants. Sure I could give Tylenol, but he doesn't have a fever. Although I may give him some to go to sleep tonight in case he has some aches. I have no way of knowing if he has that classic icky feeling because of this cold. And he obviously can't tell me. :(

So here he is, 5 1/2 months old, and he's sick. I think K made it a LOT longer than that. But, I honestly think he got this from K. She goes to school during the day. Schools are complete germ pits. She came home last week with one and now he has one. No surprise there.

Gotta go wake him up to eat. I don't want him sleeping from 5:30 on. He'll be up for the day at 3 in the morning!

Long time, no blog

2009-09-25T14:43:00.002-04:00

Ok, so it's been a long time. Again. I know. But I can't ever think of anything to blog about. There. I'm not very interesting. Happy now? :D

Let's see. James is getting bigger and bigger all the time. Last night he had a pair of size 6 mos. pajamas on and they were a bit too short. He's just over 5 months old. K always wore her size in age. So she didn't wear a 6 months until she actually was 6 months. This little guy? Not so much. I think he's going to be tall. Like his grandfather. :) Considering how the rest of us are short, it will be nice to have someone tall in the family.

He's now rolling all over the place. And scootching his butt up in the air. It's just a matter of time before he figures out that he can get up on his knees and move himself across the floor. And then life will never be the same.

Oh wait. It already isn't the same. That's right.

K is "camping" this weekend with a friend and her family. I say "camping" because they're in a cabin at a resort. With an indoor pool. And the cabin has a kitchen, bedroom, shower, etc. Sorry, that's not camping. It's staying in a cabin at a resort.

I think I'm finally getting my scrapping mojo back. I've done a little bit every day this week. I've actually completed about 6 pages. That's probably more than I did in the entire last year. Honestly. From the time I found out I was pregnant, I pretty much didn't do anything but sleep. For 9 months. I was a barrel of laughs and such a joy to be around. NOT.

Bruce is incredibly jealous of the baby. Whenever I'm on the floor playing with him (the baby), Bruce has to be RIGHT THERE. If the baby is on a blanket on the floor, Bruce must be laying nearby and part of his body MUST touch said blanket. I think he'd go into convulsions if he wasn't touching it. He brings me toys whenever I hold the baby. He ALWAYS needs to pee when I feed the baby.

Yeah, a tad jealous.

I think it's kind of funny, actually. This is the dog that paid me ZERO attention during the day when it was just the 2 of us at home. I swear it was like I wasn't even here. He slept all day, never even acknowledging me. Now? I'm his best friend. He wants to be by my side at all times.

Yeah, right. You just want me to pay more attention to YOU instead of this new little creature that has invaded your home. I'm not that stupid, bucko.

You know, I'm typing this up and I'm wondering... why? It's been so long since I've updated, there's probably no one left that actually reads this!! But, for those of you die hards that still check periodically, here you go. An update. :)

Oh!! I'm going to see the Patriot's on Sunday!! Woo hoo!! For those of you out of the loop, that's the football team for New England. As in the New England Patriot's. Three time Superbowl champs. Yeah, them. :) I'm very excited for the game. I've never been to a pro football game before. I've been to lots of pro baseball, but not football so this should be interesting. I can't wait. J has to fly out in the afternoon so he can't come. I'm bummed about that. He really would have enjoyed it. But I'm trying to sell his ticket - why lose out, right? It was $50 and it's a standing-room-only ticket. I've been trying for almost 2 weeks to sell it and can't find a buyer. Weird. Maybe because it's one ticket? I don't know. But it looks like the game is going to cost me $100 since I'll be using 2 tickets. :( Bummer.

So that's my update. I'll be back. You never know - maybe I'll get really good at this and actually start posting regularly again. :)

Irony

2009-08-09T16:38:00.002-04:00

So I'm sitting here with the baby and I'm listening to No Shoes Radio. Of course it's a Kenny Chesney song playing (She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy) and I start singing along to it.

K yells out to me, "mom!! Do NOT teach him country music!"

Mind you SHE knows it. She loves Taylor Swift. She sings along to quite a bit of the music. She has some Brad Paisley on her iPod.

But the irony? I wouldn't even KNOW about country music if we had never lived where she considers "home"!!

Yup, it's living in York that even introduced me to country music. Had we never lived there, I never would have started listening to it.

So HA! :D

Holy cow - has it really been that long?

2009-08-05T16:38:00.002-04:00

Wow. I haven't blogged in almost 2 months. I had no idea it had been that long! What with Facebook and all, I feel like everyone is always updated every minute. :)

So, in the last 2 months what's happened?

James grew. A lot. He doesn't have an appointment until the 17th, but I'm guessing he's a good 15 - 20 lbs. already. The child is HUGE! And he's always hungry. The good thing is with all of these growth spurts, he sleeps a lot. :)

Our friends from PA drove up for a week on Cape Cod so we went and spent a day with them. We were very lax about sunscreen (what were we thinking?) and K got badly burned. So much so that she was in pain for a good 5 days following that little visit. She was supposed to go to camp that week but we were able to switch her to a different week because there was no WAY she'd be able to handle camp activities with the way she was feeling.

So she's in camp THIS week! She absolutely loves it. We only signed her up for 1 week to test the waters. I think next year I'll try to convince J to let her go 2 weeks (it's pretty expensive) simply because she's having such a good time and she's trying all sorts of new things. She loves the batting cages - go figure! This is the kid who hated baseball when she was on a team. But put her in front of an automated machine that spits balls at her and she loves it. Whatever.

James has mastered rolling from his belly to his back. He's mastered it so well that it keeps him awake. I put him in his crib, on his belly, and within minutes I can hear him babbling away. I go upstairs and there he is, grinning up at me. So I flip him back over, tell him to go to sleep, and it all starts over again. Sometimes I have to do this 3 or 4 times before he actually falls asleep. But he will NOT sleep on his back. So as long as he keeps flipping that way, I have to keep flipping him back over.

We had him christened two weeks ago. It's a big event to us, so we invited a ton of people. I think at one point there were about 50 people in our yard. Thankfully we had wonderful weather, which is surprising considering how much rain we've had this year.

In 2 weeks I'm heading to the Kenny Chesney concert. I can't wait! We have such a great time and how can someone not love live music? My best friend from high school is coming too. How cool is that? I haven't seen her in what seems like ages. I actually don't know when the last time was that I saw her. Oh! I remember! Our 20th high school reunion, 3 years ago. We've always kept in touch, but we don't always get to see each other so this should be a lot of fun.

So that about sums up the last 2 months. Not much going on. And I don't even have any good Bruce stories. He's totally toned down and is incredibly jealous of the baby, but not enough that it's an issue. He just wants my attention whenever I have the baby. Other than that, he sleeps. All the time.

Little Green Army Men

2009-06-17T15:37:00.001-04:00

Remember them? They were pre-posed little men, in army garb, and were entirely green.

They became popular again after Toy Story came out.

Anyway, I think of them every 2-3 days.

Why?

Because it's the color of James' poop.

Blech.

I'm really slacking in my blogging

2009-06-10T13:47:00.004-04:00

And I blame it on Facebook. :)

Seriously. I put little updates there all the time so it seems like such repetition to come back and blog it all.

Besides, it's hard to type one handed all the time. What with a baby in my arms all the time.

He WILL grow out of that, right? Because as nice as it is, I'm not really enjoying it. Well, I do for a while but when we start to hit several HOURS each day, it gets annoying. Thankfully K likes to hold him so I can pawn him off on her when she gets home.

I know - put him down. And I do! Trust me, I do. But some days he's more clingy than others and he just wants to be held. And on those days he doesn't nap well either. I thought today was going to be one of those days but thankfully he's been down for his nap for well over an hour now. Whew. And on top of that, I don't have to leave at 2:00 to pick up K because she's going home with a friend after school so I can let him sleep as late as he needs to. Woo hoo! :)

So, what's he doing? He's smiling more. A lot more. It's cute. Want to see? Here he is, with his big cheesy grin (sorry for the pixel-y picture -- I need to clean my memory card):

Too stinkin' cute. This was one of the very first times he smiled like this. He's getting better at it. I really need to get an updated picture (and one less grainy).

J still calls him "fussy pants" because it just so happens that his cranky time of day is when J gets home so J seems to only hear him whine. Hopefully that will change soon and he'll become a not-so-fussy-at-night baby.

Still not sleeping through the night. But he's hitting 5 hour stretches now. K was sleeping 8 hours at this point. I know, I know. Don't compare. Too bad. I'm comparing. She was sleeping 8 hours at 8 weeks. He's 8 weeks and is only going 5 hours.

I really want the night time feeding to stop because, well, I want a beer at night! If I'm watching the Sox play, I'd like to have a beer, but I can't because he nurses during the night! I know, that's selfish. But dammit I'm 41 years old and I should be able to have a beer when I want one.

Hey - maybe I'M where he gets the whining from! :)

Crop Circles?

2009-05-22T11:30:00.008-04:00

Last week we gave K an extra job - spreading the fertilizer on the lawn. She's trying to earn extra money to buy herself a new iPod.

So I showed her how to use the spreader thingy. Showed her how to line up each row so it ends up being evenly distributed. It took her 2 afternoons after school to do the front and back yards.

When she came in, I asked her if she had, indeed, walked in straight lines like I showed her. She assured me she had.

Here's my lawn this week. Front and back. Lovely, isn't it?

Guess who will be REspreading fertilizer this weekend?

I Have A Confession...

2009-05-11T08:43:00.002-04:00

I'm not a fan of the newborn stage.

There. I said it.

I know people LOVE babies. Love to hold them. Love their smell.

Yeah, well, I don't.

It's been 4 weeks and I'm SO ready for the eating-every-3-hours to end.

I'm ready for the watch-his-neck-and-don't-let-his-head-flop phase to end.

I'm ready to have a beer at night if I so choose. But I can't because I'm nursing at night.

I'm ready to sleep longer than 2 1/2 hours at a time.

I'm ready to stick him in an exersaucer and watch him be fascinated by little toys.

I'm ready to be able to make him giggle and laugh.

He's boring right now. Still. I'm done with this stage. It's been 4 weeks. Let's move on now, shall we?

I was lucky with K - she was sleeping 8 hours at 8 weeks. I've been counting the days till we see that with James. I have 4 weeks left. I really really REALLY hope he does what K did because I'd really like to get a full night's sleep at some point. I'm not overly tired -- because even though I'm not sleeping 8 hours solid, I AM getting about 6 1/2 - 7 hours of sleep a night. And I know I'm fortunate in that sense. But still. I'm tired of it (not tired as in physically tired - tired as in "very done with this phase").

He's a pretty easy baby, IMO (J and K would disagree. They both think he's incredibly fussy). Sure when he's hungry he lets you know. And he's vocal about it. Or if he's tired, he fights sleep. All the time. So you need to sort of coax him to sleep. But they don't get that. And since J has the patience of a gnat, he can't deal with it. I have no problems, however, shoving a pacifier in his mouth, holding it there until he realizes it's there, and then watching his little eyes get heavier and heavier until they're closed. J - not so much. He wants to be able to just put him down and have the kid instantly be asleep. Sorry. It doesn't work that way.

So here's hoping that in 4 weeks, he's sleeping a longer stretch of hours (Hell, I'll take 5 or 6 at a time!) and he's more interesting. Because right now he's not very fun. And I'm too old to take this too seriously. If I'm going to have a baby at 40, I at least want it to be fun.

Almost 3 weeks later

2009-05-04T11:29:00.002-04:00

So it's been almost 3 weeks since James was born.

Has it only been 3 weeks?? It feels like he's been here forever.

I must admit that I'm not really a big fan of the infant stage. I'm looking forward to him being more mobile, more active, more INTERactive. Right now he's still sort of just a blob who eats, sleeps and poops. A lot.

K wants to know when we can start giving him baby food.

Yeah, she's pretty bored with him now too. :)

I had to give him a pacifier this week - something I was pretty much against. But he wants something in his mouth ALL the time. I don't know how to fix that for him. K wasn't like that. Sure she had a blanket, and she sucked on her blanket (and repulsive as that is), but it wasn't this early. She didn't start that till she was about 4 or 5 months old. Basically when she was old enough to grab the blanket and shove it in her own mouth. This needing to have something in the mouth at 3 weeks is rough on mom -- I can't stand over him forever holding the stupid pacifier in there! And he can't figure out how to keep his fingers and/or thumb in there either. So I have very mixed feelings about the pacifier. The one good thing is that when I get sick of looking at it, I can take it away. I can't remove a thumb (well, technically I guess I could. But that would be pretty mean).

So now I'm torn. Keep putting the pacifier in his mouth or listen to him whine and make that weird little noise he makes when he's hungry? It actually took me a while to figure out that he WASN'T hungry. I kept trying to feed him (both with a bottle and nursing) and he just wasn't interested. That's when I shoved the stupid pacifier in his mouth. And he was out like a light. Luckily he doesn't seem to need it in the middle of the night - maybe that's because it takes him 40 minutes to nurse vs. the 5 minutes it takes him to drink a bottle during the day. He's getting all the suction he needs at night so he can fall asleep. During the day he's not getting satisfied so he needs to suck more.

At least that's how I'm looking at it. I have NO idea if it makes any sense or if it even could be true. But it's working in my brain so I'm running with that idea.

K still loves to be with James, but is quickly losing interest in the care of him. She fed him one of his first bottles and now wants nothing more to do with it. She tried burping him once and decided she doesn't like it - she claims it makes her hand tired. She will NOT change a diaper (although at some point she will. I just haven't forced the issue yet). She thinks the diapers are pretty nasty. So, he's not as fun as she had hoped. We DID try to warn her about that. So now she's just waiting for him to BE fun.

J is still pretty uncomfortable with him. He just can't get past the "soft spot" on his head. That whole thing freaks J out and he's horrified that he might cause damage. I told him to just lighten up -- I don't recall him being this way with K. Although it's been 11 years. It's possible he WAS like that with her and I just don't remember.

Bruce is just fascinated with the diapers. Gross, I know. But really - he's pretty indifferent to the whole baby thing. I think Bruce is starting to get a bit jealous though. He's not getting any attention from me (not that he ever really got a lot to begin with) and he's not liking that. He still wants ME to be the one to take him out to go to the bathroom all the time and seems to always pick when I'm feeding the baby as his "must go" time. Sorry bud -- you take a back seat now.

So that's our life in the first 3 weeks with a newborn. Cranky pants is waking up now (he's just been really cranky this morning -- not liking that one bit. He's not usually cranky!) so I guess I should go fix another bottle and get ready to feed him and then fight with the stupid pacifier issue again.

Look what I got...

2009-04-29T10:35:00.002-04:00

This is James O'Neil Fitzpatrick. He joined us on April 15, 2009 at 3:31 p.m. He weighed in at 6 lbs., 10 oz. and was 19 1/2" long.

I was scheduled to be induced on the 15th but woke up some time around 3 a.m. thinking that maybe my water had broken (it didn't break for K, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect). Then at 5:30 when I got up to shower to head to the hospital, I REALLY began to think my water had broken. Once at the hospital, they confirmed it. So even without the induction, James was joining us on the 15th!

We arrived at the hospital at 7:00 as instructed. They admitted me and brought us to my room (313, which made me a bit nervous - and I'm not usually a superstitious person!). First they confirmed that my water had broken, then they got me hooked up to the blood pressure machine, the thing that measures the contractions, and started an IV.

But the IV caused an issue. See, I'm not a fan of needles. I just can't look at them. I don't like the idea of them piercing my skin. So I told the nurse I wasn't going to look because it sort of freaked me out that she was putting a TUBE into my skin. Not a problem - she even agreed to cover it with gauze when she was done so that I wouldn't have to see it throughout the day. So she starts to insert it and HOLY COW!! It hurt like hell! I actually yelled "OUCH!" at one point (which made me feel like a big, fat wimp) and she seemed surprised that it hurt me that much.

Ah, but it was worse than I realized. I suddenly began to sweat. A lot. As in, my entire body was drenched in seconds. Then they noticed my blood pressure dropping -- to 70/30!! Immediately my feet got raised, my head was lowered, and a cool washcloth was placed on my forehead. It took a little while, but eventually my blood pressure came back up to a reasonable number, although it was still lower than they would have liked to see. But it was manageable. I slowly stopped sweating and they were able to start the IV fluids. By 8:30, they had the Pitocin started.

I had had Pitocin with K and I remember it making my contractions REALLY painful. This time? Not so much. It was several hours before I even could feel them, to be honest. We kept watching the monitor and it would indicate I was having a contraction and I really didn't feel much of anything -- just a bit of mild cramping. I thought to myself that it was going to be a looooong day.

After a while of this, I finally started to feel the contractions. They weren't unbearable, but they were starting to hurt. Well, the anesthesiologist was in the room next door administering an epidural. I had told my doctor and the nurse that I wanted to have one so the nurse said this was my chance since he was right there. I probably could have managed the pain, but I thought I had a long road ahead so I decided to get the epidural then, rather than waiting till it was too much to handle.

The entire time I was in labor, there was a student nurse in the room with us. When the anesthesiologist came in, he asked her if she had ever assisted with an epidural, and she had not. So he walked her through the entire procedure step by step -- and we got to listen to it. Apparently it turned out "perfectly" and he said that if he were ever taping a segment on how to do an epidural, this was the one he'd want taped because it went flawlessly. Ok. Whatever. All I know is that I wanted to feel numb. :)

The numbness set in but it wasn't like the one I had with K. With hers, I couldn't feel anything from the waist down -- my legs were like 2 pieces of cement. I could NOT move them. This time, my legs were heavy, but I COULD move them somewhat. I certainly couldn't have walked on them, but when they needed me to shift, I was able to do some of the work myself.

After a while they checked my dilation and I was only at 5. The nurse suggested I roll over to lean on the opposite side (I had been lying down facing left). So they helped me flip to my right side and she said that sometimes just that movement will get the dilation to move faster.

Well, she wasn't kidding.

I have no idea on timing, but she decided to check me a little while later (maybe an hour??) and she shockingly said, "Oh! I see the baby's head!".

WHAT? I felt NOTHING. No desire to push, no pain -- and his head was right there? Ack!

So she had me do a practice push -- yup, it was time. She got the doctor and in came all of the gear (this hospital has labor/delivery/recovery rooms so I never had to leave). They removed the bottom half of the bed so it became a delivery bed. Up came the stirrups and they helped me position my legs since I couldn't lift them quite high enough on my own. Then the docctor said she was ready and had me do a push. Waited a few minutes and I did a 2nd push. Finally a 3rd time (I think -- I"m not even sure if I ever DID that 3rd push) and I asked, "am I doing these right? I can't really feel anything". And the doctor replied, "oh you're doing just fine -- he's out up to his chin".

In 2 or 3 pushes??? Are you kidding me??

Sure enough, she was suctioning out his mouth and nose and my job was done. She slowly got him out and there he was. Just like that. The entire procedure, from the time of the Pitocin to his birth, was 7 hours. Unbelievable.

He was a bit purple in his feet and hands, but once he was under the warmer, he pinked right up. I had the nurse clean him up a bit before giving him to me (sorry, but I have NO desire to hold a baby right after it comes out, when it's still covered in goo) and I got to hold my new baby about 30 minutes after he was born. Simply amazing.

So far he's been very easy going. He's nursing every 3 hours or so and barely cries - he just makes a little wimpering noise when he's hungry.

He's had a few baths already and seems to really like them. Of course I can't seem to figure out how to time them so he doesn't pee in the tub. :) But I guess that's part of being a boy. For all I know, K was peeing in the tub too, but we couldn't tell because it didn't shoot up in an arc the way it does with James. :)

I'm tired, but not exhausted. It's definitely weird to have a baby in the house. It's been SO long. K loves having a brother around and has become quite the little mother hen. She's itching for me to switch to a bottle to feed him (because I have full intentions of doing so early) because she wants to get a chance to feed him too. She helps with the baths and picking out his clothes. But she'll have NONE of the diaper changing. She thinks that's just about the nastiest thing on earth.

One of our favorite pictures of the 2 of them, taken by my sister, was when we were home for our first weekend. Here's K, proud sister to James:

Tomorrow is the big day!

2009-04-14T09:21:00.003-04:00

Because of my "advanced maternal age", my OB has agreed to induce me at 39 weeks. She's been saying all along that I will NOT go past my due date because of my age. And last week she said if I want to go now, I can. The baby has been in position for several weeks, I'm dilated, and I'm showing other signs of being very ready. So she said there's no reason we can't do this now.

Yay!

So at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, we check in at the hospital and the start a Pitocin drip.

No, I'm not looking forward to the labor part. I'm sort of a wimp. The whole labor and delivery thing scares the living daylights out of me. But I've been so miserable for the last 9 months that the misery has far outweighed the fear and I'm ready to be done with this. I'm ready to meet this little guy and bring him home and start our lives in our "new normal".

My mom is driving up today so she can stay with K while we're gone. She'll bring K to school tomorrow and be here with her at night. Hopefully J will be home by then (because that will mean the baby has been born) but we have no way of knowing so we need someone here. Of course K wants to take the rest of the week out of school because, as she claims, it will be "too hard to concentrate". Yeah, nice try kid. You're going to school. We MAY let her stay home the day we're discharged (is that the term for leaving the hospital? I think so) so she can spend the day with her new brother.

K is supposed to go to a sleepover Friday night. I can't help but wonder if she'll back out, wanting to be here to see everything that goes on if it's our first night home.

Saturday is the Girl Scout's Powderpuff Derby (same thing as the Pinewood Derby for Boy Scouts) so J will have to take her to that. I need to make sure he gets pictures.

She's out of school next week for spring vacation so hopefully she'll be a big help to me at home. And of course J will be taking time out of work. When he goes back to work, my mom will come back up for a few days. I honestly don't know what I'll need "help" with, but I know it's pretty standard to have help. I guess I'll figure out things for them to do for me. Cook? Yeah, that would be nice. :)

So that's where we stand. The next time I blog anything, it should be including pictures of the baby. Yay!!!

This dog is clearly a male

2009-04-08T12:14:00.002-04:00

Most of the time, while I'm home during the day, Bruce sleeps. He stays in his crate (with the door open) and snoozes for hours on end. When I stop to eat lunch, he'll come and lay down beside me and, well, sleep some more.

But today, for some reason, he was wandering around the house.

I finally spotted him.

He was sitting in front of one of the windows in the front of the house. And what was he doing?

He was watching all the construction vehicles drive down our street to the lot where they're building a new house.

Such a typical male thing to do! K would have never done that when she was little. But boys? Oh yes. Construction vehicles are cool. Even if you're a canine boy!

Small update

2009-04-06T09:40:00.002-04:00

Wow, has it really been a month since I've blogged? I didn't realize I let it go that long. Clearly nothing exciting has happened.

So let's see -- baby wise, the room is painted, the clothes are all washed and put away, diapers are in the house, the crib is ready. Now we just need this kid to be born. I'm VERY ready. Would like it to happen right NOW, as a matter of fact. :) I'm at 38 weeks and according to the doctor, the baby is in position. I'm not having contractions (well, there are Braxton Hicks, but they really don't count) but I'm sleeping less and less at night - finding it harder and harder to find a comfortable position. My back hurts as soon as I get horizontal. Makes for very long nights.

As far as names, we definitely decided that the baby's middle name will be O'Neil, which is my middle name. We're leaning towards James for a first name. That was both my dad's and J's dad's name. According to K, it WILL be his name. She's made the decision. And refers to him as James all the time. My only hesitation is WHAT will we call him?? "James" sounds so formal but "Jim" or "Jimmy" sound so old fashioned. I'm really stumped. I keep telling K that I can't decide if I want to use James until I actually SEE him. Then I'll know. Although for her, we didn't fill out the birth certificate until she was 2 days old and I was being discharged from the hospital -- we wanted to make sure we were giving her the right name. It's a big responsibility! There's no going back once you sign that paper! So I need to be 100% sure when he's born.

Next in line, house selling -- we got 2 offers in one day! How's that for ironic? The house sits on the market for 9 months without a bite and then we get 2 offers at the same time. Figures. Well, one offer (the first to come in) had a contingency for them to sell their house first. Yikes. With the market the way it is, that could be months more. The 2nd offer came in from a couple who was engaged and had no house to sell. Both offers were within $200 of each other so monetarily, it really made no difference to us which one got it. So we went with the engaged couple simply because they didn't have the house-selling contingency.

