Busting Some Butt

We are frantically working around here, trying to get this place show-ready...oh, yesterday. The deadline I personally set for myself was April 1st, and we are long past that. Another few days of de-cluttering and picking up, I think, and then we need to have the carpets cleaned. I just cannot BELIEVE how hard it is to transform our house from the slightly-cluttered-but-livable space it is into the picture-perfect model home I have in my head. I want it to be perfect, not "good enough," and I am making myself completely nuts.

Fortunately, we have a Realtor that we trust completely, so I know that once I am done mentally and physically exhausting myself working on the place, all I have to do is keep it clean and water the grass, because he will take care of the rest. If there are buyers out there, he will find them. If we need to change something, he will tell us. If we're being unrealistic on price, he will gently talk us down. So I have that to look forward to.

It wasn't that we had a lot of hard things on our list, just lots of little, piddly, time-consuming stuff. We have no garage, no shed, and very little attic space, so anything we needed to store (bicycles, yard tools, baby stuff, off-season clothing, etc) was stacked up either in our bedroom or the office. This meant I had a towering canyon of boxes, bags, and hampers to go through. I'm probably keeping more than I should, but I just don't have the mental energy to give myself a tough-love talk for each and every box I go through. A friend who lives nearby has an extra room and he is letting us store things there, so I can at least have a little elbow room to attack the rest.

We had the house power-washed and the yard aerated & overseeded; we replaced the mailbox and painted the post. We're patching up the interior paint, taking care of spots that were left by the people before us and which we have been looking at and going "Oh, yeah, probably should fix that" for three years. I dug out last year's failed attempt at landscaping and planted nice colorful flowers instead. I still have a little work to do out there, but right now I am so busy inside I can't figure out what else to do outside.

The nice thing about all this is that I can finally justify all those home-decorating purchases I would never allow myself to indulge in normally. Plenty of bookshelves, decorative baskets, a nice laundry hamper, all the stuff I normally tell myself I can do without. And since I am going through and doing everything thoroughly and completely, it should make unpacking & setting up in our new place a snap. I've already worked out the kinks here, so when we move I'll have my perfectly-organized work space or craft storage system or quiet sanctuary of a bedroom all figured out. All I have to do is take it out of the boxes.

One More Rule

I remembered one more of my "rules for packing":

5. Pack it Tightly
I don't mean make the boxes heavy, or crush things. I do mean use every single bit of space. The less room things have to shift, the less likely something's going to get broken or damaged. No space at the top of the box means when they're stacked they won't cave in and crush the contents. So when you pack your books and there's little nooks and crannies left, stuff socks and underwear in there. Put a towel or clothes on top of everything before you tape it shut. Slip paperbacks into small spaces in other boxes; top off large boxes with lightweight stuff like pillows and stuffed animals; add kitchen linens around the inside of boxes of plates and cups. Any time you can cram something into a box, do it. You'll cut down on the amount of boxes you have to move, and your stuff will be much more secure. It will also add some amusement to your unpacking process, like when you really need a cup of coffee the first morning in your new place and you have to pull four pairs of lacy Victoria's Secret underwear out of a box to get to your favorite mug.

*Boxes: A friend tipped me off to a good source for moving boxes - egg boxes. She said:

"Go to the grocery stores and ask what day the eggs come in and if you can get boxes. Go every time they get a shipment and grab as many as you can. Free and very sturdy. They even have handles and they are a good size. Note: this tip does not apply to produce boxes."

Rules for Packing

My friend Rae is moving, and we are de-cluttering and pre-packing as much as possible, and all of it reminds me of how many times I have moved. It's a big number. I have grown pretty good at packing, and developed the following set of rules:

1. Don't use paper. 
        Don't wrap things in newspaper. Don't buy packing paper. Don't use styrofoam peanuts, or bubble wrap, or any of that extra stuff. Use your clothes. Use your sheets. Wrap tiny breakables in socks and roll them into a comforter and put that in a box. Put washcloths and dish towels between your plates, wrap glasses in table linens. You get the idea. Anything you would use paper for, use something you already have. Not only does this save you a lot of money in packing materials, it will reduce the amount of boxes you have to lug by at least one-third.

2. Get boxes that are all the same size.*
       Copy-paper boxes are perfect, if you have a ready supply. They're solid and sturdy, big enough for most things but small enough that you have to work reeeeaallly hard to make 'em too heavy to carry. For our move from Michigan to California, I spent the year before our move swiping boxes from work and storing them in our attic. When it was time to pack, I brought them all downstairs, filled them, and re-stacked them in the attic for a couple weeks until the truck arrived. If you can't get copy-paper boxes, use file boxes from an office-supply store. This size works well. Of course, some things will have to go in bigger boxes, and that's fine, but having everything in same-size boxes will make loading the truck really easy. Heavy ones on the bottom, lighter & breakable stuff on the top, load around the furniture. Taa-daa.

