Ah, the fun never ends

We were so close. Every night I close my eyes and pretend I’m sleeping in our new house. In our new room. I picture Rachel in her room. Zach in his room. BOTH in their own SEPARATE rooms down the hall from us – as opposed to sharing the same room like they have been the last two months. (I use the term “sharing” very loosely here. I’m not sure constant yelling at each other constitutes as “sharing”) The new house is within walking distance of town, so I picture us waking up Sunday morning, throwing on some clothes and walking to the pancake restaurant that’s around the corner from us. Most especially, I had really wanted to spend Christmas there. I was so sure things would be reasonably settled that I even planned on hosting a New Year’s Eve party. (Family members only – since they would understand/tolerate the fact we’d still be mostly in boxes)

It was so close I could taste it.

And now it’s gotten just a little bit further. Today was the first day we could go in the house, despite the fact that the sellers have been out of the place for a few days. We were told they wanted to hang onto it an extra few days to “clean.” Riiiight. When we moved out of our old house, I hired professional cleaners to come in and clean everything. They scrubbed the kitchen, bathroom, vacuumed every room and closet. Dusted. The place was probably cleaner than it ever was when we lived there. But in our case, despite telling us they were “cleaning” the place, I did not get the same treatment on our new house.

Hair all over the showers and tubs. Garbage on the floor in the closets and in some of the drawers. Paint we didn’t want, left in the garage. Dust piles on the baseboards. Dust and dirt throughout the floors. Hair even on the dirty counters in the kitchen. Toilets that haden’t been cleaned in at least a few weeks (they had that tell-tale mold ring where the water meets the bowl). But as grossed out as I was – that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worse was the strange pile of something that looked like sandy dirt in the corner of the master bedroom.

Termites.

We still have to get someone in there, inspect and officially confirm, but based on the pictures I’ve seen online, what we saw is EXACTLY the same as the examples of evidence of dry-wood termites. The house was inspected for termites and had “section 1 clearance” – which means that the inspector said there were no termites. I don’t understand how we can go from that assessment, to OBVIOUS evidence in such a short amount of time, and on the first day we can get the house. I have no idea what recourse we’ll have, and who will have to pay (we’re already strapped for cash – so I’m just afraid what this means for us)

On top of that, the painters came in today, but didn’t get as far on the job as we would have liked. Our movers are, at this very moment, making their way here and will be here on Thursday, but I have no guarantee that the painters will be done. (In fact, I’m 99% sure they WON’T be done and will still have paint and tarps everywhere) As well, I don’t know what we’ll do with our stuff if we have to have the place fumigated. Oh, and the New Years Eve party? I can pretty much forget about that – as well as having Christmas there. Until the place is cleaned and termites dealt with, I’m not staying there and we can’t unpack.

So… you can probably guess I’m just a WEE bit disappointed. And freaked out. And grossed out. And SERIOUSLY pissed off.

After this whole experience, I NEVER want to move again. Ever.

Febreze Home Collection Wooden Wick Candles Giveaway

I am significantly behind on reviews/giveaways. This one has been sitting on my desk for awhile. Before we move to our house and all my materials get officially lost, I thought it would be a good idea to post the giveaway. I’ll include their product information below, but I will say that I really do like these candles from Febreze. Right before we sold the house, I had the chance to try them out and I was really surprised to hear/see that the “wooden wicks” in the candle really do crackle. It’s a very relaxing sound. 😀 And the candles smell really nice too. I’m looking forward to using them in our new house!

Here are the product details from the manufacturer:

No fireplace, no problem. Breathe a sigh of relief because the new Febreze Home Collection Wooden Wick candle has you covered. Bring the calming crackle of a burning fire into your home anytime of year with 80 hours of “ahhhhhhhh.”

Available in nine premium scents, these tranquil candles are specially designed with a wooden wick to recreate the ambiance and sound of a crackling fire indoors. Offering a brilliant range of everyday fragrances, Febreze Home Collection Wooden Wick candles can help inspire a scent and design transformation in your home.

Be sure to look for Febreze Home Collection Wooden Wick candles at your local Walmart in fragrances like Green Tea Citrus, Pomegranate Mango, Cranberry Pear, Orange Honeycomb, Rosewood Plum and Willow Blossom; as well as seasonal scents that include Anjou Pear Spice, Gingersnap Vanilla, and Yumberry Sangria.

