I'm lonely.

And it sucks. I haven't talked to most of my friends in ages. Okay, I've been busy...I know they're busy. I'm just feeling a little down today and seems like there's no one to talk to. So, I'll blog. Hubby has been in some sort of funk lately too, although when I ask him "what's wrong?" his answer is always "nothing." I don't buy it for one second.

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We went out yesterday & today and drove around looking at houses. It is amazing what pictures can do for homes for sale. I've had this "dream home" that I've been watching. I have it saved to my favorites and check it almost every day to see if an offer is pending, etc. It is a beautiful house (judging by the pictures); the kitchen is updated, has wood floors, nice yard, etc etc. Well, we drove by it yesterday. It certainly didn't live up to its pictures. Granted, we only saw the outside, but I'm already disenchanted. And its about $20-40k more than other similarly-sized houses in the area. I guess it was a good wake up call. The pictures aren't what its all about. I was just so excited to see a house with a kitchen all pretty and nice. It is going to be hard to leave our nice updated house for one that pretty much looks like what our condo used to look like. Ah, such is life. I told Glenn if they could make that house look so great in its pictures that I can't wait to see what our condo looks like!

Today we did find a very nice house. We were just driving around again, looking at houses we had seen online. We drove up to one that had an immaculate yard and was on a quiet, dead end street in a cul-de-sac (bonus points for that!!). As we were leaving we noticed an older guy getting ready to put some signs up on the street corner. Score!! They were having an open house today. It was a nice house, a little small, but nice. It was very clean and well-kept. It was a bit outdated, but I just have to get over that. Gold light fixtures are easily replaced.

I am really excited to be in this phase of home selling/buying process. We want to look around a lot and get a better idea of what's out there because, if we're lucky, we're hoping to get an offer fast.

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Speaking of moving, its funny how when your parents move away that they always want you to move where they are. Um, they moved away. Every time I talk to my dad on the phone he mentions how he's going to send me home listings in the Boise area. My in-laws always talk about how we should move to Georgia. And my mom & stepdad are always encouraging us to move to Montana. Before my inlaws moved to Georgia, they lived for a short while in Arizona. I distinctly remember them asking if we were coming home for the holidays. We are home. They're the ones that left. Its just funny, especially because it is the same with each of our parents.

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I miss kung fu. I just thought I'd throw that out there. Its probably a topic worthy of a whole blog itself. The other day I was cleaning out the laundry room and I found Glenn's old kung fu notebook from when we were both getting ready to test for our black belts. I was thinking of how that was such a big part of our lives, and how now it is nonexistant. We'll never go back. I was thinking of all the forms and how much I miss doing them. Okay, I know I didn't have to stop doing them. For a long time I would do them in my head before I went to bed so I wouldn't forget them. I tried this awhile back and I always get to this one part of Kempo II and I have a mental block. I can't get past it. It frustrated the hell out of me. Anyways, I almost got teary looking at that old notebook and thinking about kung fu. I've thought of practicing a different style (muy thai has always looked interesting), but I just don't know. I liked our style. I don't want to learn a whole new system. I'll write more about this later and explain in more detail.

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Alright, that's it for now. I still feel a bit lonely but it always feels good to write. Now I know why I so feverishly kept a journal when I was younger. I often think I should keep a journal again. Glenn got me a very nice leather-bound one a few years back, but I'll always write in it and then go for ages before I write again. In fact, the last time I wrote was right after we found out we were pregnant, so you know how long that's been. Blogging is fun, and expressive, but I definitely don't blog about things I might write in my own personal journal. Not yet at least.

The house.

The professional photographer came out yesterday to take the pics for the realtor. I was hoping we'd get copies of the pics, but Glenn reminded me he's a professional photographer and probably not in the habit of just giving his pics away. We'll have the fliers of course, but I really wanted some pics to showcase all the hard work Glenn has done. So, I took some of my own.

The master bedroom and bath





Living Room





Kitchen and dining area





Entry way



Guest bath





Beanie's room



Anyone interested in the market for a 2 bedroom condo?

Might as well get it all over with at once...

All four of Beanie's molars are coming in. I've been watching the bottom ones because it seems like she's been working on these molars forever. One night last week she was lying on the bed and laughing (or was it crying) and I noticed the top left molar had started to cut through. The top one! When all the while I'd been watching the bottom ones. A couple days later I noticed the other top one was starting to cut through as well. I am just waiting for those silly bottom ones to pop through, aren't they supposed to come first anyways? She has been horribly cranky today and more of the left top molar is coming through now. I swear these buggers have taken forever to come in! What excuse will I have for her crankiness after the molars are in?

The crib.