Well, it seems that SHE wasn't all that honest with him. After they signed the purchase and sale (well, HE signed it -- I did notice that her name was nowhere on it), she admitted to him that she was much more in debt than he knew. So they backed out of the contract. Apparently she has so much debt that buying a house is no longer an option for them.

Ok then. Back to the original offer. We go back to the buyers and yes, they're still interested (considering it had really only been 2 days, I guess it's not that big of a surprise) and we accepted their contingency, unfortunately. But we put a contingency in that WE can accept any new offers that come in and WE can back out from their contract if someone else doesn't have a house-selling contingency. So now we're just hoping either they sell their house really quickly or someone else comes along that doesn't have a house to sell.

It's almost lawn-mowing time and I really don't want to start to add THAT bill to our monthly bills. Eventually, though, the lawn IS going to need to be mowed. Ugh.

Finally, the family -- K finished basketball season. Her team was runner up for the area Catholic Athletic Teams organization. They were so excited! I would have loved to have seen them win, but that wasn't meant to be. They played a great game though - and lost by only 4 points.

Girl Scouts is winding down as well. They have a camp out the last weekend of April (which is a tad chilly for camping in New England!) and she's very excited for that. Luckily they'll be in cabins, not tents, so hopefully they wont freeze too much. Then in mid-May, she bridges over to a Cadet. It's funny how much she loves the troop here. She was so uninterested in the whole process in PA -- never even wanted to finish her 2nd year as a Brownie. But here - she's loving everything they do and she can't wait to see what comes up next year.

Speaking of Girl Scouts - I've eaten far too many cookies since they've arrived in the house!!

K and J both went to NYC for St. Patrick's Day. I didn't go. I've never missed it before. But I wasn't comfortable walking around that many people, trying to keep up with them, and potentially being bumped and pushed and shoved. I'm also at the point where I nap a LOT more frequently now and really didn't want to be a big downer on their time there. They still had fun, but K kept saying how weird it was to be there without me. I agree - it was weird to NOT be there with them. My friend came and spent the 2 nights here with me -- she was having her hardwoods refinished so it worked out perfectly. She needed to get out of her house for a few days and it gave me someone to hang out with so I wasn't alone the entire time.

J is working his butt off. He plans to take a week off when the baby is born so of course that means extra hours NOW to make up for it. Makes me wonder if it's worth it. He must be just physically and mentally exhausted.

While I was away at a scrapping weekend 2 weeks ago, J and K thoroughly cleaned the house. There was nothing hanging around when I got home! Of course I can't find a lot of stuff right now, but it will eventually resurface. :) In the meantime, it was nice to come home to actually SEE the kitchen counter, which had been covered since the movers were here. It was just all that stuff that I couldn't decide what to do with. I honestly don't know where most of it went and I honestly don't care. It's not on the counter anymore.

The only thing I'd like to find are the 6 or 7 pairs of curtains I had sitting on one of the counter stools. They were there with the intent to bring them to the basement to put into the bin of extra curtains I have. I can't REACH that bin so it was something that needed to be done when J was home to help me. And of course I kept forgetting to ask him to help me when he WAS home. Well, he moved them. And I have no idea where they are. I need to make myself a note to ask him about that tonight.

Brucie is loving his new life with woods. He LOVES to be outside, romping through the trees, getting covered in ticks. Yes, ticks. It's that time of year. Ick. But it's part of life with woods around. We just need to watch him vigilantly and pull anything off of him as soon as we find it. I have to do it to K too. She and a friend went for a walk in the woods on Saturday and I pulled a total of 5 ticks off of their clothes when they came back in. And it's only April. I can't imagine what it will be like when the nice weather hits.

We do need to take Bruce to the vet. He has something wrong with his eyes. He wakes up every morning all goopy eyed and throughout the day I have to clean them usually at least one more time. It's definitely something new. Unfortunately I'm so far along in this pregnancy that I can no longer take him anywhere on a leash. He pulls too hard and I can't walk that fast anymore (pathetic, I know). So J is going to take him in on Friday to have it looked at. What an interesting experience it will be for him to see what Bruce is like at the vet. It's NOT a fun event. He spazzes out in there! Now J can see what I go through on a regular basis. :)

That's pretty much been our life in a nutshell lately. Not much. I guess that's a good thing. I'd rather not have anything bad to report. :)

A variety of info

2009-03-09T11:57:00.002-04:00

First, it's snowing. Again. It was 60° yesterday and Saturday. And today it's snowing. A lot. We're supposed to get "upwards of 7" on the MA border". That would be me. I'm 3/4 mile from the MA border. There's at least 3-4" out there now and it's still coming down. I've determined that we're never going to actually see our front lawn again.

Second, K is sick. She woke up Saturday morning with a 102° fever. Yikes. I went to the store and got her some Tylenol which brought it down almost immediately. And she felt fine. She had NO other symptoms. Sunday morning she woke up with body aches, sore throat, headache, tiredness - typical flu symptoms. Fever was only low-grade. She's home from school today with all of the same symptoms again. She's been a lump on the couch since 8:00 this morning (it's now noon). I highly expect her to be home with me again tomorrow too. She just has no energy and feels horrible. Poor kid. I wish I could do more than pump Tylenol into her (and even that, I try to limit - I believe the body should fight the infection).

Third, even though K was sick on Saturday, we still did our annual St. Patrick's Day Breakfast. J cooked over 30 omelets this year. We saw people who haven't come in a very long time, which was nice. We then went to the parade in what was probably the best weather we've ever had. Then we did the post-parade party. The entire time K never got a fever, never felt achy, never had a sore throat. She LOOKED tired, but that was the extent of it. So I figured it was a fluke fever thing. Oh how wrong I was.

Fourth, while we were out at dinner after the post-parade party (23 of us!), Candy walked over and handed me an invitation - to my own baby shower. It's in 2 weeks. I have VERY mixed feelings about things like that. I do NOT like accepting gifts from people. I find it a very very uncomfortable situation. But I know that if I were in their shoes, I would have done the same thing. I just feel funny having a baby shower when it's my 2nd baby. Sure, it's been 11 years. No we didn't save anything so we're starting from scratch with all of that baby stuff. But still. I've already HAD a baby shower. It feels funny and awkward to me to have another one. Why should I get a 2nd one when other people don't? I don't want to seem greedy, which I'm not. We're perfectly able to provide ourselves with the supplies we will need. I don't want people to think they have to buy a gift for us. Ugh. It's hard! But I'll be there, and I'll smile, and I'll be embarrassed all day, and I'll be uncomfortable, and I'll write out my thank you notes when I get home, but I'll hate every minute of it. :( Apparently several people have asked where I'm registered. OMG -- that is SO not going to happen! I DETEST gift registries! Talk about asking for handouts!! Ugh. I just hate them. I did one for my bridal shower and it was THE most awkward thing I've ever done. I hated every minute of it. The sales clerk kept telling me that it was ok to list things that were on the medium-level of the price scale, because I was picking the cheapest of everything. I didn't want people spending that money on me! So when it came time for a shower for K (which I honestly didn't want, but knew I'd have one anyway), I refused to register. And I refuse this time too. If people want to give us a gift, then they can choose what it is. I'm certainly NOT picking out my own gifts. Ugh. Just the thought of it makes me cringe... (and no, I rarely buy anything off of someone's gift registry - I try to come up with something unique that I've chosen for them).

Fifth, I'm not going to NYC with J and K for St. Patrick's Day this year. It will be 5 weeks before my due date and honestly, I'm too nervous to do it. I'm afraid all that walking will set off labor or something. Or I'll drag them down because I can't walk as fast as they can and I get tired so easily. I've never missed a St. Patrick's Day in NY. This will be weird. But, Candy is going to come up and visit with me while they're gone so I'm not home alone for 2 days. :)

I guess that's my updates for now. Not much going on. Just a sick kid, snow, and a lack of St. Patrick's Day drinking on my part. :)

Pure torture... to a dog.

2009-03-05T11:26:00.002-05:00

I was munching on peanuts. Bruce loves peanuts. He comes running when he hears the jar being opened (yes, he can hear the twist of the cap). And it's funny to watch him eat peanuts - he actually chews them. A lot. Unlike all other food that he swallows whole. For some reason he chews and chews on ONE little peanut. It's pretty funny.

Well anyway, I was munching and I tossed one his way. Surprisingly, he missed (very unlike him!) and the peanut bounced onto the floor adn landed in the heat register.

Bruce is now laying with his face ON the register. He wont move. I can't get it out of there! I'm not dismantling the entire system to get out ONE peanut. But he wont let it go. He wants that peanut!!

Oh my. The heat just came on. Which probably means the peanut smell will be stronger (to him - I can't smell a thing). Which will be even MORE torture for him!

Sorry bud. You're not getting it. It's a lost cause!

I have a deadline

2009-03-03T16:15:00.002-05:00

I work better under pressure.

J informed me last night that he'd like to invite some people over from work for a drink in his bar. Next weekend. As in, less than 2 weeks from now.

Ok then.

That means I have less than 2 weeks to finish getting the house in order.

Seems reasonable enough. Maybe now I can actually make some decisions about where to put things. Because I've been incapable of it up until now. I keep walking around with items, placing them where I think I want them, then moving them 20 minutes later. Oh sure I can still do that, but I'm less apt to do it if I know I need to get OTHER things done between now and then so people don't think we ALWAYS live like this -- with frames covering the kitchen table, and lots of little crappy things (from former junk drawers) covering one whole section of the kitchen counter, and rug remnants still on the floor, and boxes marked "Donate" still in the middle of the kitchen... etc. When people come over, I want them to be able to see an organized, clean house. And today, they would NOT see that. But by next Friday? Absolutely. Because it's a dealine I MUST meet. And I will.

What a wasted day

2009-03-01T15:23:00.002-05:00

I don't know where today went. I had full intentions of doing all sorts of stuff around the house -- specifically, I was going to put together some wire cubes (the ones you can get at Target that you can configure in a bazillion different ways) to store my completed scrapbooks. I actually have a blank wall area where I could put it -- and since none of our book cases are 12" deep (I can easily make the shelves 12" HIGH, but the scrapbooks stick out in the front, which bugs me), I needed another option for storing my completed albums. These cubes, although not the most attractive choice, work really well.

So here it is, almost 3:30 in the afternoon, and all I've done today is read the paper, gone to church, and gone to the grocery store. I haven't even put all of the groceries away yet!

Tomorrow will most likely be a no-school day. We're expected to get 12-16" of snow. J has already said he'll work from home -- with that much coming, the driveway will need to be cleared in several increments, rather than all at once. So by being home, he can take care of that (I can't). I know I can get more done tomorrow - and it's nice knowing that I don't have to stop in the middle of the day to go pick up K, but I had HOPED to have my workshop/office done today so I could focus on other rooms tomorrow. Clearly that's not going to be the case.

I guess I could still go down to the garage, find those wire grids, and build that storage unit. The entire day isn't gone YET. But if I continue to sit here on the computer, it will be gone! And I still have SO much to do...

The Jonas Brothers

2009-02-27T11:26:00.000-05:00

K is spending the night tonight at a friend's house. She's going there directly from school, which is weird for me because it means I don't have to go pick her up. Very strange.

But the whole REASON for her spending the night is that she and her friends are going to see the Jonas Brothers 3D movie tonight. Opening night. She's beyond excited.

I don't recall ever having any desire to watch a concert on a movie screen. But, whatever...

And it seems that there's even more excitement with this grand event. Apparently the Jonas Brothers have announced that they will make surprise appearances at various theaters around the country.

And it was leaked that they will be landing their private jet in a very small airport about 15 minutes from the theater where K and her friends will be tonight.

She truly believes she will be meeting Nick, Joe and... whatever the 3rd one is named. I can't remember. But yes, she's quite convinced that they wont go to the theater 2 minutes from that little airport - oh no. They're going to get in a limo, drive up Rt. 495, and go to The Loop to the Lowe's Theater where she'll be.

She brought a poster with her for them to sign.

Maybe this was what it was like in the 60's when the Beatles came to America. Only this isn't a Brittish invasion. It's a boy-band, teeny-bopper invasion.

I'm glad the other mom will be the one with them, and not me. Because I'm not sure I could take all the screaming. :)

I can now make ice!

2009-02-24T12:33:00.003-05:00

The "3rd party" that connects appliances came today to connect the water line for our refrigerator.

If you've never been moved professionally or by a relocation company, you're probably thinking WHY this needed to be done.

Well, the movers are not allowed to do anything like that (they wont even disconnect computers/tv's/etc). They simply pack and move. So there's a 3rd party - a company that services all appliances. The relocation company sends them in to connect ice makers, washers, dryers, etc. Since our washer and dryer are already here, he only needed to connect the water line to the fridge so I can now get water from it and make ice.

Although I wont use either until tomorrow. Why? Because tomorrow we're having a water filtration system installed. Right now, our well water tastes nasty. It's VERY high in sulfur, which tastes bad and makes my toilets yellow. So there's no point in making ice that I'm just going to throw away. I'll turn that little feature back on after the filter is installed. Yay! And now I wont go through a case of bottled water a week either! I'll still drink bottled water, but once I open my first one of the day, the rest will be refilled through the water dispenser. So I'll only use ONE bottle of water per day, rather than 4, which is what I've been averaging.

It's these little things that make life easier. It sounds silly, I know, but really - having a water dispenser is a very nice feature!

The BIG Move!

2009-02-23T11:58:00.001-05:00

After 6 long months, our lives of hell are over!! We finally packed up the house in PA and had it brought here to NH! I feel like a HUGE weight has been lifted off of my shoulders!

K and I drove to PA last Saturday, which gave her all day Sunday to see her friends. Monday morning, the packers showed up. On Tuesday, the 53' truck and 3 loaders showed up, as well as the packers. My house got finished being packed while the loaders started loading stuff. By noon on Wednesday, they were completely done and I was all alone in my big, empty, beautiful house.

I spent Wed. afternoon and night cleaning it from top to bottom. My friend Kathy came over and generously helped me clean the family room carpet, which was downright disgusting. I had NO idea it had gotten as bad as it had - the furniture masked it all! Bruce used to sleep underneath the end table and that was probably the worst spot. I hadn't even thought of the oils from his fur! So now I know to really keep up on the carpets in this house. I can NOT let them get the way that house did.

Thursday morning K and I got in the car and drove back to NH. It was a MUCH harder drive home than I expected. Leaving my house and neighborhood was extremely hard - especially knowing that I wont be back. K and I both cried for quite a while during the beginning of that drive (and I'm getting all teary eyed just typing it out). I really loved that house. I loved my neighborhood. And I'll miss it all terribly. I already do.

But this is our new home now. This is where we'll stay. And eventually I hope to feel about this house as I did about that house. Right now I'm just annoyed with this house because things just don't fit the way they did there. And of course they shouldn't -- it's a different house. But emotionally, I want it all to be the same, if that makes any sense.

Friday morning the truck pulled up to my house and we had 3" of snow covering the driveway. J was in VT for a family funeral and I can't use the snowblower right now. I think the movers were tempted to leave!! I panicked a bit, but the relocation company told me they had already put in a request for "overtime" for the MOVERS to clear my driveway for me! I offered the use of our snowblower so they wouldn't have to shovel, and they took me up on it. The only issue I have with what they did is they submitted to J's company that the OT would be "3 men at 4 hours each". Um. I think not. It took them 90 minutes (they had to clear the walkway too and there was some ice built up under the snow). So J and I feel like his company got screwed. He plans on letting them know that it did NOT take those men 4 hours to clear our driveway! And no way should they be paid for that much OT. Of course with corporate America, they may just ignore J and pay the guys whatever they claim they should be paid.

So anyway, I'm now surrounded by boxes, paper, and STUFF. Oh my goodness I have stuff everywhere! I'm honestly not sure where to put most of it. I find myself walking aimlessly around the house trying to figure out what to do next.

I spent this morning packing up, and itemizing, the items we're donating to charity. I've filled 6 boxes so far (smaller boxes - they need to be light enough for me to lift) and that's just the stuff that ended up on the kitchen table. I still need to pack up all of the toys K has agreed to get rid of, the stuff I unpacked in our bath/bedroom that I don't want/need, and the clothes that we're going to get rid of. I mean honestly - do I really still need that sweatshirt from Sausalito from when we went to CA 18 years ago? Yeah, I don't think so either. :)

So that's what I've been doing. Should I even be ON the computer? Absolutely not. But I do need to take breaks. I have a lot more energy than I've had in a long time, but my back gets sore so I can't do a lot of repetitious stuff (like bending and lifting, bending and lifting, etc).

So nown I'm off to have some lunch and then back to itemizing and packing. It feels good to purge a lot of this stuff we've had for years and never used! Maybe that's a benefit to being in a smaller house - there's no room to store stuff you don't actually use! :)

After 5 1/2 very long months...

2009-02-13T12:21:00.002-05:00

I'm finally getting my furniture!!!

I am SO relieved! This has been such a weight on my shoulders and I can't even explain WHY. But it really really bothered me and I've been struggling with it all this time.

K and I are going to leave tomorrow (I originally had planned on leaving Sunday but J suggested we go tomorrow so K can see her friends all day on Sunday, which makes sense) and drive the 7+ hours there. The movers arrive on Monday and will start packing immediately. I'm hoping they can get everything loaded by Tuesday so we can drive back on Wed., but I know that's a bit unrealistic. But they COULD be done by noon on Wed. and if that's the case, we'll drive back Wed. afternoon rather than staying till Thursday. I just don't want to spend TWO days sleeping on an air mattress. :)

K is beyond excited and was totally stressing out about how she was going to squeeze in time to see all of her friends in the short time we'd be there. She's already asked if the 2 girls next door could sleep over on Sunday night since there's no school Monday (President's Day). I'm fine with that. It's not like she'll be able to do it ever again.

On Tuesday I'll leave the movers alone for a little while and sneak out to neighborhood coffee. I'll get to see all of my friends, have coffee with them, and feel normal again! And I'll be talking to adults in the middle of the day! I haven't done that in 5 months! What a great feeling that will be!

J is actually traveling all week so it works out well that K and I will be gone. Otherwise I think we may have just driven each other a tad nuts.

We don't know when they'll be delivering our stuff here. It could be next Friday or the following Monday. Apparently they're estimating that we do NOT have a full truck load (gee, ya think that might be because of the 2 Uhauls we removed from the house already?) which means they'll (*gasp*) put someone else's stuff on the truck with ours. I do NOT like that ONE BIT. I'm VERY uncomfortable with it! So much so that we're having them take stuff we had originally planned on leaving behind in the hopes that we can fill the truck and they CAN'T add anyone else's stuff on the end. I like when they fill the truck, lock the door, and don't UNlock it till they get to our new location. Having that door unlocked when I'm not there to witness it just gives me a very uneasy feeling.

If I'm lucky, they'll load the swingset. But I'm not very optimistic about it. The relocation company said no so the movers may have not choice but to not take it. But boy, that would be so nice if they could. It's only 3 years old and it would be great for the baby once he gets old enough.

We actually have an open house on Sunday - maybe the stars will all be aligned and we'll actually get an offer from it. Wouldn't that be the best?? We're planning on taking the fridge, but we know that it could be used as a negotiating tool. With it NOT there, we lose that tactic. But we need a fridge here and seeing as how that one is only 4 years old, it's awfully hard to just leave it behind. But we'd do it in a heartbeat if it meant selling the house. And no, just leaving it assuming someone wants it doesn't guarantee a sale. It's a nice added bonus, but it's not something people (should) expect. Like the woman who was surprised we're not including a washer and dryer. Um, hello? No. You want to wash your clothes, you go out and buy your own washer and dryer. I couldn't believe that one. Clearly she hasn't bought a lot of houses in her day. That was just bizarre to me.

So anyway, I'll be away from a computer for 4-5 days. Maybe I'll go over to my friend S's house and get online there for a little while. Even if it's just to check my email and not feel so cut off from the world. :)

I'm so excited! I'm going to have a COUCH again! And a real fridge! And my new, king sized bed! And bureaus! And all of my clothes (which I can't wear because I'm too fat but at least they'll be here for me to wear when I can fit into them again)! And my desk! And lots of other stuff that I miss horribly. :)

San Antonio was a hit

2009-02-10T09:57:00.002-05:00

Well, K loved the Alamo! Thought it was very cool. They apparently ended up going there every day and ended each day by sitting on a bench outside of the Alamo, talking about what they did and what she liked the best each day.

On Sunday they had planned to go to a rodeo - something you can NOT do here in NH. So they took a cab (a CAB? Is he for real??) and got there when the gates opened. Unfortunately J neglected to check any schedules and NOTHING was open yet. Just the main gates. So they walked around for 2 hours and found there was still nothing open - and went back to the hotel. I never did find out how they got back to the hotel since I'm sure there wasn't a line of cabs waiting to bring people back into town. So, K still hasn't seen a rodeo. And probably never will. Not that I expected it to be a life altering event - just something fun for her to do that's not something that we regularly see.

Oh, they did walk through the Midway (which was closed) and she said ALL the rides looked lame. Guess we got spoiled at Hershey Park on a regular basis.

They got home yesterday afternoon and get this - J never once made K take a shower! Ack! They were gone for 4 days! So I immediately sent her stinky self upstairs and told her to scrub down. Ugh. What was he thinking?

K's favorite part of the city was the River Walk. Apparently it's where the shops, restaurants, etc. are all located. Sounds like something right up her alley.

They came home with lots of goodies, including a coon-skin cap for the baby, that he wont be able to wear till he's about 10. :) But at least it will be here for him when he does want to wear it.

J grabbed the John Wayne movie of The Alamo and we watched it last night. K said it was the most boring movie she's ever seen. :) And her favorite part of the whole story wasn't even in the movie - it's when Travis draws a line in the sand for those who want to stay and fight. They didn't actually draw the line in the movie so she was all disappointed. Apparently at the Alamo, there's a marker where that line was drawn, and she took a picture of it. So she wanted to see it in action. Ah Hollywood - they have their own version of everything, don't they?

Speaking of her pictures, that kid needs a new camera. Almost all of hers came out blurry or dark. It's a cheap digital - the most basic that Kodak makes - and it's about 3 years old. She's been telling me for a while that she needed a new one but I didn't believe her. Now I do. Guess that will be a good gift for her for either Christmas or her birthday next year.

So that's their trip in a nutshell. I'm glad to have them home. It would have been lonely here all weekend if my friends hadn't come up to spend the time with me. Honestly - I think I would have gone a tad nuts. It just would have been too weird to be all alone for that much time.

And they're off...

2009-02-06T11:11:00.002-05:00

At 4:30 this morning, J & K left for the airport.

For some reason, I had a hard time seeing them leave this year. Maybe because they've always gone on a weekend when I've also gone away and this is the first time I watch them leave and I've stayed home. I don't know. But it was weird.

I have 2 friends coming to scrapbook with me for the weekend. Thankfully. Otherwise I think I'd go certifiably insane if I was stuck in the house for 4 days alone. Ack! Just me and the dog!

K already called me from the airport - they had a layover in Baltimore. She was excited to be even there -- that was "our" airport when we lived in PA. :) She was shocked to find out that she had a 3 hour flight from Baltimore to San Antonio. She thought it would be closer. Guess I need to have her actually look at a map.

I had a hard time falling back asleep after they left this morning. I finally put the tv on. Did you know that local news comes on at 5 a.m.? Neither did I. And there's nothing on HGTV at that time. Which is probably a good thing - because if it had been one of my favorite shows, I would have kept the tv on. Because there was nothing to watch (and I did the entire channel loop 3 times), I finally put it off and waited for sleep to come. I saw 6:00 on my clock and then I think I finally drifted off. I do remember seeing 6:24 - which is when my alarm normally goes off. :) Then I saw 7:00, 7:15, and finally gave up at 7:30 and just got in the shower. I'm pretty wiped out, but it's par for the course. I'm starting to get used to it now.

I'm looking forward to Monday when I have my family with me again. I miss them already. :(

San Antonio

2009-02-05T09:09:00.003-05:00

Since K was in first grade, she and J have gone away for a little weekend on their own. We usually coincide that weekend with one of my scrapping retreats, but since the one I'm going to this year is the end of March, when I'll be 8+ months pregnant (it's only 45 minutes away from home so it's not a big deal for me to be traveling), they've moved up the date - and they're going this weekend.

But there's a catch to their little weekend. Here's how it works.

