Category Archives: Moving

Saturday night's alright for whining

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Yesterday was a day of suckage the likes of which we haven’t seen for a while. FYI, this post is going to contain a lot of whining and it’s all very stream-of-consciousness blurted out by a crazy person in the midst of major sleep deprivation. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

1. We found out that we will not, in fact, have our money from the UK in time for our closing date on Friday, the 11th. The sellers have the right to completely back out of the deal and keep our earnest money that we put down, which we’re praying they don’t do. Hopefully they’ll just allow the closing date to get bumped further out. Again.

Meanwhile, this house that we’re currently living in has been re-rented, and the new tenants are moving in on Saturday, the 12th. So, we’re still moving out on the 11th, with nowhere to go. We’ll be putting our stuff in storage and then moving into a hotel, or with Cat & Tony, or who knows what. And then we also have to figure out what to do with the cats – our awesome neighbors have offered to help us out with them, so that’s a huge plus. Still, there are about 10,000 other details that we’re going to have to figure out in the next week. I’m not so much looking forward to that.

2. My dad’s cousin that I mentioned earlier is really not doing well. She has pneumonia, she can’t speak, they’re keeping her sedated, and the doctors expect that she’ll die sometimes in the next three days or so. I don’t know if I’ll be able to take off and fly to Mississippi for a funeral if Catie is sick and we’re in the middle of moving, but I’m going to try and do what I can.

3. Catie is sick. I’m praying that it’s just a bad cold and not H1N1, but the poor kid is really miserable. The cold triggers her asthma, so we’ve been having to give her medication through the nebulizer every couple of hours. As a result, none of us are getting very much sleep, so our house is not a very fun place right now. She started barfing tonight, but my Mommy Ninja Skills (acquired through countless other episodes of puking from this kid) meant that only one barf ended up on my socks, and none of them fully hit me. The rest I caught in a mixing bowl, and even managed to grab her hair with my other hand to keep her from puking in it. I’m telling y’all, that is talent. If only I could figure out a way to make money off of that type of skill… well, we wouldn’t be having issues with our house financing, that’s for sure.

* However, there was one good thing that happened yesterday: I got a job! Kind of a surprise because I went into the interview with zero expectations, but I’m going to be doing some freelance technical writing for a new, local software company. It should be a lot of fun, and the extra money will be really nice, so I’m excited about that.

But yeah, even in spite of the job news, it’s not so much a fun holiday weekend here with the sick toddler, terminally ill family member, and house troubles. I’m praying Catie sleeps a little better tonight, since I think that one solid night’s sleep alone would probably help improve my outlook drastically. Here’s hoping!

upset

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I’m sitting here trying to figure out words for how upset I am, and I can’t really find them. My stomach is in knots and my mind is a blur.

Our house closing is going to get delayed for 2 more weeks. And it’s our fault. For trusting an attorney in the UK who’s apparently either having a nervous breakdown, or about to get fired, or who knows what. But he’s been telling us for weeks that everything with our loan is ready to go, and in reality he’s missing many key items of paperwork. And that paperwork is going to keep us from getting our money in time for our house closing here.

We have a new attorney as of this morning, and he seems competent and he understands that this is a rush for us, but he told me to expect that this will take “a fortnight” (read: 2 weeks; gotta love the Brits). I’m relieved to finally have someone who will be honest and give me a definite ETA, but I hate that it’s going to take so long.

I’m praying that the sellers don’t decide that we’re flakes & decide to walk away with the earnest money we already put down. They have the right to at this point, but I’m hoping they don’t exercise that option.

I had to leave our landlady a message, asking if our house has already been rented, or if we can stay here for another 2 weeks. If we can’t, it means we have to put our stuff in storage, board the cats, and find a temporary place to live.

I feel like I need to get back online and start looking at houses again, just in case the sellers walk. But then I think about losing that house, that beautiful house that I envisioned our lives in, and I want to lie down and cry. And yes, I know it’s just a house and there are millions of them. But I could see us there. It’s the house that I wanted to bring our second baby home to. I could see us being really happy there. The idea of possibly losing that house breaks my heart.

I know it’ll be ok, and that this too shall pass. I normally believe that things will work out the way that they’re supposed to, and that we’ll end up wherever we’re supposed to be. But I’m having a really hard time finding that belief within myself today.

Potty-Training 2: Bathroom Boogaloo

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As y’all probably remember, we tried to potty-train Catie back in May. I’d describe that venture as one great big, epic FAIL. She clearly wasn’t ready, and I had no prior potty-training experience so I had no clue how to help her through the transition.

Now, though, it’s three months later. And she seems to be completely potty-trained when she’s at the baby-sitter’s house. Meanwhile, if I ask her to sit on the potty at home, I get a bunch of histrionic wailing and “NO! NO POTTY!!” Hmm.

