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A week from tomorrow, we are moving. It will be Freddie’s and my 8th move in ten years. I am sick of moving, and once we get installed in our new shiny house (with a YARD!!), we plan to stay for a good long time.

We’ve been in this house for just over three years now, which is the longest we have stayed at any one address since we’ve been together. We have a pizza place. A backup pizza place. We have a Chinese place. A backup Chinese place. A place that delivers sushi. One of my favorite Thai places. A backup Thai place. A sub place. An ice cream place. Walgreen’s and the post office within walking distance.

And now we’re moving. To a new house. In a new town. We’ll have to start all over!

The good news is that the town to which we’re moving has an excellent Italian heritage, so the pizza should be good. There are two Italian bakeries in town, which means cannoli for everyone! The new house is also pretty close to my OTHER favorite Thai place which has the added bonus of being right next to the bookstore! Too bad I have to drive around the World’s Most Dangerous Traffic “Circle” to get there.

The new town has an actual downtown! I don’t know how close we’ll be in terms of walking there, but the library is right the main street, and there are sidewalks between there and home, so we’ll see.

I think this move will be good for us. We’ll be downsizing a bit, but that can only be a good thing, since as we’ve packed up this house, I have realized how much utterly useless CRAP we have. Between garage sales, Freecycle, and donations, we are getting rid of a lot of it.

To make room for NEW useless crap!

…kidding.

We are moving in about 12 days.

We have way way way way too much crap.

I love Freecycle, which is assisting me in getting rid of said crap.

I am tired.

I always feel like I have nothing to wear, but I have A LOT of clothes. Most of them are pre-pregnancy clothes, and they do not fit me at present. They should, and will, but at present I am under a lot of stress and the primary way I deal with stress is by eating.

I’m not out of control or anything, but getting into my smaller-than-right-now clothing is still a few months off. I’m all right with that, because MY GOD, at least I finally recognize that the stress and the eating go hand-in-hand.

Or hand-in-mouth, as the case may be.

Fall is slowly approaching. While I do not welcome the shorter days, it means Sam Adams Oktoberfest beer is back, and that can only be a good thing. I cannot wait to get into my shiny shiny shiny new kitchen and cook.

Freddie took all of the art off the walls in the living room. Oddly, the room looks a lot smaller without it. I thought it would look bigger, now that there are huge, uninterrupted expanses of wall, but no. Hm.

We own three saxophones. When Jillian is big enough, we’ll be a trio.

I am hungry, but am reluctant to buy a whole bunch of food that I will have to deal with while trying to get things packed up. I did a merciless fridge-cleaning today - to the point where I even pulled out the shelves and stuff.

This is a hallmark of my PMS, which, coupled with yesterday’s all-day fast, is not making me be very pleasant today. The cleaning helps, though.

All in all, it looks like we’ll be out of this house in record time. Considering we’ll be paying the movers by the hour, this is a great, great thing. I’m looking forward to actually unpacking all the boxes. All of them. Even the ones that were packed in 1996 and haven’t been unpacked since.

Woo.

I didn’t do a Friday Random thing last week due to my bone-deep laziness. So I’ll do it today and we’ll start the week of right!

1. We are STILL waiting to hear about this house that we have been trying to buy. We are STILL in attorney review. I’m starting to get tired of waiting. We have continued to look at houses, but haven’t found anything that we like, except for one, but they are considering “multiple offers” right now, so we aren’t even going to bother throwing our hat into the ring. It’s a shame, too, because that house was really cute.

2. Except for the basement. First, you have to go down Danger Steps to get to the basement. At the third-to-last step, you need to bend over at the waist to avoid smashing your face on the support beam. Then, if you are any taller than I am, you have to stoop to walk around down there because the ceiling is so low. I can just barely walk upright and I’m only 5′7″! This confuses me SO MUCH that I cannot sleep for wondering WHY someone would build a house with a basement that you can barely access and use. WHY? That makes NO SENSE.

3. The other house that I really liked but definitely will not offer to buy was built in 1870 and has ghosts. I know this because when we went to look at it, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and my ears started ringing [more], which is always a sure sign that I’m not alone. The house itself was actually pretty awesome. Lots and lots of rooms connected willy-nilly by bathrooms and closets. It would be a great house for a bunch of kids. Alas, it would need some very serious updating and love (read: money) to make it truly comfortable. I don’t know that I’d ever be comfortable there, though, considering the fact that I passed by the attic door and realized there was no way in heaven or hell that I would ever, of my own volition, open that door. Nuh-uh.

