Our Life

There have been a few things that went on from the last post.

* Chris had a birthday – there  is some complex math there, I think Quantum.

* I have been given another job opportunity at my current employer.

*Corinn has gone to the doctor for 4 mo checkup (read: more shots) and is healthy. There is worry that her hip socket cartilage is not forming right, coz they click, but an ultrasound did not show that this was the case.

* I have a new Job title, making me a Technical Account Manager.

This last part is new, and is frustrating till I can pick up how things work in this department.

There are some ther things I could write, but needed to get back to work…

Had a great time at Corinn’s first Thanksgiving. Momma had the turkey, stuffing, and sweet potato pie…. while Corinn got the Boobie-juice.

More posts later.

CC&C

My Family has been going to this particular spot for vacation for 20+ years (I think). Vacations were a week there… and as my parents got older, they extended it to 2 weeks, with the kids (my sister and I) only invited for the last week. As our collective lives got more complicated (job schedules, family schedules, time off request timing, work load, other obligations) it has come to “We will be down there these weeks, come when you can.”

Chris, Corinn and I went last week. We consulted our friends, family, and extended family for advice on the travels with the WeeOne. Some said “go at night, they will sleep”, others said “dont go at night thinking they will sleep… the car noise and streetlights, etc, will keep them up.” With the advice pretty much 50/50, we went with the gamble of Night Travel. It worked for us. Sure, we got up at 0400 to drive 6 hours… and we were tired. Travel, it seemed, was a piece of cake.

Pics of Corinn at the beach Pics I took at night

What no one did warn us about, was that “Vacation” no longer means what it used to mean. With Corinn @ 10 weeks, and breast feeding exclusively, the “Vacation” was more of a change of location for the backdrop of the same ole same ole. Still the feeding, still the crying, still the changing, everything but “where” was the same except: Grandparents! Whoopie! So, occasionally it was “Feed.. she’s napping! WERE OFF!!”

We would then run down to the beach, and hop in. After a little bit, I would run back to check (I like being in the sun the least between Chris and I) and signal from the deck if Mommy needed to come back in.

The grandparents were funny. We heard them go through the same confusion about Corinn’s crying as we did:

• “Oh, she must be hungry!” nope just fed her…
• “Oh, she needs a diaper change!” nope, was just changed…
• “Oh… uhhh… HERE MOMMY!” hehehehe…

At the end of the week, they found the Groove too.

We didn’t want to leave. We had to, I had to go back to work. We left 2200, after last feeding. She slept the whole 6 hour drive, minus one stop to eat.

And so I went back to work today. All the frustrations, issues, and stresses – waiting for me to return.

Yep, I’m a little bit older. June 9 I turned 31. For the young’ins reading this.. yes, that’s old. Have your fun pointing that out. There will be somone younger than you pointing out your are old when you get here too… Its how karma works. For the older readers, yes, this is still the prime of my life. May I recognize that before it passes!

I spent the day with a buddy of mine (Hi Chuck!) digging posts for the fence in the back yard. We discovered the back part of the property will not support fence posts… its sand that is water logged from the creek not 10 yards away. So the dogs won’t get as much space to run around as we’d like. Thats ok, they will survive.

That afternoon we all went to our friend house that were having a birthday cookout, as her birthday is the 7th (Hi Lori!). We two Gemini’s get along. The food was great, and so was the company.  Got to see some former co-workers I haven’t seen in almost 5 years (Hi Patric and John!). We then got to see how uncoordinated geeks can be by playing some Wii.

This day also marks Chris and I’s 11th anniversary. We met on my birthday in a friend’s yard. It feels like a while ago, but not that far. Love ya babe.

This week has not been a good one for the Host. The nesting instinct has blossomed now that we have a house we will be in for a while. She is ready to paint, and decorate, and to all sorts of ‘nesting instinct’ stuff. Unfortunately, her body is not up for all that.

Where she could paint 2 rooms with 2 coats, and eat lunch, and chill, now she gets winded just getting a few strokes in with the roller. This is frustrating for a woman that has been so independent for so long, and has been in excellent health as well. She can get winded from just going up the stairs. She is bloated, uncomfortable, and can get ‘testy’. She can’t lay down (the way she wants to), can’t sit in a car, can’t run, can’t exercise vigerously… So many things she wants to do, and especially because she can’t. But, we take it in stride as we knew this was part of the program.

Host went back to the OB/GYN to get kiddo checked again. We had a ‘distended bladder’ or ‘baby needs to pee’ situation last ultrasound we had, so she needed to come back to check to see if that was an issue/concern.

The technician found that the bladder was still distended…. oh… wait… oh look!! the baby is peeing!! Yeaaa!!! then Host things “Wait… Its PEEING IN ME!!” What a thought. So, baby is still healthy, and progressing normally. We also learned Host has a bit extra amniotic fluid, almost double, so that may be some portion of the bladder issue.