It is still in Beanie's room, unused and everything. Sure she has slept in it a few times. Mostly for naps. She has never slept an entire night in it; she hasn't slept in it at all for months. She plays in it sometimes while I'm tidying up her room. We've been staging the house, getting rid of tons of things we don't need or use, putting even more in storage. For some reason, hubby has an attachment to the crib. He doesn't want it to go. My idea was to take the crib out of her room and rearrange some of the other furniture (namely the glider) to make the room look more spacious. He wants to keep the crib. For what purpose I don't know. It would seem to me that trying to get her to sleep in her crib now is basically pointless. Should she sleep on her own sometime in the near future, I would imagine it would make more sense to have her in a toddler bed. Sure, the crib converts so we could use it that way. I don't know, I'm mostly trying to wrap my head around why we should keep it in her room. My dad wanted to buy the crib for us; he wanted to buy something that would really be used. He ended up buying the changing table as it was more expensive. He would be glad to know its gotten about 5,000 more uses out of it than the crib. I don't even know if we should keep the crib. Will we use it next time around? Right now I think I'd rather just have a CA King bed! Its funny how my thinking has evolved since we purchased the crib, and funny that it is so nice and shiny new even though we've had it for 15 months.

I can't believe I'm going to admit this...

...but as I was changing Beanie's diaper and getting her into her jammies I thought Darn, I missed I Love Money last night. Yes, I watch that horrible awful train wreck of a show. And I was a little excited that they are replaying it in a couple minutes. Who am I kidding, they probably replayed it 50 times already today. Anyways, I'm about to watch it.

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A little update on our house situation. After a lot of thinking and number crunching we have decided that it is something we can make due with. Sure, its not the best possible outcome, but it is a good enough outcome that we can move on and upgrade to a larger house, which is what we both want. A few months ago I wrote a pair of blogs on my myspace page. The first was titled 10 reasons why I want to move now. The second was Ten reasons it wouldn't be so bad to stay here for awhile. Now that we're done with the remodeling, the reasons it would be nice to stay (although still valid) are heavily outweighed by all the reasons I want to leave. So, needless to say, I am quite glad we will be moving on sometime in the near (hopefully very near) future.

Okay, on to watch my trashy TV addiction....

I have a love/hate relationship with autumn.

Ugh. Its here. Autumn that is. It may not officially be fall on the calendar, but, trust me, it has struck with a vengeance. Isn't it enough that summer didn't really get started until mid- to late June? I remember Beanie was wearing sweaters in the middle of June. Now, seemingly as soon as September got here the weather cooled down and it is dark and dreary. I wake up and it is dark. That is probably the part I hate the most. I love waking up to a bright sunny day. It makes it so much easier to get up and go.

There are parts of Autumn I love -- the changing colors of the leaves, carving pumpkins, the brisk (but sunny) days. I would miss those things should I not be able to experience them, but I sure could do without this dark dreariness.

A past due blog

I haven't blogged about this previously, honestly I really don't know why it took me so long. I found out some very bad news when we were at my mom's in Montana. If we would've been at home, probably the first thing I would've done was sit down and write a blog. Since we weren't, I didn't. But I feel compelled to today, after reading through a post on my birth board.

Some of you may know that I post on a pregnancy board online. I check it every day and I consider everyone one there my friends, and a few on there I am very close with and wish we lived closer together. When I was at mom's I didn't have the chance to check in like I usually do, or post much at all. One morning (Sept 9) I popped online really quick to see what was up with my online family. I couldn't believe what I read. One of the little boys, just a week or so older than Beanie, had passed away. Slipped out the back door and drowned in the backyard pond. I just stared at the computer screen. I said "oh my god." Hubby overheard and asked what was wrong. I could barely speak. I clicked reply and sat there forever trying to figure out what exactly to type. What could I say? Nothing seemed right. I felt like someone had ripped my insides out and thrown them on the floor; I couldn't even begin to imagine what the mother was feeling. How could anything I would say be "right"? I posted my condolences and came back out to the living room (where everyone else was) and just sat, mostly speechless, still in shock.

I decided to write this this morning because last night I got online and the mom had posted that she saw a wonderful little trike at the store and how much she wanted to buy it, knowing how Reed would've liked it. The mom is amazingly strong. I cannot even fathom how she has so much strength at this time. Everything she posts is from the heart and full of truth. I'm not sure I could even visit the board should I be in a similar situation.

Putting myself in her shoes is something I never want to have to do. Hubby and I were going out to dinner the night I found out about Reed's death. To be honest, the last thing I wanted to do was leave Beanie with my mom and stepdad while we went out and celebrated. Hubby and I never really talked about the situation while we were in Montana, I felt like I needed to talk about it but, honestly, we weren't talking much at all on our trip. We talked when we got home and he told me how, even though he doesn't know the family, he is full of grief for them too. He couldn't imagine having to go through the death of your child. I don't think anyone can, or wants to.

This blog is no where near as eloquent as I hoped it would be. Reed was an amazing little guy. Though I only knew him through pictures and stories posted online, his sheer joy for life always shown through and its something I will never forget.

Last Saturday, a lot of the members of my birth board went out and blew bubbles in Reed's memory. Here are a few of our pics.







Rest in peace Reed. You are missed.