4. I’ve been putting off washing the car, thinking that surely it will rain soon. Of course, as soon as I can’t stand it any longer and decide that today is the day I will get the car washed, there is rain in the forecast.

5. Jillian threw an entire bowl of peas at me today. It got on me, the fridge, the wall, and the ceiling. So much for letting her feed herself, eh? I am trying to phase out the pureed food in favor of actual pieces of food, but she does the whole gagging Drama Queen act. On the one hand, I don’t want her to starve, but on the other hand, if she gets hungry enough, she’ll eat. I don’t know where on that spectrum I actually am, though.

6. Football season has started, and the Jets are already disappointing me. Nothing unusual there. I just hope they don’t have to get the Reanimated Corpse of Vinny Testaverde again. Actually, I think Vinny is or was under contract to another team last year? I don’t know and am too lazy to look it up. At least the Mets are still in first place.

7. I’m amused to report that the cat is still stupider than the baby gates. This animal can launch himself from the floor to my bed or up through the kitchen pass-thru window, but cannot seem to figure out how to get over the baby gate. He is a stupid, stupid cat. In fact, he fell off the windowsill this morning before I got up, which caused the blinds to click and clack all over themselves and caused me to curse at him and them under my breath. Chester is deeply stupid.

8. The fall TV season is starting up and I have no idea when any of my shows are on. Good thing we have the TiFaux set to record most of them. Too bad I don’t foresee any actual time in which to watch them, what with us about to be homeless and all. We have a maximum of six weeks left in this house, no matter what. This is shaping up to be an interesting autumn.

1. I watched a good portion of the Princess Diana memorial service this morning on BBC World. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Prince Harry is definitely the hot one. And I wish I had more occasions to wear a hat. Nobody rocks hats like the British.

2. Jillian is not quite walking yet, but we’re in no rush. She has a couple of toys that function as walkers and she’ll truck around behind them, but no actual walking yet. Thank GOD. Her balance is getting better, too - we’ve had fewer headsmash bruises these past two weeks. Of course, I’ve just jinxed us and she’ll find a way to give herself a black eye today.

3. Our house is well on its way to being sold! We are out of attorney review and are just waiting for Chuck to get the inspection and his financing in order then we are going to be handing the keys over! AIEEE!

4. As for our house-buying adventure, we’re still hashing out some things on the contract. There are some issues with some wording in the contract regarding “cosmetic defects” which we are taking to mean the siding in the back that has been scratched up by the seller’s two humungous dogs. We’ll try to get them to give us a credit or we’ll have to decide if we can live with it for now. But the whole thing seems to be progressing well enough, so I’m hopeful that we’ll be installed in the new place by the end of September.

5. To that end, we have to start packing. After all, come October 1 we’re going to be moving SOMEWHERE, whether it’s to this new house, or a different house or a hotel or a homeless shelter, so we have to pack. We have waaaaaaay too much shit. Luckily, one of our friends is opening up her house to have a huge yard sale, so maybe we’ll be able to unload some of our crap there. And there’s always Ebay.

6. The job search is coming along. In addition to having the staffing agency look for something, I am also digging around to see if there’s anything else out there that looks promising. My one obstacle is that I cannot do a job that requires me to be on the phone, so that kind of limits me. Sigh. In the meantime, I’m going to start putting together a business plan that will help me get set up to work from home. I’m not sure how it’s all going to shake out just yet, but with some work and some hustle, I might be able to get something off the ground here.

7. I hate the Today show. I think watching it makes me stupider, and god knows I need little help with that. The other morning shows are just as bad if not worse, so we watch Sesame Street instead.

8. Once we get all the house stuff worked out, I’m going to have an actual backyard! I’ll be able to have a real garden! I might have exorcised my brown thumb demons once and for all, since I have managed to keep all my plants alive all summer. I have even been able to eat the peppers and tomatoes I grew, so I have a great deal of hope that I will be able to manage an actual garden. So I need some kind of Gardening Bible, that tells me what to plant and when and what kind of soil and all that stuff. I might even give roses a try, since the rosebush I inherited here actually came back to life. The previous owners of this house probably attempted to take it with them and they hacked the hell out of it. Eventually, it [sorta] grew back under my Benign Neglect regime and actually produced actual flowers that were quickly eaten by the Japanese beetles. So I’m thinking that if I get a rosebush and actually pay attention to it, I might be able to have some pretty, pretty flowers in my garden.

9. The Mets are pissing me off. I can’t believe they got swept by Philly. And yesterday’s game was just stupid. What happened to our relief pitchers? Let’s hope the Atlanta series goes a bit better or we’re fucked.