3. Start early. Like, super early.
        Start packing as soon as you know when you need to be out. Keep out your 10 favorite cd's (or none, since, like many others, you probably download a lot of music these days) and pack the rest. Pack your books (pretty soon you probably won't have the time or brain power to do a lot of heavy reading anyway) . Pack your off-season clothes. Go through the Christmas decorations and re-pack them so nothing gets broken. The serving platters you only use on holidays, the breadmaker, the waffle iron. Pack up 2/3 of your kids' toys. Do a few boxes every night and stack them somewhere you won't trip over them. When crunch time rolls around, you should only have a few things left to pack. If you have to go a few days earlier than planned, pre-packing means that when your truck shows up, you actually have stuff to start with, instead of all your "helpers" standing around snatching away every box as soon as you tape it shut. 

4. Weed, weed, weed. 
        Starting early means you will also have ample time to go through your stuff and ask yourself "Do I honestly want to pack this and lug it into the truck and take it out and put it in the new place and unpack it and find somewhere to put it?" Even if you're lucky enough to be able to hire someone to do your packing or lugging, you still have to unpack it and find room for it and shuffle it around a few times before it gets to its eventual resting place in your new abode. When in doubt, throw it out.


That's it, I think...happy moving!


*Of course, if you don't want to buy boxes, try my favorite source for super-sturdy, mostly-the-same-size boxes: the dumpsters behind bookstores. There will be a specific one for cardboard. Word to the wise: it's always better to do this on a dry day, during daylight hours, preferably with the store's permission.

Les vieux amis sont les meilleurs amis

I have been so TIRED lately. Just absolutely, positively, worn out. Tired to the point of laying on the couch staring at the ceiling while Piper scatters toys in her wake and rummages through the fridge. It has been miserably hot here, close to 100 every day for weeks on end with humidity that makes the air difficult to breathe.

On top of that, our city has been in the top 5 places in the nation for ozone alerts for almost two weeks. I heard the phrase "orange-level ozone alert" multiple times every day on the radio for over a week before I looked up what it meant. The newscasters on tv & radio were quite happy to repeat the phrase every chance they got, but they always neglected to mention that it means air pollution mixed with intense humidity and that when it's at an orange level you're supposed to stay indoors as much as possible (especially young children, the elderly, or anyone with asthma or breathing problems), not exercise outside, not drive if you can help it, and avoid idling in traffic if you do. Which just sort of made me laugh, because school is out for the summer and the last thing any parent wants is to be trapped in the house all day with kids, and it's not like you can walk to much here (and it's too hot/ozone-y to do so even if you could), so "try to stay indoors" means everyone will have to jump in their cars and drive all over from one air-conditioned locale to another all day long.

We just got done with another round of company - my godparents were here for five days. Piper hadn't seen either of them since she was an infant, but took to them right away, happy to have more people to play with her and read her stories. They also took her for a ride in their bright-blue convertible, which, as far as she was concerned, was more fun than anyone could ever ask for. My parents are due in this weekend for a few days, and in a couple weeks, some friends from Chicago are coming through on their way back from the beach.

I have to say that, although I love my family, we have been looking forward to our friends' visit most of all. I never do manage to get down to the Windy City to see them when I visit Michigan; these trips North are always just Piper & me, and I can't seem to manage the 4-hour drive between Detroit and Chicago alone with a car-hating toddler. But they are kind enough to drive up and meet us halfway when we're there, and made the drive all the way down here for a weekend visit last Spring.

With every set of company, there's extra cleaning and cooking, and it's nice to have grandparents around to entertain the kid, but it's different with friends. There is comfort in being able to cook something and knowing the people at the table will eat it, instead of inspecting it for surreptitious vegetables or refusing to touch it because "I don't like the smell of curry." It's nice being able to suggest Ethiopian or sushi for lunch and hear enthusiasm rather than nose-wrinkling and thinly-veiled ethnic xenophobia. We can each browse the Internet on our phones or laptops while watching a movie and share stuff from our Google Readers and nobody thinks twice about the arrangement. They can work our electronics without written instructions and four run-throughs. We all like the same kind of movies and they don't require the volume turned up to ear-spliting levels.

These are friends of my husband's, from college, and as happens with many couples, they've become my friends too. We have a few friends here, but none as close as friends from our old life and locales. All this moving around has made me realize that I keenly miss people who know me. I like making new friends (who doesn't need more friends?!), but sometimes I just want to hang out with people who already know that I like my margaritas on the rocks and have listened to many of my drunken ramblings but don't hold that against me. People who I can trade music with, who will point me to new bands and listen to the mix cds I make for them. People we already have a history with, already share an ease of space and conversation with. Since moving here, I've so often felt like I was swimming upstream against a hard current to make and keep connections, fighting all the time to maintain the few friendships I've managed to cultivate. It will be nice to let go and drift for a while, floating along surrounded by familiarity.

Wait, where did summer go again?

I know that the weather turned Fall-ish promptly on September 1st, and I even blogged about how much I was looking forward to the change of season, but it hadn't really occurred to me that summer was over. Somewhere the dark recesses of my brain held the fact that school was starting, temperatures were cooling, and apples were coming into season, but my mind as a whole had not quite processed the fact that summer is gone. The thought "Hey! Fall is here!" was flitting around my little brain like a butterfly.

