First Night

Tonight we finally get to spend the night in the new house. We are buried in boxes. I know we’ll get through it eventually, but it’s hard to get anything done. Just walking down the hallway, I’ll pass a box and feel compelled to open it and start putting stuff away – even though I was on task to do something completely different.

It is pretty cool to finally be HOME. The challenge with this house will be storage – the house itself is quite a bit smaller than our last and there’s just less storage space overall. It’s going to take some creativity to solve the problem. Especially since we’re minus an office ROOM. My new office is now basically a hallway. So no office closet or anything like that. To compensate, I put a book shelf in the hallway with me, and bought some pretty baskets that fit on the shelves to put stuff in. So when you walk down the hallway, instead of seeing a bunch of office supplies hanging out everywhere, you just see the pretty baskets on the shelves.

Our kitchen has a lot of available space, but to make the most use of it, we’ll have to get some roll out shelves. Wherever I can put a piece of furniture that can hold things, that’s what we’re doing. And of course, we’re continuing to junk as much stuff as possible.

But even with all the boxes everywhere… I’m still so glad we’re done.

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.

Dog hunt

With the housing issue pretty much settled for now, we have begun our next hunt: the search for a dog. We can’t get one until we get into the house (which is at least a month to two months away) but we’re doing our preliminary research. Obviously key issues are the kids. As well, we want to make sure we get a dog that isn’t too wild. Our home will be on the small side, but I’d like to get a dog that I can take for a run once in a while, so a medium sized dog would probably be best. Some breeds (and cross breeds) we’ve been looking at are:

Golden Doodle

Cockapoo

Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier

We’ve also considered seeing what the local humane shelters have available – although from what I can tell, the breeds they tend to have the most of are not ones that we’re interested in. (Particularly boxers, pit bulls, and chihuahuas) Sometimes in the mix they might get one that seems interesting, so it will be a waiting game of sorts if we decide to go that route.

We’ve taken a few online quizzes to see what breed would best suit our family and ironically, those also seem to miss the mark. (One actually suggested a St. Bernard. LOL!! Are you kidding? In a small house with no yard?! I don’t think so) One idea we had was to go to a dog park and see a bunch of different dogs in action. Not that the behavior of one is always a representative of the entire breed, but at least it gives you an idea for a range of behavior.

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.