K picks a city - any city in the US. We sometimes put limits like, "Southwest must fly into the nearest airport" (since they have the cheapest rates) or "it has to be within driving distance" -- all depending on what's going on with J's job at the time.

Then, once she has chosen her city, she must research it - and write us a report on it's history. A full page, typed report.

The first time, when she was in first grade, she did Williamsburg (I actually went on that trip) and included Jamestown and Yorktowne in her report. That was just a paragraph for each - she WAS only 6.

The following year she chose Philadelphia. Off they went and she got to see the Liberty Bell, Betsy Ross's house, Independence Hall, etc. She loved it! And she understood what she was seeing because she had just done all of the research (she uses both online resources and encyclopedias).

Next came Chicago. That has been, by far, her favorite city. She ranks it right up there with New York City, which is mighty high praise from her since she thinks NYC is heaven on earth. :) And no, she hasn't done NYC as one of her choices. Why? Because we go into the city at least once a year, usually twice. She's done all sorts of things there already. Yes, there's a lot of history there, but there wouldn't be a lot of new things for her to see. Same with Boston. Heck, we can take the commuter rail into Boston if we want. Kind of defeats the whole "weekend away" thing when it's only 45 minutes from home.

Ok, back to her choices.

Last year they did Niagra Falls. J was a bit surprised at this choice, but she did her research and wrote her paper. And she did a good job. She really liked the area and thought it was a lot of fun. But it wasn't as "city" as she thought it would be (she's definitely a city girl! She loves the hustle and bustle and constant activity in big cities).

So tomorrow morning they leave for this year's location - San Antonio, TX. She's disapointed that Sea World is closed, but that's ok. She's been to the one in San Diego. And hey - if they could have gone in April, which is when they normally go, she would have been able to visit there.

Anyway, the bulk of her report was on The Alamo and J found a hotel right near it. I believe they're within walking distance of it, actually. She's beyond excited and is now doing research on what to do that's fun. She's done with the historical research (and probably knows more about the Alamo than most kids around here will ever learn) so now it's time for the fun part. Sure they'll tour the Alamo and she'll get to see first hand what she just spent weeks researching. But they'll also do other things - like go to the zoo, and do some shopping, and see if there's a museum. I don't think today can end soon enough for her. :)

They leave at the ungodly hour of 4:30 tomorrow morning. She's stressed about that - but the airport is 40 minutes away so she can snooze a bit in the car. I think she'll be so torqued up that she wont be able to fall back asleep once they get in the car.

And what will I do all weekend? Well, I do have a dog to care for. But I have 2 friends coming up from RI to spend Friday and Saturday nights with me. We'll scrapbook for the most part. I've already planned on making Taco Soup for dinner Saturday night and we're going out to dinner Friday night. Sunday morning we're hitting the local diner for breakfast. It will make the time pass quickly for me (being alone in the house for 4 days would probably be a bit too much for me! I'd go insane!), I'll hopefully get some more pages done, and I'll have company. :) This will be just like normal - they're away while I'm at a scrapbooking weekend. Except the weekend is at my house instead of at a retreat center.

I'll miss them both and it will be weird to be home for so long without them, but I know how much K looks forward to this every year and it's really great for them to have this time alone. J works such long hours and often gets home only shortly before she goes to bed. Hopefully this makes up for a lot of what he misses.

Well THAT will get your butt out of bed in a hurry!

2009-02-03T08:40:00.002-05:00

I have leg cramps (or Charlie Horse cramps, as we always called them) quite regularly now. I would say I get them 5 out of 7 nights a week. Usually I can stop them before they get really crippling -- I just jump out of bed and put my hands against the wall and lean into it, stretching my calf. Then I get back in bed and go back to sleep.

Sometimes, though, one will hit me very suddenly and even getting out of bed to stop it is painful.

I had one like that this morning right as my alarm went off.

I had to get up earlier than normal today because K had Academic Bowl practice BEFORE school started (normally she practices after school, but the meet is today so they're practicing early). So when my alarm went off, I knew I had to get up - no hitting the snooze button 3 times. :)

Well, it went off and instantly my entire left calf was tied up in a knot. I hobbled out of bed and leaned against the wall. It started to help, but it wasn't instant relief like normal.

Holy cow! I'm still limping.

I haven't had one like that in weeks. Thankfully!

But it certainly woke me up and got me moving!

Well, we made it through a good chunk of winter

2009-01-29T17:28:00.002-05:00

But not the entire thing.

K is sick.

Considering how she was ALWAYS sick when she was little, I think we're doing pretty well.

She woke up this morning and said her throat hurt. And me, being the sympathetic helicopter mom, I simply said, "drink some water. You're probably dry".

So she did. :)

But when she came home from school she said her throat still hurt. And that her legs and back were starting to ache.

Ugh.

Gave her some Tylenol a little before 4:00. At 4:30 she said she was feeling worse and worse so I took her temp -- 100.1°. Great.

She was supposed to go to an event for school tonight at a local place that has bounce houses, games, climbing walls, etc. She voluntarily said, "I can't go. I really don't feel good". I just about died.

Tomorrow they were going on a field trip to the movies (it's Catholic Schools Week - activities every day). Her biggest concern is that she wont get to see the movie if I keep her home tomorrow. Well, considering it was one that we had already planned on going to see, I don't think she has to worry - we'll eventually see it.

My biggest concern is that I have a doctor's appointment at 8:50 tomorrow morning. If she stays home from school, I really shouldn't take her with me. There are often new moms with newborn babies sitting in that waiting room. Not to mention all the pregnant women sitting there. I'd hate to spread whatever it is she has. But she HATES to be left alone when she doesn't feel well.

I guess I'll just have to play it by ear and see how she is in the morning. But if tonight is any indication, she'll be home tomorrow.

How can anyone resist that face?

2009-01-28T11:51:00.002-05:00

I was printing some pictures last night and came across these 2 of Bruce that just cracked me up.

First, can you say, "Anticipation"? He's waiting for K to finish opening his Christmas present of red tennis balls. :)

And then - the FACE! OMG - what on earth is he thinking?

So I told mom that I don't "need" her to drive with me

2009-01-22T11:20:00.003-05:00

I knew the call was coming - so much so that I dreaded seeing her name on the caller ID.

She was calling to see if I wanted her to drive to PA with K and I when we go down next month to supervise the movers.

No, I do NOT want her there. When the movers are done, I'll vacuum each room, wipe down the baseboards (K can do that), clean the bathrooms, and wipe down counters (I washed all the cabinets before we left and there's been no cooking or anything IN the house since then so they should still be clean. Unless one of my neighbors has taken it upon themselves to use my oven regularly). Honestly - 2 hours of work. In the meantime, I'll be sleeping on an air mattress and by the last day, will have nothing to sit on. What on EARTH am I supposed to do with my 74 year old mother?

Besides, it's my last time in that house. My favorite house. The one I've liked best of all the houses we've had. In the neighborhood I liked best of all the 'hoods we've been in. I do NOT need an audience when I leave there. Because I know it wont be pretty. I don't want to admit THAT to her, because she wont get it (mom's not very sentimental when it comes to stuff like that). Besides, if she DOES get it, then it will be all awkward because she'll want to "comfort" me. Umm... no thanks. Just let me cry, get it over with, and start the long 8 hour drive with my kid.

I feel bad that I told her I really don't need her there, but I really don't WANT her there. She sounded a bit offended. Sorry mom, but it's not where you need to be this time. It's my time to be alone in MY house and I don't want you there. :(

Glucose

2009-01-21T09:30:00.002-05:00

So, it seems that I failed my 1 hour glucose test.

For those of you not aware, during the 26th-28th weeks of pregnancy, your sugar levels are checked to make sure your body is correctly processing the sugar you intake. Because pregnancy throws your body into a complete tailspin and nothing works the same anymore.

Well, I failed my test. Which means I have to go in for a 3 hour test. I've been instructed to eat one high-sugar item a day (candy bar, can of non-diet soda, piece of cake, etc. One) for 3 days, then fast starting on Thursday night. I can't eat anything Friday morning. After I drop K off at school I will drive directly to the doctor's office where they'll draw blood. Then I'll drink some sickly-sweet orange drink and every hour for 3 hours they'll draw more blood and check my sugar levels.

I've been told to bring a high-protein snack to eat for when the 3 hour test is done. Great. Because I already feel sick when I don't eat. So let's make me sit there for hours (because by the time it's all said and done, I will have been up for almost 6 hours with no food) and not eat anything. Hopefully I don't actually GET sick while sitting there. I do know exactly where the bathroom is in the doctor's office so if I need to, I'll jump up and run in there. And it's not far from the waiting room, thankfully.

I hate having my blood drawn. It totally freaks me out. Not a fan of the needle itself, but that's not the worst part - it's the blood coming OUT of my body that freaks me out. I can't even think about it because it makes me sick to my stomach. I could never work in the medical field...

I guess I should make sure my iPod is charged so I can listen to it while sitting there for 3 hours. Ugh. And I'll bring a book. Mom got me one for Christmas so I guess I'll bring that to read. I don't know when she thought I'd have time to read with a new baby coming. But whatever. Now I'll get to read it.

In other news, K has her first Academic Bowl today. She was selected to be a part of this team of kids in 5th grade that answer various questions from all sorts of topics - from pop culture to geography to math and history. They compete amongst area schools. I wish her school sent home more information on it. I know today's Bowl isn't taking place at her school but I have no idea where it IS taking place. Nor do I know what time. I told her I'd attend the first one at HER school. That is, if parents are even welcome to attend. I'll have to email her teacher.

I'm trying to get the house ready for the movers. They'll be here in a month with all of my stuff. Yay! Can't wait! At least it's given me a deadline and a goal. J was getting annoyed that I wasn't dong anything (and he works 12+ hour days with a 45 minute commute so no, he shouldn't have to do it when he gets home from work. I'm here all day, alone, with nothing to do) but it was hard to be motivated when I had no idea when things would be happening. I work better under pressure. Now that I have a timeline, I can do things and MAKE myself get them done! Maybe I'll be really ambitious and actually start taping up the woodwork in the baby's room so we can get that painted. I will NOT have my mother help me with that room. She did a horrible job helping me with the bar and we now have to touch up everything she did. I know she means well, but sorry - it just causes more work than I'm willing to take on. Unfortuntely she calls me regularly to ask when I'm going to paint that room so she can come up and help. Ugh. I don't WANT her help. But I can't bring myself to tell her that. She'll just get all huffy and pissy. Besides, SHE thinks she did a great job. I certainly don't want to be the one to tell her she didn't!

Several things going through my head today...

2009-01-13T10:21:00.002-05:00

There's no rhyme or reason to my thoughts today. I'm rambling.

I just read a little article about the movie Marley & Me. I haven't seen the movie yet (we will!) but I did read the book a few years ago. And I sobbed at the end. This is one of the main reasons I haven't been willing to see the movie -- I know I'll be an emotional basket case by the end of it. In the article I read, there was a little video clip warning parents that the movie is not the all-laughs, fun time that's displayed in the ads. I cried. It was a 2 minute video and KNOWING what the announcer was referring to made me cry. I'm such a loser.

I cry a lot lately. Not sure why. I hate it. I'm tired of it. But I don't know how to stop it. I'm sure it has to do with all the pregnancy hormones. Three and 1/2 more months and I'm done. I never thought I'd be happy to say something like that but honestly, I am. I'm SO not enjoying this pregnancy. Not one little bit.

Speaking of the not-fun pregnancy... I fell yesterday. Being the uber-coordinated person that I am (please note the dripping sarcasm), I tripped over the dog gate and landed sprawled across the kitchen floor on my stomach. It was lovely. The gate ended up directly under my legs, which will result in a very nice shade of purple running down the length of my thigh. I was more upset that it happened than I was hurt, if that makes any sense. I feel fine, had no spotting or cramping (other than the normal cramping I have every day), and took it easy for the entire day. Today I'm a tad stiff and I definitely have a tender spot where I'll eventually have a nice bruise. But other than that, I'm fine.

I do have a doctor's appointment this week (along with the ever popular glucose test) so I'll mention the fall while I'm there. But after thinking about it, I felt a call was a bit over-protective. Of course this is coming from a person who has to be on her death bed to call a doctor. Or my kid has to be on one before I'll call. So I guess it's no surprise that this didn't warrant a call either. I just don't like to do that. I feel like they have more important things to do that deal with my trivial questions. No blood, no need to call.

I'm always amazed when I hear people talk about bringing their kids into the doctor on day 3 of a cough/sniffle/whatever it happens to be. Day 3? Let it run it's course! Make the kid rest, keep a humidifier going in their room, eat lots of fruits and veggies, and wait. It's always worked for us.

Ok, so that's how WE do it. It doesn't mean everyone else has to do it that way. But it's worked for us for 11 years and we haven't managed to hospitalize her yet so I'm going to stick with this method for the new kid.

Had to take Bruce to the vet today for his final round of vaccines. The vet in PA did them all in one shot. Here, they do boosters. I'm soooo tired of taking him. It was the 3rd time in 3 months. As I was leaving I asked them to PLEASE tell me this is the last time I have to be there because although they're all very nice, I so don't want to spend yet ANOTHER $47 to haul his crazy ass down there for another shot. Thankfully, I have a reprieve until December, when his Lyme disease vaccine is due again. Ugh.

K has a 1/2 day of school today so we're finally going to go and do some returns. From Christmas. I know I know. This should have been done weeks ago. I just didn't feel like it. So I'm doing it today. I'll be glad to have those bags off the front seat of my car.

We did get some good news this week. We're emptying the other house the week of 2/16!! I'm so excited! Of course this means I have to make the 8 hour drive down there, supervise the packing/loading, then drive 8 hours back to supervise the unloading/unpacking. But I'll have a COUCH! And I'll have all my STUFF! I can't wait! K will be thrilled - she'll get to see her friends again one more time. She doesn't think she will - because originally it was supposed to be J going down for the supervising. But since K has a school vacation week in Feb (they don't do that down there) we figured we'd wait till that week and J wont have to take time out of work. So in one month, I'll be living a normal life.

Well, as normal as owning 2 homes can be.

That's right. It still hasn't sold. We just change realtors and we're now listing at an even lower price than before. We're $65,000 below where we started in June. And we're going to bring in stagers once we empty the house. So that's another expense every month on top of the 2 mortgages. But we can NOT keep living like this but yet we can't show the house completely empty. Even the new realtor "strongly" advised against it. J agrees that we need to do this now before I get too big and wont be able to handle the unpacking. And seeing as how I haven't exactly been comfortable this entire pregnancy, we have no idea if I'll even be capable of doing it at the very end. So Feb. it is!

Gotta run to pick up K at school and start the whole return process. I dread it, but it's a necessary evil. Some day I'll have a Christmas with no returns.

Ha! Yeah, right!

My clumsiness shines through

2009-01-12T09:12:00.002-05:00

We have gates around the house. They're to keep Bruce off of the hardwoods. He tends to scratch them. Easily. He's 100 lbs. and has a tendency to get easily excited, which means he runs. Or at least tries to. But on a hardwood floor, he just slips and slides, which results in scratches.

Anyway, because of this, we keep him out of the areas with hardwood. By blocking off the entrances with baby gates.

We don't actually secure the gates - they're just leaning against the door frames. He knows he's not allowed past them (even though he could easily push the gates aside) and never tries, no matter what's on the other side.

So this morning I got home from bringing K to school and went upstairs to grab a bunch of towels that needed to be washed. I walked down the stairs carrying the towels. I turned into the hallway and went to step over the gate... and missed.

The result was me, spread clear across the kitchen floor, towels around me, with a gate under my legs.

I'm gonna be bruised up for sure.

I'm sure the baby is fine. The entire thing sort of happened in slow motion. At least it seemed it to me. Luckily K wasn't here to witness it because she would have freaked. She doesn't do well to see mom or dad "hurt" in any way.

I was going to get some things done in the house but decided to rest, just to be sure that everything is fine. The baby is moving around and I'm not feeling any pain, so I'm going with "all is well". If anything changes, I'll call the doctor. But for now, I just feel like a complete klutz.

The driveway is a mess

2009-01-08T11:10:00.003-05:00

We got snow yesterday. Then it turned to rain. Which froze. Creating a lovely sheet of ice OVER the snow.

By the time J got home from work there was no way the snow blower would get through the layer of ice. So we had to leave the driveway as it was.

This morning I dove over the end of the driveway, where the plow left it's remnants behind, to try to flatten it out somewhat. I drive the SUV - J drives a Saturn Ion. He was afraid he was going to rip off his muffler this morning trying to get over that hump.

Why didn't I use the snow blower, you ask?

Well, I'm 5 months pregnant and therefore shouldn't be shoveling (according to everyone who sees me even lift a stupid gallon of milk. I'm not crippled!). On top of that, I don't know HOW to use the snowblower. On the rare occasion I've tried, I haven't been able to maneuver it - it's just too big. So J has always done any snow removal when he's gotten home from work. Obviously we need to come up with another plan for when it freezes over. Because this really sucks.

I did stop and get some ice melt today. I've had some cramping so I'm not going out there to take care of it. Yet. But as soon as the cramping goes away, I'll sprinkle some down on the now-flattened part at the end of the driveway. That's J's biggest concern -- if that just sits like that, it will take weeks to melt. We need to get rid of that pile.

Oh, and Saturday we're supposed to get 4-6" of snow. That will be fun for him to snow-blow with this lovely sheet of crusty snow underneath it.

No school today

2009-01-07T09:23:00.002-05:00

It's snowing.

No, wait. It's raining.

Oops - wrong again. It's sleeting.

No! It's snowing again!

Ok, so it's been a mix all morning. I have no idea what it's dong right now because it honestly is changing that quickly. Brought the dog out -- it was sleeting. I turned around and noticed it was snowing. Came back in the house and sure enough, it was sleeting again.

Let's just hope that we don't lose power. Ugh. I sooo don't want to go there again.

So K is home from school. She's trying to get a friend to come over but the friends dad is smart and wont drive in the ice. Now she's trying to figure out another time for the friend to come over. She's being a pest, in my opinion. If the girl can't come over, she can't come over! Deal with it! I just yelled at her and told her to stop asking - the girls dad said no and that's the end of it. Ugh.

Eventually she'll go outside in the snow/ice to sled. She'll take Bruce with her, thankfully. He's already driving us nuts because he wants to go out. He KNOWS there's snow out there and he LOVES snow. He just wants to play!

If you're so inclined, please say little "no power outage" prayers for us please. I really really don't want to play that game anymore!

Ahhh... back to routines!

2009-01-05T10:44:00.002-05:00

I'm happy to report that school started back up today! I'm alone in my house for the first time in 2 weeks! Yahoo! I didn't realize how much I enjoyed it until I didn't have it anymore.

Oh shoot. In 4 months, I'll have someone with me 24/7. Ack! I'm never going to be alone again! Well, there are always naps, right? :)

Got K off to school this morning, ran two quick errands, and came home and parked my butt. Leaving in less than 30 minutes to go BACK to school - today's Monday and I help in the cafeteria on Monday. The school requires 20 hours of volunteer work from every family. You can pay to get out of it, but since I'm a stay-at-home-mom, it seems silly for me to not just do the volunteering. Of course I couldn't do it from Sept. to Nov. because I felt like such crap all the time. But now that I feel somewhat normal, I can commit to a regular time.

And with that, I've come to realize that I'm SO done with the whole school volunteering thing. I think maybe this next kid isn't going to have the involved mom that K had. I'm too old to be around a bunch of little kids.

I don't particularly like other people's kids.

I know that's a horrible thing to say, but it's true. I'm not good with kids. I don't know how to talk to them. I don't really care about the latest Bionicle toy they got for Christmas. I don't care about what the Jonas Brothers are up to. And I have a very hard time pretending like I care. So I've learned to just avoid them (kids, that is). It's easier.

So I guess that's my confession for the day. I don't like kids. Shoot me.

Also on my agenda for today (after being in the cafeteria for 90 minutes), is to do one of my MANY returns. I'll do Target, because it's close to the school. But one day this week I have to head to the mall area (30 minutes away) and do some returns out there. I have JC Penney, Sears, Macy's, Borders, Sports Authority (different mall - figures), and there's another one. I can't think of it. The bags are all on the passenger seat of my car. Nice.

Routines are good. I'm glad to have a schedule again. Maybe I'll even start cooking dinners rather than scrambling to reheat yet another leftover. It all just makes life feel normal.

I forgot to blog again...

2009-01-03T21:41:00.002-05:00

Sheesh. I seem to do this a lot.

Let's recap the last 2 weeks, shall we?

Christmas was nice. Well, it started off weird. Woke up at 2:30 in the morning to K saying, "mom, we just lost power again. I think it's about 6:00. Can we get up?" I thought there's no WAY it's 6:00 in the morning, so I went downstairs to find my cell phone. Uh... no. We can NOT get up. Go back to bed.

Power came back on around 8:00 a.m., but J had started the generator when we did get up at 6:30. K wouldn't come downstairs until we guaranteed the tree was lit. :)

Spent the day just hanging out. It was nice. I like quiet days like that. And of course we overdid it with gifts for each other. Again. We really need to set a dollar limit. And now that the credit card bill is in, I think we can both agree to that. Yikes. J got me a gps, a digital picture frame, Bose speakers for my computer, and a front loading washer and dryer, amongst other things.

Yes, you read that right. I got a washer and dryer for Christmas. And I'm not upset about it. Why? Because it's a frivolous purchase. We don't NEED a new washer and dryer. Our set is 11 years old but it still works just fine. But he bought it on Black Friday and it was just too good of a deal to pass up. And with ours being the age that they are, he figured they're both going to go soon anyway. Might as well take advantage of the deals.

It's being delivered in February. Can you believe that? That's how backordered they are. But hey - that's ok with me.

We drove to RI the day after Christmas to do the whole thing over again with my family. K loves doing that. For years they drove to PA to come to us, but this year since we're so close, we offered to go there. It was a nice change. And of course my sister and mom both overdid it with us and K. They need to start limiting gifts too! It's getting insane!

Saturday we drove to VT to see J's family. He has a cousin who's only 50 years old and has cancer - and is not doing well at all. J was determined to see him. He actually looks great, considering the aggressive treatment he's getting. Hopefully this treatment will work. Apparently it's successful on something like 20% of the people who try it. Not a high number, but it's better than NOT trying it, right?

Anyway, that night J's sister had her annual Christmas party at her house - which was the reason for our visit. And it just confirmed to us that we soooo do not belong up there. We do NOT fit in with his family at all. It's a good thing we live far away from them (although 3 hours isn't far. But they certainly wont make the drive here - I can guarantee it). We're like oil and water.

Drove home Sunday and got ready for Monday - K's 11th birthday. I can't believe my baby is 11. She's growing up way too fast.

This time my family drove here to celebrate her birthday with us. Just a small group -- it was nice. And my BIL was able to help J with some stuff in his bar, which was nice because J was stuck on how to do something and BIL was able to see it from another angle and help J come up with a better solution.

We shocked the you-know-what out of K for her birthday. We got her a Nintendo DS. Now you're probably thinking, "yeah, so?". But you need to understand - we've always been very anti-video game. What prompted this change? Well, I had been starting to bend. I was feeling bad that she truly was THE only kid that didn't have ANYTHING even remotely related to a video gaming system. J wasn't bending - until he realized the DS is a handheld system. For some reason that doesn't bother him as much. So we went for it. She was so surprised that her hands were shaking for a few hours after opening it! :)

Wednesday we got to do it all AGAIN! That was her birthday party with her friends. We did it at Build A Bear and we had a snowstorm again. Luckily I planned it for 10:00 in the morning and the snow had only started around 9 so it wasn't bad. The drive home was long, but it wasn't horrible. I just took it slow.

We stayed home for New Years Eve. It's the anniversary of J's heart attack. We prefer not to go out with the "amateurs" who think they can party all night and then drive home. So between the heart attack thing and not wanting to be out anyway, it works out well for us. We were in bed by 10:30.

Now we're just getting back into our regular routines. I'm looking forward to school starting Monday simply so that life will feel somewhat normal again. K's not looking forward to it though. :) Oh well - that's life, kid!

The baby is doing fine too. Starting to move around a bit more. Apparently I "popped" this week. I feel like I "popped" a long time ago but I was told by several people that I definitely look pregnant now when just a week ago I was still able to hide it quite well. I guess at over 5 months, I should be looking it, huh?

