Berry Muffins

Before I gave birth to my daughter I started a stash of freezer meals so I wouldn't be subjected to Taco Bell every night. One of the things I made were Whole Wheat Berry Muffins, they were truly yummy heated up in the microwave with a mug of coffee. It almost made the long night I'd had and the angry baby seem not so bad.

I've made them a handful of times since then, for a friend post-partum and most recently my Monday playgroup. They've always been received pretty well, my husband being the biggest fan requesting that I "make them all the time! I'm serious, all the time". He's not much for compliments, his favorite food gets a "yea, it's good" response.

I found the recipe here: How Sweet Eats>, please leave a compliment to the original site.

Berry Whole Wheat muffins:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (optional: sub 1/2 cup for regular flour)
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup canola oil
1 egg
1 cup berries of your choice, fresh raspberries come out really tart and taste like summer (yum!) frozen berries are also just as good.
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 400

Combine dry ingredients, and wet ingredients and mix. Gently fold in berries, and spoon into a muffin tim. You do not need liners, but they do make for easy clean up. Bake for 15-20 mins. Can eat immediately, store in fridge or place in freezer safe bag and store for a month. Enjoy!

I tried to pretend I was a food blogger and get cute pictures of the muffins on a pretty plate, but I had a 14 month old following me and yelling belligerently for the food I was withholding. So instead I leave you with pictures of baby El stuffing muffin in her face. What you can't tell is that she's doubling fisting it in each pic.

When this is your childhood you have to laugh

One of the shows the husband and I indulge in is Modern Family. It took till the start of the second season before we watched an episode and we've been hooked ever since. The Season Finale had the youngest family member, Lily on a backpack leash at DisneyLand. Her parents are overwhelmed because she has the tendency to run off and one of her fathers thinks a leash is the safest bet. In the end they find another equally laughable solution, but I'm going to focus on the leash here.

The whole "to leash" or "not to leash" debate is an ongoing argument between Moms, one Dads and Grandparents often engage in. I've had friends relay times when their parents begged them to never put their grandchildren on a leash. We've all looked a little sideways and passed judgement at the mom doing a good job of ignoring her leashed kid, and thought that if she paid more attention she wouldn't need that leash. On the other hand I know I've also judged the mom with the litter of kids she's allowing to run wild, and felt sorry for the mom who is clearly outmanned and knows it. That mom needs a leash, or a really strong super stroller.

But I digress, I'm writing to tell a story, one I've heard told to me affectionately over the years by my Grandparents. It's the story of how I earned the nickname Soap on a Rope. How it's affected me and made me who I am.

When I was a couple of years old my Grandparents took me on a camping trip with my sister and some of their friends. Think Glamping, glamourous camping, like four poster beds in tents and other wasteful things, but minus the four poster bed and tent. Stupid analogy, we had a fancy trailer, and lounge type camping chairs out front. I'm sure there was some green grass like rug to "define the camp site".


On one of the days a Ranger showed up with a little girl that they did not recognize and asked if she belonged to them. Later we found out she was from a campsite over and her parents were too drunk to notice she had wandered off. But ignore the drunk/drinking part, from the way my Grandparents tell this story she would have wandered off had they been sober. Anyway they tell the Ranger, No, and point to me informing him "that One's ours". The Ranger compliments them on how they're watching me, tells them how often kids disappear out there and is on his way.

As for me, I'm tied to a tree on a long "lead line"... yep I was on a lead line. Or a rope strung from a tree and the trailer, kind of like the one I set up or my Mother in Laws dog last time we went camping. Not just any one would do me though, this one my Grandparents proudly declare had enough slack to allow me to wander the campsite and go inside the trailer. Hence, Soap on a Rope. Shameful. Apparently this was the same trip my big sister took it upon herself to lead me around a tree till I couldn't go any further. She swears to this day I had fun following her, till I realized I couldn't go any further and started screaming.