10. Last weekend we went to the track because they were having a crab cake cookoff. I love me some crab cakes, so we loaded up the family truckster and headed down the shore. It also happened to be Free Chair day, so we got our free little folding chair thingies. They give you a voucher at the gate and then you have to go over to a booth to claim your free chair. While we were standing there, a woman came up and complained that the chair she was given had dirt on the cover. I was like “um, it’s free, lady. Shut it.” God, what a bitch. Even the poor lady in the booth was all “um, what do you want me to do? They’re all pretty dusty.”

10a. I won $31 on the horse that I picked. I suppose I could take some time and learn how to read the racing form and then make a decision based on the horse’s previous stats and stuff, but I pick my horses by name. I usually do pretty well, considering.

11. Go Rutgers!

One of the best things about looking for a house to buy is the fact that we get to walk through other people’s houses. I’m a voyeur like that, in that I like to look in people’s windows as we drive around in the evening. Not because I want to see them naked (most people are not good looking clothed, much less naked, and besides, looking at naked people is easier on teh Internet, which is why it was invented).

Over the past few weeks, we have walked through around 10 different houses. They have ranged from empty but nice enough to “HOLY GOD, what the hell is this?”

The layouts are the most problematic, since I can always paint. Some houses are intelligently laid out, like the two split-levels that we wanted to make and offer for. The first one had already accepted an offer and the second one was offended by our lowball offer so much (so it would seem), that their realtor told ours “It’s obvious your clients can’t afford this house.”

Whatever, jackass.

But for the most part, the houses are put together in some logical fashion, except the one, which had a full bathroom off the living room (?), and the one where you have to walk through a bedroom to get to the Danger Stairs (steep!), and the one we saw today that had three bedrooms and one bathroom. Which was off of the kitchen.

?

So you’d have to go through the kitchen, through the living room, and then up the stairs? What if you’re having company? Yikes. Plus, the only way to get to the back yard was through the neighbor’s driveway (past their turquiose El Camino, yikes).

The second house we saw today seems like it might be a good fit. We will spend this evening discussing it and the possibilities, then we’ll probably put an offer in tomorrow, if possible. It’s a cute house, right around the block from the one that we “couldn’t afford” and it’s really really cute.

Lots of possibilites, while still being livable. We saw a few houses that had possibilities, but we couldn’t have lived there in their current state. Like the one with NO cupboards in the kitchen. Where would I put all my gadgets? That one was haunted anyway, but that doesn’t bother me. Lack of counter space DOES.

Today’s house has a brand-new kitchen. It’s really sexy, with nice granite work surfaces, new cabinets, and a new double-oven range. Sweet. I could really get my chef on in there. The bedrooms are on the small side, but looking at possibilities, you could bash out the wall in the master bedroom and make it into something really special. It is a VERY cute house.

The challenge now will be to get Mr. Negative to see the house as it COULD be and to get over the small bedroom situation (like we spend that much time in there anyway). He needs to see what can be so he can get over what IS.

Part of his problem is that he is spoiled from living in this townhouse. Our kitchen is HUGE. Our bedroom is ridiculously huge. Much too big, in fact. Plus an en suite bathroom? That’s crazy. For the amount we’re willing to pay for a house, there is NO WAY we’re going to get the kind of space we have here. Sure, the overall square footage might be more, but the layout is going to eat up a lot of it.

So I have to gently steer him away from “it’s smaaaaaallllll” to “oooh, we could add on by a third!”

We shall see.

Our offer was categorically denied. As in they won’t even negotiate with us denied. We know that this house is on the market because it’s part of an estate and needs to be sold, which leads us to believe that the crazy asking price is more or less set in stone for the seller.

Bitches.

But that’s okay. It’s just Not Our House. We’ll keep looking and in the meantime, that pushes back that sad, sad day when I will have to get an actual job.

It does get frustrating, though, looking at houses and not finding anything even remotely suitable in our price range. I find myself start to wonder just WHY we live in New Jersey. I’ve been VERY good this time around, though, and haven’t started looking at house prices in other areas. That’s the worst thing to do.

Poop. Our Realtor called yesterday to tell us that the sellers of the house we were going to make an offer on have already accepted another offer. We can still put our offer in since they haven’t gone to contract just yet, but…

I’m disappointed, but this happened to us last time we bought a house and it worked out for the best. Last time, we walked through a townhouse that had pretty much the sexiest kitchen I have ever seen, anywhere. It had an Aga range, first off, and I think I would live in someone’s garage if there were an Aga in there.

