July already?!

I think we’re finally in the swing of things.  It’s taken awhile, but I think we’re there?  The boxes are gone, we’ve done a ton of yard work — the front yard was a dust bowl when we got here, now it has plants and greenery and it looks great.  The back yard is our next battle — we’ve bushwacked back there quite a bit — nothing had been done for probably 15 years.  Next, we’re hoping our landlords will pay for materials and we’ll fix it up.  We did the front yard out of pocket, but the front is much smaller and we wanted to show we could do a good job.

Our wedding is in 3 months!  We’ve gotten the suits ordered, we have an appointment to see rings (from a eco-friendly, queer-friendly, local jeweler), we are mailing invitations today.  We’ve had the venue for awhile, we’ve met with our bartender and photographer.  We’ve booked our flights and hotel for the honeymoon.  Honestly, it feels like we’ve done a lot of the big ticket stuff that you have to do ahead.  We still need to finalize what we want to make for food (because we’re doing it ourselves). Oh, and a dozen other little things, like music, decorations, cake, etc.

As for out little dog, he’s doing better, but my goodness it is a lot of work.  He’s a chewer, and he’s trying to destroy our stuff.  He recently started chewing on my couch (I love my couch), and I was nearly ready to get rid of him.  But we’re going to make this work and train him up, and once he’s older he shouldn’t chew so much, anyway.  At least, that’s what everyone keeps telling me.  It had better be true.  He still has a wonderful personality and is just so friendly.  It’s hard to be mad at him for long, even when he is truly horrible.

It’s time to get ready for work for me, but I am going to try to start blogging again.  Honest.

Big Updates

It seems that a lot has gone on in the past almost two months.

First off the bat, I got engaged!  We’re getting married in October, and things are already lining up well, so that is a relief!  We’re definitely planning a very low-key wedding, so that is helpful. But other than doing the planning we have to do right now, we’re putting it off, because…

We’re trying to buy a house.  The one big hitch (other than having not enough/barely enough money for the up-front costs) is that T still owns her house with her ex. ugh.  Her ex  finally did agree to buy her out, at less than half the equity, after futzing around for two months, but now her ex is going to require her to be out by the end of March.  We were hoping she could stay until at least April because we can’t get going on our house stuff until we have cash in hand from the house.  Of course the market is so expensive that it will still be quite hard to afford anything.  It’s incredibly frustrating.

The other option was to sell the house, but her ex refused to do that unless everyone was out of it, and since T actually lives there, plus has pets, that was unrealistic.  Plus we knew she would drag it out as long as possible, and we want to start our life without her.

I’m going to tell you, it’s a lot of big stuff all at the same time.  (T also started a new job this month.)  We have talked about just renting for a year, but we have four pets between the two of us, and we’d end up paying just as much as, if not more than, a mortgage.  We’re also worried we’ll get priced out of the market if we wait because we’re barely able to be in the market now, and prices will only continue to go up.  Renting isn’t completely off the table, though.  It’s just not our first hope.

I’m going to try to blog on a more regular basis.  I’ll try to give you updates on the house and the wedding.

Hope your Monday treats you well!