All the things I was going to do this summer (go to Michigan for a visit, start sewing again, finish the Pay It Forward packages before Labor Day, knit the six different shawls my mom wants, make and send off the birthday presents for all the August birthdays, get started on some sweaters for Piper, start work on the October birthday presents and the Christmas stuff) have slipped through my fingers like sand. But I wasn't worried, because hey, I still had some summer left, right?

Then I woke up this morning and saw a yellow leaf on our back stoop. I raced to the windows on the side of the house and there they were - patches of reddening leaves scattered throughout the trees. My happy little butterfly went away and was replaced with "HOLY CRAP, IT'S FALL ALREADY AND I AM SO SCREWED."

Looking at those trees, thinking about that leaf, I realized the following things:

* The preschool I had hoped to send Piper to started this week.
* I have not even looked up dance studios around here so I have no clue where to send her.
* The August birthdays have come and gone, and I have not even started their projects.
* Labor day is over, and neither the Pay it Forward packages nor my package for the charity I'm sending stuff to are ready to go out (click that link and check out Mel's contest; it's a really worthy cause).
* I can't even find all the yarn for the first of my mom's six projects. I seem to have misplaced a ball.
* If I want to get to Michigan for a visit before Christmas, I'd better get plane tickets NOW.
* We are almost halfway through September.

I have no idea how I'm going to catch up. Apparently I have some sort of time problem, because this is not the first time I've had this issue. I bop along, content to make half-hearted stabs at my gargantuan to-do lists, blissfully filing almost everything under "do later." Then when it actually is later, I scramble and work like mad to get everything done in time. I was never this inefficient when I worked in an office; I just don't get it.

Much of my recent time was spent working doggedly around the house. The mess and clutter and boxes still unpacked after almost 18 months finally got to me and I couldn't take it anymore. We bought actual bookshelves and cd racks so we could finally get rid of the boxes in the spare bedroom. I packed up or gave away most of the (approximately) two tons of baby clothes & toys we owned. I got all my craft stuff together, organized it, and packed most of it up so it can go into the attic until I have a craft room (or, at this point, any little corner would do). We've been tackling one project or so a week, trying at least to tame the chaos of moving our stuff four times in two years. Although my House Project List is by no means finished, my brain is a lot happier and better able to think now that some of the physical disorder is gone.

I am still working on my items for Cris, Jen, Emily, and Lana. I had a wee little setback last week, because I bought the wrong supplies the first time and had to go out and get new and start over. I would up buying the stuff that I wanted to buy in the first place. I should've just trusted my instincts, because then I wouldn't be out the first round of supply money and six hours of time, nor would I have found myself charging through the hillbilly-est Wal-Mart in the area at 9:30 pm. There certainly are some, uh, colorful shoppers at that hour. Oh, well. Live some, learn some, right?

9/17/09: I changed the date of this post retroactively. My apologies if it shows up twice in your feed reader.

A Few Notes On Moving Into Your Very Own House

1. If you are at all interested in marital harmony, don't buy a house. These past two weeks have seen some spectacular fights. Fights which our neighbors may have heard, fights which resulted in throwing packs of Post-It Notes at each others’ heads, fights where many unpleasant names were called, fights during which each of us proposed the idea of divorce and the other one pointed out that we have to stay here, we own this goddamned house now and anyway neither of us has anywhere else to go.

2. When you have been stuffed into dorm rooms and apartments since the age of 18, and then spent the past nine months crammed into one room at your parents' house, it's really nice to have several days before your stuff arrives at your house so you can enjoy all that space.

3. When your closing has been pushed back a week and you are not 100% sure until the day before that you are actually going to close this time, the gas company is not sympathetic to your plight and will not give you an emergency appointment so you can have heat over the weekend. Not even if you beg. So we spent our first several days as homeowners still sleeping at my husband's frat house rental place.

4. After the above-mentioned fights about your new home, it is very nice to have a separate bedroom for your baby so you and your spouse can have make-up sex (and make-up-for-lost-time sex; he was gone for THREE MONTHS, people) and not have to be totally silent about it.

5. If you are going to have to stay in temporary lodgings until you get into your house, it is nice if they are only two miles down the road from said house. This may, however, inspire a certain laissez-faire attitude in your husband concerning the moving of your belongings from the temporary house to the permanent one. Most of our stuff was moved in the ReloCube, but there was the carload Max brought with him when he moved here in January (his computer, clothes, etc) and the carload that came down with us (a suitcase of our clothing, baby toys, our mattress, various odds and ends). Since we were in the temporary house over a week longer than planned, our stuff had time to spread out and scatter. I wanted to pack our car as full as possible each time we ran between the temp house and the new one; instead Max preferred to throw, say, a bath towel and two t-shirts into the back seat and call that a load. This made me crazy and led to a couple of the above-mentioned fights.

6. This close proximity of houses may also cause you to leave your cats in the basement of the old house for probably much longer than you should, while you attempt to unpack at your new abode and feel like a horrible person for enjoying your nice new home as a pet-free place. This enjoyment of a pet-free lifestyle may in fact cause you to realize that while you love your pets, you will probably not get any more once these are gone. You may also feel a twinge of despair when you calculate that this will probably not happen until your daughter is in high school. Then you will feel like an even more horrible person.