My point? That story is hilarious. Seriously, I was tied to a tree with a lead line. This was no watered down cute fuzzy backpack leash or a little wrist leash, nope, they probably bought the supplies at a local pet store. They even realized how ridiculous it was and gave me an equally ridiculous nickname to commemorate the experience. But they did it, I survived to tell about it mostly trauma free (sister torture excluded) and it's just another reason why I have a good sense of humor. Will I do the same to baby El? Probably not, but I might tell her I did at some point. It's a great way to keep your kid humble, tell them at one point in their life you tethered them to a tree. But because you love them and are humane, gave them enough slack to be able to get shelter. You can't buy that kind of humble pie from any sort of Maury style bad teen boot camp.

I shaved my legs for this... aka Baby El's birth story

Julie over at The Progressive Parent came up with this lovely idea she's dubbing #birthstrong. The idea is that through sharing the stories of our children's birth we can spread awareness of women's choices in birth, and feel the connection that all Mother's share.

Before I can tell Baby El's birth story I need to share with you my sister's, my mother's and her mother's birth stories. I'll be brief. My Grandmother was born in 1931, premature and very tiny, to a tiny woman. My Great-Grandmother Mercedes had the cards stacked against her, with PreEclampsia, Cephalopelvic Disproportion and Placenta Previa, my Grandmother entered this world through an incision on her mother's abdomen. Twenty one years later, my Mother made her entrance the same way. The reasoning? Cephalopelvic Disproportion, reportedly my Grandmother's pelvis was too narrow for any baby to be born through. I later learned that the doctor's never gave my Grandmother the chance to try, cut her open without a sign of a contraction on the horizon. Can't blame her, assuming you completely trust your doctors and they tell you a C-section was inevitable wouldn't you schedule it as well? Fast forward to 1981, my Mother a woman who inherited my Grandfather's tall and linebacker build, is in labor with my sister. The cards as slightly stacked against her, PreEclampsia, extra fluffy and high C-section rates. After sixteen hours of a labor by all accounts she managed well, the doctor's said it was time, baby's heart rate was dropping, she wasn't coming out the traditional way. She was wheeled to an OR and my sister, with her cord around her neck, was born shortly afterward. Three years later I was a repeat C-Section, complete with a cute story of my Dad's coworkers not believing I was going to be born that day.

Growing up I heard these stories of the three direct generations of Women before me delivering their children in the OR, constantly hearing that our "Pelvises are just too small". I accepted this as fact and repeated this to anyone when a conversation would come up about child birth. I was going to have a C-Section, my pelvis was too small. Fact.

When I became pregnant, I asked my original OB about my pelvis during the initial exam at my very first appointment. Maybe I thought it was a good follow up to my usual ice breaker "You know I normally make someone buy me dinner first..."? To be completely fair to her she did tell me it was narrow but that the relaxin hormone can and does widen the pelvis up. She made a big point about not counting out vaginal birth without having a Trial of Labor. I noted this and basically brushed her off mentally, here was my proof. My pelvis is too small, I'm broken. Much like needing artificial implements to see I would need doctor's to deliver my child(ren).

 At seven months pregnant, while on a trip with my extended family to New Orleans, my cousin says something that resonated with me. Summed up it was "Don't count yourself out, you could have a vaginal birth. You never know.". Fueled with this revelation, I researched, read books on natural Childbirth (another post) and in a hormone craze did a 180 on my birthing stance. They had been wrong before, given the right support and time I could do this. I wasn't broken.

With the exception of one high blood sugar level during a Glucose Test, and nausea in months three through six I had an easy pregnancy. Finally after what felt like an eternity my due date came, and I met it with grumpiness. I'd been into L&D two days earlier and was barely one centimeter dilated, so I was sure I was going over that date. I walked, I hopped, I squatted while telling baby to "GET OUT", I asked for the spiciest meal at a Chinese restaurant and I bitched. Oh how I bitched. On roughly four occasions that I night I had what I felt was a cross between a Braxton Hicks contraction and my baby kicking the crap out of my cervix, they didn't take my breath away but they forced me to sit up perfectly erect. Awkward while driving and didn't improve my mood. It was further proof I was in for a long two weeks. I still somewhat hopefully informed my husband "Maybe we'll have a baby tomorrow." He might have rolled his eyes at me. Sometime that night I went to bed, and woke up around 2 in the morning to pee like usual.

