So, we’ve been in the house a week.

This has been a strange ride.The movers showed up on July3rd and packed up our whole house in 4 hours. We had fast food, then took the kids to my MIL’s house. We fibbed a bit and told everone we were going to stay at the house with the dog. Instead we got a hotel room, just the two of us.

July 4th we got up early, went to the house and let the dog out, packed up the last of the stuff the movers wouldn’t take, picked up the kids and headed out.

Six hours later we pulled into our new driveway. Things seemed screwed up from the start. The water wasn’t on. We had already put down deposits and gotten stuff in our name and the water was SUPPOSED to be on, so my husband went out to the water main and turned it on. They havent turned us off yet so I’m hoping that was ok. We couldn’t get the gas to come on either, but that finally worked inself out. We think the house has been sitting empty for about a year. We dropped off the aminals and headed to a hotel for Friday night. Saturday morning the movers were supposed to be there, but they had been delayed and wouldn;t be there until Sunday morning. I needed a fridge snce we left the one in our old house and the new house didn’t have a fridge. Also, Directv was supposed to be there to hook up Satelitte Saturday between noon and 4pm.

So, we got up, went to the house to let the dog out, then went fridge shopping. We found something we liked so I went back to teh house to wait for the tv guy and my husband went to pick up the fridge.

FIVE HOURS LATER….I still had no tv because the satelitte guy showed up and then said he couldnt do anything ebcause we didn’t have a tv in the house. When I asked him to start and I would get a tv from somewhere he refused and left. I got on the phone trying to get someone else out but by that time I was pretty much freaking out.

Sunday morning at 7:20am the movers showed up. While they were moving stuff in we started again trying to get the tv service turned on. After an all day thing we finally got them to schedule today as the install day. Right after all our stuff was delivered, my husband took a nap because he had to leave and drive from GA to DC to work for 2 weeks. Yeah……we move down here and he leaves for 2 weeks. As if that wasn’t fucked up enough, his boss said about the situation, “We all have to make sacrifices”. Wonderful.

Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was

So, he took a nap, then we went to his office so I could hop online for a few mins to check email and grab some phone numbers.

Then my husband left for DC and I came back to the house and cried. I just wanted to go “home” and this was not my home.

This week has been rough.

We are trying to proceed with buying this house ASAP, but we are running into road blocks. I’m worried. I know I will love this house, but right now it doesn’t feel like mine. I feel like I’m playing make believe. I’m trying not to be pessimistic, but it’s been hard.

Today was install day for the satellite and true to my dream last night, it didn’t happen. They gave us a bullshit line that they gave our order to a tech who didn;t work this area. I was pissed after spending an hour on the phone to be told this. My husband called and they gave him another BS line about computers being down. He called corporate we was just as pissed as he was and they all had a conference call with local. Corporate told local they needed to get someone out here TODAY. They also gave us a $100 credit.

Later my husband called to say that the install was scheduled for TOMORROW. We get the $100 plus few months because local had thier head up thier ass. If they don’t show up tomorrow, I might hurt someone.

Meanwhile today, a co-worker/supervisor of my husband’s came over to try to help get my nasty pool up and running. We ended up needing a new pump that he wouldn’t let me pay him for. It will be another 4 days to a week before it will be swim ready but at least it’s a start.

I’ll be meeting my husband back at the other house next weekend. Hopefully we will be close to closing on it. My Realtor there is pretty useless. the only reason she wasn’t fired before we left was because an offer came through. She hasn’t returned my emails or phone calls this week.

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone

We accepted an offer on our house today. This is the second offer we have accepted so we aren’t jumping for joy just yet. Things LOOK good. The buyers were even wondering if they could close earlier than what was on the offer. The movers come tomorrow and I don’t feel ready. I feel like there are a million things that still need to be packed. A million and one things are already packed. The movers drop our stuff off on Sunday morning. My husband also leaves for 2 weeks on Sunday morning. This is going to prove to be fun! Me, 3 kids, 1 dog and 2 rats (and a partridge in a pear tree) on our own with the movers. This better be worth it.

I feel sick. I want to cry and puke all at once.