7. I cannot recommend ABF U-Pack enough. They are cheap, reliable, and extremely accommodating. They showed up exactly when they said they would, they were great about letting us have the container two extra days and then holding it for us until we called for it. Everyone on their staff was friendly and able to answer all my questions whenever I called. I will say, however, that the driver who dropped off the ReloCube warned me to pad and pack everything really well because “these things ride pretty rough.” He was NOT kidding. When the cube arrived, there was a big scratch mark down one side of it (not through it, though, it didn’t pierce the hull so our stuff was untouched). I think had I not resorted to stuffing clothing into the cracks between boxes, there would’ve been a lot more shifting going on during transit. As it was, the heavy round base for our living-room lamp was floating around in there unsecured, and it came out pretty banged up. Some screws and most of the little pins for our other lamps went missing, since I didn’t think to tape them into place. But that’s it. So on the whole, missing the clickers and a couple tiny (and replaceable) screws for some $10 Target lamps isn’t that bad.

Did We Get Our House?

Yes, we did. We closed last Friday (the 4th), a week after we were supposed to, but fine whatever okay great. A few notes on closing a house:

1. We were warned that there would be a lot of signing, but ye Gods! It never ended. I tried to count the times we put ink to paper and lost track somewhere around fifteen.

2. Hearing "no, she doesn't have to sign, her name's not on the loan" was one of the most humiliating moments of my life.

3. Being told "yes, you have to sign there, your name is on the title" was one of the strangest.

4. Ryan and I both got the distinct feeling that the lawyer conducting the proceedings was not terribly impressed with us. He was both older (I guessed somewhere around 60) and dressed in a very nice suit. He came off as being very old-school. One of the last names on the door was his and he probably owned the shiny new BMW parked right outside said door, so our raggedy broke-ass hippie schoolteacher married-with-different-last-names selves probably made him shake his head and wonder what the world is coming to.

5. I am also in the wrong business, because if I figured it correctly, Mr. Old School Lawyer got paid $270 to sit for twenty minutes speaking jargon and handing us things to sign. I'm quite sure he didn't even put together the thick sheaf of papers; that's what first-year associates are for.

6. Although logically I knew everything was on the up-and-up and that we had no reason to be paranoid, as I sat there looking at the long list of fees and terms which I only half-understood, I tried not to panic. Somehow I couldn't shake the feeling that we were getting screwed somewhere in all this. This was not helped when I realized that if we didn't have to pay all these people/agencies/firms to do...whatever it is they do...our payment would be about $200 lower every month. It was also not helped by the fact that most of these "processing" and "document research" and "title search" fees really amounted to paying some company's interns to do a couple Google searches and photocopy the results in triplicate. Our house was built in 2005; it's not like there was a lot of stuff to go through.

We are still not really unpacked, the cats are STILL in the basement of the other place, we have no furniture, and I can't find anything. We just got our own Internet connection, so I no longer have to truck around with my laptop looking for unsecured networks or keep the baby from eating electronics and getting bit by ants while I check my e-mail at the other house. Driving here is crazy, I still don't know where anything is. I am behind on everything, so if I owe you a phone call, email, cup of tea, pie, or anything else, just know that I will catch up eventually.

Temporary Lodgings

Still no house. Ohh, yeah. Still waiting.

We left Saturday evening and drove through the night. I was pretty apprehensive about how my car-hating-child would handle a 10-hour drive, but through the valiant efforts of several adults we kept her up all day, with the exception of a 20-minute nap. She slept most of the way, and we took breaks to feed, change, and release her whenever necessary. There were a few streteches where she screamed for 20 straight minutes, but on the whole it wasn't too bad. Ryan and his dad drove his parents' ailing Dodge minivan, which was crammed with us, our stuff, and all 9 of our cats. There was so much shit stuffed in there I barely had room for my feet.

The worst part was that I had to stay awake the whole time to make sure the two very tired drivers didn't fall asleep at the wheel, so even when the baby was crashed out I was poking Ryan in the ribs or asking my father-in-law if he'd ever been to Charlotte before and which basketball teams he was rooting for. Some time around West Virginia I ran out of polite conversation starters and since I don't know Ryan's dad well enough to just poke him in the ribs or pinch his arm like I did to Ryan whenever I saw the car start to drift or his head start to bob, there were several points when I very nearly screamed out "YOU ARE SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME. YOU ALMOST RAN OFF THE ROAD JUST NOW. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMNED MOUNTIANS, IT'S PITCH-DARK AND STORMING LIKE CRAZY. PLEASE PULL THE FUCK OVER BEFORE YOU KILL US." Twice I deeply regretted my decision to chug two Smartwaters and an Arizona Green Tea, because I damn near peed my pants as he started awake and swerved on the dark, wet road.

We arrived safe, but still have no house. Monday we were told that "the lawyers" who needed that 72 hours to look over paperwork had not even received said paperwork yet. Our mortgage person was reportedly "hopeful" that we would close later this week. Yesterday we got word that we're scheduled for this Friday at 3:00. If we get delayed again my head might possibly explode. I am not sure exactly who is holding up what and which pieces of paperwork are missing. I guess that's all for the best, because if I knew who the weakest link was, you can be certain that I would take Piper and all nine cats down to their office and camp out all day, every day, until each and every piece of paper needed for us to get this thing settled was where it belonged.