Friday, 4:30 am

I'm suddenly awake, and I know I'm in labor. My contractions feel like menstrual cramps, icky and deep inside of my uterus. I get up, as each contraction hits I have to walk, I have to move. I can't sit still, I can't go back to sleep, I tried to on the couch and couldn't. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a zombie in the mornings and I hate be awake at a ungodly hour (aka any time before 10). Going back to sleep sounds delicious to me at this moment but it's not working, I try to lay back down in bed and hop out with a whine during a contraction. Not from the pain, I'm pissed that I can't go back to sleep. I had been rolling my hips in figure eights and swaying side to side for months prior to this day as it was the only way to relieve pressure. I can't honestly remember if I continued to do so in the moments between contractions or during, I mainly remember my desire to walk away from myself. Sometime after the start of labor I start timing my contractions, just for shits and giggles. I have my 40 week appointment at 2:30 pm and I know I'll go in for that and only be 3 centimeters dilated. It's going to be a long weekend I tell myself over and over.

5:00 or 5:30 am

I'm in the guest bathroom, letting my husband sleep, and relieving myself (TMI?). While engaging in that and between contractions I'm googling on my cell phone "contractions under five minutes apart but less then a minute in length". Lovely Google confirms my suspicions, I was likely in Early Labor and it could be hours if not days of this. Bastards I mutter.

Snot nosed kid

Dear baby,

I love it when you nurse yourself to sleep and then reach your little hand up, up, up to touch my bare skin. You settle into my warmth, finding comfort in human contact, and start snoring. Even when you sound like your Great Grandpa, or a lawn mower on the loose, and your face is covered in snot, you are so beautiful. Watching you sleep can wash clean the hardest moments with you. You know the ones, where you want to crawl into my lap and don't understand why I push you away. Those moments are generally when I'm yelling "hot! Hot, oven! No!" or "Mommy needs to wipe!", and it's ok I think we both know that you've forgiven me for my cruelty by nap time.

You are beautiful and a true vessel for all the hope and love I have to give to this world. Be safe, wear clean underwear and always know someone loves you. Also, keep in mind that I have photographic evidence of some embarrassing moments and I'm really not afraid to use them.

Lazy

Take notes ladies and gents, I'm going to lay some Mom knowledge on you that will rock your world. You know that moment of the day (or all day) were you sit down on your cushy behind and space out for a bit? Or where your Facebook, Twitter, etc gets updated? Actually this moment, were you found my blog and are now reading it.

So thinking of the moment, and not including nap time, what is your child(ren) doing right now? Mine is riding her plastic rocking horse backwards and shoving blocks inside of a receptacle that takes balls. I tell myself she's a creative thinker and is trying to get the world to conform to her not the other way around.

If your child(ren) are playing happily by themselves pat yourself on the back. You're not neglecting your child or ignoring them for your own selfish desires, thank you Attachment Parenting for further Mom Guilt. Your playing child is engaging in Exploratory Free Play, and is learning through exploring their environment safely. There are preschools dedicated to this type of learning, think Montessori.

See? You didn't need a fancy degree to instinctually stimulate your child's curiosity of the world and problem solving skills. The only tools you need are a phone with Internet capabilities, the Facebook app and enough toys to supply a daycare. Good to go. Now excuse me, there is a ball I need to pry out of a block shaped receptacle.

Note: there hasn't been a sarcasm font invented yet, so I'm going to add this disclaimer. Obviously if you're going to let your child play on their own you should be supervising and the environment should be a safe one. Outlets plugged, no knives etc.

Laundry

I've got baby's diapers in the wash & in the meantime....

Bad Mom or Evil Genius?

Mooch

Edit: I was editting this post and changing up the photo when I made an error and deleted the whole thing. Then pulled a stupid move and "reverted to draft" rather than just exited out of the whole thing thus saving myself the heartache. This is a rewrite.
I've had a few ongoing jokes to explain why Baby El cries and screams when I leave the room without her. The jokes go like this:

She's smart, she knows where the food comes from and gets nervous when it walks out of the room.

She's just worried the food isn't coming back.

