Things I know now that I didn't two months ago:

1. Built in microwaves are not meant for short people.  It really looks nice and saves space, but I can't see the food as it cooks.  The kitchen is going to become an obstacle course of step-stools at some point.  
2. There might be something to this whole robe thing.  I think I need a waffle robe or something similar for my mornings.  All the windows have no blinds and most of my morning routine involves states of partial undress.  
3. Sometimes we live under a flight path.  Either that or sometimes the flights all sound like they're about to crash out of the sky.  It only happens occasionally that they're super loud and I think it may have a correlation with inclement weather - but man, 20 planes sounded like they were going to fall out of the sky tonight (loml once described it as sounding like the Lost airplane).
4. Sleeping with a boy for a month can suddenly make it hard to not sleep with a boy and that offends me.

The bathroom downstairs look amazing.  And the basement is getting close.  Loml wandered around down there a bit last night and besides his being certain the house is going to fall down around us, we're both looking forward to having it as actual living space.  Two weeks from today?

The bathroom tile looks amazing.  I'm annoyed with the construction but also excited.  I think the tension of that is exhausting me.  Work has been kind of exhausting as well.  I'm just tired.  That is all.

From the doorway.  You can see the pipes for the double sinks/vanity on the left.  I bought the vanity today, online.  Fingers crossed it actually looks like the picture.  On top of that black edging, the wall will be painted green.  Romaine to be specific.

Thought I should get a close up.  The tile for this bathroom was expensive.  Glass on the walls, marble on the floors.  There is no grout just yet...

Journal swap round 4: librarian

I like to think that she was feeling wild, free ranging like a zebra.  

Journal swap round 4: me.

I made this quite a while ago and I believe this was during some crazy times with the house purchasing process.

Bits and pieces today.

***

Currently I have three space heaters running; this place will be a bearable temperature tomorrow.  I will continue to run up the electricity bill until it happens.

***

I have a few journal swap posts in the works, rounds 4 and 5.  Or round 4 and half of 5.  The posts are about to become even farther apart as my swapping companion is about to move states.  So we're going to embark on a mission to save the post office with our journal swap mailings.  We have welllll over half of each journal left.  It may be years at this point.

***

Last night I was at a friend's house and came home later than usual.  I came home to Boku staring at me out the front door.  Apparently she's taken on the role of guard-cat.

And one last crazy cat-lady picture to share.  This makes me happy.  We all love the house (though will be happier when the construction is over).

I haven't been feeling all that well lately.  Just tired and headachey, chesty and dribbly.  It's been a while, and at first I think it was allergies.  Then it was allergies compounded by my terrible handling of move stress.  Then it was that compounded by a different schedule because there's a boy in my bed every night.  Next, mix in the smell of paint and stain that has been heavy in the house for the past week.  So now, it is allergies?  Am I sick?  Or is my body just angry at me?  Apologies for the blank blog and stares, for the missing me for the past two weeks.  The contractor keeps promising two weeks.  So let's say that by Halloween, I should be 100%.  If not before.


Living with another person, after 6 years of solitary....it's been hilarious and fun and maddening and exhausting.  Loml and I are having a good time.  I do worry that he's bored a lot, a lot of his stuff was left in the basement at his house.  But I'm trying not to hover or worry or nag like a 60 year old wife.


Gotta go scrape some windowpanes and clean a square of grout on the floor in the bathroom...

Please forgive me for being terrible at taking pictures.  Basement pictures below.  Good luck figuring out how the basement is set up from the photos you're about to see.  Over the fact that it's not my strong suit?  Good, now we can all move on.

Being a homeowner is really odd.  Sometimes I pause and think 'We live here.'  Kind of incredulously.  And then it immediately follows 'I own this house.'  And then I scratch my head, say 'huh' to myself, smile a little and continue on with whatever I'm doing.