Ryan's roommate graciously agreed to let us crash here, as he is away on business at the moment. I am thankful he's letting us use his house (our cats are stashed in the basement, since the roommate is allergic), but it's...um...a bit like a college house. I can't seem to locate the vacuum sweeper and there is a staggering collection of liquor bottles on top of the fridge. There are jugs of apple cider exploded in the freezer, along with some sort of dribbly red alcoholic concoction frozen into wine glasses. They cleaned up a bit before we came, so the bathtub and kitchen floor are reasonably safe, but everywhere there are piles of expensive electronics (ahhh, to be a single male with disposable income), thick layers of dust, cd's, half-unpacked boxes, various types of weaponry (nobody was ever sorry they bought that mace when zombies attack, I guess) and keyboards and video games and glass figurines. The baby is perpetually covered in dust, crumbs and hair (yes, hair) and I have been going crazy trying to keep her clean and out of things.

Last night Piper was cruising along the front of the entertainment center and decided to give the deocorative screen-print tapestry hanging there a good, hard yank. Turns out it was held in place by two ceramic ashtrays, which fell direcly onto her little baby noggin. They didn't break, but a large seashell that had been resting inside one did, and the sharp little pieces flew everywhere. Piper is okay, she got a few small cuts on her head and scared both of us half to death. Two minutes after that I found an extremely large red fire ant trundling along three inches from the baby's leg. I snatched her up, stashed her in the playpen where she sleeps, and then took a shoe and killed the sucker. It was of alarming size.

Piper was screaming by now, standing up in the pack n' play and letting off howls of fury at being treated in such a manner. Despite that fact that it was 12:30 and my husband gets up at 5:30 for work, I marched into the room where he was sleeping, flipped on the lights and said "I don't care WHAT it takes or who we have to kill. We better have our house this weekend."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

If I ever decide to buy a house from across state lines, somebody please kill me. Seriously. Or you could just beat me with a large dirty brick until my brain leaks out my ears and then pile all our worldly posessions on top of me. Make sure you clean out my checking acccount first. That would yield almost the same results as I have right now, with less effort.

We're moving using one of these. Notice how the pictures don't show the length of the thing? I mean, they give you the dimensions, but you think "Oh, six feet long? Eight feet high? No problem!" However, when they delivered it on Tuesday, it was quite short in person. I had some serious doubts about how much of our stuff would fit in there. But my brother came over and rocked out, cramming our shit in there like a pack-master. I was still worried about fitting the remaining stuff that was scattered around the house, so I took the clothes/soft things and stuffed them in the cracks between boxes. Our crap is wedged in there so tight, my brother joked that when we finally get around to unloading, we'll open the door and there will be a slight tremble from within and then poof, everything will explode outward in a cartoony avalanche of household goods.

But, fine, whatever, we got most of it loaded. Ryan was flying in Wednesday night, so I thought we could finish up the packing/loading Thursday. He called me Wednesday before he got on the plane and said he'd heard from the realtor and mortgage people and they said everything was 100% go for the March 28th closing date they promised us six weeks ago. He boarded the plane happy, Piper and I picked him up at the airport, and we went to bed Wednesday night a snuggling little family, feeling quite secure that this was our last night in Michigan. We awoke Thursday tired but pleased that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Our plan was to finish loading the stuff, go pick up our rental car at 4:30 and take off between 7 and 9 pm Thursday night. It's a 10-12 hour drive, so we should've arrived in plenty of time to drop off the rental and go to our closing at 4:00. By 5pm Friday, we were supposed to be unlocking the the door to our new house.

Except for the part where Ryan got a phone call at 2:00 pm yesterday and was told "the lawyers need 72 hours to look over the paperwork" and the VERY SOONEST we can close is some time Tuesday.

Panic erupted. We were mere hours from transporting a minivan full of cats, crap, and baby due South with nowhere to go once we got to Charlotte. Ryan used up two of his three available days off to come here and drive us down. We paid $230 to fly him here, for fuck's sake, plus almost $300 for the rental car. The movers were scheduled to pick up our stuff on Friday and drop it off at the new house on Tuesday.

After more than an hour of freakouts, back-and-forthing, and debating, Ryan's dad offered to drive us down some time this weekend. Ryan's roommate said we could put the cats in his basement for a couple days and crash there until we can get into our house. So we canceled our rental van and will be going on Saturday night instead, and I just hope to God the cats don't trash the basement and that "the lawyers" don't decide they need until Thursday or Friday of next week to do whatever the hell it is they're doing.

In the meantime, I have to make the stuff I left out stretch to cover nearly a week. I've arranged for our belongings to be delivered to the new house Wednesday or Thursday, but the lone suitcase of clothing I left out contains three outfits for each of us - outfits I picked out for the 70-80 degree weather in Charlotte, not the two inches of snow we got here last night. I'm already out of clean socks; I can't find my hairbrush; this morning, the baby pooped all over the one long-sleeved shirt I have for her; Ryan brought just one change of warm clothes, since he had shorts and t-shirts he had left here. Oh, and for some reason, Piper is trashing her clothes worse than usual. Which means my clothes are trashed worse than usual, because whenever her face and shirt are smeared with gooey chunks of graham cracker, drool, and floor lint, my face and shirt wind up smeared with it too.