We got the Fence material. All “$holy-cow-thats-a-lot-for-wood” of it. It doesn’t seem like enough. Our friends came over after the baby-shower, and were retelling of their fence rebuilding exp. They took their fence down. When stacked after demolition like we have our new stuff, did not thing there was enough there to actually make the fence they just took down. As another happy aside, they may be able to assist with drilling, yes drilling, the fence post holes. That is a great relief, if we can pull that off. Digging fencepost holes has to rank somewhere with dentistry, or clearing briars from the backyard.

Oh, and I have updated the blog software again. Did you notice? sure ya didn’t

With the thought of 2 mortages looming over me, the bread winner, and my wife, the “host”, we were sweating bulletts over the selling of the old house.

There were a few stops and starts with the seller, ranging from: loans falling through, papers being drafted with incorrect numbers, to her real estate agent just not doing her job, to the moons aligning against us.

Chris finally got the papers, and the money, last week.

YEAAAAA!!!! only one (almost crippling) mortgage!!

We have some woods behind the house here. We want some space for the dogs to run around in a fenced yard (more on fence issues later), so we, and by that I mean I, need to clear some of the brush in the woods.

Chris’s brother has a bush hog. You may remember the commercials… big guy leasurely pushing this red machine along through some brush, which is languidly falling out of the mowers way, and just makes it seem so easy and uncomplicated. I am here to say: advertising is false!

The cycle-bar will damn near shake your teeth out, not even cutting stuff. When they are trying to chew through something bigger than a pencil, will try to take you with them. When not on level ground, it will either run away from you, or try not to go forward. There is only 2 modes to the ‘go’, and that is ‘forward’ and ‘off’. Now, imagine you are me: with long sleeves on, gloves, and a determined smirk, and this machine is plowing forward through brush and saplings. Now, to this, add that almost every one of the saplings is wrapped in this devilish mesh of briars. Some of the ‘aww, that hurt’ type, others the type that you can put marshmallows on and roast 20-30 of them at a time. Bloodletting. SO… Here I am, plowing through underbrush that is rapidly piling up on the mower, full of pricky briars, and keeps hitting the throttle adjustment to idle. Slow going, and painfull. I tore 2 shirts almost off of me trying to get the backyard cleared.

AND THEN, I broke it. I don’t know how, but something gave up. I was going forward, and it stopped. I do have SOME mechanical aptitude, so I tried to see what was wrong. Only thing I found was that a drive chain came off. I get that back on, but it still didn’t go forward. We had to return it to the brother-n-law with “something broke, not sure what it was. Call me if you have it repaired and I will pay for them”.

Now, I get to clear the backyard like a lumberjack: with an axe, a pocket knife, and lots of cussing.

The weekend we got back from the babymoon, we needed to find a house. The timeline was getting too close. We close on this house, need to be in another house or just pack our stuff and move to temporary housing. “Appartment?” you think… we have 2 dogs, a cat and a rabbit. We didn’t even check, the deposit would probably kill us. Then there are friends and family (thank you all for opening you homes to us!) … Animals come in to play again… there just didn’t seem to be a good solution other than find our destination house, and quick!
The day we got back, our Realtor had a listing that was juuust listed. It was a New listing, you can only do that for the first 2 weeks a house is on the market. So we went to take a peek. The yard is… a hill. and a good one. The house is awesome! As we are walking in the back yard, the neighbor lady says “you guys should buy this house….” and we chatted a little. The next Thursday, I took my Dad and Mom by. They like it too! man that yard is a hill… And we meet the other neighbor.. She’s cool too. Her husband is a Geek, she is a stay at home mom! Awesome!
So, we put in an offer. It was 9K less than the bank was asking (it’s a foreclosure), and threw in that they pay closing costs, to see what they would say. That was on the friday, we sent in the contract. Our Realtor didn’t tell us we were stupid, but you could tell she wanted to… So we have to wait for a bank not even in Georgia to return the counter… Monday had us both asking each other “think they will take it? or laugh at it?” We finally do get the counter, and it was for 1K less than original offer, + all closing costs. Sweet! We accepted that offer, got an inspection, and are ready to rock and roll.

The day the inspector is looking the house over, the at home-mom neighbor states “we are kinda jealous… you are getting a really great deal” she went on to give me the number the original owners paid for the house, which was $30k+ than the asking price. SWEET DEAL!!!

For those that want to see what it looks like, the pictures are here.

I will be calling on those I will need to help me, as the wife can only pack boxes.

We’ll keep ya posted!

We went on our baby-moon last week. “Baby-moon?” you ask? yep… it’s like a honeymoon, but is the last time you get to go on a vacation without kids (in the figurative sense).