We even put our offer in but someone came in behind us and paid CASH for it. Fuckers.

About a week later, we found the house where we’re living now, and we’ve been happy here… so I’m thinking that this most recent house simply is Not Our House. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Of course, none of the other houses we saw on Saturday are Our House, either. Those were scary as all get-out.

So we’re back to square one. Back to perusing the listings, trying to see if something is worth looking at based on the description. Today, I’m doing a drive-by of at least five houses that were in our “Meh, maybe” pile. I’m hoping that maybe they just didn’t come across on paper as well as the other ones.

Fingers crossed!

We met with our potential home buyer last night (HI CHUCK!) to hammer out a deal and make him the soon-to-be-ACTUAL buyer of our home. Once we get the contracts written up and signed, we are on our way! Yessss!

Seriously, in the kind of market we’re in now, the fact that we are able to sell our house to a friend and eliminate all the hassle of using a Realtor and paying commission and stuff, well, that’s just a godsend. We are seeing houses that have been on the market for almost 8 months, so you know those people are probably sweating it.

Now that we’re on our way to making a deal on the sell side, it’s our turn to get real serious real fast about buying something. Our Realtor sent us a list of all the houses in our pathetic price range in the areas where we’re looking. How many? 42! The answer!

We quickly narrowed that down to 7 in the “yes, definitely we must go see this house” pile, and 6 in the “eh, maybe” pile. Today we went and had a look-see at five of the top seven.

The first one we looked at is one that I have been eyeing for some time now. I love the street it’s on and I like the look of the house from the photos (which, as we are well aware, are COMPLETELY misleading most of the time). The kitchen desperately needs to be re-done, but the rest of the house seemed to be in pretty good shape. The backyard is nice and level and the house is just really clean overall.

The 2nd house we looked at was a little (okay, a LOT) older. It was built in 1910 and was more or less GINORMOUS but it was crowded on a wee little lot and still would have needed some serious work, especially in the kitchen area. There were NO cupboards! No counter space! Where would I put all my gadgets?

Plus, I’m pretty sure that house was haunted.

The third house was one that I wanted to see but not Freddie. It was an estate sale, so it was really priced to move, but it hadn’t been redecorated since about 1968 and it showed. It was really really horrid inside and the lot was tiny and crowded with the neighbors, so that was a NO.

House #4 was just disgusting. You could tell that the people who had lived there were serious hard-core smokers because even though the house had been empty for quite some time (judging by the cobweb), it stank. It absolutely REEKED. Plus, it was a piece of crap anyway.

House #5 was one that Freddie had been wanting to see since we started this process in April or whenever we first got the idea to find a bigger house. The photos made it look really groovy, with a spiral staircase and really interesting tile in the kitchen and bathroom. But we got there and it was a shithole. It was disgusting and dirty inside, and it turns out that the spiral staircase was the ONLY way to get upstairs. The hell? So…. no.

We are going to make and offer for the first house we saw, since we both really like it and think it has a lot of potential. Plus, it follows the basic rule of Real Estate: buy the crappiest house on the nicest street you can afford. And that’s what we’d like to do, if they accept our offer.

There are a number of things in our favor - the current owners have already moved out, so they probably have another mortgage or something. It’s been on the market almost two months, and that’s helpful, too. Plus, we can pretty much close any time. I’m not placing my furniture just yet, but I’m hoping that this works out somehow.

I have seriously been slacking in the “update my website” department. My excuse is that it’s summer! I have better things to do, like… um…. wait, it’ll come to me…

It hasn’t been all laziness here, though. We may have found a buyer for our house (HI CHUCK!), which, if it works out, is the single best thing to happen to all of us this summer. We won’t have to put the house under a Realtor’s care (which means a whole lot of extra work for me), watch it sit on the market, forlorn and unloved, and eventually sell it for not nearly enough money to someone who won’t love it.

If Chuck buys it, we know he will love the house, and also not cause us to have to pay a commission, which = yay.

So that means I have been looking at house listings pretty much non-stop for the past week or so, trying to get my head around the fact that a 23′ x 11′ bedroom on the 2nd floor of a Cape Cod is nothing more than glorified attic space. Because it is. And, you have to remember that the photos make the house look at least 354234% better than it actually is. Trust me. You absolutely MUST do the walk-through before you start deciding where your furniture is going to go.

Jillian is all systems go, which is normal. She is currently NOT napping, but she really ought to at least try to sleep because I’m leaving her up there until 3:30 either way. Lunchtime has now become Food Experiment Time, whereby I plonk down a selection of things for her to eat and she does whatever she wants to with them. I still make sure she actually eats something at breakfast and dinner, but lunchtime is for getting used to touching things.

