I’ve been busy busy!  But I’m at least glad that I have internet enough to be able to blog again.  Man, that sucked so bad.  But  I bet you guys maybe want to hear about the house we just bought?  No?  Well too fucking bad, I’m telling you about it anyhow.

This house is over 100 years old.  All the houses on this street were built around the same time.  They have similar looks and are all red brick.  It is a quiet street, with large mature trees lining the road.  Although the neighborhood is at this time very comfortable looking, it is obvious that when this neighborhood was first built, it was for well-to-do families.  This house has a stone foundation, plaster walls (when we got our home insurance, we had to out in the policy that if the place burned down, we would rebuild with drywall because plaster is effing expensive apparently), hardwood floors, copper piping (although it sounds nice, it SUCKS when copper piping goes bad…been there done that), a new roof, a family room with travertine marble tile floors, two working wood burning fireplaces, 4 bedrooms, two and a haf baths, and a very sweet backyard for city dwelling.  We are three miles from any shopping we could want yet our street is very quiet.  It’s not a thru street, so the only traffic that comes through is our neighbors.  It’s awesome.  It has a forced air furnace and since I like for my home to be warm, that is awesome.

This whole house is awesome.  I’m very impressed that we were able to get such a gem.  We had a modest budget, especially for the area.  I mean, we’re not living in a poverty state OR city.  We’re living in a boom town, a suburb of the second biggest city on the Eastern seaboard.  Even better, I’m extremely happy that we got a house that doesn’t look like anybody else’s house.  Yeah it’s on a street where the houses look similar, but 100 years of different owners moving in and out, renovating, and putting in their own touches has made this neighborhood a little gem.  I’m so happy that we’re homeowners and can finally get comfortable in one place and not have to worry about signing leases or wondering if rent will be raised next year, or if our next place will be big enough for us.  We’re settled.  After too many years of feeling displaced we are finally home.

This is the living room.  As of right now, we don’t have any furniture for this room.  The hardwood floors need to be refinished and the walls will be repainted a very neutral yellow very soon.  I am in love with that big window.  It was made to have a great Christmas tree displayed inside.

These last two are our sun room.  This was a room that was almost the best feature of the house to Jessie and I.  We call it the “snuggly room” because we are cornballs like that.

Lukas’ room.  I’m sure you could have guessed.  It’s such a sweet and cheery room.  I’m so happy to have given him his own room.

The family room.  It’s a great room and it’s amazing how comfortable I feel in there already.

We’re not unpacked yet.  We’re about two-thirds done.  The master suite is getting a little love right now.  We’re putting in a walk-in closet and refinishing the hardwood floors.  So for now we are sleeping in what will be the office and that means that I can’t unpacks office boxes or all of the bedroom boxes.  However, my family room is unpacked and decorated for Christmas, my living room is clean and there is a Christmas tree in front of the big front window and Lukas’ room is finished.  We’re a little cramped, but feeling very homey.

And now for the funny story of today’s post:  Last night we were out to dinner with my mom and brother.  The waitress brought us plates for the appetizer and they were still warm from having just come out of the dish washer.  Lukas put his hand on it, and said “Hot!”  We told him it wasn’t hot and I showed him that we could touch it.  He put his hand on the plate again and said, OW!  Goddamn!”

I COULD take the blame for this one, but Jessie says it just as much.  I guess we’re going to have to start saying “fudge” and “Fiddlesticks” and “Poop” a lot now.

HI!  How are you?  It’s been a very long time, hasn’t it?  Well let’s see here, I’ve uprooted my family from Washington, stayed with my mom and stepfather in the boonies of Pennsylvania for 3 months, and bought a house in a sort-of suburb of Philadelphia.  I’VE BEEN BUSY!  Being without a reliable internet connection was torture for me, and it killed me to watch the rankings on MWC and SMP fall to nothing.  Now I’ve got to work to get those damned things back up to something.

Ok, so what have you missed?

The plane ride from Seattle to Philadelphia was the longest plane ride of my life.  I will never ride in a plane with a toddler again.  Ever.  Then getting Lukas adjusted to life in a huge house full of breakable things was equally awful.  Jessie’s drive from Seattle to the boonies of Pennsylvania was awful and I’m sure he’ll never want to do that again.  Ever.  Then Jessie had a 3 hour commute EACH WAY to his job.  That means he was spending 6 hours a day in commute.  THAT SUCKS.

Lukas turned two while we were in internet limbo.  Jessie’s parents and brother and sister-in-law and their daughter came and we had a nice little party.  The kids had fun playing and the grown ups had fun catching up and eating ungodly amounts of food.  I made Lukas a dinosaur cake.  It was cute.  He got a million presents as always.