I will say, I have a lot of new respect for homeowners.  And very little respect for the homeowner who owned this house before me.  It appeared to my mom on move in weekend that she never cleaned.  It also appears she didn't take much pride in the house.  The french doors featured yesterday have glue on every single windowpane.  It takes a little time and a razor blade to get the glue off.  And then they look like new.  From what we have learned about the house, those doors have been there since 2004.  Six years of dirty looking french doors?  I'm not even a very clean person and I find that impossible.

Basement picture extravaganza!  Try to remember the last picture show.  I managed to fail at taking that same perspective shot and am too lazy to go downstairs and fix it (no access from inside the house, have to get a key, unlock the door, etc, etc).

From the bottom of the stairs looking west.  That rough bit of floor is where the stairs used to come down.  The bookshelf is an add on from the foreman, a way to hide a jumble of ceiling pipes that turn in to the utility room at that point.



From the bottom of the stairs looking south.  Door on the left is the bathroom.  On the right is utility room.  Notice the height different of those doors and then weep a little inside for loml's head and any tall friends of his.

From the bottom of the stairs looking east.  Loml makes his first very sinister actual appearance on this blog, if you don't count his feet from the first picture.  In the picture it looks like he's walking in to the laundry closet (to his left).  To his right is the "rec room" where the TV/couch will be.

From the bottom of the stairs looking north.  Floor drain!  That rough floor is where the shower closet was.  You know, the closet with a wooden door that you opened to a surprise shower.  Complete with drain that has no plumbing.

"loml's room".  Will have a bed in that nook and lots of gear in the rest of the room.  Today he actually purchased a $4 prize to hang on a few walls in there.  You should ask him about it.

The bathroom.  First left will have a vanity.  Second left is a toilet nook.  Up to the right, to the right of the window is our custom shower.

This is what it looks like when you have a wall that doesn't say "family a journey to forever":

And this is what it looks like to have a front entry way with stuff in it (including cat):

Still settling in.  Probably will be for the next month.  I promise I will get pictures of the basement again, hopefully tomorrow.  Slight hitch to that plan is that the contractor is coming tomorrow and we are going to have to argue a bit about the bathroom door - so I may be in a tizzy and full of hate for the basement.  But soon, I swear.

Not to make this all about the cats, but WOW yesterday was a doozy. Boku needed antibiotics, like I said yesterday. I tried on my own to grab her and give them to her and received quite a few hideous scratches on my arms and hand (keep in mind she only has back nails, this was some acrobatic freaking out).

Then, later in the day, loml's dad donned protective gear and loml and I followed him around with syringes. She freaked out, cornered herself in the litter box and became FERAL CAT FROM HELL. Hissing, spitting, growling, doing cat acrobatics to avoid being grabbed, etc. He only got ahold of her once and when I put that syringe in her mouth she went mental. So. Boku has had no antibiotics or painkillers.  Hopefully her missing tooth will not get infected.  But at this point, I don't feel like I'd blame myself even if it did.  We tried.  Really, really hard.

Cut to last night. For a few hours, she sporadically came into our bedroom meowing loudly, angrily, needily. I don't know what was wrong. At one point loml got up to see what she needed. Came back and she was quiet for a bit. Then she started up again.  I went out to see what I could do for her (I showed her food and water in case that was what she couldn't locate). Got back in bed. She was quiet again, for a bit, then came back.

Me: It's like having a baby.
Loml: A fat, toothless baby.

Eventually she stopped wandering around meowing. I think it was around 5:30. Somehow though, last night I got the best sleep I've had here yet. Getting used to the new bed/new house has taken a bit. And now I have to return to work tomorrow, unhappily.

Next time, hopefully no more about the cats.

I live here now. Here as in, the house I purchased. 

***

I'm currently preparing to grab Boku and force antibiotics down her throat. She's finally come out from hiding in the following places:

1. The litterbox
2. The very back of the closet
3. Under the couch

She's taking antibiotics because she has very few teeth these day, specifically one less than before her trip to the vet and three less than the last time I saw in her mouth.  The canines fell out somewhere in the apartment.  I already missed my chance to grab her - she's wandering around now, curious, finally.  She just found the front door, where she can see nature.  It's a whole new world here.  I think nature scared her, I cannot find her again and antibiotics are still in a syringe on the coffee table. 