We went on another NCL cruise. We ported out of Charleston, which was a much more paletable drive than to Miami, so was not as long. We spent 4 of the 7 days at sea, but it was ok. We were ready for it.

For the impatient, check out all the pictures here.

In the “Getting there” link, some notes:

Ships captains relinquish control to “Pilots” for each port. Pilots know the ins and outs of the ports, like shifting currents or sand bars, etc. We learned this on our last trip, but didn’t know how the pilots got on or off the boats. Leaving Charleston, I caught a second wake behind us, and saw the Pilot boat flanking us. So, I snapped some pictures. The no-frills hand off looks like this.

In the Grand Cayman:

We went to a private beach/resort. The water was too rough to go snorkeling So I shutter-bugged around. One of my favorites is this one.

In Cozumel:

We bummed around like tourists for a while. We went back to the same corner joint we got rained into last time we were there. Looks like they had made some upgrades. And, we went back to the dive bar, to get some pictures of the ceiling and mural… One of the things that really grabs you about Cozumel is the water. We overheard that on a good day, the visibility can be up to 200 feet underwater. A fact that seems to be illustrated by seeing the daylight under the ship as the sun set behind it.

In Key West:
We went to the Sunset Festival in Mallory Square. It was more a Street Festival than a Sunset one. I was expecting some sort of cohesive moment, like the countdown at New Years, or something. There was nothing. Not even Ooooh’s and Aaaaah’s. Mabey the sound of clicking cameras, at least the “cka-sheeeh” programmed into them .

If ever I am in Key West for another Sunset, I want to check the local forecast and get the sunset time… and @ 5 min till, yell loudly: Ladies and gentlemen, especially the tourists and first timers… Do not take your eyes off the sunset or your beloved to look at me, I am only a time-keeper and a voice… We have 5 minutes left in this day and sunset… We have one minute left of sunset. 10! 9! 8!” Kinda proves you make your moments. So if a moment isn’t quite what you are wanting, change it to what you do. You will never get THAT moment back, so make it count!

Chris’ Cube:

Chris’ co-workers missed her… to the tune of 5 of them spending 3 hours wrapping her cube in aluminum foil. Now, the pictures don’t show it, but they wrapped the change in her drawer, the individual paper clips in her drawer, the individual pieces in a magnetic sculpture, even the phone cord. They missed her.

I wasn’t left out either, but the things they did to my monitor are not family-friendly. But to describe it: I put post-it’s up on my monitor when I need to remember things to check back up on things. There were a few extra when I got back:

• Cliff uses too many post-its
• Shutty rocks! (this is a guy that works with me and was ’squatting’ at my desk while I was gone)
• Shutty is Cliff’s daddy
• The Circle

Thank’s Shutty!

When we got back to Charleston and were walking out of the customs check, the last custom’s official at the door said it best: “Welcome back to reality, sir”

I am starting to dislike selling the house. It’s not that I don’t want a house that our family will fit in, I do. It’s not that I will need to call on friends, as my wife will not be able to assist with moving; I will.

I hate answering the phone to then have to essentially need to vacate our house in ~10 min as an agent (we have never met) brings someone over (who we have never met) to see the house.

I feel worse than Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day off. If you remember the movie, Ferris had a theory that one of Cameron’s issue was that his house was like a museum… Well, our house is like that now. Devoid of “Our” things. Cleaned and arranged so that one looks at it and can imagine themselves living in our house.

We get up, put the dogs out, and make sure the house has that “You could live here!” look. That part was kinda not so annoying. As I suck at cleaning, my job was not to make any mess that Chris would have to clean up. My office – just don’t use it if you have to change anything about it. If you take a CD/DVD in there… you take it back out. My laptop bag goes in the closet. We have to be in a constant state of “you may have to leave any minute”. As if that wasn’t enough, we also have to get out for blocks of time the agent’s give us. “I’d like to show your house tomorrow.. sometime between 1 and 4 PM” ok? so friggin when can _I_ be here? It’s not that big a deal when you aren’t going to be there anyway, like on the weekdays… But on our Saturdays!? it just kinda sucks, ’s all I’m sayin.

For those that are interested, you can see the new carpet, and some pictures of most of our stuff from 3 bedrooms shoved into 2 rooms here.

You can also see what the “Prepped” house looks like here

As a general note, the pictures are large. Don’t even click if you are on dial-up. They will be ginormous.

Yea, we know. We suck.

As a teaser post, we have a few drafts in the works:

Hiccups. Chris has felt the baby have hiccups!
Murphy’s morning. Go ahead and check your spare tire’s air pressure, will ya?
Pictures (I hope I can get these to work in IE) – Chris has progressed past “beer belly” and into “you are pregnant!”
Doctor visit #3 (I know, you are wondering what happened to #2?)

More when we write them!