We went into Clarksburg to see friends and family we hadn’t seen in three years.  We brunched with the Canon’s and had a nice visit.  We visited my father and his parents and had a nice and slightly uncomfortable visit.  And then we met up with Aschlie and the rest of a visit was an absolute hoot.  Aschlie and I went to my grandmother’s grave and instead of crying, we told morbid stories and laughed.  My grandma liked to laugh and I think she would have appreciated laughter over tears.  Then we went to the Hussmann’s where I got to hold itty bitty beautiful babies and get slobbered on by Riley.  We had good food, had great company, and felt completely at ease with super nice people.  I was happy for Helen and Mary that their husbands are just super nice guys, to the point of being disarming.

We visited with Aschlie and had great talks and B.S.ing.  It was so nice to talk face to face.  We had breakfast the next morning all together and then said goodbye.  We headed to Morgantown to see Jessie’s brother’s new house.  It is ENORMOUS.  Then the long-assed drive back to the boonies of Pennsylvania.

Somewhere in there we decided that we needed to at least look at a few properties in the area and get an idea of what our budget could afford us.  We found a WONDERFUL realtor and set up a viewing day with three houses.  The first house was dirty and scary.  The second house was on a gorgeous tree-lined street and was fantastic.  The third house needed to be condemned.  We went back to the boonies and talked about looking at other houses.  Then we decided that we actually really liked the second house so we asked our realtor to talk to the listing agent to inquire about it further.  The listing agent said that the price had been reduced recently and they were getting a lot of foot trafic through the house.  We talked about it some more and decided it couldn’t hurt much to put in an offer (after Jessie had about 20 panic attacks).  We put in an offer, got a counter, countered back, and were under contract in one weekend.  It happened really fast.  Then Jessie had another 20 or so freak outs.  We got the place inspected, was told everything is in great shape and after the mortgage company dragged their feet until the last effing minute, we closed.  So yeah, we now own a house.  We looked at three houses before buying one.  The whole process was not as stressful as some people make it out to be.  You sign a zillion papers, you fax a zillion papers, and then you sign a zillion more and then they give you a set of keys.  I’ll be posting pictures later, right now I’m just catching up.  Trust me, I’ll be talking about this place a LOT on the future….and you’re going to read it and like it or else!

On a little side note here, I feel that I should post something funny.  Two nights ago, we went to Home Depot to get a big garbage can for recycling.  It was too big for our car, so we had to readjust everything and ended up having to recline the front passenger seat and setting it in there.  Well with Lukas in the back, there was no place for me to sit besides curling up into a ball and smooshing myself into the space behind the reclined seat.  Our car is tiny and sucks sometimes.  Anyhow, Jessie was talking to me and turned his head to say something and I heard a loud *THUMP* and then him yell, “OUCH!  I just punched myself (I’ll tell you the rest in a second).  Believe it or not, I hear Jessie yell “I just punched myself….” about 3 times a week.  Sometimes he punches himself in various regions of the crotch, and sometimes he punches his chin.  He does this a lot, so it wasn’t a surprise to hear him yell the first part.  It was the second part of this yelp that put me into hysterical laughter only because it was so unexpected.

“I just punched myself in the face with the trash can!”

You tell me where else you would hear that exclamation.  Where?  Who else would say that besides Jessie?

Apparently the wireless internet detector-thingy in my laptop blows.  This would explain why I consistently lost access.  Right now, my entire body is clenched, watching my little internet icon….waiting for that goddamned red X to appear to tell me that I have once again lost internet access.  I get on my computer long enough every day to check my email and that alone takes a while because I keep losing my signal.  It’s pissing my off!  Jessie says he has a miracle remedy but I need to wait a few weeks to get it.  We shall see!

Also keeping me from doing anything on the internet is my toddler.  The toddler.  Toddler.  TODDLER.  Oh, how do I explain it?  Oh yeah:  TODDLER.  I’ll spare you the details of my sleeplessness, my pulvarized boobs, the two of us (Lukas and I) sobbing in a dark room at 2 a.m., the screaming, the locking of doors, the watching of Nickelodeon on four different televisions, the opening of loud doors in the wee hours, getting punched in the face by tiny hands in the middle of the night…..I could go on and on.  Let me just say this, it’s a damned good thing that this little boy is so sweet and adorable…because the nights are terrible here and I’m going to crack very soon.

I also hate my mom’s cat.  Usually, I love cats.  Really.  I like dogs, I’m just not good at owning them, but I really love having cats.  This cat, though.  I DO NOT LIKE HER.  Part of this might be because her prison room is the room right next to the bedroom that Jessie and I sleep in.  Late at night she uses her litter box and thumps the sides of it as she scratches around.  She thumps on our door, trying to open it so she can come in and sniff our faces as we sleep.  She waits until 3 a.m. to groom herself and that fucking bell around her neck wakes me up.  This is what it’s like.

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Other than the nights sucking hardcore, we’ve got it pretty good out here.  There’s good food to eat, nice conversations to be had, plenty of room to spread out, and more televisions than you can shake a stick at.  We know we’re lucky to have family help us out like this.

I’ve got lots of pictures, I just need to see if there’s a secret nook around here somewhere where I can have internet long enough to upload them.  Keep checking, I’m still here!