She isn’t walking just yet, but she is damn close. She can walk along pretty well behind one of the many walky-light-up-noisy-ass toys that she has, but walking alone is still some ways off.

THANK

GOD.

I’m currently being a Bad Mama by letting her watch Sesame Street in the mornings. She likes it, it keeps her out of my hair for a full fifteen minutes, and it might actually teach her something. When she sees Elmo or Cookie Monster she claps her hands and turns around to look at me as if to say “Isn’t this COOL?” She’s funny.

In other news, the Rag Shop stores have gone out of business. I have avoided going there because I am weak in the face of discounted yarn, but today the signs said “80-90% OFF!” so we toddled in to see if there was anything worth grabbing. I got 4 sewing patterns for a buck! That’s a savings of like, 80 dollars because patterns generally aren’t cheap! Not that I have anywhere to sew or even any urge to sew right now, but patterns for a quarter? I only wish I had time to rifle through them all!

I also got a selection of odd knitting needles for cheap. I don’t even know if I’ll need them, ever, but for a dollar? I’m buying them. Someday I may start a project that requires the extra-long size 3 needles. There was a huge basket of knitting needles that, um, light up but I didn’t even consider buying them because they were stupid. There were also some really crazy sizes, like size 50, which are just enormous. Unless I’m knitting a heavy-duty fishing net for a giant, I can’t imagine what I would need those for.

All in all, I wish I would have stopped in sooner, but I’m not supposed to be spending any “unnecessary” money due to this whole Real Estate thing we’re working on.

I am excited to find a house. With a YARD! Where I can have a garden! I did pretty well with my makeshift garden this year. My tomato plants produced actual, edible tomatoes and my red bell pepper was extremely good. I should have taken a photo of it before I ate it because it was beautiful. My orange bell peppers are almost ready, as are the green peppers. Next year, if I have the space and the motivation, I’m going to branch out a bit and try my hand at something odd, like eggplant.

I have definitely been living up to my slacker roots lately. It’s just been too damn hot to do much else but sit in the air-conditioning and sing songs to the baby, so that’s what I’ve been doing.

The baby, by the way, is trying to learn how to walk. She stands up and briefly lets go of whatever she’s anchored to before she plops back down on her butt. Or her face, which is what she did yesterday. Twice.

We had our 1-year checkup last week, and it went really well. Kid is growing and growing and growing, up to 22.5 pounds and 30 inches! It’s only the 75th percentile for both, so I’m interested to see a 99th percentile kid. Her head, however, is in the 91st percentile, which makes Mama very proud. Lotsa brains in there!

In other news, the Great House Escape is progressing. We rented a storage locker and moved a bunch of stuff out (mostly things that haven’t been unpacked since we lived in Ohio… ten years ago), including my treadmill, which puts a wee kink in my fitness plans. I suppose I could chuck the baby in the stroller and run outside but it is, like I said, too damn hot. My lazy ass is going to have to start getting up early, I think. Shit.

But, yeah, the house’s fitness program is going well. Now that the majority of the clutter has been shoveled out, all that remains is to organize the rest, clean like an OCD patient, and then call the Realtor to come take photos.

Then I’ll have to maintain this freakish level of cleanliness so the house will make a good impression on potential buyers. Yikes.

On the other end of the process, we are seeing houses now and then to try to gauge what’s out there in our price range. We saw one this week that was… nice… but not quite what we wanted. The bedrooms were absolutely miniature, and the garage was at the back end of the back yard with no obvious way to get a car back there. It was a tad confusing. But the rest of the house was really nice.

The other house we saw was a shithole. For one thing, if you’re trying to sell your house, some air freshener would not go amiss. We walked in and were confronted with the kind of smell I associate with a poor family who has toddlers. You know what I’m talking about. Smells like food and babies and poor. Even if the house was lovely (it wasn’t), I would have been totally turned off by the stank.

Luckily, the house was a total shithole. The rooms were small, and the only way to get up the stairs was through one of the bedrooms. It was weird. Once upstairs, the dormers (it’s a Cape Cod) made the ceilings all crazy and there is no way my king-sized bed would be making it up there. So that one was a definite no.

The good news is that prices are sliding way way down and the kinds of houses we’re starting to see in our price range are improving. That does not exactly bode well for the house we’re trying to sell, but we are hopeful that our Realtor team will be able to help us market it effectively and we’ll be able to flee the premises before too long.