Mona did fine, came out yesterday to get some loving and then hid behind the bed in the guestroom all night.  Baby steps.

Someone found the food/water and someone used the litter box, so all in all, cat acclimation is going OK.

***

The move went really well.  Nothing got broken, everything found it's place and there was only one fight.  Miscommunication between myself and loml caused Drama with a capital D when it came time to pay the movers.  But, that fight lasted only a very short time.  Then we were busy fighting about the cats.  Kidding, kidding.

I still have quite a bit to do around here.  When the basement is done, then it will fall into place.  And suddenly we won't have nearly enough stuff to fill this house.  But right now?  There's enough stuff.  I have to continue to put it on shelves and ferret it into corners.

I'll try to get some pictures and update on the construction in the next few days.  Now though, I have stuff to dust and windowpanes to clean.

As I'm packing up the piles of junk, I found my "scrapbook" for senior year of college.  And by scrapbook I mean, an empty scrapbook and piles of pictures.  Only three pages had pictures selected for them (individual piles of pictures stuck between pages).  The rest was just a pile of the year.  And wow.  Looking through all my crap (and I still feel like there are one too many piles of crap sitting around) has been illuminating.  And scary.

Senior year of college I look so...young.  I was heavier then, but my body doled that weight out differently than it does now, so my stomach isn't so bad, but my cheeks!  Wow.

Then there are the pictures of dancing on poles.  Katie drunk face everywhere (this just means I have my mouth open wide in wild, drunken laughter).  And then there's the incriminating picture of me with a stripper all up in my lap.  I'm laughing, clearly mortified and I look like I might be about to poke his chest like "is this real?".

Lessons learned:

1. Go back to the gym, lady.
2. Never allow your friends to take a picture of you when there is a stripper in the room.
3. Never attend anything involving a stripper in close quarters again.  I do not need to have that experience ever again.
4. Look through old pictures more than once every 6 years.

I have an irrational, ridiculous hate for the word ablution.

Out of all the words to hate, I realize it's not a real winner.  I read romance novels, so I know how many terrible words there are out there in the world (or I know how many terrible words there are to describe sex and anything sexual).  I mean.  Quim.  Mons.  Member.  Bulge.  Sheath.  Explosions.  

And yet, I read ablution and want to throw a book down in disgust.  Just wipe it up, nothing fancy.

There are two things you should know today:

1. I grow pimples better than you.  I mean, I am a champion at stress-fueled geysers.  I have two monsters on my face right now that don't seem to be going away.
2. My current plan to get the cats to the vet (to be boarded while I move) involves starving them.  This makes me feel cruel and at the same time, like a dastardly genius.  It was loml's idea to get them used to the carriers by putting the food in them.  I will, in fact, take it to the next level and starve them so that they both enter the carriers at the same time to get said food.  I just tried it and it went more smoothly than I even hoped.  I am planning on torturing my cats to make life easier.  Someone call animal control.

I feel like I've lost my steam with this story, I am done with it.  I'll finish up quickly here.

So it's closing day.  I asked loml to come with me, due to my irrational fear of the seller.  A couple of hours before the closing, the realtors, loml and I had the final walkthrough.  And happily, the seller was gone.  She wasn't staging any sort of hostile takeover.   It appeared she did most of the items she said she did, so we were all set to close.

At the closing, all was going well.  The seller didn't show.  Her lawyer was personable.  Mine was running me through the first round of paper work.  And then, somehow, it came up that my mortgage was entered as waiving escrow.  I never planned on waiving escrow - I always wanted my taxes and insurance to be rolled into my monthly payment.  The mortgage broker and I never even discussed changing this.  And here was my mortgage, no escrow.  I explained, in an angry voice, that this was NOT right.  She started to figure out what to do.  And then mortgage broker walked in.  I think it's unusual for these guys to show up at the closing.  There he was, all subdued shame due to the problems he had already caused.  In the end, he saved his own ass by showing up and he got the situation rectified, though I wouldn't say it happened quickly.