I've also taught her the handsign for milk. It's a fun party trick she'll pull out, climbing into my lap, staring at my chest very intently and signing "MILK" with both hands. She's very serious about her food, if I could remove my breasts and leave it with whoever is watching her she'd probably be happy as can be. So it's an understatment for me to say that weaning is going to be notfun, a process that I've already started. Baby El has always nursed on demand durring the day and at eleven months has been known to nurse almost every two-three hours. Most days she averages nursing six times a day. I've started cutting back to four times a day, through distraction techniques or to be completely honest by me personally not being so lazy. Once you get over the newborn hump breast feeding is such a lazy mom's way to parent. Seriously. It goes like this:

Oh, you're bored? I'm bored too. Want to nurse? Hello facebook

Here, mom wants to sleep more come into bed and nurse while I pass out for a bit.

I really do not know how you bottle feeding mother's do it, I cannot imagine all the extra work and stuff to carry. Even if I wasn't so lazy, baby girl is and always has been a comfort nurser. Sometimes she wants to nurse and that's the only thing she's going to take, I'm so excited for her to be a teenager. No really. The introduction of solid foods has proved that she's a mooch. Bring out a tupperware container at a playgroup and she's on you in the blink of an eye. There is no shame, you'll see that cute little bow mouth opened like a birdie waiting for a worm, and those little hands going up to grab what she can reach. I've even been somewhat ashamed when she whined at someone for not giving her food quick enough.

With my weaning goals in mind, yesterday I met with three of my closest friends for group pictures. You know it was all the rage at one point to take pictures with your BFF's, we just kept on the tradition. Baby El was already on her third nurse of the day and I was holding out the last one for right before bed. Something she wasn't too thrilled about but easily distracted by her exciting new walking skill. We were there for probably an hour and starting to finish up the pictures when the smallest of the babies decided she was hungry. My friend T sat down with her baby and started nursing. I think at that point Baby El's mooch senses started tingling, as the next thing I knew she had climbed up T's lap and was staring T down. With angry eyebrows and all, she started making Milk signs and then used her other hand to PUSH T's baby away. Eleven months old and ready to rumble over someone elses food. She was like a drug addict trying to get her hit. Clearly I was right.

Three pots, two mixing bowls and the kitchen sink...

When I see something cool online, an awesome dress pattern for Baby El or a yummy recipe I think "oh yea, I can totally do that!". Reality? My sewing experience is limited to the one pair of leggings I made for Baby El out of an old Maternity Shirt of mine. They're fairly laughable. The top seam is thicker in some parts and thinner in others, and when I went to reinforce the crotch I made the pants tighter. On the plus side the side seams look professional, of course that's because they are since I cut the original material along the existing seam.

Let's be honest though, I still think I'll be able to hand sew a quilt made out of my daughter's baby clothes. My husband calls this denial "wasteful" and usually rolls his eyes when I bring home new projects that in his words (and mine at the end) will just collect dust. As for me? I call it confidence, I am convinced that I can tackle almost any project I truly set my mind to. Or at the least I'm going to try! I am woman hear me roar and all that. As a side note, this confidence/denial extends beyond the "traditional womanly arts" and I think with the right plan, tools and so on I can build furniture. Yes, despite shoving a knife in my nose, I still think in my mind that I am safe to handle a table saw. Just keep 911 on speed dial and a tourniquet handy...

Which comes to where we're at right now, with a big hole in the middle of my house and what was once our guest bathroom. It was previously so Handi-capable chic! The previous owner had widened the door; installed a handicap shower which basically looks like a tub with the apron removed & laid down on the floor and handle bars all over; and built a cubby for the bolted to the wall sink. It was very wheelchair accessible and I'm sure made the previous tenant capable of taking care of the basic needs I take for granted. Except for the shower part, with a screaming baby I am grateful for every single shower I take. In the end though, with the unfortunate exception of one member of our family, we had no need for a wheelchair acessible/handicapable bathroom and are in the process of tearing it all out. Baby needs a tub and we need a much more practical set-up.

Since my husband is mainly doing all the work I've been offering assistance. Asking him what I can do to help during the babies naps and all. Sunday he said "you can crawl under the house and dig holes".

Me: uuuhhhh.... What? How? You'll have to show me

Any kid with shovel experience can dig a stupid hole, I know that. But apparently my "I can do it!!" attitude only extends to things I can take credit for. No one wants to crawl under my old house so I can show off the lame holes I dug. How's that for a party trick?

