Our Life

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.

So, we are moved in. Thank you to all that showed to help, and thank you to all that weren’t able to but had offered.

We will need to sit down and write all that happened, out…

The seller did not want to pay ~$500 in taxes, we find out on the DAY of closing. Our loan officer, knowing we were strapped for cash after coughing up 5% of the down payment ourselves, bought down our loan from 6.17% to 6.0%, so we didn’t have to come up with that… but, that delayed closing from 1 PM to 4 PM. It also meant we closed in escrow. What I didn’t understard abou that, was that we didnt own the house till all the paperwork made it to California. So we walked away from closing with a stack of papers, and no house. We couldn’t even get in and clean before moving…

We did get a call the next day about 11 from our lender saying we could occupy. We spent the day cleaning, replacing toilett seats, and getting contact paper in all the drawers and bathroom cabinets…

We then had family and friends help us move in on Saturday. Many hands make light work. It was awesome.

I have a few posts waiting on some details before I post them, stay tuned!