Aaaaaand I woke up really late this morning and I have a ton of things to do, which means our plans for the three of us to take a family day and go to the museum will probably have to be shelved.

So, like I said, just beat me with a dirty brick next time.

Why Rent When You Can Buy? Oh, That's Why.

So, my husband is in North Carolina, attempting to teach miscreants teenagers how to diagram a sentence. I am here, holding onto my sanity by a thread down the fort. After much discussion and some frustrating apartment-hunting (online by both of us and in-person by him), we have decided that it couldn't hurt to look into buying a house. This, of course, means applying for a mortgage. Because, you see, you can't really buy a house until you ask The Man for some money and The Man tells you how much imaginary money you'll have to spend.

We went through this once before, in California, before we decided that working two jobs apiece just to own a piece of shit condo in the seedy end of town was not something we wanted to pursue. I handled it all, spending much time on the phone with a very nice lady from some mortgage firm or other, a firm which apparently sold my information to whoever buys that sort of thing, because now I get 10 automated robot telemarketing calls a week on my cellphone about "an important personal business matter" and "the great rate I can give you on your current mortgage." Whatever, dudes.

I also handled the documentation and made many phone calls badgering a certain employee of another mortgage company to GET OFF HIS ASS and do something when we had to use that mortgage company in order to qualify for a downpayment assistance program provided by the city and a reduced-interest-rate program for teachers. This guy took our documents and then sat on them for four weeks, while I left him an increasing number of irate messages and finally called threatening to camp out in his office until he filed our paperwork for us. In the end, it didn't much matter, since we didn't want to buy a piece of shit condo in a piece of shit town, but we only decided this after I spent all those weeks trying to get this assmonkey to do his fucking job.

Anyway, this time Max is handling it so far, although I will be the one digging up our tax records and pay stubs and bank statements when it comes time. Max has on occasion sighed heavily and rolled his eyes at my obsessive filing of our personal documents, but a couple of days ago he thanked me for my dedication because he knew all it would take was the flip of a file-box-lid to get what we need.

Monday he called to tell me he called several mortgage people and was only able to get one on the phone. It was a guy, and when Max explained what we're looking for/our situation, this particular mortgage-broker-person said he was just going to run Max's credit/info, instead of ours together, because he thought that would give us a better score and more money. We were under the impression that since we're married, it doesn't much matter, but I guess that's not the case.

I was irritated, because when Max relayed the conversation, I got the distinct impression that this mortgage guy had dismissed me outright since I'm not employed (at least, not in a paycheck-gathering, social-security-accruing sort of way) and am, for all intents and purposes, a Stay At Home Mom. Which, uh, let's face it, as much as I just shuddered typing that sentence, I am. Oh dear, there goes another shudder.

However, this does not mean that I am happy to be cast aside uncounted. Particularly since my credit score is 60-100 points higher than my husband's (which makes it very high, the sort of high that made dollar signs pop into housing lenders' eyes during our first attempt at buying a home). My husband has good credit, but that is mostly due to my influence (and by "influence" I mean constant badgering about paying bills on time, taking over paying the bills so they get paid on time, and threatening to make him eat his credit card if he used it again before the balance was fully paid off). So I am a leeeeetle annoyed that this loan guy is blowing off my very existence.

My irritation with this loan guy's attitude is approaching the levels I reached during our house-shopping days in California, when I endured all manner of sexist comments and attitudes from realtors. I'm still not sure if people involved in the house-buying business are this stupid and offensive to everyone, or if everyone but me is too stupid to be offended.

Unlimited Night & Weekend Minutes

So, Max is Down South, and we are still stuck in the Great White North until we figure out a place for us to live. He gets up at 5:30 am to go to school every morning. I just called him at 12:20 am to tell him something. He wasn't mad. In fact, this sort of thing is pretty typical of our relationship. The conversation sounded like this:

Him (groggily): Hello?
Me (jabbering): Okay, I'm sorry to call you at this hour but I had to tell you this right now or I would forget, okay? So I'm really sorry but I had to tell you this. You remember that one time when we were in the Starbucks and that Sparklehorse song "Shade and Honey" was on only we didn't know it was a Sparklehorse song at the time? And I spent the whole three and a half minutes or whatever of the song going "Damn, what is this? I know this. What is this? I know this song, I know all the words, what the fuck is this?!" but I couldn't figure it out and then we got the Sparklehorse album and I was like "oh, that's the song" and I got all obsessed with Sparklehorse and I listen to the album at least twice a week now?"
Him (patiently): Yeeeaaah...
Me (still jabbering): But we never did figure out where I knew the song from?
Him (still patient): Uh-huh...
Me (teeth nearly chattering with excitement): Well, guess where it's from?! You remember that movie Laurel Canyon that I watched like eight times in a row? It's in there, the guy sings it! The songs in the movie are Sparklehorse songs, the lead singer wrote that song for the movie!
Him (as if a light bulb has gone on): OH! Oh! Yeah!
Me: I just wanted to tell you that.
Him: Well, I love you. Good night.
Me: Me, too. 'Night.