I think I'm having Braxton Hicks already. I need to ask the OB the next time I'm in. I get some pretty serious pains in my lower belly sometimes. I don't recall having them with K. Then again, this pregnancy is pretty much the complete opposite of anything I had with K. Honestly - it just can't be over soon enough for me. I'm NOT enjoying this.

So that's my recap. Boring, I know. Sorry. Not much else to share. Maybe now that we're back to a regular schedule, I can get back into a routine of blogging. Unless I forget again. :)

Snow, snow and more snow

2008-12-21T19:30:00.002-05:00

On Friday afternoon, it started to snow. By Saturday morning we had about 8 inches (they had forecasted 6-10"). Not bad. J went out with the snowblower and took care of it.

We took a ride to Salem, NH to pick up the tv I bought for my mom for Christmas. While there, we were going to get a new tire put on the truck (got a flat on the road while driving on Thanksgiving and had been driving on the spare all this time. Luckily the spare is a "real" tire and not a donut). Sears estimated a 4-5 hour wait. Umm... no thanks. BJ's across the street didn't have our tires in stock. Ok then. Next to that was a National Tire & Battery. They estimated 2-3 hours. That's reasonable. We can do a bit of shopping.

FIVE HOURS later, my truck was ready.

OMG, I will never EVER go to NTB again! As it was, when we went back after 2 1/2 hours, it wasn't even on a lift yet. J freaked and they put us ahead of some other people and told J it would be "about 45 minutes" more. Nope -- over 2 1/2 hours more! Meanwhile the only stores within walking distance were BJ's and Target. Well I'm Target-ed out. I honestly can NOT find anything to buy in that store that is Christmas related. I've been there too many times. And we had already been in BJ's for over 2 hours! So J stood in front of the register at NTB waiting for our truck to be ready. K and I sat in the little snack bar area of BJ's waiting (I left my boots in PA so I wasn't about to trudge through yet another parking lot in my sneakers). Eventually K went back into the store to flip through some of the books. I couldn't because I had a cart full of already-paid-for stuff.

And it was FREEZING sitting in that area. My toes were numb.

Needless to say, we were NOT happy campers when the truck was finally ready. And J was even more annoyed with me because this was something I could have done any day during the week over the past 4 weeks, but chose not to. I was afraid I'd pick the wrong tire, or get suckered into buying something I didn't truly need, or just screw something up. I wanted him there when we did this.

Sheesh. I was never such a wimp about stuff like this. I swear I get more and more insanely dependent on him the older I get.

Anyway, the entire time we were enduring this, it was still snowing (from what started on Friday afternoon). It didn't accumulate on Saturday, but it WAS falling.

Sunday morning we woke up and finally it wasn't snowing anymore. At least for a little while. We went to 9:30 mass and sure enough, it was snowing when we left. And it's still snowing - 10 hours later. We've gotten about a foot today, on top of the 8" we got Friday night. And it's still coming down.

J cleared the driveway and then went to do the neighbors. They're away for the weekend and asked us to please keep an eye on their house (what on EARTH do they think is going to happen to it??). J takes that to mean, "please clear our driveway if it snows". He feels it's part of the "watching" aspect. Whatever.

So he was out there for 2 hours doing both driveways. By the time he came back to our house, it needed to be done again. So he redid it.

I just went outside to let Bruce out. Guess what? It needs to be done again.

And speaking of Bruce, there's nowhere for him to go to the bathroom. J had cleared a spot for him but it's completely covered over. The snow is deeper than his legs are long. He's figured out how to pee (although he's having a rough time of it - he's not a leg lifter so it's not like he can stand in the cleared driveway and go on the snowbank. He stands and just goes -- can't do that when the snow is past your belly!) but he can't poop. Poor thing must be ready to burst. J said he'll clear a new spot for him in the morning.

K, who loves snow, asked me today if it ever stops snowing here. :) Yes, it does. But get used to it. Then she said, "will this snow melt by the time the baby is born?" Ummm... the baby is due at the end of April. I think I can safely say, "yes".

She ended that conversation by telling me that she's done. She wants it gone. In PA, we got snow so infrequently that when it DID snow, it was a special event. She's now had it for 3 days straight and she's done. She said, "THIS isn't special. This is just annoying". Oh honey -- you have a long way to go this winter. This weekend was just the beginning!!

It was a very long 4 days

2008-12-16T19:25:00.002-05:00

For those of you not aware, we had an ice storm up here in the Northeast.

On Friday morning, about 1 a.m., we lost power.

On Monday evening, about 6 p.m., we regained power.

Luckily we have a generator. But I didn't have the foggiest idea how to start it up so I had to wait for J to come home from work and start it. Which means K and I were in the house Friday with no heat or electricity until about 4:00 in the afternoon. That's a long time. It wasn't that bad in the morning - and we WERE able to get the fireplace going (it's a gas fireplace), but that didn't exactly warm the house up -- just the family room. By the time J arrived, we were wrapped up in blankets. I know there were people who refused to leave their unheated homes for DAYS. I don't know how they did it.

You don't realize how much you take electricity for granted. Because we have a well, K and I couldn't even flush toilets while waiting for J to get home (the pump is electric so if we flushed, the tank would empty into the bowl but the tank wouldn't refill, which means there'd be no water to refill the bowl with the NEXT flush). I had to use a match to light the burners on my stove. But at least we have a gas stove! Had it been electric, we would have been without any way of eating hot food. I couldn't shower on Friday (well, I could have once J got home but really -- at that point, why bother?). I couldn't fill Bruce's water bowl - that would have required running the faucet and it would have emptied the lines. By the time J got home, it was starting to get dark. We had ONE candle in the house. That's not a lot to work with. And on top of that, I thought the candle stunk. :)

Some (ok, lots) people are still without power. There are some areas being told to expect to be like this until next week some time. We were told it could be anywhere from a few days to 2 weeks. Thankfully we ended up being on the short end of the estimate. I can't imagine going 2 weeks like that. Sure we had the basics once the generator got going, but we had to refill the gas container every day -- we only had one and every store in the area was sold out of them so we couldn't get more to stock up. The generator lasted about 5 hours on a tank of gas, which means one of us had to get up during the night to refill it. Thankfully J did that - he's an early riser anyway. We had to shower with our camping lantern (we have a battery powered one that we found Saturday morning -- forgot we even had it!!), which doesn't exactly provide enough light behind the shower curtain. Forget shaving. That wasn't happening.

No, none of these things are true hardships. I know there are millions of people out there who have it much much worse. But it IS a huge eye opener to see just what it's like NOT to have these things at our fingertips when we normally expect them to be there. We grow up with these things just THERE. They're available. All the time. No questions asked.

Kind of puts a lot of things into perspective.

I'm tired of being tired

2008-12-05T10:28:00.002-05:00

I just cleaned 2 1/2 baths. It used to be that this was a standard weekly event in my house. Now it completely wipes me out.

I hate this.

I keep telling myself that maybe if I got back on the treadmill, I"d have more energy during the day. But I don't have enough energy to GET ON the treadmill to begin with.

It's a vicious cycle.

Twenty more weeks. Then I'll be tired from not sleeping. But THAT is a different type of tired, in my opinion. I can nap and feel better. This tiredness from doing routine things is ridiculous.

Oh - Wednesday K and I went Christmas shopping for the day. We were gone for 7 hours.

I felt like I had run a marathon. I couldn't WAIT to go to bed that night.

I remember when I used to have regular shopping days like that. And it never bothered me. :(

Wow - it's been a while.

2008-12-03T19:10:00.002-05:00

I didn't realize it's been WEEKS since I've blogged. I guess I haven't had much to say.

Let's see - lots of little snippets of info.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Friday before Thanksgiving, we went to the BIG ultrasound. We found out the sex of the baby, which resulted in a very disappointed 11 year old little girl. See, she was really hoping for a sister, but will be getting a brother.

We have NO idea what to do with a boy. We have a girl. And for 11 years, we've only known girl stuff. I have 3 nieces. I don't know what to do with boys! Ack! This is going to prove to be very interesting.

~~~~~~~~~~~

After the u/s, we drove to PA to pick up another Uhaul full of stuff from our house. We had storage shelves in the basement that were packed to the gills with crap. Now those storage shelves and those bins are neatly organized in our basement here in NH. And our basement in PA looks a LOT bigger because there's so much more space down there.

It was great to be "home" and surrounded by my stuff again. I also took a lot more kitchen stuff, which makes me feel a lot better. I'm not as stressed about being here now. I still wish I had a couch, but I can live without one for a little while longer.

Oh the best part? We took the washer and dryer! No more trips to the laundromat for me! Yahoo!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~

J had the week of Thanksgiving off. We got oodles of things done in the house. He set up all that basement shelving and totally organized the basement. It looks great. He also built our new grill, which was badly needed (unfortunately we keep forgetting to buy a propane tank for it!). We also put some vinyl stair treads on the basement stairs, which apparently have freaked out Bruce. He will NOT walk on them. He walks up and down the stairs, pressed up against the side of the staircase in the little 6" section where there's no tread. Weird dog.

~~~~~~~~~~~

K is thinking of auditioning for a PBS show that's filmed in Boston. It's called Fetch! and it's about science and exploring, and the open casting call is the 2nd week of January. She's never seen the show (but I'm sure that now that she knows about it, she'll want to watch it) but the activities the kids do really interest her. She needs to make the decision about whether or not to audition, but I think she'd really have a blast doing it. They only film during the summer, on weekends, and over school vacations because they don't want kids missing school. She wants to get a friend to go with her to audition -- let's see if she can convince one of her friends from school.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I scrapbooked last weekend for the first time in a very long time. It felt good. I need to get back into a regular routine of doing it. I'm so far behind - further than I've ever been. And when we found out we were moving in early summer, I was almost completely caught up. Ugh.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok so I can't think of anything else to say. Maybe this is why I haven't blogged in weeks.

Great Therapy

2008-11-12T12:32:00.002-05:00

Yesterday a friend of mine who lives only 90 minutes away, drove up to my house to spend the day. I showed her around (apologizing profusely about how empty it is and how embarrassed I am to have anyone here because of it) and then we sat down and started scrap booking.

When we started to get hungry, we took a ride to a little town about 30 minutes away and had a great lunch. Then we went to Michael's so she could buy a 12" trimmer like the one I just got (the Making Memories one - it's awesome!). She tried it at my house and was instantly hooked. :)

When we got back to the house, we made some tacos for supper, and then played a game of Disney Scene It (dd's request).

She headed home around 9:00.

I had forgotten how much I missed adult contact during the day. In my old house, I was surrounded by stay-at-home moms so if I did so much as take Bruce out to go to the bathroom, I usually saw someone outside. And I had regular "scrapping dates" with people so we could get together. And I volunteered at school so I was with people during those days. For 2 1/2 months here, I've had NO adult contact at all. It's lonely. And sort of sad, actually.

Then today one of my PA neighbors called. We talked for 3 hours!! When I told J, he said, "I couldn't stand to be on the phone with anyone for 3 hours! I'd go nuts!" but this is someone I saw 3-4 times a week, and talked to regularly when we lived in PA. I haven't spoken to her since we moved. I didn't realize how much I missed her until she called. And of course I immediately started crying (so did she).

But both of these events were like really good therapy for me. I feel GOOD. I had 2 good days! I'm motivated to do more. I WANT to scrapbook now! For 2 1/2 months my supplies have been sitting at my feet and I've done nothing. But now I see them and I'm actually interested in using them again!

I need to have people here more often. Obviously it has a good impact on me. I should meet people but I honestly don't know how. :( I know I could go to K's school and volunteer but I don't even know what their procedures are -- 5th grade isn't usually in need of "mother helpers" and I don't even know where to begin to find out who DOES need help. I'm so out of the loop with these things. In PA, I was so heavily involved with PTO that I knew exactly what help was needed and I was always there to lend a hand. I do have the PTO President's email address. Maybe I should bite the bullet and ask her if there are any committees... but would I be opening up a can of worms? Ugh.

Anyway, my point is that adult contact during the day is a GOOD thing and I definitely want to do it more often. :)

Progress is being made

2008-11-07T12:45:00.002-05:00

So we've been in this (empty) house for 2 months. No blinds, no curtains, no furniture. Just us and a few scattered pieces of furniture that we were able to move ourselves. Pretty bleak.

On top of that, for those 2 months, I was sick and exhausted. I couldn't eat anything (still can't drink anything, but at least I can eat now. And I manage to choke down about a bottle of water a day. I know it's not enough, but it's better than not having ANY water, right?) and I slept for most of the day while K was in school. So maybe it's a GOOD thing that there was nothing in the house. It wouldn't have ever gotten unpacked.

But this week I feel better (minus the drink thing). A lot better.

I hung curtains in my scrap room.

I hung blinds in the master bedroom (dd doesn't want any in her room. She faces the back yard, which is woods, so it's not like anyone can see in. Unless you count animals).

I hung a bath towel bar and a hand towel bar in the master bath.

I assembled the free-standing toilet paper holder for the master bath.

All this week! Actually, everything except the scrap room curtains was done today.

Oh, I also spent 2 days organizing all of my scrap stuff! I can start scrapping again! It's all here, at my fingertips. Not as conveniently as it was at my old house, but it's here and I really need to start moving on this stuff. :)

Today I even printed pictures. And uploaded some others onto Snapfish to place an order with them.

J is out of town. He's going to be SHOCKED when he gets home tomorrow. Especially concerning the towel bars. They've been driving him nuts.

Now I know you're all thinking, "then why didn't he just hang them himself?" Well, the man drives 45 minutes each way to work every day. He works anywhere from 12-14 hours. He often CONTINUES working when he gets home. The towel bars took me about 15 minutes to hang. That's it. I think he does enough. I can hang a stupid towel bar. I'm just ashamed at how long it took me to do it.

Now if we could just sell the other house, I could get all of my stuff and take advantage of this sudden surge of energy. My mother has been ITCHING to get up here to help me "do something". What, I don't know. I'm not having her drive 90 minutes to help me hang a towel bar which took me 15 minutes to do. That's silly. And she can't help me with things like painting because she had surgery on her shoulder in June for a torn rotator cuff. She can't do that type of repetitive motion (although she insists she can do SOMETHING to help me paint). If we had the movers up here, she COULD help with things like unpacking the kitchen stuff. Or helping K unpack her toys. But until the house sells, that just isn't going to happen. Much to my dismay.

Speaking of the house, we lowered the price AGAIN and now we're also offering to pay up to $10,000 in closing costs. We're hoping that gets some of the people in that don't have the money for both a down payment and closing costs. Now as long as they can do the down payment, they can buy. I just want to sell that house!

Know anyone looking for a 4 bed, 3 bath home in York, PA? It's in great shape and the buyers are eager.

I hate living like this

2008-11-03T13:34:00.003-05:00

J and I have been emailing back and forth all day about the whole furniture situation.

I hate this. I hate it more than I've ever hated anything in my life. I know it's trivial - it's JUST furniture. But I can NOT continue living like this.

Yet J isn't willing to call the movers yet. He insists that by emptying our still-on-the-market-and-not-going-anywhere-house, we're looking at losing $30-50,000. I think that's an exaggeration. I mean come on - $50,000 less for a house because it's unfurnished? That's insane.

But he wont budge.

At first he said we'd have our stuff by Halloween.

Then Halloween started getting closer and he said, "no - by Thanksgiving" and drove the 8 hours down and picked up a car load of stuff (mostly clothes).

Now we're 3 weeks from Thanksgiving. And this weekend he springs on me that he's thinking of driving down to get another load.

Wait a minute!! The MOVERS could be bringing it ALL here! But no - he thinks maybe we should wait till Christmas.

Ok, then what happens on December 1st, when Christmas is less than a month away? Do we move it out to January? Then February? Then what? Do we live like this indefinitely?

I already told him I was slowly going insane living like this. And I do NOT want people in my house. At all. No visitors. I do NOT want people seeing us living like squatters. Honestly, I feel like we took our little Uhaul of stuff and snuck into an empty house and are staying here until we get caught. There's nothing "homey" about it here. It's empty. It echoes.

He commented this weekend that this is the first time in all of our moves that I haven't even hung blinds up in the windows yet - usually by now I've done all of that. But why bother? I have no curtains to hang up. I have no idea which ones I'll be able to reuse from the other house. So I have to wait. Just like I have to wait for everything else.

I'm tired of it. I don't know how much longer I can do this. When I asked him when we put a limit on it, his reply was, "when you're willing to give up 3 years of my work and a minimum of $50,000". That's NOT an answer! That's a guilt-trip - like this is all my fault. And I'm pissed. And upset. And tired.

I just want to live a normal life. And there's nothing normal about the way we're living.

The End of Daylight Savings Time

2008-11-02T15:13:00.003-05:00

So, apparently we were supposed to turn our clocks back.

For some reason, we live in a fog because we had NO clue. None whatsoever.

Woke up this morning, decided to go to the 9:30 Mass. J goes to write out the check for our budget envelope, which are all kept on his "desk" (which is currently the dry bar). His computer is also on this "desk". So he's looking at something on his computer and yells out to me, "hey! Do you have any idea why my clock on my computer would have the wrong time?"

Um... no.

Then he says, "oh!! Was last night the night we were supposed to turn the clocks back?"

So I find the front page of the paper (which we BOTH had already read) and yup, there it is, clear as day. We gained an hour of sleep.

Who knew! In our little world, it was still the same as always!

Clearly I must be feeling better

2008-10-30T12:30:00.002-04:00

I go from one extreme to another.

Today for lunch I had a can of soup (yes, the ENTIRE can) and a grilled cheese sandwich.

A week ago there was no WAY I'd be able to eat that much in one meal.

Of course I just finished. Let's see how I feel in 30 minutes when it's all sitting in my stomach like a lead balloon.

The Case of the Missing Clothing

2008-10-27T09:24:00.003-04:00

K has been complaining that her "cupcake shirt" has been missing. We also can't find her school gym t-shirt.

Keep in mind we have no furniture yet - it's all still in PA. Which means clothes are in piles on the floor around the perimeter of the room. It's not like it would be hard to miss something. But still, we went through every pile. Sure enough, both shirts are nowhere to be found.

J drove to PA this weekend to get more stuff. He hadn't packed very much in the way of winter clothes so he decided he needed to get more. He also needed to get the titles to our cars so we could register them. But that's another story. Anyway, one of the things he really wanted to get was jeans. He only had 1 pair here.

There were no jeans at the PA house. Not one pair.

Where on EARTH did his jeans go? Are they in some limbo land with K's cupcake shirt and school tshirt? We have searched everywhere in this house (and trust me - there's not a lot of places to look since everything is empty!) and we can NOT find any of these items.

K's shirts I'm thinking maybe got stuck to the washing machine drum at the laundromat. I make it a point to spin the drum as I'm emptying it so that I don't miss any clothes in it, but a tshirt may very well have been stuck somewhere that I couldn't see it. But 3 or 4 pairs of mens jeans?? I think not.

I haven't replaced K's uniform shirt because I refuse to pay $6 shipping on a $7 tshirt from the uniform company. And the store is about 45 minutes away. I'm not driving down there unless I have some other reason to go in that same direction. The school let us "borrow" one and that's the one she'll use until I get my butt down to the Boston area (just north of the city, actually). As far as the cupcake shirt - we had bought it on clearance at Kohl's. Now she wants to go back to Kohl's to see if there are any more left. You KNOW that if we do that, the original will suddenly show up.

But the jeans? I'm more baffled about that than anything. It just makes no sense. One does not LOSE 4 pairs of jeans. At the same time.

We have no clues, so I can't even begin to figure it out.

My dog is a complete spaz

2008-10-24T12:52:00.002-04:00

J left this morning to drive down to our PA house. He's picking up some more stuff (like winter clothes for him and dd -- I just have to go out and buy all new stuff since I'll need maternity clothes for the winter), finally getting our neighbor to take our swingset from us, and to meet up with the woman who's buying our dining room set and, hopefully, have it removed from the house this weekend.

So this morning, he comes down the stairs with his toiletry bag. That's it. No suitcase or duffel bag (he has stuff there). Just his toiletries.

Bruce went INSANE. He knows luggage. He knows luggage means he's going to the kennel, which means he gets a ride in the car.

He was a complete spaz all morning until we left. Jumping, crying, whining, running down the stairs to the garage, coming back up, running back down. Never ONCE did any of us say "ride" or "kennel" or "pack" or anything else that could cause him to believe we're going anywhere. K and I are still home! It's a normal weekend for us (although I'll admit that I"m a little jealous that he gets to be in our house again and I don't. But I truly think it would be too hard to see all of my friends/neighbors again). Bruce will have his normal activities (read: lay around and do nothing) all weekend.

But he was CONVINCED that he was going in that car.

What a nut.

Ugh

2008-10-22T13:13:00.001-04:00

I thought I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. But it seems to have dimmed.

Still feeling like crap.

I'm 14 weeks. That was the magic number when I was pregnant with K. Why can't it be this time too? Because I"m done. I'm sick of this. I just want to crawl under a rock and have someone wake me up when it's April so I can have the baby and get on with my life. Because the way I feel now, there's no "getting on" with anything.

I hate this.

One Word

2008-10-20T19:49:00.002-04:00

Wow. Two blogs in one day. How unlike me.

Anyway, I stole this from http://cloverscommentary.blogspot.com/ and thought it would be fun to try myself. Here we go:

*Use the 1st letter of your last name to answer each of the following with ONE word... *they have to be real places, names, things...nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial

1. What is your last name?.....................................Fitzpatrick

2. 4 letter word...............................................Umm... let's not go there, ok? :)

3. Vehicle: ...................................................Ford

4. City / Neighborhood: .......................................Franklin

5. Boy Name: ..................................................Frank

6. Girl Name: .................................................Francine

7. Occupation:.................................................Farmer

8. Something you wear:.........................................Fedora (Ok, SOME people wear them!)

9. Food: ......................................................Food. Ha! Kidding. flapjacks

10. Found in a bathroom:.......................................fog

11. Reason for Being Late......................................fever

12. Something you shout........................................Four!

13. Animal:....................................................Ferret

14. Body part:.................................................foot

So close...

2008-10-20T13:34:00.002-04:00

I actually felt good this weekend. And today, I still felt good.

And then I ate a yogurt.

Ugh. What a HUGE mistake. I feel like crap now. That funky feeling right at the base of my throat is back, like everything I've ever eaten in my lifetime is about to come right back out. I was missing that horrible feeling and it was a nice change! Now it's back.

So I'm avoiding dairy like the plague. And you have NO idea how hard that is for me. Because I LOOOOVE dairy... milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream, etc. But I'm going to avoid it. And if this kid ends up being allergic to dairy, I can tell you right now he/she will be living on formula because after this morning/afternoon sickness is done and I can eat dairy again, I'm NOT stopping for anyone! Ugh.

Tick tick tick tick tick...

2008-10-18T17:07:00.002-04:00

J & K took Bruce out for a walk in the woods behind our house. We have almost 2 acres, and there's a 2 1/2 acre buffer between us and the next landowner (which is a business that we can't see). So there's lots of area to walk.

They were only out about 30 minutes. When they came back in, J plopped on the floor and spotted a bug on his pants. Dd, who is freaked out about ticks, immediately ran over and said, "IS IT A TICK??" I went to look at it and it didn't look like one, so I went and got a napkin to squish it and kill it.

It wouldn't squish.

Now, if you're not familiar with ticks, you can't just squish them. They're flat. Perfectly flat.

I knew immediately that that's what it was. So we went into the bathroom (tile floor, rather than the CARPET that dh was sitting on) and I inspected dh. We found 3 others on his clothes, but none in his hair, neck, arms, etc. We also checked dd and found zero on her (good thing, because like I said, she freaks when it comes to ticks).

Then we went and got Bruce.

I am not kidding when I tell you we pulled a minimum of 15 ticks off of him. MINIMUM. As the afternoon wore on, more were appearing on his fur. Luckily he's white so it's really easy to see them on him. But just when we thought we had the last one, we'd spot another surfacing in his fur.

We flushed them all (because you can't kill them by just squishing them) and now every time I walk by Bruce, I give hm a once-over.

I can't believe he got that many ticks on him in less than 30 minutes. I hate to think what would happen if he had free reign in the woods!! Sheesh!