Movers come July 3rd. No this house has still not sold, in fact we havent even had a showing in 2 weeks. We are leasing the house in Ga. We are locked into a year long lease. At any time during the year we can buy the house. If after a year our house still hasn’t sold, we lose everything we’ve put into the new house (unless the owners decide to let us continue to lease on a month to month basis). Honestly, if we are still in this position in a year, I’m moving back here. With or without my husband. Needless to say, this whole process has put an insurmountable strain on our marriage and I’m not sure if we will recover.

So why am I moving? It’s a leap of faith. I’m putting everything on the line and jumping with the hopes that the Universe will catch me. I want us to be happy. I want us to survive. I’m really hoping that we can.

I’ve never felt more mentally inept than I do now.

We still haven’t sold this house. We’ve picked up on showings a bit, but nothing worth writing home about. Everyone wants something for nothing. I had one of those home investor agencies offer me $60,000 for it. Laughable. That wouldn’t even cover my mortgage. No, I’d rather just stay put. It’s not like I’m facing foreclosure or something and am desperate to take anything thrown at me.

The sellers of the GA house offered to let us lease the place. They had a great idea. We could move everything down there. Live in the house. Pay them $1400 a month in rent. Keep the house presentable and ready for showings at any time. And, if they got a buyer, we had to move. Doesn’t THAT sound like a great idea?

So, when we declined that, they came back and said they would let us rent for 6 months before they would start marketing the house again, but if our house hadn’t sold in 30 days, we had to lower our asking price by $5,000. Now, we just lowered it $7,500, I’m not lowering it again, and certainly not because someone else told me to.

So, we declined that one as well.

Then they came back asking “What do we have to do to get you to lease the house?” Hmmmm….interesting.

Well, for starters, I’m not a renter. I don’t want to be treated like a renter. I wont treat the house like a rental, because my goal is to buy the house. I want no less than a 12 month lease with the option to purchase at any time during the lease period. I want 10% of my monthly lease payment to go towards the price of the house, and everything is contingent upon a home inspection. I gave a bit too. I added in there that if we didn’t exercise our option to buy they got to keep all of our lease allowance plus the $2,000 deposit, plus our $1000 earnest money.

So, we are waiting. If they say no to this, I’m walking. Good luck to them. The house has already been on the market for a year and we are the 3rd buyers they have had. I love that house, but I’m no longer in the mood to play nice.

Another week has gone by and that means another Stuff Portrait Friday brought to us by Kristin

This is my daughter playing her guitar. She got it for her 9th birthday (which is also the day this was taken). It’s PINK!! How cool is it to have a pink guitar!

Did you play?

For my own mental health, I just can’t do this anymore.

Yesterday was already a bad day, but it got worse as the night progressed. And maybe I’m being unfair since the drama that showed up on my doorstep wasn’t really mine, just mine by proxy. It still effected me and my family.

At 10pm my doorbell rang. We are homebodies. People dont visit during the light of day and they certainly dont come knocking when all the lights are out. My daughter met me in the hall and said “It’s the neighbor, something’s wrong” I went to the door to find my neighbor standing with her baby on her hip dressed in sweatpants and a torn bra. She was shaking and crying and needed me to call the police.

The story that unfolded was more than my head could take. Her situation is not mine to judge but I can say that from my experience it was caused by youth and naivety.

Her husband is military. He’s out of state right now at schooling in Texas. She had a male friend that, according to what she told my daughter, her husband hated and told her he could only come over if he wasn’t there. He showed up as soon as the husband left and has been a fixture there since. Like I said, not my place to judge. Her situation is her own. I guess she asked him to leave today. He went out drinking. Came back, they argued. He wouldn’t leave so she grabbed her daughter to try to make a run for it. When she got in her car he blocked her in then pulled her out of the car and was hitting her. He pulled her clothes and ripped them off. She was able to get away and grab her baby and run to mt house. AT which point he grabbed her keys and locked her car and her house and left.

I called the police for her and they sent someone over. She was giving them his information when he came back. The police were able to chase after him and arrest him.

Meanwhile, the police station calls me back. Someone in her family had called the police station trying to find out what was going on. In the time that he was locking her out of the house he called everyone in her phone book and gave them all the sordid details of what was going on.