See? I blurt out weird things at random times and he not only follows what I'm saying, he's right there with me.

I love that man.

Not a Planner, But He Makes Good French Toast

One of my husband's more exasperating qualities is the way he hands out information. Whenver anything's going on, he either a) doesn't get all the necessary info, or b) doesn't give it to me. For example, he'll tell me his parents are talking about coming for a visit on Saturday, but he won't know what time and he thinks "maybe we're going to go eat lunch or something together." I don't find out until Friday night that they are coming the next day at two o'clock and not only are we going out to eat, they have a very specific place in mind and I need a nice-looking outfit to wear and they'll probably want to come back here afterwards so I need to make a dessert and stock the fridge with beer. It has taken YEARS of screaming and pleading and explaining and temper tantrums on my part to get him to correct this habit even a tiny bit. At least now he'll tell me up-front that he doesn't have any more information, and occasionally he'll remember to ask for it before he hangs up the phone with the person he has just made plans with.

I'll admit it, I am a control freak and I like to have as much information as possible beforehand. I like to be able to plan for every contingency. Some people would find it paranoid and weird that I would pick out three (sometimes more) possible outfits to wear to lunch with my in-laws, so that I have choices based on what the weather is like tomorrow, possible shoes I might feel like wearing, and whether or not I think his mom will wear a blue dress and do I want to run the risk that we might be dressed even a little bit alike. I am more inclined to call this facet of my personality the "they drive to weird-ass out-of-the-way places and I don't want to be scrunched into their Saturn for four hours of drive time wearing too-tight pants and a sweater that is hotter than a blacktop in July, and ok so sue me but I would be weirded out if my MIL and I both showed up in flowy blue dresses" factor. I will make said dessert and buy said beer for consumption post-meal at our house, but I will fret that maybe blueberry pie won't go with whatever we'll be eating, and perhaps I should buy both light and dark beer because you never know what people will be in the mood for.

My husband's refusal/inability to adhere to the Defense of Our Marriage Freedom of Information Act (i.e. Weetzie will freak the hell out when she does not know every tiny detail beforehand so if you are making plans you'd better get your facts straight, pal, and God help you if you don't tell her everything you know immediately) has forced me to be a little more Zen with my planning. Oh, sure, he's improved (he usually remembers to nail down time, date, and place now), but you are talking to a woman who will not wear red underwear beneath a purple skirt because those two colors don't match and it would bother me all day. I am so Zen now that he can say "my parents are coming on Saturday" and I will just shrug, pick out two possible outfits, and make an apple crisp. That's how Zen I am.

My Zen-master qualities will be sorely tested with this move. Er, possible move, since last night he said that he hadn't actually told them he full-on accepted the offer, and he thought maybe he'd go down there first and check it out. I spent the day combing websites and puzzling over neighborhood maps for a place we may or may not move. I haven't even gotten around to trying to price moving trucks or figuring out how we're going to live for months and months with no furniture because we got rid of it all and, horrifically enough, there is no Ikea in North Carolina.

I suppose I can't blame him for his caution. We went in blind and excited for our California move, and that did not turn out nearly as great as we thought it would. And a job is nice, but if it's going to be another terrible job in a place we can't really afford to live and would hate...well, that's why we left California.

I am pretty proud of myself, though, for not picking up something and beating him with it when I asked about things like the job salary, benefits, etc. and he said he didn't know. I just took a deep breath and told myself that I can't blame him for not researching the job all that well, since we thought it was a long shot and weren't sure how interested we were in another big move. It would just be nice to know these things, so I can work out a possible budget and maybe find a pediatrician or know if I'm going to have to auction a kidney on Ebay every time Piper gets an ear infection or someone keys our car.*

He's supposed to go down there for an orientation before the end of the month (two days right before the school lets out for Xmas break), and I think his plan is go down there solo and check it out - the school, the neighborhoods, the town in general. We want a reasonably nice neighborhood (our budget never allows for one that's super-trendy or super-safe) where we can survive with one car. I am going cross-eyed looking at apartment listings and trying to get familiar with a city I've never been to. When we moved to California, it was sheer dumb luck that got us an apartment three blocks from his school, which just happened to be on the safer end of town. We picked that complex because it was cheap and allowed pets. Somehow I don't think Fate will be that kind twice, and I don't want to end up livng next to a sewage treatment plant (does Charlotte have a DoWiSeTrePla?) or in a place where living with only one car is out of the question.

One thing that got me totally excited about this (possible, probable) move was when Max pulled up the weather forecasts for there...and then for here. It's supposed to be high-60's in Charlotte this weekend. Here? They're prediciting mid-30's and snow. I did not like the cold when I lived in Michigan before, and two years of wearing flip-flops 11.5 months of the year did not make me happy to come back to a place where I have to dress my wriggly, cranky child in 4 layers of clothing just to take her outside.




*Which happens a lot, actually. Twice in the first year we owned it - once in CA, and once two days after we arrived back in Michigan.

Southward Bound

This morning, Max got offered a job in North Carolina.