House and Baby update

2008-10-16T20:05:00.002-04:00

House first. We had a showing this past Tuesday. It was the first scheduled showing (re: non-open house viewing, which is really just nosey people) since August. I was excited beyond belief. Someone actually requested to see my house.

Unfortunately after looking at 16 houses in one day, they decided they wanted to live on the other side of town (my old town is literally divided between the West and the East side. We lived on the West side. People RARELY cross over to the "other" side, for whatever bizarre reason. I never really did understand the logic). So even though they really liked our house, the location wasn't right.

BUT! I got a call tonight. We have ANOTHER scheduled showing tomorrow at 5:00! We dropped the price on Monday so I don't know if that's what's suddenly generating traffic (dropped it $10K), but I don't care. Something is, and that's all that matters. So, I get my hopes up again. Maybe this will be the one.

We also have another open house scheduled for this Sunday because of the dropped price. But I"m sure that will just bring in more nosey people with no intentions of actually buying. Because people have nothing better to do on Sunday afternoons than to tour houses that are for sale and get sellers hopes up.

Hey - if YOU have nothing to do this Sunday afternoon, please don't go visit a bunch of open houses just to look. Or to "get decorating ideas". It's a waste of time for the real estate agent and there are actually people out there who NEED to sell and aren't just putting their houses on the market to see what they could get for it (we have a neighbor who's had their house on since April for that exact reason - just to see what they could get!! Instead it's screwing up our numbers). It's depressing to see a steady stream of people go through your house and get NO offers. Or lame feedback like "it's actually out of our price range". Well what the heck were you doing looking at it if you knew you couldn't afford it!!! Aaarrrgghh!!

Anyway, now I'm anxiously awaiting 5:00 tomorrow afternoon for these people to see the house I fell in love with 4 years ago. I knew the minute I walked in the door. Why can't someone else feel that way about it?

Ok, 2nd update is the baby. It's still making me sick. Ugh. But, I'm at week 13 and from everything I've been reading, the nausea should stop around week 14. So hopefully this is pretty accurate and after next weekend, I'll be in the clear. I remember feeling GREAT when I was pregnant with K and I actually enjoyed being pregnat. That is SO not the case this time. I'm hating every minute of it. I know - what a horrible, mean thing to say. But it's true. I hate this. Ugh. So I'll burn in hell. At least I wont be nauseas.

Not much to update

2008-10-13T18:38:00.003-04:00

Still waiting for the icky feeling to go away. At least it's taking longer to hit. I actually feel pretty good when I first wake up. Breakfast is ok - just causes a bit of nausea. Then I nap and I wake up feeling ok again. After lunch, again a bit of nausea. But by dinner time, I feel downright icky.

I realized today that part of it may be some slight depression. I'm trying very hard to live with nothing in our house. Honestly - we have nothing in the house.

Look - this is our family room:

Kind of sad, isn't it? That's all we have. A small tv, a small bookcase with dvd's on it, 2 chairs and a recliner. I NEED TO SIT ON A COUCH!!!!!

Sorry. Just needed to get that out.

Anyway, this is my point. My house ECHOES. Do you have any idea how pathetic that sounds? And we have no blinds or curtains. Sure, I could put them up but guess what? The blinds I wanted are being discontinued. Lowes isn't replacing them until December. So I either have to wait till December or choose something else. I haven't found anything else I like. No, I haven't looked all that hard, because I have no desire to spend any amount of time in a store. But I really need to get blinds. The lack of privacy is really getting annoying.

Because you know those trees peeking into the windows all the time can be so bothersome.

I know - privacy. From what?? There's nothing to be private FROM! But I'm so used to having blinds that I feel like I have to have them.

And I can't put up curtains because how am I supposed to match anything? All of my furniture is in the PA house. If I try to buy anything new, I can almost guarantee whatever it is wont match. And I can't just reuse the curtains from the other house because this house has a gazillion windows. Honestly - every room is surrounded by windows. I don't have enough curtains in the other house to use in any room in this house.

I'm just bummed, tired of being tired, tired of being sick, missing having my stuff around, somewhat bored during the day (I can't even read a book at night because we forgot to bring lamps and the overhead lights just don't provide enough light for reading), and a bit lonely. I miss my neighbors. I just want to feel NORMAL again and I don't know how to make that happen. :(

Sorry for the downer of a post. But I couldn't think of anything good to write.

Could it really be letting up?

2008-10-10T17:50:00.004-04:00

Edited at 7:00 p.m. -- I take back everything I said below. I feel like crap. Aaarrrgghh!! It's never going to end!!!!!!!!

First, I have to say I was tagged - a while ago. Something about listing quirky things about myself. But it all happened when I had no internet access so I'm way behind the 8ball in tagging other people and, well, I feel like it's sort of pointless to get in on the game now. Sorry Lisa. But thanks for tagging me! It's nice to know someone thinks of me. The next time there's a tagging game, go right ahead and tag me and I'll be more up to date. :)

So, I'm officially 12 weeks pregnant today. Technically I'm probably a bit more than that because, well, without getting into too much detail, um... let's just say that 12 weeks ago, my dh was out of town and we'll leave it at that. :)

Anyway, I finally got a prescription for fenergren, or some other freaky name, that's supposed to help control nausea. And it does. By knocking you flat on your ass so you sleep for hours on end. Because you know, in the first trimester of pregnancy, the 10-12 hours of sleep you get every night just isn't enough. Let's toss a few more in for fun.

But at least I don't feel the need to stay within inches of the bathroom. And that's a relief.

Well, the reason I think it's letting up a bit is because today I only took 1/2 a pill, hoping it wouldn't make me quite as drowsy (I do have to drive and be somewhat coherent during the day) and I took that 1/2 pill at 7:00 this morning. It's now almost 6:00 at night and no, I don't feel 100%, but I also don't feel the need to be sitting by the bathroom. And I DID things today! I vacuumed! I wiped down the sinks (ok, the bathrooms need to be cleaned and I merely wiped them down. But isn't that better than nothing?). I made dd clean up her room. I haven't had the energy to do these things in WEEKS!

From what I've been reading, week 14 seems to be the magic turning point. And it makes sense because technically, the baby is 12 weeks old when I'm 14 weeks pregnant. I hadn't realized that with K. It seems "week 1" is actually the week you last had a period! Uh, last I checked, I was NOT pregnant that week. It was 2 weeks later that the whole swimming of the little guys happened. So really the baby has been developing for 10 weeks but I'm 12 weeks pregnant. So when I'm 14 weeks, the baby will be at 12 weeks, which is the end of the 1st trimester, which means the stupid placenta can take over with the nourishment and my hormones can stop wreaking havoc on my body.

At least that's how it works in books. Let's hope I'm a textbook case. Because I'm sooooo over feeling like crap. And J is over it too. I'm really getting on his nerves. Because I have such control over this stuff.

Life likes to throw little surprises now and then...

2008-10-03T15:50:00.002-04:00

So it's been 5 weeks - we've been living in the new house. No furniture, but WE'RE here and that's what matters, right?

Want to know what's been happening in those 5 weeks? Let's start with last week...

We were in the Caribbean. We took a cruise. A much needed vacation. We were on Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, which is currently one of the 3 largest ships at sea. It was huge. We usually cruise on Carnival simply because you can't beat the price (and we use the ship as our mode of transportation to various islands, rather than making the SHIP our vacation, if that makes any sense). But we were curious about this new ship and our very first cruise, about 5 years ago, was on a Royal Caribbean ship (which, at that time, was the largest ship on the seas -- Navigator of the Seas). We wanted to compare Carnival and Royal Caribbean. Well, the verdict is in. Honestly? I don't see why anyone would pay an extra $200 - $250 per person for a RC cruise to go to the same EXACT destinations as a Carnival cruise. The food is just as good on both (actually, there are more main course options in the dining room with Carnival. With RC we had 3 choices that changed each night, plus 4 that stayed the same - so yes there were 7 choices a night, but 4 of them never changed. And one of those 4 was at an additional cost of $14.95 because it was coming from the Chops restaurant, which is NOT included in your price for the cruise, unlike all regular dining room food). The shows were very similar. Sure RC has a skating rink. We used it once and saw one show on it. And RC has a rock wall and a wave pool. Dh and dd each used both once. Were any of those amenities worth $250 more per person? Absolutely not. So if we were to take another cruise, we'd go back to Carnival simply because of the price. I don't see the logic in paying that much more to go to the same places. I've heard people say that they've found the people on Carnival aren't as... I'm not sure what word to use. A better class of people were on RC. Again, I did NOT see that, at all. Oh and the kids program? Dd loved both, but said she made friends much easier and faster on the Carnival ships than on this cruise with RC. Not sure why that is, but it's what she found.

Oh I know what was better on RC - their "thank you" for being a repeat cruiser. We all got gifts in our cabins, including dd (a nice little backpack) and we all got a coupon book (although we really didn't use any besides the Johnny Rockets coupon. Oh there you go - that's ANOTHER place that RC charges above and beyond your fee. They have 2 "nice" restaurants and Johnny Rockets that you have to pay to eat in. Carnival now has 1 nice restaurant, but that's really only on their newer ships). We've been on 3 Carnival cruises and the only thing we ever got for being repeat cruisers was a free drink at the "repeat cruisers get together".

Ok, before that. Hmm... Really didn't do much. Since all of our furniture is still in York, there's not much TO do. I have to go to the laundromat twice a week. That's fun. NOT. And we didn't have cable tv or internet until THIS week. And we only got our phone the week before we went on vacation. So I was really limited with what I could do from day to do.

So what DID I do?

I napped.

Yes, you read that right. I napped. Why? Because that's what you do when you're completely physically exhausted day after day. And nauseated. Yes, nauseated. Morning sickness will do that.

So there you have it. The week before we moved, I found out I was pregnant. We have defeat the odds! We have defied science!! We had been told this wasn't possible, and for 10 years we didn't bother with any protection because we had natural protection. But apparently God had other plans. He was just waiting till I was old. Because I'm 40 now. And dh is 48. Dd will be 11 when the baby is born (April). Guess we'll have a built-in babysitter when we need one.

We're still shocked by the whole thing. And feeling like crap for 6 weeks is getting VERY old. But I'm at 11 weeks now so I should be seeing an end to this soon. At least I hope so. Because I'm so done with the napping thing (I'm so not a napper!) and the eating every 2 hours. I had just lost 15 lbs this summer! I think I've already gained them back.

So that's what we've been up to. Moving, vacationing, making babies... Sounds fun, huh? :)

So far, so good

2008-08-27T20:27:00.002-04:00

As of 4:00 this afternoon, everything is clear to go on Friday for a closing.

Let's hope the mortgage company, lien company, realtors, builders, etc. are all correct. Because we're driving up this weekend if it's the last thing we do.

See, K's not in school yet. I had PLANNED on bringing her to her PA school for the week. But when we got there and I told them we were moving this weekend, they took a step back and basically said, "oh. Sorry. Too bad, so sad. She can't come here".

They refused a weeks worth of tuition.

A Catholic school said no to tuition.

Unheard of, I'm sure.

This really threw us for a loop. We had planned on K being in school this week. Yes, I know it was only a week, but it would get her back into her routines, she'd get to say goodbye to her friends, and life would seem somewhat normal for her, if even for only a week.

But, it wasn't to be so. Now she HAS to be up north next week so she can start in her new school on Tuesday. The school that, when I called, told me not to worry that her uniform hasn't arrived yet - they have one there she can use. And don't worry that I haven't submitted the registration forms - I can do them when I drop her off on Tuesday morning. Hm. Helpful. Hm. Understanding. Hm. What a concept - from a Catholic school.

Anyway, guess what we've been doing at home for the last 2 days? My own little warped version of homeschooling. I don't have any curriculum's. I don't really know where to begin. So I pulled out her summer workbook for math and language arts. Then I had her pick one of the science books (sort of like kid encyclopedias) that we have. Told her to pick a subject and we'd work on it. She chose the Human Body book. Then proceeded to tell me that the chapter on tissues made no sense to her because she couldn't understand most of the words. Great. So much for that idea. I'll have to figure something else out for the next 2 days.

For social studies, I brought her to the Scholastic site and had her review The First Thanksgiving. Tomorrow we'll do a bit more on that.

Oh, speaking of tomorrow, she's "allowed" to go to the school at lunchtime to have lunch with her friends and say goodbye.

Gee, thanks.

After the HUNDREDS of hours I devoted to that school, and the HUNDREDS of dollars I spent on things that I've "donated" without being asked for reimbursement (because we were always told the money was in the budget - submit our receipts. But I never did), the least they could do is let my kid have lunch there one more time before we move. It's not like she'd be disrupting anything at LUNCH.

My poor baby cried herself to sleep last night. She was heartbroken.

Part of me understands that the enrollment process is ridiculous for 1 week. But did they have to ENROLL her? Couldn't they have said, "just let her come in - she wont actually be on the records". No one would have ever known. It's not like the government has anything to do with them. It's a PRIVATE school. They get their funding from tuition. Oh sure they get some state assistance, but it's not based on the number of kids there on day 2, 3 or 4. It's a certain date after 10/1. So she could have gone in, assumed she was enrolled, gotten to spend time with her friends, finally gotten to have her favorite teacher in the world (Mr. B), even if just for a week, and no one would have been harmed by it. Not a soul. Instead my baby cried for 2 days because she wasn't allowed in. It just breaks my heart.

But, it's water under the bridge now. What's done is done. J wants to send them a letter. Pointing out the endless hours I devoted to that school. How things like Grandparents Day, Teacher Appreciation Day, the Halloween Party, St. Nicholas Day, etc., would have NEVER taken place had I not stepped up and said, "oh, no one's taking care of this? Ok. I'll do it" and then handle everything (except the Halloween party - it was a team of us who took that over). He's livid. Being able to do these things is why I'm home. And I feel like we were just slapped in the face.

Ok, I'm still harping on it, apparently. Sorry. I'm trying to put it past me. I just hope it doesn't sour my volunteering decisions with the new school. I want to be as involved there as I was here (well, maybe a smidge less). But boy, it's hard to want to do something after feeling like you're not appreciated.

So, that's the scoop. I'm sort of homeschooling my kid until we close on the house on Friday and then load a Uhaul on Saturday and drive up on Sunday. Ack!

Oh, and Bruce. I called the vet. Apparently I can give him a Benedryl to calm him down for the ride. And here I was thinking I'd have to get some doggy Valium for him. :)

Everything comes full circle eventually

2008-08-23T08:46:00.002-04:00

Well, if everything goes as planned, we'll be closing on a house on Friday and moving in over the weekend.

Let's back up a bit, shall we?

Made the offer on the new construction - they said they would only accept full asking price. So we offered on the one with the great deck. The would only come down 2% from their asking price and also put in the counter offer that they would NOT be "nickel and dimed to death after the inspection".

Ok then. It's been nice doing business with both of you. But you're going to be sitting on your properties for a very long time.

So Thursday J takes a ride over to our original house - the one with the land issue. He decides he wants to see exactly where the company behind it is going to put this new building. Would we be able to see it? So he's walking through the woods and he hears, "Hey!" He turns around and there's a man standing in the clearing. J explains what he's doing there - just checking out the lay of the land because we were supposed to buy that house (pointing backwards) but it fell through.

Mr. M, the man who saw J, says, "oh. So you're the one. I'm so sorry. I'm the person who filed the lien. I never meant to cause you distress - I just had to look out for myself".

Yup, seems J had bumped into the owner of the business behind the property.

So, they went inside the building. Mr. M showed J the plans for what he was planning to build. Told him how everything had transpired with the lien. Praised the builder, telling J that he's definitely one of the best in the area.

Then he asked J why we wanted those extra 2 1/2 acres - because they couldn't be built on so what had WE planned to do with them? J explained that we just wanted space to hike and walk through the woods with our kid and our dog.

Well then! He seemed shocked to hear that. Offered to sign a document giving us unlimited access to those 2 1/2 acres for recreational purposes. He has no intentions of building on it either - he wants it as a buffer zone between his business and the residential area behind him.

So J called me. This was an interesting turn of events. We could potentially still get our original choice of a house. And we could have access to ALL of the original land, with only paying taxes on less than 1/2 of it (for those of you not aware, property taxes in NH are astronomical. Just insanely high - because they're the ONLY form of taxes NH collects).

It didn't take us long to agree that this is what we needed to do. So we called our realtor, took the builders offer from earlier in the week (it was tweaked a bit, but definitely in our favor), called the mortgage company, and got the ball rolling.

The mortgage company is busting their butts to get us all of the paperwork so we can close this Friday, the 29th. We also got a lower interest rate!! How cool is that?

We'll find out Monday if they're able to swing the timing of the closing. Please keep your fingers crossed that they can do it for Friday because moving over the holiday weekend would be ideal! The following weekend we have to be up in MA for a Jimmy Buffett concert so to already be IN New England would make life so much easier.

So everything is happening in a whirlwind now. J's home for the weekend (for the first time in a month) and K is thrilled to have him home - she actually opted to make NO plans with any of her friends so she could spend time with daddy. She misses him so much. Being back in the same house again would be wonderful right now.

So that's our story. I hope it's done. The icing on the cake would be an offer on THIS house this weekend. We have an open house tomorrow. Last weekend the house across the street had an open house and had non-stop traffic for 2 hours -- this is the house that has been for sale for 13 months and I might have seen 5 people see the house in that time frame. Something clicked last week with it because everyone seemed to want to see it. Let's hope that means the market is changing and the same will happen for us tomorrow.

Random thoughts

2008-08-21T11:48:00.002-04:00

No updates on the housing. We made an offer on the gray house with the burgundy shutters. They came back 24 hours later with a counter offer that was only $9,000 below their asking price and they said it was their final offer.

Okey dokey. It's been nice doing business with you. I'm sorry to say that your house is NOT worth $400,000. Looks like we'll be moving on.

So we got to thinking...

That original house - the yellow one on 4 acres that had the land issue? Well, the land situation has been settled. It's now a 1 3/4 acre lot. Sure it's smaller, but those are OUR appliances in that house with OUR carpeting.

The builder offered us an additional $20,000 off if we come back.

We still love that house. It's still our first choice. Would we have preferred the 4 acres? Absolutely. But really -- 1 3/4 is nothing to sneeze at.

J is heading up to the lot today. He's going to walk the 1 3/4 acres and see where this proposed building is going to be built behind it. He seems to remember walking uphill, then downhill, when he walked the lot before. If that's the case, no matter WHERE they put that building, we'll never be able to see it, even in the winter, because the hill will block it (yes, it was that significant). And today J got the plot drawings (I have no idea what they're actually called) showing the proposed development - and from what he can see, the actual building will be 3 lots down from our lot, not directly behind us, which makes a HUGE difference!

So now we have a major decision to make. Do we go back to our original house? We were already getting a great deal on it. The builder was true to his word and refunded us every penny we put into the house. He did it with no questions asked. He's been honest through the entire ordeal - it was HIM that told us there was a lien on the property. He's just not a very good business man - he didn't think the previous purchase and sale was still valid because it was old. But there was no expiration date on it, so it WAS valid. He was at least forthcoming to us to let us know BEFORE we closed on the house - because then it could have been really ugly. In fact, we really had no issues. None whatsoever. We got out of the contract, got our money back, and were able to walk away. But our house is now sitting there for sale. And we can't find another one.

I do NOT want to rent an apartment. The thought of it just turns my stomach. No no no no no. NOT an option. That would be the absolute last, most desperate measure we'd take.

The thought of getting into the house we originally picked just gets better and better every day. I'm sort of relieved that the gray/burgundy house refuses to move on their price - because it gives us an easy out. They're not willing to negotiate so we're not willing to buy their house.

J's actually interested in the original house too. Which really surprised me. He's the one who brought it up first! I was shocked. Then he told me that he'd like to say I'm a wishy-washy flake for going back to it, but he'd have to say the same about himself. :D

K starts school at her old school next Tuesday. She's thrilled. Me? Not so much. I was really hoping to be gone by now. And besides, how much time will she be there? Maybe 3 weeks??? What's the point? She wont even get anything done in that time frame. But she needs to start so that's where she'll go. We went in today to pay the registration fee and the office was closed for a staff meeting. Great. Love driving 15 minutes into town to find I totally wasted my time. Why does the secretary need to be in the staff meeting???

I am utterly and completely exhausted from everything. I could sleep 20 hours a day. Honestly. I want to move and I want to move NOW!! Labor Day weekend would be ideal, but that's next week. There's no way the bank can have everything ready for us to close on the 29th if we decide to go with our original house. Then the following weekend we have tickets for Jimmy Buffett -- so we can't move then. That leaves the weekend of the 13th. Sure, that could work. But it REALLY would have been nice if we could have been living up there BEFORE the Buffett concert. I really don't want to do that drive 2 weekends in a row. Oh, and then the weekend after that -- the 21st -- we leave for a cruise. Out of an airport up there. So we have to go up there AGAIN. That would be 3 weekends in a row.

We need to move next weekend. Period.

Update #4,509,687,067

2008-08-19T09:02:00.005-04:00

So if you're still following my home saga, here's the latest.

And it's a doozy.

Ok, so you remember this house, right?

We made an offer on it yesterday. Yes, we low balled the offer. It's been sitting there for 18 months. The builder is finally putting his own finishing touches on it rather than waiting for a buyer to pick stuff. All that's left to go in is carpeting and hardwood. We figured he'd come back with a counter and we'd eventually get to an agreement, like a normal house-buying experience.

Not so.

Mr. Builder wants his asking price. And nothing less.

Ok then. Let's move on, shall we??

Who pays asking price in THIS market? Is he KIDDING?

So then we went to house #3 which was this one:

We haven't made an offer on it yet. Why? Because we still have an issue with the size of it. It's only 3 bedrooms. And, well, I'm spoiled. I want a NEW house. I don't want someone else's dirt. But I could deal with that aspect of it. The lot is fabulous on this house - just an awesome yard. The house is very nice too, but that 4th bedroom being missing really bugs me.

But it's a good thing we didn't offer on it yet. Why? Because we got a phone call yesterday afternoon from the builder of our ORIGINAL house. Remember this one?

Yeah - that's the one that we were all set to close on. But we found out that the developer had already promised 2 of our 4.3 acres to someone else. We got out of that deal. Got all of our money back (we had paid for upgrades like better flooring and better appliances). Put it behind us and moved on.

But the developer feels bad. He's "truly very sorry" for what he did. And he wants to make amends. He really wants us to buy this house.

So yesterday he offered it to us at $20,000 less than we originally were going to pay. Plus we already got the $10,000 back that we had invested in it. So really we'd be getting it for $30,000 less. Sure it's got a smaller lot now (1.55 acres vs. 4.3), but it was still our original choice of a house.

Do I want to have a "light industrial" building an acre behind my house? I just called the town and it's described as being "condo-like buildings with a variety of shop type assembly facilities and offices". According to the planning dept., they are only allowed to operate during "normal business hours" so weekends and nights they'd be closed.

There are trees behind the house so we'd have a buffer of about and acre between us and this building.

So here are our options:
1. Forget that our original choice is even available at a fabulous price. Make an offer on the smaller house with the great yard and purge a bunch of stuff we don't need since it wont fit in that house.
2. Talk to the developer of our original house and see if he'd be willing to rent the house to us until the entire lot debate is finalized (the 3rd party involved, who had taken this to the supreme court of NH and lost, had 30 days to appeal the decision. He now has 2 weeks left. An appeal has not yet been filed. If he doesn't file, then the "light industrial" building will be built as planned. If he DOES file, then there's a chance that this could drag on in court for months).
3. Buy the original house and take our chances that we never get involved in any sort of property boundary lawsuit (the developer said if anything should happen, he'd cover any legal fees for us).
4. Say SCREW IT ALL and find an apartment to rent for 6 months and continue looking each weekend until we find the perfect house.

It's all pretty funny now. Really - it is. I mean come on - what more could happen? How many houses can we offer on before we actually get to buy one??

We're at a complete standstill.

Oh, and dh drove up to Salem, NH this past weekend. We had taken the entire town off the list because we were told it would take about 90 minutes for him to get home because traffic on that highway is a nightmare all the time. Well, he went up by some back roads. He could have done it in about 10 minutes longer than his commute to the blue house. So we went back and looked at those houses again.

But, after sleeping on it, he doesn't think going with that town is the right move. There's no "downtown" (which we like to have) and the nearest one is 20 minutes away. All this town has to offer is a huge mall and a race track. So I think we'll stick with our original plan and try to figure out which of these houses to go with and NOT throw another one into the game.

