Sabbatical is over

I’m back! I wasn’t truly on sabbatical from my blog, but I recently realized it had been about six or seven months of radio silence. Since my absence, I got married (it was wonderful), started a certificate course at my local community college online (to get some actual accounting/bookkeeping credentials), and bought a house with my wife.

The house is what consumes us currently (well, that and I am taking three classes this quarter, so I’m busy with homework, as well). We closed a couple weeks ago, but thanks to flexibility with our current rental lease, we left ourselves a few weeks to get things done at the new place before we move in. We’ve been busy painting, insulating, and making minor repairs as we discover them. Really, my parents have been doing the bulk of the work, as T and I can only go up on weekends. (Thank god for retired, helpful parents!) My mom has been painting nearly every day, and my dad, with weekend help from my brother, insulated and sheetrocked the entire garage. The house is going to be great once we get there.

I’m excited to be a homeowner. I know it’s more work and more responsibility, but it means its ours. I really can’t wait to move in. Move date is set for April 13th. After that, things should calm down back to the new normal (for me) of still very busy instead of crazy-busy.

just wedding rambling

The wedding is coming up quickly — 9 days, if my math is correct.  And with it, work has been extra busy/frustrating.  I’m still dieting to try to lose just a few more pounds by the wedding to ensure my suit fits as well as it is able (a whole other story that I’m not going to delve in, but I have a draft post full of emotional vomit).  I did payroll this week for the first time by myself.  We’re under a couple injunctions from the state from an incident stemming from the nursing staff.  Still no personal days, despite our numbers being strong (they took away our 5 personal days this year, leaving us with only 4 holidays).

We’re mostly ready for the wedding.  We still need to sit down and figure out the music.  But all the other big stuff is done.  Our suits are done, we have our rings. We’ve hired bartenders and a photographer.  A work associate is catering, gratis.  We’ll pay for the actual food (at cost through my work).  We’ve wrapped gifts for the bridal parties.  We made the centerpieces.  Things are coming together.

T asked if I was excited, but honestly, I’m not. Not yet.  I rarely get excited before something actually occurs — I’m too busy with the to-do list that invariably precedes any such event that may provoke excitement.  I told her I would get excited once we had checked off all the remaining items.

Until then… I guess I have work to do.

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.

all things new

Disclosure: Not all things are new.  Yet.

We, my fiance and I, decided to get a new dog.  A month before we move in together.  And he’s living with me and going to work with me.  His name is Spike, and he seems to be a chihuahua terrier mix.  He has a great personality.  My cats aren’t exactly happy, but I’m making it work.  [I did almost have a breakdown when I couldn’t get them to eat for nearly two days–I’d put their food on the table so the dog couldn’t get it, but they wouldn’t touch it.  So I have it in the bedroom, which is blocked off from the dog, and they started eating again.  I suspect they wanted their food on the floor, where it ‘belongs.’]

I’ll tell you this.  I maybe need to pay a bit more attention to my anxiety levels when I’m making big decisions, such as to get a new pet that I have to train on my own for a month.  Especially when it’s a month away from moving.

My packing for said move has more or less stalled, but I’m sure I’ll get back to it this week and weekend.  I mean, I don’t have much choice if I’m moving in a little more than three weeks, right?

Wedding planning is mostly on hold until after the move.  And I think we’ve finally decided to not worry about house hunting until at least after the wedding.  It’s just too much otherwise.

Deep breaths.

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!