By 11:45 the police were ready to take her to the station to file charges.

I should also mention that her 2yr old doesn’t know me and is going through that stage where she doesn’t want to be around anyone she doesn’t know. Every time my neighbor went to talk to police, she left the baby here and she would scream as though I was killing her. The screaming woke up my other 2 kids who were upset that they had been woke up. It’s also exam week. My 13yr old was actually mad and crying because he thought I was having some sort of party and was pissed that I was letting all this happen and keeping him awake. When they took her to the police station she asked if she could leave the baby with me. I hated to, but I had to say no. There as nothing I could do to comfort that child and i had to think of my own at that point.

I can understand what this woman is going through. I’ve been in that same position. I’ve had a man stand between me and my child and not let me get to him. I’ve jumped in a car trying to flee only to be pulled out. I’ve  been through all of this while not having one single person I could turn to. I understand. I was also young and naive and thought the best of people even when they showed me their worst. It was a long hard struggle to get to where I am now.

Where I am now is torn between helping this virtual stranger and keeping my kids from that kind of drama

After waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me and finally relaxing a little and accepting that things were actually going to work out for us and this house….the fucking rug got ripped out from under us.

My Realtor never got the loan approval letter from our buyer so when she went to get it today she was told that he just found out he was being transfered and wouldn’t be able to but the house. She thinks he’s lying and wants a letter from his employer. But really, so what if he is lying. If he pulls out, he pulls out. The best that can happen is I get to keep his measly $500 earnest money.

Meanwhile, we’ve been working towards getting our loan solidified for the house in Ga. That’s what I was worried about. The seller there has been such a flake that I thought something would happen there, but all of that worked out. Our loan was approved, the seller signed everything she needed to sign. Things were going well.

We can’t own 2 houses. We can’t afford it, and our loan is contingent on the sale of this house.

I thought I was done fighting. Looks like I was just warming up.

My blog isn’t much of a “mommy blog”. I don’t really feel like I talk that much about my kids. My youngest is 8 and they up to 11 and 13 from there. They have long passed these milestones that people are recording in their blogs.

Sometimes I wish I had been blogging when they were little. I was on message boards, but I’m discovering that it’s not the same as carving out my own piece of the internet.

Random strangers congratulated me on the birth of my youngest. More strangers saw me through that first year, and my husband leaving for a travel job. I turned to the boards for adice, support, wisdom. I relayed funny stories. Now, all of that is gone. Message boards change and fall. Posts get deleted. Whole groups disapear. People come and go. And you really have no control over any of it.

My 11yr old daughter will ask me every now and then…”Remember when I….?” and some times I don’t. It would be great to have archives to read through and laugh and remember that funny story.

The current trend seems to be Down with Mommy Bloggers. The critics say that these moms are pimping out their kids for a paycheck. While it’s true that some moms make a good profit off their blogs, many more don’t make a dime, or make just enough to cover their domain costs. No, more so these women are leaving behind easily retrievable memories. When their kids say “Remember when….” not only can they say “yes I remember”, but they can take their kids to the computer and relive the event through their blog.

The Baby Book has found a new medium.

I got a phone call today.

That’s not completely accurate. I got THE phone call today.

We have an offer.

I met my Realtor at her office and looked over everything. It’s not spectacular, but it’s well within our do-able range. We had just dropped the price $7,000 and they offered $3,500 under that, which is what buyer’s do. They also want all us to pay all of their closing costs. Like I said, it’s not spectacular, but it’s still do-able. We still walk away with a profit. The want to close in 4 weeks on June 16th.

Our contract in Ga is supposed to close on June 16th. I’m going to see if they will let us push it one day so we can close here and drive down there.

Now the fun part comes. Holding my breath and praying that nothing unexpected comes up during inspections. Getting our financing finalized for GA (we are pre-approved). PACKING!

I’ve done my part, I sold the house. Now it’s my husband’s turn to take care of the money part.

I don’t need no one
to tell me about Heaven
I look at my daughter
and I believe

Daughter - Live

Stuff Portrait Day brought to you by Kristine at Random and Odd. This week’s theme, song lyrics. I love this song.
Did you play?