So that's my story. Pretty funny, huh? I'm at a loss. Completely at a loss about what to do.

Nothing yet

2008-08-16T15:46:00.001-04:00

We've narrowed it down to 2 houses.

Did I already blog about that? I probably did.

We're still going back and forth on the 2 of them.

I just don't understand why this is turning out to be the most difficult decision of our lives. :(

Crunch time...

2008-08-14T10:12:00.004-04:00

The builder/developer has agreed to give us back our invested money. We'll be signing a release today to get out of our original purchase and sale agreement.

Which means we have to pick another house. Quickly. K starts school in 12 days.

Here are the 2 we've narrowed it down to. One is in MA, one is in NH. We liked both of these in June. They were on our list then and they're still on our list. Here are my issues with each one.

House #1 -- MA

Facts about the house:

Of the 2, it's the more expensive one, but lower taxes.
It's new construction - we could still choose flooring. But we have to start a lawn from scratch (landscaping is in - it just wasn't in when this picture was taken).
It's the same size as what we have now (we had wanted to downsize).
It's in a bad school district (we'll be using private schools).
We could easily fit all of our STUFF in this house and still have plenty of storage.
We'd be close to everything. It's in a city, but has 1 1/2 acres so it feels like we're in the country.
Builder will finish the 3rd floor for us (which is what will make it the same size as our current house).
It will be the lowest priced house (so far) in a very expensive neighborhood (thanks to the housing "crisis").
We don't know how many kids are in the 'hood. Although J stopped by and talked to a neighbor one day last week and was told there were a lot. We just have never SEEN any.
Abuts conservation land so our 1 1/2 acres would spread out and there would be no development behind us.
Would not be able to move in until 2 weeks after a signed P&S (which is AFTER school starts).

Here's house #2, which is in NH:

Facts about the house:

Has a good size lot (3 1/2 acres)
The deck in the back is incredible!
Our stuff wouldn't fit as well -- it would fit, just not as compactly and evenly as in the other one.
It's only 3 bedrooms (vs. 4)
Gorgeous kitchen.
It's in an established neighborhood and we know there are kids (we met the owners and asked)
School district isn't the best, but it's not the worst (we'd still use private).
Lawn is already established, plus they've done upgrades like a water softening system and irrigation system.
Buying a pre-existing home is buying someone else's problems.
Taxes are exorbitant (so much for the "tax free" living in NH - they just get you on property taxes).
Price of house is significantly lower than first house.
They just had the hardwoods refinished - they look brand new. Family room carpet was just installed in May.
They're desperate to sell - they said they could be out in a week if we needed them to be.

As you can see, there are good things and bad things associated with each house. I woke up this morning leaning towards #2. Now, just 4 hours later, I'm thinking we need to go with #1. I wonder how I'll feel after lunch?

And for those that think #1 is boring looking, you need to go to New England. It's a classic New England style home. We know people who've paid a VERY large sum of money to get a "reproduction colonial", which is what this is, because they wanted a house from the 1700's without the structure of a house from the 1700's. Yes, there are still houses that old in New England. And yes, people buy them. Intentionally. :) When I first moved to PA, I couldn't believe that none of the houses looked like this - I truly expected to see the same thing I grew up with. House #2 -- that's what they build down here in PA. That style is finally making it's way north, I guess. :)

Anyway, those are the 2. We like them both. We can see ourselves living in either one, and being quite happy. But which one do we choose??? Ack!! I hate making decisions!

The proposal

2008-08-13T10:35:00.002-04:00

Well, they came through with their proposal yesterday.

Initially it was verbal. Even after we explicitly stated that it MUST be in writing. So after J argued with OUR realtor that she had to go back and get it in writing, they finally submitted it - 4 hours after our requested cut off.

And of course, it's not what we were hoping for.

Well, it is. Sort of. But it's not good enough. There's still too much of a risk of us getting tangled up in a lawsuit. And we really really don't want that.

So the info is now with our lawyer, who is reviewing it. And he's going to advise us how to get out of the contract and write up something for the developer requesting we be refunded the money we've already invested in this house. And we will walk away.

I'm sad. I'm frustrated. I feel a million different things.

We've narrowed our alternate choices down to 3 other houses (I know a few days ago I said we had made a decision, but we second guessed ourselves and now we're back to debating each one again). Each has good and bad points about it. Yesterday I was leaning towards one and today I'm leaning towards another. We need to make a decision about this. Hopefully we'll be out of our original contract by this afternoon and tomorrow morning we can offer on another one.

We can NOT continue living like this. J's miserable. I'm miserable. K thinks it's fabulous that she might get to go back to her old school (NOT going to happen!). I haven't sprung the "living out of a hotel" news on her yet. In my mind, we ARE leaving next weekend. If we have to kennel Bruce for a week or 2, so be it. He'll survive. But she WILL start school up there on the 26th. Do I want to live out of a hotel? Absolutely not. But J has been doing it for 6+ weeks. I think I can handle 1 or 2. The only hesitation is that one of the 3 houses is in a totally different area, affecting which school K would attend. So we need to make a decision so I can get her registered at one of these schools.

Why is this so hard?? It's a house? Like I've been telling K for months - it doesn't matter where the house is or what it looks like, as long as we're all in it together. So why can't I get past this and live with that same belief? Well, I can. The problem is that I can see us living quite happily in any one of the 3 houses. So I go back and forth and back and forth. And so does J.

I told J last night that I'm about ready to just stick the 3 addresses in a hat and pull one out and go with that house. Honestly -that's how desperate I'm feeling about this. If we can't come to a decision, what does it matter??

They'll probably make us move in 18 freakin months again anyway.

Update on the fun housing situation

2008-08-10T17:32:00.002-04:00

On Thursday night, J and I decided I needed to be up there to look at more houses. If this falls through, we need a back up plan. So I booked a flight, found people to watch K for the weekend, and took off Friday afternoon.

Friday night we re-toured 3 homes we had seen in June. Two of those homes had made it to our final list before we chose the "cursed" home. The third was one that I thought was disgusting. Honestly - it was filthy and smelled awful. But they changed realtors and the pictures online showed that they clearly had cleaned it up and put fresh paint throughout. So we though maybe it could be had for a significantly lower price and we could finish "cleaning" it up.

We were wrong.

Some people are just pigs.

Anyway, that one came off the list immediate. But the other 2 remained on - as they have been since June when this all began.

Saturday our realtor had to go out of town so she had a coworker take us around. We saw 7 houses.

Of those houses, 2 were much too formal for my tastes. Honestly one of them felt like it was completely staged. There was nothing "warm and fuzzy" about it. I was afraid to touch anything. J said, at one point, "I'm thinking that this family room has never seen a beer or a football game". And he's so right. It was stuffy and uptight. It was beautiful, but so not us.

Two other houses we determined were just too far of a commute for the price. We could get closer to J's job for the same price. We didn't love them enough to justify almost an hour of driving each way for him.

In the end, we ended up with 3 houses on our new list. The 2 from June, plus one other one.

In the meantime, there's the original house, which is still sitting there with a Purchase and Sale agreement on it, signed by both of us, with a closing date on it that was 2 weeks ago.

J has an appointment with the lawyer tomorrow afternoon. We'll find out what our rights are and what our options are. The builder/developer has till Tuesday to give us his proposal as to how he's going to remedy this situation. We then need to decide, based on what the lawyer says and what the proposal is, if we're going to stay with that house or move on to our 2nd choice.

We don't want to screw this guy. We don't want to sue him for all it's worth. We just want to get out of the contract and get back not only our deposit (which we'd be able to get back anyway), but the money we spent in good faith by having upgraded appliances, carpeting, tile, and an irrigation system installed. That's money we never would have spent if we weren't planning on buying that house. Just let us walk away with our money, please. Hopefully he'll be amicable to that and we can start over.

If not, we bring him to court. And we can have criminal fraud charges brought against him because he deliberately deceived us. We specifically asked how big the lot was before we made an offer. We emailed them the 2 different MLS listings showing the 2 different lot sizes. They told us it was definitely the larger size and never gave an explanation as to why there was one with a smaller lot size listed. We don't WANT to go down that road, but if he makes this difficult, we're prepared to do it.

So we have house #2 picked. It's also new construction (we've already researched the developer!) and can be ready 2 weeks after a signed P&S. Which is good because K needs to be up there by 8/25 to start school on 8/26. Which means if we can get a signed P&S by the end of this week, the house should be ready by Labor Day weekend. We'd only have to live out of a hotel for a few nights.

I don't want to jinx myself by doing anything with this house until we know we can offer on it. I'm not willing to take any risks here. We need to be living together as a family. This just gets harder and harder every day. All of you military wives -- I always suspected it was hard when your husband's were deployed, but I never really understood just how hard it really was. At least my husband isn't in danger (which would just add a whole different element to the difficulty!). My heart goes out to all of you who live this way for months and months at a time. It's only been 6 weeks for us and it's been the longest 6 weeks of my life. You deserve so much thanks from all of us for putting up with what you endure. Thank you.

I'll keep my blog updated as I get info from J regarding where we stand. Please keep your fingers crossed that this doesn't become a big lawsuit and we can walk away with everyone happy. Because I really don't want to go down that road.

A Million Different Thoughts

2008-08-07T10:12:00.004-04:00

J and I talked on the phone for over an hour last night. And he HATES the phone. We just had to figure out WHAT to do.

We looked at every single house available online. Every one. Of all of the houses (and there were a lot), there were 7 that we were somewhat interested in.

Not ONE of them made us yell "WOW!" and make us want to walk away from the house we're supposed to buy.

Oh and on top of that, every single one of them was at least $125,000 MORE than the house we were supposed to buy. And had less land. Even if we lost those 2 1/2 acres, the other houses had less land than what we'd end up with at OUR house.

We want OUR house.

But we know that may not happen.

We need to find out what exactly the puzzle company means by "light industrial manufacturing". That's what they planned to build on that spot. Does that mean we'll hear machinery 24 hours a day? Will we be able to smell/see anything? Or is it people doing piecework inside? Because if it's the latter, we don't really care. But if we can see/smell/hear stuff, then we don't want it there. One and 3/4 acres is still a good amount of land. Still enough that we'd have lots of woods behind us. We'd still have privacy. But I don't want to KNOW there's a factory blowing smoke in my yard.

Hmmm... maybe it would get rid of some of the bird-sized mosquitoes. :D

We'd also expect some sort of a refund for losing those 2 1/2 acres. We specifically chose that lot because of it's size. We WANT a lot of land. So if we end up with less than what we thought, we expect to pay less.

J said he really doesn't believe the developer was being malicious in his intents. He was brutally honest with J. And that scores HUGE points with him. Honesty is one of THE most important traits to J and having this guy stand there and basically say, "I screwed up" was MAJOR. He actually handed J a copy of his Purchase & Sale agreement that he signed with the puzzle company. He basically tied his own noose around his neck. But he told J that he wants to fix it.

The question becomes HOW will he fix it and how long will it take? Because we don't have a lot of time right now. Every day is costing us money. J is still living in a hotel. At our own expense. He's still planning on flying home every other weekend. At our own expense. The longer we can't live in the same house, the longer he has to continue with these expenses. And they need to stop. They were supposed to stop next weekend. J seriously doubts this will be settled by then.

In the meantime, K is supposed to start school in 3 weeks.

As of today, she's not registered anywhere. She has no book bag, folders, notebooks, pencils, uniform, shoes - nothing. Because we don't know where she'll be going to school. I could homeschool, but I don't even have the materials for that!

We need our life back in order. I need to sleep like a normal person. I need to be with my husband. My daughter needs to be with her father. I can't wait forever.

But I want the house we picked. I want MY house. I don't want to start the search all over again.

Life is on hold

2008-08-06T16:59:00.002-04:00

I don't even know where to begin.

We will NOT be moving into the house next weekend.

J did NOT close today like he was supposed to. J may NEVER close on the house.

See, the property is behind the Ravensburger Puzzle factory. We can't see it or hear it - it's far enough away. But it's THERE.

Well, the developer of our sub-division apparently made a bargain with Ravensburger -- they give him access to their land (including using some of it for fill) so he can begin this subdivision and in return he would sell them 2 1/2 acres of land for $100. They agreed.

The problem is, he never did anything with that agreement. The closing on it never happened. But he took HIS end of the bargain. He used the land. He tore down trees. He used it for fill.

Ravensburger didn't get their 2 1/2 acres.

Oh, where is that 2 1/2 acres??

On OUR part of the subdivision. It's actually a little more than 2 1/2 because we THOUGHT we were buying almost 4 1/2. If they removed Ravensburgers share, we're down to 1 3/4.

Ravensburger put a lien on the property yesterday.

Seems they had planned on building another facility on that 2 1/2 acres.

Basically, in our back yard.

J has been talking with his corporate lawyers all afternoon. He met with the developer today and got this information. Called me to fill me in (and honestly - I'm sure I got some of the details wrong because I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open for a good 10 minutes) then drove back to work to meet with lawyers. Because this is a relocation, the company has already paid for the title search (good thing they did that!) and the land survey, which obviously was wrong!! Although I guess that depends on who's plot plan you look at.

We're also in this for a large sum of money. We gave a deposit. We paid out of pocket for the overage for the appliances and flooring. We paid to have an irrigation system installed. We had a SIGNED purchase and sale agreement! We've built houses before. We never in a million years dreamed this would happen.

So now we need to figure out what we can do. Can we walk away? That's what we'd like to do. But what are the legal ramifications of doing so? And how hard will it be to get our money back? Those are some of the questions J was asking the lawyers. And then we need to find one of our own after he gets this council.

I just spent the last hour looking up properties online. Clearly we're going to need to find something else. And quickly. Hell, we agonized over choosing THAT house! How are we going to choose another? And the funny thing is that a lot of the houses we looked at in June are still for sale. And we never threw away our notes from any of the houses.

Fate?? I have no idea. But what possessed us to NOT toss our notes?? Houses that we took off the list almost immediately - I still have everything.

Weird.

So life is on hold. We don't know when we're moving. I don't know what to do about K's school. Register her here? Keep her registered up there and we move into a hotel (oh that would be a blast with a 100 lb. stupid dog!)? I'm at a loss. I need some answers.

Back home for only 2 weeks!

2008-08-04T18:29:00.003-04:00

I'm home from my whirlwind week in New England. Here's a rundown of what we did:

Friday -- drove to RI. Took 7 hours. Ugh.
Saturday -- saw Lee Ann Rimes, Sammy Hagar, Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney in concert. EXCELLENT time! Awesome show! Can't wait for next year!
Sunday -- tried to go to the New England Patriots' practice but got torrential downpours instead. Oh well. Maybe next time.
Monday -- Drove to the new house in NH so K could see it and so we could be there for the inspection. K loved it and picked the bedroom on the 3rd floor (we'll be on the 2nd) which really surprised us!
Tuesday -- Scrapped all day with 2 friends.
Wednesday -- drove BACK to NH to visit 2 schools. Decided on the 2nd one (they're actually in MA, but they're the closest Catholic schools to our house). Need to get her registered. K and I decided to stay with J at his hotel.
Thursday -- Ok, honestly - I can't remember what I did Thursday. I think I shopped??? I'm not sure. Pathetic, I know.
Friday -- drove to J's office and we had dinner in Salem, MA which is a very cool little town. I spent the night there with him.
Saturday -- J and I drove up to the new house because we wanted to see what was completed on our punch list of items (we were supposed to close on Thursday but ended up not doing it because there were some things we wanted fixed/altered before the house became officially ours). Made an updated list of what still needed to be done. Then J and I drove back to RI (this is now the 3rd time in a week that I make this drive) and at night we went to the Bruce Springsteen concert. J doesn't particularly like Bruce (ok, he actually DISlikes him) but went so that he could spend some time with me. He ended up sitting in the car in the parking lot about 1/2 way through because he was bored out of his mind and was NOT enjoying himself. At least he got to finish his book. :)
Oh, and I have to add that the concert started 2 HOURS late. Why? Because we got MORE torrential downpours! It was hard to see across the stadium (it was at Gillette Stadium, where the Patriot's play - so when I say "across", I mean across a football field) because the rain was coming down so hard. Since he started so late, he didn't finish till 12:30. Which means I didn't get home till 2 a.m.! I'm too old for this!
Sunday -- had breakfast with some friends and then did the 7 hour drive home. Emptied the truck, put the gate in the back, and went to pick up the dog from the kennel.

In our hectic week, we decided that being apart really sucks. A lot. So K and I are moving up there in 2 weeks. The weekend of the 16th, to be exact. We're not having the moving company do it though, because J isn't comfortable having an empty house on the market. So we're packing up the "bare necessities".

Do you have any idea how hard that is to do?? I have no idea what I should take, what we can live without, what I'll bring that's useless, etc. Yes, I have a list. And I add to it regularly. But I need to keep in mind that I can't take too much stuff because we need THIS house to still look lived-in. This is not an easy task!

Needless to say, the next 2 weeks will be pretty hectic. Again. And of course K is panicking about which friends she can see. We now have 6 sleepovers scheduled over the next 2 weeks. Ack! Have I lost my mind? She's going to be a bear by the time this is over!
Friday -- drove BACK to RI

The big adventure

2008-07-24T21:41:00.002-04:00

Heading out Friday morning for the long drive to RI. We have a VERY busy schedule over the next week.

Friday - drive for 7 hours. That's always fun.
Saturday - Kenny Chesney concert in Foxboro, MA. My sister and I are the 2 losers going alone. We don't know anyone else who likes country music so we suck it up and go just the 2 of us every year. But we have a blast and wouldn't miss it for anything!
Sunday - might go out on the boat with S & J in the morning. Then Sunday afternoon we're heading BACK up to Foxboro to watch the Patriot's training practice. Woo hoo!
Monday - be at new house at noon for inspection.
Tuesday - scrapbook all day with C.
Wednesday - drive up to new house AGAIN to tour schools.
Thursday - close on the new house. J will get to sleep in it on an air mattress. I'm not sure if I should say "lucky him" or not.
Friday - open. I had told K we'd go to the beach. Maybe this is when we'll have to do it.
Saturday - back to Foxboro for the 3rd time in a week - this time to see Bruce Springsteen in concert.
Sunday - do the 7 hour drive again.

We have an open house scheduled here on Sunday the 3rd so I can't get home till after 3:00. Then at 4:00 I can go pick up Bruce (the dog, not The Boss).

My car is loaded. In the morning I'll add my houseplants to the car - bringing those to mom to take care of until we move. The movers wont take "living things" and I'm not going to want to transport them AND the dog when we actually do move. So they're taking a little vacation in RI for a few weeks (hopefully that's all). I'll also add the cooler with our drinks/snacks and our bags of clothes.

Sheesh. I hope I can fit it all.

I'll have limited internet access up there. Whenever I try to get online, my mother comes and stands behind me to see what I'm doing. It's incredibly frustrating. So much so that I prefer NOT to go online just to avoid it.

So until next week...

Relaxation

2008-07-21T15:31:00.003-04:00

Spent the weekend with 17 other women and we laughed, talked, scrapbooked, ate, and just enjoyed the quiet of the woods around us.

Sometimes we all need to recharge.

I didn't bring my camera (I never do when I go on these retreats) so I can't share pictures. But I can tell you that I'm going to miss all these women in the PA/MD/DE/VA area. They're the ones I've gone to retreats with since I started retreating in 2004. And now? It will be too far. I'll have a whole NEW group of women to meet. And that will be weird.

Maybe we'll venture back down at some point and I can give enough advance notice that we can all get together again. Maybe. But plans like that often get talked about but never actually materialize.

Thanks for a great weekend ladies. I'll miss your smiles on future retreats. :)

Well that was depressing...

2008-07-13T12:12:00.003-04:00

Had a showing on the house this morning. They were supposed to be here "between 11:00 and 12:00". They showed up right around 11:30.

And they were gone by 11:35.

That's NOT a good sign.

What's wrong with my house??

Was it because my @%&$* dog saw them pull in the driveway and ran towards them? Dd was supposed to be entertaining him outside. She couldn't hold him back.

Was it because I forgot to take the stupid gate down that keeps the #$!#^#% dog from going on the second floor? At least they knew to step over it.

Was it because I didn't have fresh baked cookies on the counter? I'm all out of cookie dough.

Was it not clean enough? I spent several hours yesterday and 3 hours today vacuuming, washing floors, adjusting window blinds so they were all perfectly aligned...

I'm so not good at this. And you'd think I'd be able to take it all with a grain of salt. I've been through it enough times. But I LOVE this house!! Why wouldn't anyone who walked into it??

EDITED: We heard back. Apparently they really liked the HOUSE - hated the back yard. See, we back up to the common area of the development. They don't want people to be able to be that close to their property.

So it's a good thing they didn't want it. They wouldn't have fit in here anyway.

We have floors...

2008-07-12T16:25:00.002-04:00

J went to the house today. He's spending the weekend up there so instead of working all day, he opted to just work for the morning and took a ride to our new house.

Our dining room has floors. Yahoo!!

Not quite sure why they didn't do the foyer too, because it's the same hardwood. But maybe the dining room took all day. Who knows.

Still haven't gotten our quote on the carpeting and it's starting to annoy me. We can't move on until I pick carpeting. I can't pick carpeting until I get the pricing. Where is my pricing??

J said that today, at the house, it was gorgeous out. About 75°, a slight breeze, and just dozens of birds chirping away. Here? Not so much. It's about 90°, there's a breeze NOW but the air was stagnant earlier, and I haven't heard a bird chirp in ages. A neighborhood needs trees for that. And that is something we sorely lack.

He also found the perfect spot to hang a hammock. How cool is that?? Although with bugs being exceptionally large in NH, he may not WANT to have a hammock in the yard. :)

In other news, I decided to have a "workshop" tonight. My house is forever spotless, which is nice, but boring. It's like I never have anything to do anymore. So yesterday I sent out an email to my customers letting them know that I've decided enough is enough - my tables are going back up and I want someone to join me to scrapbook tonight! I have 3 people coming! I couldn't believe it. I never got that many people when I had workshops planned months in advance. Go figure.

Oh, and tomorrow we have a showing on this house!! I'm very excited about that! It's one thing to have people come through an open house - they may be doing it just to be nosy. But to call a realtor and ask to set up a specific appointment to see a house - that shows interest. I hope it has good results. Of course this means I have to take DOWN the stupid tables tomorrow. But that's ok. I'm happy to if it means having someone come see my house.

Wish us luck tomorrow, please. The sooner we get an offer on this house, the sooner K and I can move north to be with J.

Moving at a snail's pace

2008-07-11T09:44:00.002-04:00

So we signed the Purchase & Sale agreement 2 weeks ago.

The builder has done NOTHING in that time. NOTHING. Not one thing has changed in the house. I've picked out tile, carpeting, appliances -- and NOTHING has been done.

J is about ready to walk away -- he doesn't care about losing the deposit.

We've told the builder that the sooner he can finish, the better. J's living in a freakin' hotel. It's a wasted expense. Get him IN that house.

Yet there it sits, looking exactly how it looked when I saw it a month ago.

I'm tired. And I'm sick of this. I just want to know where I'm going to live. I just want to live WITH my husband. I want to know which school K will be attending. But I can't do ANY of that. And I hate it.

My mom and sister just left after spending 3 days here. They came down for one more trip. At this rate, they may be coming down again some day because it feels like we're never going to leave here.

Oh and our house here? Been on the market for 2 weeks. We've had 2 people come through. That's it. One was an elderly couple -- and I assume they came through looking for decorating ideas (which they will NOT find in MY house!) because why would an elderly couple need 4,000 sq. ft and 4 bedrooms? But as far as coming to see decorating ideas, people do that all the time around here. I personally think it's odd, but whatever. The other people were really interested, really liked it - but then we never heard squat from them again.

I can't move until we at least have an offer on this house.

And now I can't move because we may not even have a house to move into.

Every time we've been relocated, it's been a very smooth, easy transition. This time? Not so much. And I hate it.

Dishwashers and microwaves and stoves, oh my!

2008-07-02T20:33:00.002-04:00

I know - it's been a while.

I'm very stressed out. Over, of all things, appliances. Stupid, huh?

See, when we bought the house we're in now, it had all top-of-the-line Kitchen Aid appliances. I LOVE my appliances. Seems our new house will have a $1400 allowance for all but the fridge.