It appears that we Yankees are about to go get Southern-fried.

Packing

It's 1:00 am, and I am totally not packing, which I should be. I'm not completely goofing off, I'm making a list of stuff for Max to do when he gets up at 6:00 am. I am on the night shift with Piper, and in the morning I will sleep for a bit while he baby-wrangles and attempts to put a dent in the chaos that is our apartment. There is stuff everywhere, stuff piled on stuff piled on stuff stacked on things piled on stuff. We have no furniture except a fold-up table, a couch, a mattress, and a living-room chair. We sold some things, and donated the rest to a family that needed it. Most of it was too big to take with us and we were happy to give it to people that could use it. However, this means that all the stuff that was on the bed, desks, coffee tables, night-stands, and so forth is now ALL OVER THE FLOOR. My job tonight is to sort the big piles into smaller piles so in the morning my husband can attack one pile at a time.

I should probably be napping if I'm not packing, since Piper is asleep. Normally she wakes up around midnight and wants to be up until 4:00, 5:00, or even 6:00 a.m. and insists on being held or fed or otherwise interacted with during that entire span, thus ruling out any chance of me a)sleeping, b)pumping out some more of my toxic-to-babies-antibiotic-laden-breastmilk, or c)doing anything even remotely useful.

Instead, I am working on my list and watching The Family Stone. I have loved this movie from the first time I watched it. I passed on it in the theater because I thought oh, no, Sarah Jessica Parker. But I turned it on one night for something to watch while I folded laundry, and was instantly charmed. I think it's a sweet and funny film, and it's on my list of favorite "non-traditional" (for lack of a better term) Christmas movies (a list which also includes Love Actually and The Ref). The Family Stone makes me laugh because I've been there, on both sides of the equation - both as a member of the family peering curiously at a sibling's chosen partner, and as the outsider who has a hard time connecting with her partner's family. This year, holidays should be a whole new sea of treacherous waters, since we now have the first/only grandchild on either side and will be living back in Michigan, but don't know exactly where in the state we'll be at the end of the year.

Right now I'm watching this movie because it's funny and I feel less stressed about the move when I can laugh. It's also giving me a small amount of warm-fuzzy feelings about living near family and friends, which I really need right now because all I can think is this better be fucking worth it. Moving back had better be the best thing we've ever done, because I don't want to give up matching furniture we actually liked and uproot our lives and do all this shit just to get back to a crappy hellhole we can't wait to get out of again.

Unless of Course Your Mom Is Cool With The Porn

I have been cleaning (or attempting to clean) like mad lately, although if I hear the word "nesting" one more time, have one more person tell me it must be my hormones, or get one more vehment insistance that this means I am about to go into labor any second, I may buy a gun and climb a clock-tower. That's saying a lot these days, since the hip/back/tailbone pain is back again and so bad I can't do one lap around Target without resting twice, but I swear I will find a way.

I am not feeling a crushing sense of "oh my God baby almost here must clean clean clean NOW!" Rather, what has me re-discovering the joys of organized living and overuse of Scrubbing Bubbles is the impending arrival of my mother and sister. They will be here in just over a week, and they are staying for more than two weeks. Two weeks is plenty of time for my mother to find all the piles of dirt I've swept under the rugs, realize that I never clean my oven unless the crud covering the bottom is actually on fire, open the hallway closet so all the junk I've shoved in there falls on her head cartoon-style, and generally confirm her long-held suspicions that I am the world's most disorganized person.

My mother and sister are also going to help us pare down and pack up our posessions while they're here, so I am frantically vaccuming up golf-ball-sized wads of cat hair from under the furniture, cleaning clutter off all the flat surfaces, and making sure there are no porn DVDs or dirty socks stuffed in random places. Nobody wants to explain to their mom what they're doing with a copy of Jenna Jamison's Greatest Clits or why they didn't pick up the dirty clothes that got kicked under the bed two months ago.

Nobody believes me when I tell them this. I have had several people insist that it MUST be "the hormones." Strangers, relatives, acquaintances - they all are all pregnancy experts apparently, because they all like to tell me how crazy pregnant ladies go crazy with the crazy hormonal pregnant cleaning right before they pop out a baby. Yes, thank you for the info, I've seen sitcoms and read the "funny stories" section of Reader's Digest too. They continue to tell me I am suffering from hormones no matter what I say. I will be sure to call these people up and ask when I need to take a piss and what flavor of ice cream I would prefer, since they seem to know my body and mind better than I do.

I don't get it - nobody wants their mother to know how much of a slob they really are. Do you want your mom finding your copy of 365 Sex Positions or a pair of dirty socks behind The Chronicles of Narnia in your bookscase? If your mother was coming to stay with you, would you feel okay about letting her brush her teeth over a soap-scummy sink or shower in a tub that, while it is in the guest bathroom and therfore rarely used, has inexplicably developed a visible dirt ring? What would your mom say if she knew that you hate putting away laundry so much that you frequently skip this step altogether and chuck it wholesale into the pile at the bottom of your closet or wear clean-but-horribly-wrinkled items straight out of the basket until it is empty again?

Mmm-hmm, that's what I thought. Must be your hormones.