Texty

Now that we have a pending offer, I figured I'd take a few moments to think about all the time we spent in Chez Fou, and the big events in our lives in the nine years we were there.

I haven't had a lot of direct emotional attachment to the house itself, but the time we spent there definitely was eventful. In addition to the big stuff--9/11, market crashes, Katrina, two wars, three presidential elections, etc.--there were a lot of major events for us personally.

( Some highlights: Feb. 2000 - Apr. 2009 )

Clearing out my china cabinet so we could do the dining room floor has proven to be my downfall. I got to sort through all my Willow and realized that I hadn't really added much to that collection in some time.

So I hopped on e-Bay.

Oh, shit.

An ungodly amount of money (largely credit) later, I have probably two dozen new pieces. And I'm watching several new auctions every day. Turns out that there's a motherlode of the stuff I like to collect (unusual pieces, particularly the multicolored patterns) turning up every day. I think one of the sellers actually specializes in this stuff. And of course, I'm not the only one who collects this stuff, so some of it is getting bid up quite a bit. I'm letting a lot of stuff go when it gets to be way overpriced, but some things I do just have to have. And I just now discovered that there was a multicolored Willow pattern called "Chinese Legend" that came out about 15 years ago that I love and want to start collecting. Oi.

Now, it's not like we're dirt poor or anything. It's been at least five years since we really had to worry about paying bills and such. We have a healthily positive net worth, what with all of M's stock and the house continuing to rise in value. But we do have quite a bit of credit debt, especially with my student loans, and our cash flow could be on a higher trajectory than it is. And we also have potential offspring stuff and our cars are starting to show some age, and there's a lot more house stuff we need to do and...

Sigh...

I'm really not high maintenance. I give less than two shits about fashion, so I spend next to nothing on clothes. Maybe $500/year, if that. I don't go for flashy jewelry. I don't get expensive haircuts or spa treatments and I'm certainly not going to drop wads of cash on cosmetic surgery. I'm not picky about having "the finest" of everything. I drive a five-year-old Toyota and have little to no desire for anything fancier than that. Granted, we have some pretty extensive (and expensive) plans for the house we want to build in a couple of years, but that's a joint project and something we've been looking forward to for ages. And I do hope to pay a lot of the credit off when I get a job. I actually hate how much of a sponge I am. I believe in earning my keep.

But I guess I am kind of expensive when it comes to certain things. My fandom madness, for instance, cost a pretty penny. And there's always the upgrades to my computer so I can run my games. And now this. I feel terribly irresponsible for spending the money this way, but I do have to say that it's making me happy to get all this gorgeous stuff. And maybe that's worth it.

But I'm totally not telling M how much I've spent on this. ;)

This? Is amazing.

I'm very tired and sore, but happy to be home. I'm mostly moved out of the bachelor pad, now. There are just a few more small things and some cleaning left to do, which will be dealt with when we're up there again next Saturday for commencement.

Of course, there's still a half-full U-Haul sitting in my driveway. It'll be emptied tonight, but things will mostly be going directly into the garage, where my car usually sits, as there are several household cleaning/re-arranging things that need to happen before those things go to their proper homes. Two years of being away from home means two years of household projects have been buiding up. I suspect I'm in for a busy (and probably expensive) summer of mucking around the house.

I need the domestic downtime, though. I'd go completely nuts if I didn't have any mental stimulation, so this won't last long, and I'll likely be doing plenty of brain-oriented projects, too, but two years of school means the old noggin needs a bit of a rest for at least a few weeks. Continuing to catch up on my reading, plus daily rounds of mah-jongg and spider solitaire should be enough for it. :)

Other than domestic stuff, reading, playing and socializing (Eeee! People!) I'll probably be working somewhat on the fertility stuff, to see where that goes. Otherwise, I'm just waiting for a good job to come along.

If October rolls around and I'm neither pregnant nor in a perfect job, I'll probably go sign up with some temp agency or something, since we'll definitely need the money by then to start paying off some of the massive credit bills this whole educational adventure has racked up. Fortunately, my degree means that the kinds of temp jobs I can now expect will be far different than the biological office equipment ones I'd done before. No more answering phones, that's for damned sure.

The draft (and the research log, and the weekly participation summary) es fini! 12 pages of the damned thing, too. Well, OK, so it was really only about 8, if you shave off the biblio and the weird opening pages that APA style requires. It was about 2100 words total--a little less than half of the final size. However, all that's left for me to do on it is just amass and analyze (according to criteria I've set) several more stories. This should take a fair amount of time, but next to no effort.

With all that's left for this class being that, a final essay on my class participation and a presentation, this means I'm officially on the downhill side of this class. Unless he finds something horribly wrong with my draft, it's smooth sailing from here out, and I should have no trouble passing. Yes, I was actually worried about that.

My advanced reporting project, now that's a different story. I'm glad I can kind of sleep through the next two weeks of seminar, because I need to throw a metric fuckton of effort into getting that project in better shape. I'm worried about doing the map (which reminds me: n8dagr801, are you a GIS guru and can help me with that?) but I'm more worried about getting the last interviews I need. You know me and sourcing. Bleh. I think I'll manage, especially with the wonderful efforts of the lovely miztiy involved, but I'm still stressing anyway.

For the moment, however, I'm going to take a well-earned break. I am going to do absolutely nothing of academic value tomorrow. Instead, I'll probably spend the day starting to pack up my apartment, since I now have only three weeks left of actually living here (I'll be sleeping in SnoCo during finals week.) M is going to meet me for dinner, which will also be nice.

Early next week, I'll probably do the advanced reporting project stuff, plus herd my kittens to get decent coverage of the GAP nonsense going on. Then I get FOUR WHOLE DAYS at home. More like 4 1/2, if I get out of production early next Thursday and don't have anything other than class to occupy the following Tuesday. I'll probably spend almost that entire time sleeping--resting up before I do my final push to finish my two projects, which are due at the end of dead week. And I may also try to get my LOTRO characters to a level at which they're actually useful for group play. I could use the whole blasting orcs thing to calm me down after all this chaos.

I also, however, do plan to celebrate my birthday a bit early in some way that weekend. Not sure how or when or what, but something other than the usual.

And now, bed--and a few chapters in the latest Redwall book I'm devouring--awaits. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.....