Do you KNOW what $1400 will buy you in stoves, dishwashers and microwaves?

Not much.

At least not as much as what I currently have. And I guess I'm spoiled because I want what I currently have.

Yes, we can go over the allowance. But I'm married to Mr. Cheap. And I'll have to really finagle my way into a higher price. I've already jacked up the price of the house by changing the kitchen flooring to tile, adding in an irrigation system, having garage door openers installed, having the house wired for a generator, and now I want to upgrade the appliances. So I need to tread lightly.

I went to Lowe's tonight to see what they had (the builder has referred me to a small store in Salem, NH, which is the company they contract out for appliance installation) and learned that the builder-recommended Frigidaire appliances aren't all that great. The sales person at Lowe's actually told me to stay away from Frigidaire dishwashers.

Great.

I think tomorrow I'm going to go to an appliance store. Not a major national chain like Lowe's or Sears -- a store that specializes in appliances (like the one I'd be using in NH, except I'm not IN NH so I can't go look there!). Maybe they'll have more to look at. Maybe I can find something more in our price range (rather than 3 times our price range) that I like and that seems to be equivalent to what we have.

Oh, and we'll need a new fridge. Because ours, which we weren't planning on leaving with this house, wont fit in the new spot for the fridge. Our current fridge is too tall. So let's tack another $2000 onto our already increasing bill.

Sigh.

This was supposed to be fun. It WAS fun 10 years ago when we did this. But this time? Not so much. It's stressful. Maybe it's because of the weird feelings I have on moving. I want to, but I don't want to. Ugh. This should be easier!!!

Oh and one more thing. I need to pick out carpeting too. Same scenario - they referred me to a local store so I have to find one HERE that carries the same brands, pick out my carpets, and then get the ordering information to be sent up to the NH store.

Sigh.

Want to see where we're going to live?

2008-06-22T19:23:00.003-04:00

Ok, so maybe I'm jumping the gun here.

We're in the middle of negotiations. We made an offer, they countered. We countered their counter. Not by much - just a smidge lower than their counter. Now we're waiting to hear back. If they say no, we'll go with what they asked for when they initially countered.

Clear as mud? :)

It's in NH, because J has a thing about having a MA address.

Not really. It was just something we both preferred - living in NH. We'll get clobbered with taxes, since he'll be working in MA, but that's ok. We'll be HOME in NH. It's a little town called Newton, in the middle of nowhere with nothing around. I can't WAIT! We'll be about 15 minutes from downtown Haverhill, MA, which normally wouldn't be that big of a deal, but we stayed there while house hunting and we found 2 places we really really liked. One was a brewpub, called The Tap . The other was a little Irish pub called The Peddlers Daughter. What more could we ask for? Oh, and I'll have shopping available about 20 minutes away in Plaistow, NH. So even though we're in the middle of nowhere, we're right in the middle of everything. I don't WANT to be walking distance to a grocery store. So this is perfect.

It's a new construction house -- and will be ready in 30 days. THIRTY days!! That's so close! So fingers crossed that OUR house sells so K and I can move up there with J by August. I really really want her to start school up there.

Anyway, here's our house (and yes, it really is LEVEL, unlike the picture!). Love it! It's amazing to me that it took us forever to decide on a house but now that we finally have, I feel like it was the one meant for me from the beginning. I still love the deck on one of the others, but we don't live outside (heck, it's NH. We'll be lucky to spend 20 minutes outside before we're carried off by the mosquitoes!). And it's the INSIDE that really matters. And I loved the layout of this one.

So that's home. Our last home. Where we'll stay. Because this is IT. We're NOT doing this again. It's our last move. Hooray!!!

And the decision is...

2008-06-19T12:09:00.003-04:00

that we don't have one.

It's been almost 3 weeks since we first started looking at houses. And we still haven't decided on one yet. We went back up last weekend and saw another 10 or so, bringing our total to about 40 houses.

The good news is that we've narrowed it down to 3. Two of those houses are new construction (already started) and the other is an 8 year old home. We like all 3 of them for very different reasons - and they're all very different houses!

Today I woke up thinking of the same house I was thinking of yesterday. So maybe this means that's the house? It's the first time I've had the same house in my head for 2 days in a row. It's also the house that's less far along in the construction so I'd get to pick cabinets, flooring, counters, etc. I didn't mind the choices put in the other new construction, but it would be kind of nice to pick my own. And in the existing home, although I love the kitchen, I wasn't crazy about the color of the counters (granite).

J sent me an email this morning simply stating that he was much closer to making a choice and he wanted to know how I was feeling. Unfortunately he didn't tell me WHICH house was his choice. He wanted me to say it first. So now it's been killing me all morning, waiting to hear back from him. He needs to check his email more frequently!!

So if we're on the same page, we'll figure out what we're going to offer on it. Hopefully we can call our agent tomorrow and do that. Then the part I hate the most comes into play - the negotiating. I'm always SURE that we're going to lose the house in this stage. Dh thrives on it -- I dread it. I wont sleep until we've come to an agreement and all the papers are signed.

Maybe I'll just drink heavily all weekend.

The Whirlwind Weekend

2008-06-11T15:00:00.003-04:00

I know, it's been a while. But we had a VERY busy weekend.

First, K finished school last Thursday. I'm very excited to report that she had a perfect report card! All A's and all 1's (comments)!! We're very proud of her.

Second, after K got out of school (at 10 in the morning - what's the point in THAT?), we got in the car and drove to RI. J was already in MA at his new job. We got to RI around supper time and spent the entire next day just doing stuff in the area. Our last stop was the LL Bean store - can I just tell you that I can't WAIT to be close to one of those stores?? I LOVED it! :)

Anyway, I left LL Bean to head north. I was meeting J at the Manchester airport where he was returning his rental car. There was no point in him keeping it over the weekend when we had my car. From the airport, we drove to Haverhill, MA where we spent the night.

Saturday morning, bright and early, we met the realtor at the first property we were scheduled to see. It was new construction, in the town of Newton, NH. Very very nice house. I really liked it. But I found some of the bedrooms to be a bit small. And I didn't like the lot across the street -- it wasn't something I wanted to spend the rest of my life looking at. I know I know - it could look totally different when a house is finally there, but I don't know that it will. Am I willing to make that kind of mistake? So that house went on the "maybe" list.

Then, much to our dismay, our realtor had a 9:00 appt. that she couldn't get out of. So we left her and went to drive around some of the other properties until 11:00, when we could meet her again.

Prior to this weekend, we had informed this agent of how we shop for houses. Basically, we schedule as many as we can into one day. We've done as many as 22 in a day. We then narrow it down to 3, re-look at those houses on Sunday and then make an offer Sunday night. We've done this 4 times now. We assumed this time would be the same.

But L, our agent, didn't quite get that. First, we weren't starting till 11:00. Second, when we suggested stopping to grab a quick bite to eat, we meant at a Subway or something like that. She pulled into a sit down restaurant!! Wasted time!!! So not only did we lose time by starting late, we lost time by sitting in a restaurant for an hour. Oh, and we lost more time because of how she scheduled the appointments -- we criss-crossed through the same town about 5 times.

At 4:30, she was done.

Ack! Are you kidding me??? We should be doing this till 7:00!!! At least!

So, back to the hotel we go, get back on line, and map out some houses we're supposed to see on Sunday (because she set them up for both days rather than all of them on one day). We then drove around doing drive-bys of these houses and managed to take a few off the list just based on what we saw of the neighborhood. While we were online in the hotel, we also looked up some more properties and emailed them to L. We told her we wanted to get into these new homes on Sunday.

Sunday morning comes and she asks us which homes we want to take OFF the list in order to see our new list.

What didn't she get about this?? NONE. We want to see ALL of the houses. We know it can be done. We've done it before.

Guess what? We did it.

Well, almost. She ended up blowing off a few of them, but they weren't high on our list of properties so we were ok with that.

Anyway, here it is Wednesday. Have we picked a house yet? No. Why? Because nothing called out to me. Not one of the houses we saw (which ended up being well over 30) was MY house. I didn't feel it like I have in the past.

So I've spent the last 2 days looking at more houses on line. J talked with a few people in his office and was told by all of them that any house off of Rt. 93, heading into NH, will be a nightmare. Rt. 93 is a horrible road to travel. Running parallel to it is Rt. 95, which is a breeze. Towns that we thought were 50 minutes away from the office are really only 40 minutes - because there's never any traffic.

Well that changes our whole strategy. We'd both PREFER to be off of Rt. 95 -- we like that area better. But we were under the impression that it was just too far of a commute. Not true.

Now we're trying to get back up there this coming weekend. Should be pretty easy, right? Not so. There are no evening flights on Sunday night for me to come home. I can have K stay with friends for Sat. night (she'll be in NYC Friday night with a friend so that makes Friday easy). I'm trying to get a flight that will get me back into BWI by 8:00ish. That would get me home by 9:00. I can easily pick her up on the way home. Bruce can stay here and I'll pay some neighborhood kids to come visit, feed him, and let him out through Saturday and Sunday (I just can't bring myself to kennel him yet again). We'll just tell our selling agent that the house can't be shown this weekend -- I can't imagine having potential buyers walk in and seeing a 120 lb. dog come barreling at them. Since the house is only going on the market tomorrow, it's not a big deal to say no showings until Monday. But I can't find a flight! Why the heck are so many people flying to Baltimore from NH on a Sunday night??? Don't they understand that I need that flight??!!

So I'm flipping out that MY house is out there and someone else is going to buy it because I can't get up there to see it. J thinks I'm losing my mind - he's so nonchalant about the whole thing. Meanwhile I'm a basket case. I NEED to be up there this weekend. My perfect home could be sitting in Hampton, waiting for me to visit, and I don't even know it!!

So fingers crossed that we can get me a flight, please. I really really need to be there. I need this to be done. I can NOT drag this out.

The beginning of the hunt

2008-06-02T17:22:00.002-04:00

Well, J just called and we're definitely heading north this weekend. He's flying up Thursday morning. K has a sleepover with her best friend on Sat. night (it's her friends birthday) so I'm going to ask the mom if K can sleep there Friday night as well. That way I can fly up Friday afternoon. J will stay till Monday but I'll fly home Sunday afternoon.

We're shooting for a marathon house-hunting expedition on Saturday. In the past we've looked at as many as 22 houses in one day, narrowed it down to 3, re-toured those 3 on Sunday morning and made an offer Sunday afternoon. We've actually done that 4 times. This time it might not happen quite so quickly. First, we're looking at a MUCH wider area. I just don't know that we can squeeze that many houses in when we're going to be driving further distances to see each one. Second, we really don't have to be in such a hurry -- if our house doesn't sell, we're not going anywhere anyway. Well, K and I aren't going anywhere. J is heading north as of the 30th whether we have a house or this house sold. I'm hoping for early August for us. That will give K and I time to get some use out of our already-paid-for pool membership AND get some trips in to Hershey park since those passes are paid for already as well.

I currently have 15 houses I'd like to see. There are a few that I really really like. It's a good thing we have such incredible satellites now - we've been able to zoom into neighborhoods, check out how many swingsets, pools, etc., everyone has, and determine if we like the location of the house. We actually took a few off the list because in panning out, we spotted things just behind the trees that we didn't want to live near. Those things probably wont be visible when we're there because of the leaves on the trees!

On the other hand, the satellite thing is kind of creepy. I mean we can really zoom in on houses! No, we can't see in the windows, but we can see colors of doors and shutters, landscaping, fencing, etc. It's weird. When I input my address, I could see my car in the garage!! Check it out at http://www.maps.live.com -- but keep in mind that some areas aren't zoomable (hey - I made a new word!). But put your address in and see what comes up! When it finds the address, choose the "bird's eye" option for viewing. THAT'S how you really zoom in.

Wish us luck, please. I really don't want to have to do this 87 times to find a house. I can pretty much tell the minute I walk in the door if I like a house or not, so it makes it easy to weed out some bad ones. And in the last 3 houses we bought, I walked in and knew INSTANTLY that that's where I wanted to live. I'm hoping to get that gut feeling again.

But more importantly, please wish us luck in selling our house. We'll be burying a little statue of St. Joseph in the back yard. It's a Catholic thing, but it supposedly works. You can read about it here: http://www.sellfast.info/st_joseph_selling_home.htm (sorry, I can't figure out how to make the link just a word. It keeps asking for the URL and then never asks me for the name. I so blogger challenged!).

So that's the scoop. The wheels are in motion. Everything will start flying by now. The relocation company contacted us today -- that's a huge first step! Once they're involved, you know it will go quickly.

Colonial Times

2008-05-27T17:06:00.002-04:00

We spent this past holiday weekend by touring Colonial Williamsburg. It's definitely a place we most likely wont ever get to again, since it would be something like a 13 hour drive (it's only 4 hours from us here).

We spent Thursday night in Richmond. Ok so no offense to Richmond-ites but wow - what an incredibly boring city! There was NOTHING to do. That's sad. We arrived later in the afternoon and the State House was closed, but you'd think there'd be SOMETHING in the area to do - even just some shopping! Nope. Just empty store fronts with broken windows.

We did walk the 2 miles (ack!) to Monument Ave and took pictures of the confederate heroes. On that walk we tried to find a restaurant to eat but there wasn't one! Not a single place to stop! Luckily we did spot what looked like a main road so we went down it and sure enough, there was a McDonald's. Not exactly what I had in mind for my vacation dinner, but at least it was food!

Friday morning, after an incredibly uncomfortable night's sleep (really - it had to be THE most uncomfortable bed I've ever slept in! And that's saying a lot because I've always said the bed in my mom's spare bedroom is the worst), we continued the drive to Williamsburg. We decided to do Busch Gardens on Friday. It was us and about 3000 middle school kids who had apparently done some sort of band or chorus competition while there. LOTS of 13 and 14 year olds. And hey - since I got to spend 12 hours with kids that age, if you happen to HAVE kids of that age, please tell them to watch their language when they're in a family place! We were on one roller coaster and the two boys behind us, who looked like nice, clean cut, well raised kids, spewed every foul word I've ever heard out of their mouths. So glad my child was able to get such a lesson in language this weekend.

Saturday we spent the entire day in Colonial Williamsburg. There is just SOOOO much to do there! It was our second time there and there are still places we haven't seen!

We managed to snag reservations at the Kings Arms Tavern. Ok, so it was a little too... obscure for us. We did find things to eat but we would have been better off somewhere else. The food was delicious, but our choices were limited since we're not really big game meat eaters.

Sunday we headed to Jamestown. We did Historic Jamestown, not the Jamestown Settlement. K is completely fascinated with archeology and wanted to see if they were still excavating the well we had seen 2 years earlier. They weren't, but she did get to see some of the items they were pulling out of that well 2 years ago.

Monday morning we drove home. It took about 5 hours simply because there was an accident on I95 that shut down the road. We had to take a detour and it took us really far out of the way. But at least we got home.

Now we begin the whole house-preparation process. I don't even know where to begin, but begin I must. I think tonight I'll work on my workshop. I dread getting to K's bedroom and playroom. They're disasters!! But they need to be done. We MUST sell this house and it can NOT sit for months and months like our neighbors' houses have been doing.

And the answer is...

2008-05-21T09:03:00.002-04:00

WE'RE GOING HOME!!!!!!!!

Oh, the concert. Yeah. It was great. Get to see it again in July. Don't remember much of Kenny actually singing. Too much draft beer. Mental note for next time - don't drink draft beer. :)

In other news, J got the offer, and accepted it. We're moving. We're going home.

I have such mixed feelings about it. While I'm happy that we're finally going to be home again, I feel AWFUL about inflicting such pain on my daughter. She was devastated last night. She knew it was coming (we had warned her that it was a possibility) but the finality of it was too much. She was crushed. She woke up this morning and started crying again. I hate causing her pain. Parents aren't supposed to do that. But we did. And in a big way. I just hope that eventually she'll forgive us for making her leave her "home" - the only place she's ever known as home.

J is NOT looking forward to working in the corporate offices -- too much political bullshit, but he IS looking forward to the change. He's tired of the manufacturing side of things. He's tired of dealing with all of the employees. Now he'll just have 2 people reporting to him - and they're both jr. marketing people. Professionals. Not whiny brats who want the world handed to them on a silver platter. That will be a nice break for him.

I, on the other hand, have a bazillion and one things to do. We're leaving tomorrow for Williamsburg. When we get back, I have to get this house ready to go on the market. We're not sure yet WHEN we'll put it on, but it will need to go on soon. Then we need to figure out when we can get up north to look at houses there. We'll be looking in both northern MA and southern NH so it's not like we can go in one weekend and buy a house, which is what we've always done in the past. Our area is too wide. So we'll have to spread it out over several weekends. Luckily the houses aren't moving quickly (unlike when we bought this house in 2004 -- it had been on the market for 9 days and there was already an offer coming in. But we beat them to it so we got the house) so waiting a week to make an offer shouldn't be an issue. There are several that we've been watching for the past month and the prices have been coming down. Which is great! I just don't want to see that happen with THIS house.

I know. I want it all. :)

So I spent my 40th birthday (yesterday was my birthday) by crushing my child's hopes and dreams. Nice way to move into middle age. I hope I can ease her pain somehow. She doesn't understand how J can accept a position when he technically doesn't want to move. I wish it was that simple. But it's not and she wont understand it for a long time. I just hope she can forgive us for tearing her apart like this. It hurts me more than I can ever explain.

Pirates and Poets, Part 2 -- The Parking Lot

2008-05-15T19:19:00.008-04:00

So we arrived in Lot B, under the highway.

See here - this is our view of the people around us - those are the people I had to drive through.

But WHERE was Tricia? While we were driving in, I was actually on the phone with her but could NOT hear a thing. So once we were settled, I called her back. She was walking towards me. I was walking towards her. I could see a person in the distance walking alone, with a cell phone in her hands. Could it be her? Was it actually THAT easy?

Sure enough, it was.

So far the day was going pretty well!

We went to Tricia's car, explained that we were sort of boxed in and couldn't get my car over to her, so we took her cooler, her tailgating box, and a chair and marched it back to my car. Now to set everything up.

First, the coolers came out so we could all have a drink. Ice, cold beer. YUM!

Next, the chairs. We all needed to be comfy.

Then we set up the table, took out the grill, and there was the piece de resistance (ok, so I'm not good with foreign languages. But you know what I mean!!). The portable toilet!!! Yes, I brought a potty with me. Why? Have you ever BEEN in a port-a-john at a concert when extensive tailgating has been going on?? Well, if you have, you will be thinking, "my God, she's BRILLIANT!" and if you haven't, let me tell you -- do NOT go into them. The later in the day it becomes, the WORSE it becomes. Nasty. There are not words to describe it. Lots of drunk people. Very very drunk people. Little pottys. No toilet paper by 1:00. Just not a good scene. So I take matters into my own hands, thankyouverymuch.

But where to put this potty? Oh I have that all figured out! Thanks to Joe, I have a potty tent! Yes, for Christmas Joe gave me a tent to store my potty (the potty was my anniversary gift from J. If that doesn't scream "been together WAY too long", I don't know what does!). It's meant to be a shower tent for campers. But I'm using it for my potty. It's perfect!

Anyway, I put the tent up - took no time at all. Then we put the potty inside and I hung the roll of special toilet paper on one of the straps inside. Yes, you have to use special toilet paper. There's a chemical in the "dumping tank" that disintegrates things very very quickly. It also deodorizes. So it's a very important ingredient. Once it was ready to go, I explained the "flushing" technique and we began our little 4 person party.

Here's our potty:

We were really enjoying ourselves, and fired up the little grill. Burgers and salads were consumed. As was a large amount of beer and, for one adventurous person who shall remain nameless, some Captain Morgan's and Coke. Ack! I'm so NOT a hard liquor person. :)

Finally, Amy decided to be the very first person to break in the potty. We were a little concerned about the tent's "transparency". No, you couldn't see through it, but you could definitely see shadows. But, sometimes Mother Nature's calls are much stronger than our desire to be modest. Amy went for it.

And it worked! There were no issues! No one could see! It was a success!

Tricia and Sandy each tried it as well, with equal success.

Then it was my turn. Oh but now things must be different, right? Because nothing can be easy for ME. So I go into the little tent, do what I need to do, and then I hear it... a male voice. Very close. Asking me things like, "what'cha doin in there, huh? are you peeing? I can seeeeee you! Pull those pants up!!" and on and on it went.

Ugh. Why me?

Of course my sister had to take a picture of me leaving the tent with the guy watching. Nice. Thanks Sandy. That's a photo to treasure. :)

Want to see it? Of course you do.

Ok, so that's the toilet story.

Oh wait. I do have one more.

Everything was going fine with the toilet and we even had a few guys approach us and ask us if their girlfriends could use our potty (WHY couldn't the girls ask us themselves??). We said yes. One guy even gave me $5. :) But then the people in the car in front of us decided that they should have access to this nifty potty too. And started using it. Without asking first.

Well, apparently someone used NAPKINS instead of the special paper. Guess what? It doesn't decompose!! So the tank got filled almost instantly.

Sadly, this meant the end of our potty and the end of our party. Down came the tent, the potty got emptied, we packed up the car, and headed into the show.

Here are the 4 of us, before the overflowing potty issue:

Part three will continue -- the actual show!

Pirates and Poets

2008-05-14T16:57:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, I went to the Kenny Chesney concert in Baltimore. It was my 3rd time seeing him, but the first time at M&T Bank Stadium (my first time ever in the stadium at all). We had a blast - although some points are a bit, um, foggy.

Let's see - started the morning by driving to the airport to pick up my sister who flew in for the show. Then we went to the Homewood Suites hotel to meet up with Amy, who was also attending. We decided when we bought the tickets that we'd stay at a hotel near the stadium so no one had to drive home.

Already in the parking lot, Tricia was waiting for us.

Now, all of the concerts I've been to have been in New England, or more specifically, MA and RI (with a few CT thrown in, but CT really isn't part of New England anyway, so it doesn't count). When you attend a concert up there, you pull into the parking lot and each car takes the next available spot in line. Very orderly. Very structured. That's just the way we are!!

Here? Not so much.

Tricia kept saying there was a parking spot right near her. But I couldn't understand how I'd GET to her since, in my mind, I was going to have to park where they told me. But I soon learned how wrong I was.

As I pulled into Lot B, I could see cars turning in different directions. Weird. But ok. Then a security guard approaches my car. He then tells me "It's your lucky day! You're getting the Presidential treatment today!" and he told me to follow him.

Um. Ok.

Well, it had been raining all morning so the ground was wet. And it was still pretty cloudy, although the rain had stopped. The stadium is right next to the highway and the parking lot is UNDER the highway.

And that's where Mr. Security Guard was leading us.

But that wasn't an easy task. See, there were people who had been set up for tailgating for hours. They had chairs, tables, grills, etc., in the middle of the aisles. But Mr. Security Guard made them move their stuff so we could drive through!!

I was so humiliated.

But laughing hysterically the entire time.

Meanwhile I had NO idea where he was taking us. Finally we turned under the highway and he brought us all the way to the end. There was one open parking spot and that's where he was leading us. The people parked in the next spot were using this empty spot, but he made them move their stuff (nice way to make friends with your neighbors!) so we could pull in.

Honestly - I have NO idea why he did that for us! It was so bizarre!!

Ok, K needs the computer (she's 10. It's "very important". I can't imagine what's so important but I'll let her have it and continue this later).

Next up - our adventures in the parking lot!

Talkin' Trash

2008-05-07T10:17:00.002-04:00

Ok, you know life is boring and uninteresting when you start blogging about your trash.

But that's what I'm doing.

We have limit as to how much trash we can put out each week -- 6 "stacks" plus one large item (like a sofa!) for regular pick up. Well, J mowed the lawn last Saturday and it had been so long since he'd mowed, that he actually had to rake. So, he raked the clippings and filled up about 12 trash bags with them. And he plopped those bags on the curb. He didn't put them IN a trash can - just left them on the curb.

Now, the way they look at a "stack" is whatever we can fit IN a trash can and piled on top of it, without it tipping over, counts as one "stack". If we put the individual bags on the ground, then they each count as one stack.

You see where this is going, don't you?

Monday morning the trash guys came. They emptied the trash can that had our regular weekly trash in it. Then they picked up a few of the bags of grass clippings and left the rest there. With a sticker on one of them explaining the limit.

Did you know that grass clippings, even though they're in bags, smell HORRENDOUS even after 48 hours?