Clearly, something needs to be done. To be honest, I think I was thoroughly traumatized by that last potty-training attempt, so I just put it out of my head and figured I’d tackle it again… someday. With no concrete idea of when that would be, because I was too freaked out to imagine revisiting that whole debacle.

My sister Tracy and I were chatting online yesterday and she gave me this brilliant idea, and I’ve decided to run with it. Dave and I talk to Catie about the upcoming move a lot, and we’re always trying to reassure her how it’s all going to be great, because we don’t want her to get stressed out about it. So we talk about how it’s a really nice house, and we’ll all be there (Mommy, Daddy, Catie, Beaumont, & Teenie), and Catie’s big-girl bed will be there, and all of her toys, books, and movies will also be there. And oh, the fun we will have in our new house.

BUT (and this is where Tracy’s genius comes in), I told Catie last night, the one thing that our new house doesn’t have? Diapers. There are no diapers in the new house. At the new house, we all use the potty.

Catie is at daycare today, so we’re going to start working on this tomorrow. I think we’ll probably go the Pull-Up route for a day or two before going cold turkey to just big-girl panties, because that was a disaster last time.

Wish me luck. I’m sure I’m going to need it. (Oh, and if you have any potty-training pearls of wisdom, feel free to leave them in the comments for me.)

of course, the perk of having a cold is that I can't smell the litter box

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When I got home from Chicago on Sunday, Dave was running late to pick me up at the airport. I got my bags and met him outside baggage claim. I gave him a big hug & kiss, and climbed into the backseat to sit with Catie for the ride home. I noticed that her voice seemed a little raspy, but didn’t think much of it. When we got home, she wanted me to carry into the house, which I was happy to do after not seeing her for 3 days. That’s when I noticed she was (very mildly) wheezing. Dave admitted that she’d come down with a cold over the weekend, but he didn’t tell me because he didn’t want me to freak out and fly home early. What can I say, the man knows me well.

(In my defense, a normal kid’s cold is not something to freak out about, and I know that. But for Catie, colds usually lead to asthma attacks, and after landing in the ER twice, I tend to be a little panicky. So there’s that.)

And really, her cold didn’t seem too bad. We had to give her albuterol a few times, but she seems mostly better now. Yesterday when we were playing, she threw her head back and laughed, and I noticed that her top two eye teeth (the “fangs”) are just barely poking through her gums. I figured, oh well, that’s what it is, then. It’s not a cold at all, she’s just congested because she’s teething again. No worries.

Then I woke up today and realized that she definitely did have a cold. And I know because I now have it too. Sore throat, runny nose, the whole nine. Now I’m just hoping that my cold passes as quickly as Catie’s did. Because I really don’t need to be sick right now.

In moving news, I spoke with our landlady about whether or not she’ll let us stay here for the month of August, since our closing date on our house has been bumped. Have I mentioned how horrible our landlady is? Oh yes, I have. First, she started in on me that a couple of people have complained about “a very strong cat odor” in the house. Well, yes, we have two cats. I try to keep the litter boxes scooped, especially when we have a house showing, but what can I do? Sometimes you still catch a whiff of them. I can’t believe her rudeness in trying to essentially blame me for the fact that the house hasn’t been rented yet. She even issued a mild threat by saying, “Well, if they’ve had accidents on the carpet, I don’t know what I’m going to tell the owners…” Um, well, you don’t have to tell them anything, because they haven’t had accidents on the carpet. (Admittedly, Teenie has had a couple of accidents on the hardwood floors, which I’ve cleaned immediately. So no worries there.) I reassured her that the cat odor will be gone as soon as we move out, then tried to ask again about whether or not we can stay. She’s impossible to pin down with a definite yes or no answer, so finally I just said, “Ok, how about if I bring you a check for the month of August, and then you can pro-rate a refund based on the day we move out?” She seemed satisfied with that.

So yeah. Apparently we won’t have to move twice. I guess. (I hope?) Oy. Such a pain. Now to figure out when we’re getting our money and can close on the new house. Good times.

my first vlog

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Isn’t that what you crazy kids call a video blog entry? Anyway, here’s mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kohQ7yh6aWQ

I mainly got the idea for this because I wanted Dave to hear the psychotic Elmo singing, but he’s at work, so I needed a way to record it, because no way in hell am I keeping this thing in the house for Catie to find and want to play with later. Watch the video & you’ll see why.

Also, side note for those of you going to BlogHer: this might help you recognize me in the crowd. Although I’ll hopefully remember to put on some damn lipstick then.

moving makes me crabby

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So, the house thing. God, where do I start? Ok, I mentioned this earlier, but basically, our down payment is coming from the UK. Dave, his mom and his brother own a couple of vacation cottages in Scotland. They’re taking out a business loan against the value of the properties, and our portion of that loan will be our down payment. Which is awesome, because when it’s all said and done, we’ll own a house here in North Carolina, plus we’ll be part owners of a couple of vacation cottages in Scotland.

