Murky Waters

I need a guidebook. I do apologize for being so lax in my blogging (Honestly, it’s a blog called The Newlywed Game and I can’t even blog about my 1st anniversary??? One sentence version: this has been the most incredible year of my life. Done) but the real estate search has taken over all my spare time, some work time and sleeping time. I now stalk Redfin for a living.

It’s not as though we are in a big hurry to move or close on a house, I just have this need not to miss THE house because I didn’t look hard enough. Case in point: I recently hunted out a house on a Thursday when it came on the market, by the time we saw it on Saturday, it was gone. And it was the first place that felt like it could have been home and it was slightly heartbreaking. I’m learning that even after all the work to find THE house (yes it does have to be in caps, thank you very much), the journey is just beginning: offers, money, inspectors and it’s all very overwhelming and surreal. And guess what? Talking about money is fun. Oh wait, no it’s not. It’s really, really not.

And thinking about spending THAT much money, you had better hope you like the darn house. And then we’re back where we started, trying to find THE house. Back to my stalker tendencies, I do promise to be more cheery next time (when we GET THE house!)

Real estate lurker

Can't blog, too busy stalking Redfin.

This brain is full. Please try again later.

Wow, sorry to have been such an MIA blogger, but things have been busy because: we have re-entered the real estate world.

And home loans and finding a realtor and cruising listings (All.The.Time.) in addition to working is exhausting and most of the time it feels like my head is going to explode from all the information, consideration and advice I keep jamming into my brain.

But I'm excited about the possibility of having our own place (please come visit me even though we are looking in the south end! It's cool there, really) but also slightly petrified because I'm starting to realize that sometime in the last couple of years, I became a grown-up and I did not see that coming. Part of me wants to embrace it (remember as a kid when all you wanted was to grow-up? I got my wish) or do something rebellious like tattooing a tramp stamp on my lower back in order to try and recapture my youth. (Kidding of course. Except for maybe a "My man is better than your man" tatty. That would be classy.)

In all seriousness, prayer is much appreciated and kind thoughts as well as make a pretty big leap forward.

Post-Vacation Haze

Coupled with pre-vacay ADD, I now have post-vacation fog brain in which my mind refuses to wrap itself back around work. Ninety-percent of the time, I’m pretty happy working full-time, it gives me some purpose, I like the people I work with and seriously what would I do with myself all day? (Although you might get a few more blogs out of me, that’s for sure). But all it takes is a vacation for me to decide that lying around on the couch all day sitting on my soon-to-be ginormous backside eating bon bons wouldn’t be the worst way to go in life. There are several distinct phases to get to such an outrageous statement:

Stage 1, morning after return: “Why is it so early? I’m going to go back to sleep and then by the time I get up Mom will have cinnamon rolls done and I crawl out and eat them in my sweatpants with Julie & Julia…. Mmmm. CRIKEY! I have to go back to work today and there are NO MORE CINNAMON ROLLS AND NONE OF MY WORK PANTS WILL FIT RIGHT NOW. Sigh.”

Stage 2, mid-morning after return: “He wants me to file all the what? What is he talking about? Did I miss something while I was gone? I don’t want to, can I say no? Oh right, no I can’t because this is my JOB. DRAT.”

Stage 3, noon after return: “All I have for lunch is a pimento loaf and mayonnaise sandwich I found in the back of the fridge. I miss buffets.”

Stage 4, mid-afternoon after return: “I miss mid-afternoon naps too.”

Stage 5, way too late to be at work still, day after return: “HOW MANY HOURS A DAY AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK? 10? Have I always done this? Why don’t I remember how long a day this is? Why am I still here? Maybe all that sun addled my brain a bit.”

Stage 6, evening day after return: “Have finally reached the comfortable recesses of the big green couch with Flight of the Conchords on DVD and my bon bons; am not going back.”