I put the remaining bags into one of the trash cans. That was nasty enough. First, they weighed a TON. Second, they were wet from some light rain we received. Third, the bags were cheap and one of them tore. The whole process was just disgusting.

That trash can, even though it was on wheels, was sooooo hard to pull up my driveway, which is a high, steep hill. But I managed to get it up to the top of the hill. And I put the trashcan in the garage, where we store it.

The next morning, I thought something had died in our garage. The smell was unbearable.

So I took to leaving the garage door open all. day. long. Trying to air it out. But then we'd close it at night. And in the morning J would leave for work and have to deal with the stench.

It's only Wednesday. That can has been in the garage for 2 days.

This morning, J put it outside. We just can't stand the smell anymore.

Oh, and those trash guys? Yeah. They get to OPEN THE LID! I would NOT want to be the person doing that! Oh and then they get to LIFT the trashcan, which probably weighs about 200 lbs. I'm not kidding. I can barely move it. And it's on wheels.

So today I come downstairs in the morning and my first thought was "what's that smell?"

It was my kitchen trash.

Aarrrgghh!! There's no escaping it!

Apparently on Monday when I cleaned the fat off of the chicken breasts before freezing them, I tossed the packaging in the trash. Normally I do this before the trash men come so I can toss the packaging right away. I didn't GET to it soon enough this time. Well, the packaging smells like, well, rotting meat. Blech.

Clearly we're having some serious trash issues in our house this week. Monday, which is our trash pick up day, can't come soon enough for me.

Why can't anything ever be easy?

2008-04-28T10:01:00.002-04:00

The politics of corporate America are playing a VERY large role in J's game. And we're NOT happy about it.

Let's just say that we STILL don't know anything. And we WONT know anything for at least another 2 days.

Because making decisions in normal time just isn't feasibly possible in this company.

Oh, and keeping job descriptions and grade levels the same AFTER an interview is also not possible. Because that's the hold-up now. They've LOWERED the grade level. As if J would take a step DOWN? Are they nuts???

So, we're back to negotiations. Although it's J's current boss (who recently was promoted) who's donig the negotiations this time.

I'm tired. I'm just mentally exhausted from this whole thing. And K is just beside herself. She's so upset. Yes, we told her. We did explain that it's not 100% sure, but it's about 99% sure. And now this. We wont fill her in with this development. No point in getting her hopes up that it wont happen. In the meantime, we just have to wait to see how J's boss manages at headquarters tomorrow.

{sigh}

I just want it to be over. I just want to TALK about it openly. I'm tired of walking around with this big "secret" on my shoulders.

If you're at CNY this weekend, MUM's the word!

2008-04-24T08:47:00.002-04:00

One of my friends from RI is meeting us at CNY tomorrow. She works for the same company as J. Please, if you'll be there, do NOT mention any potential moves around anyone. No one in the company knows yet and I'd hate for them to find out through chit chat at a non-work related event when they SHOULD find out through normal channels.

Hopefully we'll know by tomorrow and this will be a pointless post.

Thanks

Down to the wire now...

2008-04-21T19:23:00.002-04:00

We'll know by the end of this week. Hopefully even sooner than that.

It seems the guy who will be J's new boss is going out for surgery at the end of this week. He wants this finalized before he leaves. Which is Friday. So in order for him to write up his little announcement to go on the "board", he'll need to finish negotiations with J before that, get J's signature on the contract, and get it written up. So hopefully we'll have all of that finalized by Thursday. Whew.

It's about 99% definite that we'll be moving to northern MA/southern NH. We have a spreadsheet of houses we're interested in. They range in towns from Exeter, NH to Haverhill, MA to Salem, NH to Salem, MA. Lots of options.

I'm scared, excited, happy, sad, nervous, anxious... just a million different things all rolled into one.

And I have sooooo much to do!! Ack!

We have until Monday...

2008-04-18T14:12:00.002-04:00

I've never seen an interview work this way.

J was told he did "very well" on his interviews. They want to know if he's still interested in the job, after talking with everyone. And if he is, he has to let them know by Monday. Then they can discuss salary.

But he wasn't technically OFFERED the job.

But it sounds like he will be offered the job. Doesn't it?

He's torn. I tossed and turned all night. He was up early (as was I - 3:30, to be exact). He was very snippy and short tempered yesterday. I know he has a lot on his mind. I wish I could help him. But this is something he has to decide all on his own. I don't envy him. :(

So by next week we'll know if we're moving or not. It's very scary.

Oh, and get this -- today I went to Lowe's and got:

mulch to thicken up the thin areas
Kilz paint to try to touch up the water mark on the ceiling in the kitchen
outdoor paint to repaint the bulkhead which is starting to look nasty

And I spent today laying down that mulch, laying fertilizer on the lawn, and sprucing up the yard. You know - that whole first impression when someone pulls up.

This is soooo out of character for us. We're not "yard care" people. Think my neighbors will suspect something? :D J thinks people in HIS office are suspecting something - because he cleaned out his office. It looks like he's leaving. It wasn't intentional to look that way - he was just trying to find his desktop. But now that it's clean he's trying to keep it that way.

So it's just a matter of time before everyone figures it out. We're cleaning up the yard, taking care of our lawn, he's cleaning his office. Yup. Clearly we're getting ready to leave.

We're down to the wire now

2008-04-16T10:16:00.002-04:00

J is in MA right now, interviewing for the job.

The job that he no longer knows what it's about. Because they "changed the job description" after he applied for it.

The job he may not even WANT after he sits through this interview.

The job that, if he does still want it and it's offered to him, may move us home.

I'm a nervous wreck. I've been up since 4:00 this morning. Couldn't fall back asleep. I don't know what to think, feel, want.

Yesterday I opened up our little spreadsheet of houses that we liked. K walked in. She asked what it was. Thankfully I was able to come back quickly with "it's an old file I found. Isn't that funny?" because there was clearly a house shown that was for sale. We had copied the picture from realtor.com. She's not stupid. But she didn't press it more. Thank God. She will NOT take this well.

I wish he'd call. I know he can't - he's interviewing for crying out loud! But still - I want to know. I NEED to know. WHAT'S HAPPENING??? Ugh.

If he's still interested (because they wont actually offer the job today. Oh no. This will have to spread out for another 2 weeks or so, I'm sure), when he's driving back up to the airport, he's going to drive through one of the towns we're looking at. Neither of us even remember it from when we lived there before. But obviously it existed. Maybe it was smaller than it is now (only about 3000 people). Lots of new construction going on - which is right up our alley. We're not good "home maintenance" people so a new house is perfect for us - nothing to repair. :)

Of course it's possible we'll hang out in THIS house for another 8 years. Although I highly doubt it. My guess is that he'll keep his eyes on that job board and apply for anything that opens up, just to get out of THIS plant. He's not comfortable with the changes being made.

I can't believe we've been dealing with this for 5 weeks. Five WEEKS! And we still don't know anything! I'm exhausted.

We have an interview (and other info)

2008-04-10T09:31:00.003-04:00

Three weeks (almost 4) after J applied for the job in New England, he finally got a call for an interview. With the call came a very bizarre comment. He was basically told that they needed to talk to him to explain the "changes in the job description" since he applied for it.

Well hell - it's been almost a month! I'm sure the job has changed!

So you'd think they'd tell him over the phone to see if he really is interested in flying up to interview. But nope. They'll tell him when he gets there. So they're paying for a flight, a hotel, and a rental car and J could walk out of the interview and say, "not interested anymore. But thanks anyway". Are they really that stupid??

He's been in Mexico this week (and yes, he was affected by the flight cancellations through American Airlines, but he managed to get on a Continental flight instead) so he's had limited contact here. I'm using that as the excuse as to why they opted not to tell him over the phone. It probably cost more for that phone call than his flight did.

So what did I do this morning? Got onto realtor.com again. There are some new listings. And a lot of the original ones we saw are still listed too. That doesn't sound good to me - why aren't they selling? Then again, is anything selling?? Actually yes - I know someone who just sold their house and is moving a mile down the road into a bigger house. So that's 2 houses sold. See - it's not all that bad. Ours will sell too!

******************************************************

In other news, Bruce scared the SHIT out of me last night.

When he sleeps in the laundry room, I can hear him if I'm at my desk - we share a wall. Last night he was sleeping in there (where he spends about 90% of his time - he loves it in there) and suddenly I heard him jump up and start jumping around. He's a big dog - over 100 lbs. so when he jumps up, you hear it. I thought it was odd because it was after 9:00 at night and he's usually down for the count by 8. So I went in to investigate.

As I walked into the kitchen, he came out of the laundry room. He was walking like he was drunk -- slamming into the kitchen chairs, stumbling, his legs not holding him up. He wandered around the kitchen (peeing the entire time) and made his way into the family room, body slammed the coffee table, and then came back into the kitchen. He finally slowed down for a minute so I put his leash on and took him outside. He peed for a long time. Then he started to poop and as he was squatting down, his legs were shaking and his whole body was rocking back and forth. He stopped, walked across the driveway, and then squatted again, going a bit more.

When we came back in the house, he was all excited, wanting me to play. He brought me his bone. I got him calmed down, kept telling him it was bedtime (all the while I'm panicking that something is seriously wrong with him!), and he kept panting and drinking water. Finally, about 20 minutes after it all started, he was calm and sleeping again.

Part of me thinks I should call the vet. I looked up "dog seizures" on google last night and youtube. All the videos of dogs having seizures looked NOTHING like what Bruce was doing. My initial thought was that his leg had fallen asleep and he didn't know how to handle that tingling sensation and he couldn't walk. I know when my leg has fallen asleep and it's woken me up, I've tried to get out of bed and just fell to the floor. Why wouldn't it be the same for an animal?

On the other hand, he flips out at the vet - does NOT handle it well. Do I want to bring more trauma to him? I'm thinking maybe I'll watch him for 24 hours and see if it happens again (God, I hope not!) and then call. It was so out of the blue -- he was sleeping for cryinoutloud!

************************************************************

Took K to her first orthodontist appointment yesterday. She's going to need a palate expander, which totally grosses me out. Of course I didn't tell HER that. But eewww.... the thought of it makes my skin crawl. Great. And now I get to look at it all the time. Blech.

Mr. Cheap -- oh, excuse me, I mean J wants to talk to the orthodontist about what our other options would be. Like pulling teeth. Ack! Is he NUTS?? Oh, and Mr. Perfect Teeth has NO idea what that's like so to him, there's no reason NOT to consider it. NOPE. Not gonna happen on MY watch! I don't care that it's $2000. She's getting the palate expander before we yank any teeth out of her mouth.

Our consultation is the 30th. We'll see what the doctor says.

************************************************************

That's all for today. Keep good thoughts for this job interview, please. I really want J out of this division of the company. The stories he's telling me are making me nervous. I'd rather he get into a more "stable" (for lack of a better term) division. Even if it means moving. I'll move. Hell, I'll pack myself (I've never done that before!) if that's what I have to do!

Miscellaneous Thoughts

2008-04-02T13:35:00.002-04:00

1. No news yet. I'm beginning to think it just isn't going to happen. It's been over a week. NO ONE has an interview, so it's not just J. What the heck is that guy waiting for? J's in Mexico next week. I'll bet that THAT'S when this guy wants to do the interviews. So J wont be able to. And then he wont be considered.

2. I'm looking through a cooking magazine. I'm sorry, but if you need a recipe for a sandwich, you have some issues. Bread, meat, cheese, maybe some lettuce. Done. You do NOT need to follow a recipe for this!!

3. Bruce's ears stink. Gross. I know what it means - they need to be cleaned and there are probably some mites in there. I have the stuff to get rid of it. But I don't feel like getting off my fat ass.

4. Speaking of my fat ass, I'm now down 12.8 lbs. I love this! It's working and it's easy! How cool is that?

5. I'm getting better at saying no. I was nominated by someone as the PTO President for next year. I made it very clear to the principal that that is NOT an option. I'm NOT interested, thankyouverymuch.

6. My little "business" (oodles of sarcasm there) with that direct sales scrapbooking company could potentially be in the dumps. They are NOT looking healthy right now. My specific business has never looked healthy. But the corporate offices - yeah, them. Looking a little peaked. I'm thinking they're not gonna be around much longer. Need to see what I'll need to order over the next few months.

7. I go to Central New York for a scrapbooking reatreat in 3 weeks (less than that, actually). I can't WAIT. Sometimes you just need to get away.

8. J and K will spend that same weekend in Niagra Falls (oooh... gotta book the dog at the kennel!). It's their city of choice for this year. K is writing her report on it right now. She's got one full page, typed. Needs to do another 1/2 page on the history. I haven't been to Niagra Falls since I was about 12. I want to go back. But this is THEIR weekend away. I wont barge into it. Besides, I'll be hanging out scrapping with 44 other women. :D

9. Even though the whole job thing seems to be even more in limbo than normal, I'm really hoping to keep my stamina going with the things that need to be fixed in the house. Maybe not "fixed". Just improved upon. I washed my kitchen cupboards - first time in 3 1/2 years! And honestly - they weren't nearly as dirty as I'd have expected them to be. Maybe I should cook more.

10. I found several houses on line that I've love to see in person. But they're in NH and MA. Wont be checking them out any time soon. I need to stop looking at realtor.com before I drive myself completely insane.

I'm doing good so far today!

2008-03-28T10:58:00.000-04:00

It's almost 11:00 and I haven't gone to realtor.com ONCE! Yay me!

But it's hard. And I want to go to it. Although I seriously doubt there's anything to see that wasn't there at 9:00 last night, when I looked last. I find it hard to believe houses are popping up on the market that quickly.

And, again, there's that factor of perhaps this not happening at all.

I wish they'd make a freaken decision and be done with it!!!!!!!!!

I'm mentally exhausted

2008-03-26T13:34:00.001-04:00

Just wiped out. I'm going to go completely insane if we don't hear something soon. :(

Maybe there's some good in all of this

2008-03-24T12:16:00.002-04:00

So J and I spent the entire weekend looking at properties online. Using tools like Google Earth has made it MUCH easier. We were able to zoom in to the house, look at the entire yard, the neighbor's yards, the area around it, etc. It was actually kind of creepy - like we were some peeping toms. But we did it with oodles of houses. And I think there were only about 4 that we couldn't locate because the realtor didn't list the street address.

So, with that, we made a spreadsheet of the ones we'd like to see. You know - assuming we actually move.

We've been prepared before when we've moved - every time we've walked into a realtor's office with stacks of printouts from realtor.com of houses we wanted to see. So this part isn't new to us. But we've never done it BEFORE we actually knew we were moving. Part of me wonders if we've just jinxed ourselves.

Is it a jinx if we don't move? I still don't know. Although we both agreed that K will be royally pissed. Furious. She'll have to get over it but neither one of us are looking forward to having to tell her this time. Oh, and just recently she told me that every time we've moved, we've told her by having her sit on the couch with us. So you know that this time, I will not do that. Because she'll know. But part of me thinks she's suspecting something - we've been talking a lot about NH lately and she's picking up on it. So who knows... maybe subconsciously she's preparing herself and it wont be such a shock when/if we do tell her.

But the good - where am I seeing good?

Well, I keep looking around my house at the things that need to be done. Granted some of them I wont do, like paint (let a new owner do that), but some really need to be done have needed to be done for a while. Now we'll actually get them done to shine the house up. Like power washing the deck - man is that deck in bad need of it. And washing down the kitchen cupboards - I'm ashamed to admit that I've never done it (it's today's to-do item). And bringing up the carpet cleaner and actually washing all the carpets (although I'd rather just pay to have it done professionally. And it may come to that for the family room - I'm not sure my little Bissel will get that rug clean). And reorganizing the closets to make them look more spacious (sort of started this this weekend in our closet). And finally finding something to do with the stuff J took home from his dad's house when they finally sold it after he died. That was last year - and lots of that stuff is still sitting where we plopped it last year. It's out of the way for us, but it doesn't look nice.

Oh and the pictures! Ugh. I still have frames on the floor that I never was able to put up anywhere - I just couldn't find the right spot for them. Now I'll just box them all up and put them in the basement. And then the oodles of personal photos all over the house will have to be moved -- I've seen too many "sell your house" shows in HGTV to not know that leaving out personal photos is a turn-off to potential buyers. So I'll take ours down.

I'm torn about what to do with K's room. Two years ago I painted it purple and then painted bright pink circles all over it. Very "out of the box" for me. But we had fun doing it and it looks adorable. But it's very specific to a certain little girl. Do I paint over it in white or leave it as is??? I really don't know what to do about that. J thinks I should paint it (this coming from a man that thinks all rooms should be white). I figure it's ONE room in the house. Potential buyers can paint it themselves (unlike some of the houses we saw that had hideous colors in the rooms and I'd have to paint EVERY room. Ugh. If the house is otherwise perfect, I wouldn't turn away from it, but it's definitely a deterrent when it's every stinkin' room).

Can ya tell the waiting is just about killing me??? I want to know NOW!! What the heck is going on?? Aaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!!!

So there IS good. I'm doing things around the house that have needed to be done for a while. The potential selling is a motivator for me. Maybe because we've done it so many times that I've gotten used to it and it's the only thing that does motivate me. Kinda sad, if you think about it - the only way I'll do bigger projects in my house is to MOVE?? What kind of motivation is that???

I wish I had an update

2008-03-20T14:38:00.002-04:00

No news yet. I suppose that's good news, right?

J is still trying to sort out whether or not he really wants this job. He's getting such a run-around about what the job will entail. It all depends on who he's talking to and what day it is. Very typical for this company. I'm frustrated so I can't even imagine how frustrating this is for him.

In the meantime, I've spent the last week doing pretty much nothing but looking at properties at realtor.com. And I have mapquest up every time too - so I can see how long of a commute each drive would be for him. We'd like to keep it under 40 minutes. But boy - that REALLY limits our choices and gets us into areas with NO land. Or we can have land but live in a 200 year old house. As enticing as that may sound, we are NOT the appropriate people to live in an old house. The newer, the better. We're not really good at the whole maintenance thing. An old house would be a nightmare for us.

But I'm most likely jumping the gun anyway. If and when this does happen (IF - please note that key word!), none of these houses will be on the market any longer anyway.

Oh, on a positive note, one of the 3 houses for sale on our street sold this week!! Woo hoo!! That means there are only 2 houses for sale on our street, 3 on the street in front of us, and 1 on the street behind us. Whew. That's a relief. Maybe this means things will start picking up. Because to be honest with you - given the choice of those 6 houses, there's no WAY I would have picked the one that's recently sold. But hey - it could easily be someone else's dream home. I just don't particularly care for it (it's new construction).

J has to decide by tomorrow if he's going to submit his resume for the job. Then he'll have to go through the whole interview thing. How stupid is that? The job is pretty much his if he wants it, but they need to make it "look" official. Puh-lease. Like people don't know how these things really work? They're not stupid. But, he'll go through the whole thing and maybe the interviews will help him make his decision. Then, when the job offer is made, he can say yay or nay. Of course at that point, he'll pay dearly for saying no to it. Because him submitting his name is pretty much the equivalent of saying he wants the job. Never mind that he STILL doesn't really know what it entails since they're being so freaken secretive about everything.

So we wait. And wait. And then we'll wait some more. I hate this part. I really really hate corporate America sometimes. And this is one of those times. Normally I like them (I know - I'm one of the few) because corporate America has allowed me to be a SAHM for the last 10 years. And because corporate America has kept J employed for 25 years. And because corporate America has paid him well for those 25 years. But this is the price WE pay for those benefits. And most people don't hear about this crap when they hear of the evils of corporate America. They make the peons pay. And we pay dearly. If we move, this will be our 5th move in 11 years. That's a lot. And only 1 of those moves was one that J initiated. The rest were all positions that they asked him to take. And we agreed to move to "help the company". Now we WANT to move (I think. Did I just say that?? Maybe I do. I think I do. I want to want it. But do I? Ack!!) and they're dangling the carrot just out of reach. They're big bullies. That's it!! Corporate America is a big bully!!

Can I kick him in the shin?? Or do you think that would just make matters worse?

And so it begins again

2008-03-14T09:17:00.003-04:00

For the 5th time in the last 11 years, we are waiting to hear if we'll be moving again.

Yes, again.

J is looking into a job at the company headquarters. It would be yet another lateral move for him, but it would get us "home" to New England and it would give him some stability in his job. There's sooooo much going on politically in the plant here and he's not comfortable with what he's seeing.

But, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered first and that's what we're waiting on. Once these questions are answered and, if they're answered to our benefit, it looks like we'll go.

His biggest concern is selling our house. There are currently 3 houses for sale on our STREET. If you count the entire neighborhood - there are about 8. That's a lot of competition. And that worries him. We've always been VERY fortunate with our house sales but we've also never tried to sell a house in this type of market. We'd like to at least get back what we've put into it (we had the basement finished within months of moving in).

I have such very mixed feelings about everything. I want to go "home" but I'm not 100% sure that I'm ready to do it NOW. I love my neighborhood. And I know I'll never find another like it. We are quite unique. The majority of us (maybe 90%) are not from here. We're all in the same boat. The majority of us are stay at home moms too. We get together every Tuesday for coffee, rotating houses. We watch each others kids regularly. When someone has a baby, we provide meals for that family for 2-3 weeks. Same with surgery, death in the family, anything. We've become each others' families. And I know that's not standard, especially in New England. I seriously doubt I'd find anything even remotely like this up there. And that's really hard to walk away from.

But I'll be home. And isn't that better? We'd be about 90 minutes from my family, and 3 hours from J's family (that's a heck of a lot closer than the 10 hours right now).

K will flip. Absolutely flip. She'll be sooo pissed off. And that will be the hardest thing of all - telling her. She knows the potential to move is always there, and she often will ask, out of the clear blue, if daddy is looking at other jobs yet. But I've been able to say "no" over the last 3+ years. I hope she doesn't ask me now. I do NOT want to lie to her, but I can't tell her anything yet either. We need to keep this private until the decision is made.

Keeping it quiet. That's hard too. The school is looking for people to sign up for next years' committees. I haven't turned in my form yet. I hate to commit to being on a committee if I can't follow through. But I'm also afraid that my not turning in that paper is sending big red flags to everyone. Or am I the only suspicious person out there? Maybe I just read too much into it and no one really CARES that I haven't turned in my papers yet.

My head has been spinning for 4 days. That's how long ago this all started. Well, technically we knew this could be a possibility about a month ago. But at that time, J really wanted nothing to do with this job. But now that he's talked with the guy who currently has the position, he's changed his tune.

Oh but the cost of living up there! Ugh. It's soooo much higher than here. J will be looking at a 45 minute commute. In all of the jobs he's ever held with this company, he's never had to drive more than 15 minutes to get to work. So 45 minutes IS a big deal to him. He's 47, soon to be 48, years old. He doesn't want to start that NOW. But living near the office is just not an option. Unless we want to live in an 80 year old, 1000 sq. ft. house on a .10 acre lot for 1/2 million dollars. WRONG! Not going to happen.

He's even mentioned, in passing, that maybe WE should stay here and he'll get an apartment and come home on weekends.

I DON'T THINK SO!!!

I told him that is SO not a viable choice. We are NOT living 8 hours apart from each other for the next 8 years until he retires! Is he NUTS? I'll take a freaken loss on the house before I agree to that. It's just not acceptable to me.

And then there's the chance that NONE of this will happen. And I will have totally stressed myself out for nothing. Trust me - this is NOT the first time in our lives that we've been down this path. And I'm sure it wont be the last. But he has 8 years left before he can retire. And that, to me, is a light at the end of the tunnel. Living like this, never knowing if our house will be OUR house for much longer, will cease to happen in 8 years.

But first I have to get through this one.

I think she's faking

2008-03-07T19:41:00.005-05:00

K stayed home from school today. She put on a good show this morning! First she got up and said, "oh no - my throat hurts". I told her to eat breakfast and see how she feels.

That's when she started coughing. A lot. And she laid on the couch. Never felt warm (I didn't even bother trying to take her temp - I could tell she didn't have one) but curled up in a blanket anyway.

So I agreed to let her stay home.

Interestingly enough, she was remarkably well by about 4:30!!

She's still coughing a bit (because the constant cough ended about an hour after it "started" -- a miracle!) and she's pretty much spent the ENTIRE day on the couch. But was she sick enough to stay home? I doubt it.

Sometimes even 10 year olds need mental health days.