Speaking of the cottages in Scotland, want to see them? Here’s one and here’s the other. I know, the view is totally hideous, right? Gah. I can’t wait to go visit there, but someone *cough*Dave*cough* needs to get his passport renewed before we can go anywhere.

So, yeah. The loan. It seems that the bureaucracy involved in getting a loan is just as tedious in the UK as it is here. So there’s a couple of little things that need to be done before the loan funds can be released, but those little things are expected to take at least two to four weeks. Why? I really couldn’t say.

Meanwhile, our closing date was supposed to be on July 21st. As in six days from now. Obviously that won’t be happening. The sellers have agreed to an extension, but if we don’t have the money by August 31st, they can walk from the deal. Hopefully it won’t come to that, we should have our loan money long before that date.

BUT. Our lease expires on July 31st. So what happens if we don’t have our loan funds by then? There are a few possible scenarios:

1. The sellers could let us go ahead and move into the house and rent it for the month of August. That was our hope, and it would’ve been ideal, as it would’ve meant that we only had to move once. But they said no – I’m not really sure why, I think they’re just being overly cautious about any potential risk for them. (Or it could be the way our realtor called it, which was, “They’re just being turds.” I love her.)

2. We could extend our lease by a month on this house (or even just a couple of weeks), which would give us enough time to secure our funds, close, and move. Again, that would be mean that we only have to move once, so yay, right? I called our landlady to ask for an extension. She said that while nobody has rented this place yet, “if somebody wants the house, I gotta give ’em the house.” Um, thanks for the loyalty to your current tenants, bitch.

The thing is, I totally get her reasoning: in this type of neighborhood, most likely the new tenants will be a family with kids, and they’ll want to move in August so they’ll be in the district before the school year starts. So she’s worried that if she extends the lease for us, it might cause her to lose a potential new tenant. But does she have to be so rude about it? Everything is such a headache with that woman.

Anyway, we won’t know whether or not we can stay here until a couple of days before our lease expires. And since I’m a chronic planner, the idea of putting it off that long (and then possibly having to scramble to find movers at the last minute, which will be impossible at the end of the month) makes my stomach cramp with anxiety.

3. We move out on July 31st, load all of our stuff up into PODs, board the cats, and find temporary housing. Maybe we shack up with Cat and Tony, maybe we find a short-term furnished apartment or an extended-stay hotel. This is seriously the least desirable outcome for me, since it means two moving days rather than one, plus dealing with the aftermath of a seriously stressed-out toddler. Catie doesn’t do well sleeping in new places, and the transition to a new house was going to be bad enough. But if we’re staying someplace for a couple of weeks and then moving to the new house? God. She’s going to be sleeping in our bed every night until her 3rd birthday. Ugh.

So yeah, I’m stressed. And I’m pretty horrible when I’m like this, I feel so irritable and mad all the time, and I’ve been snapping at both Dave and Catie. (Twice now I’ve yelled at Catie to just be quiet when all she wanted was my attention. And I made her cry. Mommy FAIL.) I just don’t know what to do, and not having a solid plan in place makes me feel like I’m going crazy. I hate it. But I continue to pack boxes anyway, because what else can I do?

random Wednesday stuff

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1. It looks like we’ll be staying pretty busy with company for a while. My brother spent Saturday night with us, and shortly after he left on Sunday afternoon, Brittany came to visit. (Which, if you read her blog, you probably know exactly why she came on Sunday instead of on Thursday, which had been her original plan.) On Sunday night, my sister called – she had travel plans for this weekend that fell through, and she was wondering if she could change her plane ticket and come to Raleigh instead. Sure, why not! So we’ll have a continuous stream of visitors for over a week, which is actually kind of cool. Especially since it distracts me from the fact that…

2. Our house closing date is going to get changed. The closing depends on us receiving some funds from the UK (we’re taking out a business loan against a couple of pieces of property that Dave and his mom and brother own together), and we just found out from my mother-in-law today that it’s going to take longer than we thought, due to the fact that we have to wait for lawyers and surveyors and all sorts of legal mumbo-jumbo to finish up. And you know, that’d be fine, if it wasn’t for the fact that we have to be out of this house on July 31st, and if we can’t close by then, we’ll have nowhere to live.

So, we’re asking the sellers if we can rent the new house for the month of August (along with a letter from the bank in the UK promising that the funds are, in fact, on their way… at some point). And I’m crossing my fingers and praying that they say ok and don’t decide to walk.

3. In other real estate news, for the past two days I’ve been trying to help Brittany find an apartment in the Raleigh area. It’s been fun – her arm is all banged up and she’s taking Vicodin for the pain, so she’s been very giggly and stoned through the whole process. I’ve been her designated driver, and I’ve been taking lots of pictures of all of the apartments because I wasn’t sure she would remember anything that we saw. But we’ve found a few apartments that she likes, now we just need to narrow it down and pick one.

4. Today’s date is 07-08-09. Funny.