Giveaway:

I have one Walmart gift card to giveaway with $15 on it so you can try out these candles too! All that’s required is that you leave a comment telling me which scent you’re most likely to try. For an additional entry (up to one additional entry per day awarded) tweet the following – and leave a comment here for each tweet you make:

Win a $15 Walmart gift card and try out a Febreze Home Collection Wooden Wick Candle! http://bit.ly/fLCGoV

Contest ends December  27th, 2010 at 10pm PST. There is no purchase necessary to enter the contest. I will be using random.org to choose the winner. I’ll contact the winner via email, and he/she will have 48 hours to respond. After 48 hours, if I don’t receive a response, another winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: Febreze provided me with the Febreze Wooden Wick Candle Kit, information, and the $15 Walmart gift card to giveaway through MyBlogSpark.

Settling in

Things have settled down from when I posted last. We got some resolution on some open and scary issues. With that resolution, we were able to make an offer on a really nice townhome, just outside of a really nice town (walking distance). Everyone has signed off on the paperwork, so now we just wait. It will be about a month or two before we can actually start moving in, but at least we know a home is definitely within our future.

Living here will not be easy – and we’ll be carefully watching every penny we spend. We’ll be living on a tighter budget than we ever had. That is pretty scary to me – but we’ll do what we have to do.

Anyway – the last time I posted, things were pretty much at their worst. So I felt I had to update. The next few weeks will still be hectic – I have work that has piled up while we’ve been busy with house stuff. And then there’s Thanksgiving – we’ll be visiting Sam’s family back in Massachusetts. And then right after that is Hanukkah… then Christmas… Then sometime then or shortly after we’ll start moving into the house… I’m glad we went to Hawaii when we did. It will be a long time before I can afford another trip like that – and while the rest of the chaos is going on, at least I know the place now and can go there in my mind when I need to escape. 😉

A Beautiful Mess

The last month has been a whirlwind. We’re in California now, but I’m not sure for how long. We made the decision to come here based on some things that have now apparently changed since we arrived. It’s a total mess. I hate to say it, but this was a horrible horrible mistake. It feels like a long series of events happened that were never meant to be. I’m praying that there will come a time very soon that we can get back on track, my kids can get back on track – and we can all live our lives with minimal damage from all of this – both financially and emotionally. I keep trying to find the bright side and at the moment it’s not real clear. Aside from my getting to spend some quality time with my parents for the next 6 months or so – that’s about the only good that I think will have come from this.

We may still yet be headed to Portland, OR. I’m not sure. Our lives are completely up in the air, but I’m done destroying my kids academic year. We won’t make any more changes in their lives until the end of the school year. Then I’ll work on righting the wrongs. Until then we have to live with the mess we made.

Reflections

This time next week, I will have started an entirely new phase in my life. At least that’s the way it feels. Everything will be different than it was before. I’m definitely ready for some “different.”

When we moved here about 5-1/2 years ago, I always knew this was a temporary arrangement. I never intended to stay in Utah forever. When people asked me what I thought about living here, my canned response was “It works for us for now.” Over the past year, it’s been more and more clear that it was working less and less for us on so many levels.

I am not a very religious person, and I don’t believe in “God” per se, but the way things have been going, I feel that what we are doing is following a path that “something” laid out for us. Everything has fallen into place, like it was always meant to be. Like it was planned out that way long before the thoughts came to me. It’s a weird fence to be sitting on when I really don’t “believe.” Either way, I’m just following the road as it goes along. The decisions were tough because of the doubt, but once they were made, everything came together.

I’ve been looking at houses out there, and I’ve found a few things that were close to what I would like, but not perfect. This of course makes me question everything, and lets doubt creep in – but I’m also trying to hold onto the belief that this is all happening exactly as it is supposed to and no matter how much I worry about it – it makes no difference. It will all fall into place at just the right time, and not a moment before. It’s true – if the perfect house came on the market now, it would not be good – because we are not there yet, and can not buy it. So I have this crazy hope that just when I need the house, it will be there. And that may be the first day we get there, or it may be a few months from now. But we won’t be “homeless” forever.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is how we will survive the next while… Let me paint a picture for you: my parents house is relatively small. Well, it’s a perfect size for them: a retired couple that occasionally has a visitor. Not really designed to hold as many people as will be living there very soon. A 1500 (or 1400?) square foot, 3-bedroom house for 6 people. “Tight” doesn’t even begin to describe it. We’ll be loading up their garage with all the stuff we couldn’t put in storage. We’re converting their office into a bunk bed kids bedroom, and of course Sam and I will be taking over their guest bedroom.

When I described the situation to a client of mine, he said it sounded like the premise of a sitcom. I totally agree. I really feel like I need to document our life there, because at some point (probably not DURING) I’m going to look back on that time and laugh at how crazy it all was. At least I hope so.

But above everything else going on right now is this huge anticipation – that this isn’t “just another move.” This is just the beginning of something huge. That for the past 5-1/2 years we were in limbo – we were in the “waiting place.” And NOW finally, stuff is going to happen. What that “stuff” is… I really have no idea. But I think it’s going to be great!