" Come see what I did in the bathroom! ...... Oh, no my husband did all the tiling, demo, flooring, but see I did the crucial stuff! I dug the holes for the concrete jacks that lifted our house back up, without that we'd have a slanted floor! .... No I didn't use a sand bucket and plastic shovel... Assholes"

Narcissistic much?

*the picture is where the shower used to be, that's now the only semi-completed space. The rest is just floor beams.

The knife incident...

My friends love this story. My friends also like laughing at me. Do we all have friend's like that? Or am I just extra lucky?

A few years ago I ordered a pair of shoes online at a steal. Seriously, it was a steal. I'd seen them on a website & then goggled like a fiend to find the best deal possible. My search culminated into one of those great Ebay moments were you wait till the last minute & get the winning bid and run around your little apartment like a SuperBowl Quarterback Victory Dance tm. Admit it, I'm not the only one.

Anyway, so I come home to find my victory boots on my doorstep all taped up in their original packaging. I go inside and grab the only logical item that can be used to release them from their box, my six inch Chefs Knife..

I said it, my six inch Chefs Knife.

To. Open. A. Shoe. Box. With. Boots.

Overkill? Naw, this is my standard tactics in box and bag opening. Of course the utter ridiculousness did occur to me & the thought to abandon this method passed through my mind right as I'm opening the box, and pointing the sharp end towards my face no less. But I like to learn my lessons the slightly harder way.

As I'm thinking "this is a dumb idea", the knife slips..... I'm downplaying the situation here. My SIX INCH Chefs Knife slips

... and ends up...


in my nose.

The tip was in my nose. In my NOSE.

Cue much shock and some hand flapping. I would say my life flashed before my eyes, but I'm not that melodramatic. What did flash before my eyes were the thoughts of how I was going to tell everyone, I guess you could start it like a bar joke "two nuns & a Rabbi walk into a bar...". What does that say about me?

I believe I started an uncomfortable OMGee laugh & alerted my husband to what had just happened once I realized I wasn't bleeding to death. The look on my husband's face said it all. "How can I trade in for a smarter wife?"

I walked away with a slightly bloody nose, a annoyed husband, and a story. Oh and a really cute pair of boots! Can't forget about those.

Baby says...

If my ten month old daughter could journal I'm pretty sure she'd have this to say about today:

Mom fed me yellow goodness (egg yolks) today, but snuck in some green crap. Sure I ate a quarter of it, I didn't want her to think I was completely ungrateful. But I had to put my foot down & tell her I would not stand for this! She gave me some banana and then taunted me by keeping the rest just out of reach. As a warning of further action if I was not promptly given more banana, I proceeded to wipe my banana covered hands all over the dining table and in her hair if she was silly enough to get close.

Best food of the day?
1) my feet
2) my right shoe
3) blueberry yogurt Mom fed me at the coffee place
4) the silver spoon

Most WTF moments of the day?:
1) Mom putting me in a ruffled monstrosity & then wondering why I looked like a butterball turkey. It was unacceptable.
2) the cat licking his lips at me while I looked like a stuffed turkey.
3) Mom complaining when I followed her into the bathroom. Only fair after she changes the diaper I'd worked so hard to make warm.
4) Mom letting me shut myself in the bedroom. Then "pretending" she can't find me.
5) Not being allowed to eat a pen.

There was this guy at the store wearing blue pjs that I wanted to follow home. I need to learn how he got his Mom to let him stays in pjs all day.

Mama needs a shower...

My friend and I like to play a little game. We call it "Bad Mom or... Evil Genius?".

So a detective knocked on my door...

Think it's a lame start to a joke? It is, since ealier today a detective knocked on my door, informing me that a car parked about eight houses down from mine was set on fire Monday morning at 4:30 a.m. This marks it as the second car on our street to be torched in the nearly eleven months since we first purchased our home in March 2010. Roughly four more cars had been burned down the month before we moved in, in one night of car burning fun. The four cars that night do not include the multiple other cars that had been broken into the same night, in what the local Police Department believes was a related incident. According to them the arsonist was prepping the other cars to be burned as well, and was probably scared off after the cops showed up in response to a report of the first two cars burning.

The last car that burned, back in May, was burned directly across from my house and we first watched it burning from our front window before venturing out to catch the drama unfolding from our front steps. Somewhere I have a really good description of that event, I'll find it and post it tomorrow or write a new one. I might even inclue the video I took from my digital camera of the car burning up.