The Office

There aren't too many shows I will sit and watch with true enthusiasm. There are a few...The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, & The Office are about it. My sister came over the other day and made fun of me for having the premiere date of this season on The Office written on my calendar. Um, I wouldn't want to miss if or anything! I likened it to her writing the day her bus route changes on the calendar. She quickly scoffed at me. She would be late to work if she forgot when the park and ride was changing location and I would only miss a TV show. Only? We're talking about The Office here. I challenge that missing the season premiere of The Office would be almost as bad as being late for work.

I went out and bought Season 4 on DVD the day it came out. Hubby works fairly odd hours and is unable to watch it and we don't have DVR. I know, we're back in the dinosaur ages. I was so bummed when we forgot to bring Season 4 with us to Montana. At least there were a couple reruns on last Thursday. Unfortunately, Hubby said that the ads for the new season pretty much ruined the old one for him. He's wrong. He has no idea what happened last season (at least for the most part). The other night we watched the first DVD and you know what happened the very next day? Our Playstation 3 crapped out. Wouldn't be so bad, but the 360 crapped out a few weeks ago and, since we had the two of those, we packed away or donated our other DVD players. Ack!

Anyways, just a pretty random fluffy blog. Just something to cheer me up a little from the gloom and doom blog of yesterday. Any other Office addicts out there with me?

A brain fart of a blog

Whoa. Its been awhile since I've written. We've been busy working on the house, went away for vacation, and came back and worked on the house some more. Time to get caught up a little.

Just a warning, it has pretty much been a shit day so I apologize in advance for the likely depressing tone of this blog....

Let's see. The trip. The drive to Montana went much better than I expected. We only had to stop three times on the way there, and made it in abotu 10 hours. Not that much longer than it would've taken hubby and I by ourselves. Since my mom and stepdad live about 1/2 hour from anywhere there was a lot of driving in Montana too, and I think Beanie has had just about enough of car trips for quite a while.

We went to Glacier twice. It was beautiful, as always. We headed up to a part of the park we had never been. We loved it. Our only regret was we didn't have more time to spend in this more remote part of the park. We went up to Polebridge and to Bowman Lake. It was gorgeous and much less touristy and crowded than the Going to the Sun Road and Logan Pass.

Bugger. I was going to add some pics, but they are all on my other computer :(. We packed up the desktop when we staged the house, so I only have the laptop now. Poo. I'll have to see what I have on photobucket later.

We met with the realtor on Tuesday. He got back to us today. The price he is suggesting is not as much as we were hoping for. Not really close actually. I was so sad this morning I almost cried. We are crunching the numbers and seeing what we can do, but it definitely was a blow when we got the number. I wasn't too surprised given the recent sales nearby, but it doesn't make it suck any less. Poor hubby said "I guess I should've finished the house 5 months ago." I told him he can't think like that. He has been working his butt off and finishing 5 months ago would've been impossible. It is what it is. If we're going to go there I'll say "I wish brother-in-law (who used to own condo with hubby) should've agreed to our offer of buying him out when we gave it to him instead of farting around for 6+ months before agreeing to it." But, if you ask me, given the fact that he neglected to pay his portion of the mortgage for over 8 years I think he's damn freaking lucky he got anything. Ah, anyways. Not so happy as I hoped about this whole situation. Damn housing market. But, like I said, it is what it is. We can't look back and go through all these "what ifs" we just have to take what is in front of us now and go with that. That's all we have. Sure, we could stay here awhile. Neither of us really want to though. I want a house that is ours. This place has never really felt like ours, even though the two of us have lived here for over 9 years. For most of the time we rented the second room to one of our friends. Hubby always owned it with his brother until we refinanced last year. It never was ours, not until now when we've done all this work on it just to sell. A bit ironic, isn't it?

The other crappy thing that happened today was that some crazy receiving clerk pulled out his box knife (blade out) and started waving it all around in hubby's face. I guess not in a threatening way, more in a "I'm bat shit crazy" way. Still, hubby was pissed, doesn't like knives being waved inches from his face. Who does? He called this morning asking if I knew who was in charge of receiving at the company he was delivering to. I knew who it used to be, as I worked there before my current stint as a Mommy, but I called my friend to see how it was now. So many crappy things have been happening to hubby since he's gotten on this new route. He never complains or says how much he hates his new current work situation, but I can just tell. He HATES it. Um, how could you not? One day he is driving down the street to find a dead homeless dude has rolled out into the road in his wheelchair, he's got a "let me puff up my chest and act big" manager at one store who likes to cause troubles, and now he's got some dude waving a box knife blade in his face.

And to top it off, my father-in-law called with bad news today. Hubby was reluctant to post this on his myspaqe blog, but, sadly, I'm sure almost no one I know in real life reads this blog so I'm not going to hesitate here. My father-in-law has kidney cancer. They are going to remove his kidney and hopefully that will take care of everything. Geez, what else could come up today?

Luckily nothing. It was a dark and dreary day weatherwise, and it went perfectly with everything that happened. I made brownies and ate the hugest brownie ever, topped with a quite generous amount of ice-cream. Made me feel a little better.