And so I own a house.  I own a house that is currently in a serious state of construction.  I now get to decide whether or not to lop off the back of the house due to a seriously unstable and dangerous enclosed porch situation.  I only have really terrible pictures of it so be warned.  The porch goes along the back of the house. Half of it is off of the kitchen and is a mudroom.  The other half is off of a bedroom and is a fabulous closet.  Here are the only terrible pictures I have.  Mudroom on left, closet on right.

Time for a shift.  Here's where I vilify my mortgage broker instead of the seller.  It's July 16.  The same day that I got the great news about the contractor.  I got a voicemail from the broker the night of the 15th.  It was confusing, basically he suggested that I get the mortgage without my Dad.  I knew I could qualify on my own but never considered it because then my Dad's down payment help would have to be taxed.  If he signs with me, he's not giving me the money as a gift, he's just putting money down for our mortgage.


So.  July 16th.  I call the broker back from work.  We no longer qualify for the loan.  Panic.  Rage.


Remember when my mortgage was pre-approved more than a month before this, the mortgage that included my Dad?  Yeah, the mortgage guy fucked up royally.  And in the terms of the contract, I had to have my loan secured by July 23rd.  And my Dad is in France.  The mortgage broker and his assistant somehow missed one of my Dad's debts.  Please consider that about a year before he had also done my sister's mortgage, with my Dad cosigning and at that time the debt existed as well.  Moral of this story:  records are important.  Filing.  Cross-referencing.  Look at the damned mortgage you did last year and start from there.


So basically the options, as mortgage broker (MB) saw them and emailed them to me that day:

1. My dad would gift me the money and be taxed off of his ass. 
2. I would have to just take a larger mortgage and in a year, pay down the mortgage with the lump sum from my dad.

If you could all take a second and very seriously analyze these options, I'll break down the very rude phone call I made to my MB.

1. Unacceptable.  He'll be paying out the ass.
2. I lose a full year of mortgage payments.  Because this option is essentially a refinance.  Also, my payments would be huge for that year.  And there's no guarantee that they would get smaller at the time of the lump sum payment.  Cluster.

My Dad's solution was to loan me the money.  "Loan".  Mortgage broker, on the phone, said that was not possible as I would no longer qualify on my own with the loan.  Here's where I went full on bitch.  It went something like this.

Mortgage broker:  No, you can't accept a loan as this would adversely affect your asset to debt ratio and you no longer would qualify.  Do you understand?

Me: No actually, I don't.  First, how did the debt get missed? (imagine full on dripping bitchiness)

MB: That was my fault, I apologize.

Me:  Second, you want me to take a full mortgage, right?  One which I qualify for on my own?  How is it possible that I no longer qualify for a mortgage if I take the loan?  Smaller mortgage + LOAN should equal bigger mortgage.  There are no missing variables here.  I would be borrowing the same amount of money in both cases, only from my Dad my interest rate is lower.  So technically, if I got a loan from my Dad, my asset to debt ratio is BETTER.

MB:  .................(long silence).  That makes sense.  I'm not at my desk.  Let me work on some things and call you back.

Yes, that's right, I schooled my mortgage broker in finance.  I HATE THAT DUDE.

Eventually we worked it out and I got a loan from my dad for the down payment, which is technically a second lien on the house.  But don't worry, mortgage broker fucks up again, at the closing.  See you next time.

As a complete side note, I got an email on July 21st that my closing was scheduled for August 5th.  If you'll remember, it took us weeks to settle on August 16th.  I had a brief panic attack when I got that email and imagined the seller engaged in some kind of hostile takeover of the house - living in it for free for 11 days.  Truth is, she just didn't want to pay the fees.

Not sure what to share, so here's the tiny yard patch.  Garage on the right.