The Detective told me that one of the neighboors had caught a glimpse of the suspect, tall thin man wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt. Helpful, no? Not to come off like an ass and blame my neighboor for not getting a better view, it was the middle of O'dark and a half past "why am I up?" am. Also, the street that I live on has an Elementary School backing up to it that was closed five years ago and has since been converted to a "continuation high school" with a driveway that lets out onto my street. Directly across from that driveway is a path to a creek that runs behind the whole street, and connects to multiple other creek paths that runs a decent length of our town. To make things even worse, the town High School is two blocks from us. Seriously, why did I buy a house in this neighboorhood? It seems like the perfect breeding ground for getting away with a crime, since traffic around here is almost as changing as traffic in a mobile home park.

Time to finish up the nursery dresser painting project we have going on in the garage so that we can get all of our cars in the driveway and/or garage. Lock your doors ladies and gents, America isn't completely safe.

Starting it all up...

I'll admit like most projects, I started my blog with the intent to make it permanent and a daily activity. Then in an all to short period of time, I become lazy and forget all about my grand plans to have a daily activity. I let other, far un-important things, get in the way and let my projects go unfinished. It would be a stretch of the imagination to call this blog "important" at least to anyone but myself. So when I say "un-important things" I primarily mean that the other things I find to do are utterly lame. IE: watching TV, sleeping, etc. No great excuses such as work, chores, a social life.

What I also mean by referring to this blog as not important to anyone else but myself is this: I used to be a much more creative person. In part my creative outlet of writing poetry and creating stories was an escape from what I deemed a boring and painful childhood/teenage years. Not to get all angsty, because seriously? What teenager doesn't think their life is boring and/or painful? Over the years, I quit acting as I never made it into any of the plays in High School, I cut back on my poetry, I stopped taking art, and slowly my creative writing become less and less important. For a long time my only creative outlet was a livejournal, but even that I've found less time for. I would go over in my mind the posts I wanted to make and then when I sat down to write them I lacked the words. Now my creative outlet has been limited down to random, boring, sometimes fun, "I'm thinking" wall posts on the infamous Facebook. Lame.

As I'm about to embark on Motherhood (even now my spawn is squirming under my skin plotting her escape into the real world) I know that more of the things I use to define "me" are going to become less important. In the face of a child who depends solely on you for sustenance, how do you step away and selfishly do things just for you? Now before I lose more of myself, I want to stake a claim on the creative person I once was. I hope that this stand will help me to keep "me" in this crazy trip I'm about to take, and will leave me feeling more satisfied with myself by the end of each day.

Younger self, I've missed you, let's step out into the cold and find you once again.

Sail away...

So much has happened in a short period of time, I've reached major milestones in the last year without doing much living. To elaborate, my weekends and time outside of work is generally spent hanging out at home. I don't get out too much, and when I do it's usually for food or a book buying excursion. Summed up, I'm lazy and require a high amount of time laying about being useless to feel like a person come Monday morning.

Despite that I've still managed to tuck at least two major milestones under my belt since the start of this year. I went from weary and jaded House Hunter, where we feared that we'd never find a house that we could purchase. To First Time Home Buyer and all the highs and lows that go with that, including delayed closing/escrow, and inspection issues. I went from fantasising about renovation projects to starting them, or in my case purchasing the material and watching my husband start them.

I went from talking about having children, even setting a date to start trying, to becoming pregnant in the blink of an eye. Due to a few non-controlled experiments I had hypothesised that it would take a couple months of trying before we got it right, so although it's earlier than expected and before we're really ready I'm excited. I love feeling the little movements of the baby, so tiny that I can't tell if it's a kick or just a wiggle around. When I'm bent over in an awkward position and I feel that movement like a protest at all the extra space I'm taking up, I'm sure in that case it's a kick. I can almost imagine this child's personality forming and the inevitable grumpiness that it'll more than likely inherit from both of us taking shape in that one little kick. I know it's silly, most of the kicks you see a fetus doing are pure instinct, but it's nice to imagine they're more than that.

I need to blog more...