Pre-Vacation ADD

Tell me if this ever happens to you too: it's 3 days until I leave for a glorious sunny vacation on the houseboat in Idaho and my attention span for work is pretty much gone. Here is how my train of thought goes:

"Let's see here, I have until the 11th to finish that writing piece, so I should probably get working on it. OH WAIT, I'll need to turn that in before I leave on vacation because I won't be here on the 11th because I'LL BE ON VACATION, SQUUUEAALLL! Oh man, I should probably find a bathing suit that fits, and see what the weather is supposed to be like. Do you think they'll let me wear my cowboy boots with the steel-toed shoes on the plane or are those considered a weapon? I mean, I guess I could hurt someone with them but I certainly wouldn't. Maybe I should just pack them instead, but are they going to fit in my carry on bag? Maybe I can borrow a bag from someone. Does Casey have a bag that doesn't look all boy-like? He could really use a new bag, I think that other one is broken, plus maybe a new pair of pants. Shoot, I need to iron those dress pants before I go too. Not that packing pants in August really sounds necessary but as a chronic over-packer I don't understand that kind of logic. Why bring 2 when you can bring 6 pairs and have options? It's like having a moving closet. Oohh, wait wouldn't that be cool, a moving closet? I could just pull it over to the bathroom in the morning and pick out my outfit, and then drag it back into the bedroom later in the day! It'd probably be really heavy though with all my stuff in it, maybe if I vaccuum packed my clothes, it would work...."

And which point the phone rings at work, causing me to jump in my chair and realize I have no idea where I am for a minute or how much time has past that I've just been sitting at my desk at lollygagging. I mean, what have I been doing?

"Oh yeh, that's right, I'm going on vacation. SQUUEAAL! I should start packing, I wonder........"

Heat Wave

Fair warning: if you are one of those people whose response to our Northwest heat wave has been: “It’s always this hot in Texas, in fact it’s even hotter, so stop complaining,” you should stop reading right now, cause you ain’t going to like what’s coming. Because. It’s. So. Freakin’. Hot. People. And I am going to complain until I collapse on the floor of my apartment with heat stroke because I don’t live in Texas, in fact I chose not to live there for this very reason, I don’t want to deal with 100-degree plus weather, umm ever. I live in Seattle because I like the rain, my jeans and sweaters and my morning lattes, not sweating while sitting in the apartment, getting burned by my car interior and instantly sticking to the leather chair every time I happen brush by it. In fact, the only thing running through my brain right now is that this post has to end prematurely although the material here is endless because of the laptop/heater on my lap that I am ready to chuck out the window at this moment to get away from it.

iWork

It amuses how everyone has taken to putting “i” in front of product names, therefore obviously making it cooler. Every time I go into a Brookstone or a Sharper Image, there is a plethora of iPillows and iStereos, which I think are supposed to make me go like this, “Oh, an iPillow, this must be so much cooler than a regular pillow because it’s got an “I” in front of it, just like my iPod and iPhone are so cool. I have to have it!” When in fact I am paying $40 extra bucks for a regular pillow.

The reason I bring it up is because every stinking day I have work with the phone system at the office that is trying way too hard to be hip. When the phone rings you have to options, to press the “Answer” button or the “iDivert” button, which places the call straight into your voicemail. This presents numerous, slightly annoyed questions to pop into my head:

1. Um, why is not also iAnswer? Was there some sort of patent pending for some ridiculous board game called iAnswer where you have to recite the alphabet backwards in Hebrew while standing on your head so you couldn’t use it? Or they ran out of funds and could only spring for one iPhrase so they flipped a coin and iDivert won?

2. Also, phone system, do you realize that as the mere means by which people call to yell at me for not getting their subscription, you cannot nor never will be cool to me?

3. Why can I do super, extra spiffy things like iDivert people but not keep people on hold for more than a minute before you promptly hang up on them? Maybe you should have spent some of your patent money from claiming iDivert phrase on that fun little function instead, hmm?

4. I can also only assume you were made and programmed in some country where caller ID is some mythical and wondrous function that only comes on a day when you have impressed Santa Claus with your holiness and comes and goes on whim, am I right? Well apparently today the jolly bearded man in the big red suit is very, very pissed at me.

5.If I were to whack said iDivert button with my keyboard over lack of caller ID frustration, what would it be called then? iBreak? No, that one is taken too? Darn it. What about iHateyou? It has a certain ring to it…

6. Why are trying so hard to get me to like you? Do you have low self-esteem, did you maker not give you enough love in your childhood, or just want to fit in with the popular iPhones? How sad, good luck with that…