I've been getting the desire to blog more and more. With no readers, the desire to blog really has to come from me, and a sense that there is someone out there who will someday stumble on my blog and think "that shit's funny". This sense, or intution if you will *read:ego* isn't always strong with me. Meaning I might have to direct people who know me in real life this way.

... we'll see how that goes.

Public Service Announcement

The delay in your regularly scheduled posting has been due to job stress. We apologise for this inconvenience and blame it directly on our current employer who is finishing up with Bankruptcy filing. Current employer has made hints in the direction that "the way the economy is currently we'll be able to get qualified individuals for cheap!". Meaning, this not-so cheap and not-highly qualified individual could be out of a job soon. Also out of the house hunt.

It has been hard to come up with anything to write that doesn't sound like a "Dear Diary" entry. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it's the waiting not the result that's killing me. How is everyone else fairing in this uncertain time?

Monday's are a deja-vu

Rule #1 in homebuying, never piss off your Real Estate Agent.

... three days and I haven't heard a response back from him. Two houses just hit the market in our target area, one in the middle of our price range. The other at the top with little wiggle room.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet, houses are moving really quickly in our area and price range. You know the houses I mentioned in this post? All have gone contingent*, most were on the market for under twenty days.

If I'm in the market longer I'll start bringing a camera, and I'll post screen caps of the market listings. That way you'll believe me when I say, time is of crucial.

The majority of the houses we looked at are ones we can see ourselves in. We've considered expanding the kitchen, visualized where the entertainment center would go, laid on the floor to figure out how our bed would fit in the master bedroom, imagined wedding pictures mounted above the fireplace and planned Thanksgiving dinner. In a way we don't so much get an emotional attachment to the house but rather what the house means. The house is a blank slate in many ways, if there's the room and money for it, almost anything can be changed inside.

*contingent essentially means that an offer has been accepted by the seller and the escrow process has started. Houses can go back on the market during this time.

and then I was wrong...

Update: according to my husband I'm harsh.

With that in mind, I probably apologise cause I need to.

The Apologizer

Hi my name is Meghan, I am 25 and I am an Apologizer.

I'm the finger on the trigger, apologize first and then ask what I did wrong kind of gal. If it's not the first thing I do, sometimes a defensive exclamation escapes first, it's the second thing I do.
Always without fail, I will apologize whether I was really wrong or not. It's probably my faux-bohemianesque upbringing that makes me want to care about how others "feel". That as part of a whole working society we're all just gears that need to get along in the machine of life. In part I can attribute my Apologizer status to my tendency to be blunt and my preference to soften the blow with an "I'm sorry, but..." (those shoes do give you cankles).

As I've gotten older, I've started to wonder if me being an Apologizer is adjusting the way those I interact with view me. Does it weaken my stance and how I'm viewed as a whole? Does it cause people to take me less seriously? Am I often apologizing for no reason?

In a brief e-mail exchange between my Realtor and myself, I felt the need to apologize. My initial e-mail could be viewed as an insinuation that he had not done his job. Previously he had insisted the listing price on a house was almost $10,ooo more than it was. Not only was I calling him on it but I was asking if any subsequent information regarding a bid in on the house was also incorrect due to the original mistake. His response was completely clipped and brief, telling me that the information on the bid was still correct. My internal response is "I'm sorry I implied you can't do your job!! FORGIVE ME!". Followed by groveling.

.... I'm stepping back, and reminding myself that in life I'm not always wrong. He had a right to be irratated if he was, and I had a right to question his original answer due to his initial mistake. No apologizing for me this time. It's a twelve step program!

Dear diary

I'm starving. My stomach is an empty gnawing pit.

My last meal for the day has consisted of rabbit food, with a little bit of protein thrown in for shits and giggles. So far the "I is so poor I can't afford my frilly $10 coffee drinks" diet is a tough one. I'm not going to share with you the midday daydream I had of a dancing Iced white mocha, or the chorus line of rice crispy treats with shortbread cookie feet, or the measly snack of garlic tasting cucumber slices I had earlier. I will share with you my desire to sell my husband "services" on the street corner. Buy me an iced chai anyone? He's a great mechanic, mind out of the gutter people.

Isn't my life so tragic? On the plus side, I hear starvation is God's diet plan.

*note: sarcasm doesn't always translate well in text.