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It’s a done deal!
…. sort of. It’s all contingent on the sale of my house. Which is why I’m scrambling to get my house listed with my realtor as we speak. There are lots of small projects that need to be done, and I’ve got two days to get my house ready for pictures for the listing, and then have it ready for showing by the end of next week.
Have you ever sold your house before? I’ve never sold, and so I’m not entirely sure what I all I should do, other than clean, declutter, and organize.
I’m totally excited about moving though! And very anxious to see how much we can list our house for. I know we’ve made a killing on it, but I’m just not sure how much of a killing it is. Since we purchased it 5-1/2 years ago, we’ve landscaped the backyard, completely fenced it in, gutted and remodeled the bathroom, gutted and remodeled the kitchen, put in a new hot water heater, new carpeting, and new flooring too.
Of course, there are a few things that have me worried, like how cut up the backyard is from the mild winter and the dogs running around it.
I’ll probably AWOL for a few days, as Hubby and I get the house ready to sell. I’ll do my best to check in when I can!
A penny from Heaven?
Here’s an update on the house …. we made an offer, they countered, and now we’ve countered the counter.
I hope to have a done deal by Friday, and then we’ll have three days to put our house on the market.
The sellers have asked that closing be no later than June 30, which puts moving day right in the middle of Wimbledon!!!! I’ll do it if I have to, but I’d much rather move before or after it, as I’m a complete tennis freak and missing Wimbledon would break my heart!
Hubby & I agreed to go the distance on this one, as we both really want the house. We also agreed to put in an offer for $3000 more than what we offered on Sunday.
Um, well, here’s the thing … I made an executive decision this morning when talking to our realtor and bumped it up to $5000 more. My offer seemed more attractive, and hopefully they’ll either take it, or counter a little bit closer to what I’d like to pay. I should have an answer tomorrow.
The last time we put an offer on a house was two years ago. We fell in love with it, and put an offer in immediately. My hubby started to FREAK OUT on the way home from the realtor’s office, and it just got worse as the the night went on. Can we afford this? Are you sure you want to move? Etc…… By morning he had me freaking out as well, and by noon we had cancelled our offer.
Egads. It was quite the event.
This time, there is no freaking out, and no second guessing. (so far)
This morning I was at the grocery store, and you know those change machines that the coins slide out of so the cashier doesn’t need to make change? Well I paid with my debit card, and while doing so, a penny came down the coin chute of the change machine.
The cashier and I looked at each other, and I said, “Too bad my daughter isn’t here, she’d think she had hit the jackpot!”
We laughed, I finished paying with the credit card, packed up my groceries and left.
Only later in the day did I do a head slap …. why didn’t I take that penny???? What if that was my lucky penny???? What if it was a sign, and I was supposed to take it and I didn’t???
Gosh, I’m such an idiot!!!
HOLY CRAP!!!! This just came to me now as I’m writing this, I’m also wondering if I’m so clueless as to not see that it could have been a sign from my grandpa? Today is the anniversary of the day he died, and he always saved his pennies for myself and my brother. We’d divide them up and take them home with us when we’d visit?
The day after he died, as I was driving home from Florida with my mom and grandma, we found a penny on the ground some parking lot next to the car. My grandma took it, and said something like ‘he got into Heaven’, then put the penny in her pocket.
Did a penny come from Heaven today for me, and I missed it?
Do you think I’m nuts? (don’t answer that one)
C.E.C.
Saturday night we went out to dinner to nice Italian place. The thing is that this restaurant was right next door to Chuck E. Cheese.
A place that I detest.
And a place that my (almost) five year old loves.
The plan that Hubby and I use when we go to the place next door is to divert Zoe’s attention so that she doesn’t notice that Chuck E. Cheese is there. The plan has always worked.
Until Saturday night.
This is what happened. The parking lots are completely separate. The restaurants (is C.E.C. a restaurant???) are in separate buildings, but still next door. They are located up a hill, behind a bank, so the overflow parking for both places usually ends up in the bank parking lot. Apparently it’s okay to park there if you are going to the place we were going, but not okay if you were going to C.E.C.
Hubby parked the car in the lower, bank parking lot, and not because the restaurant’s lot was full, but just because he saw a spot and parked there. We were almost to the door of the restaurant when this parking attendant chick yells to us, “ARE YOU GOING TO CHUCK E. CHEESE?”
And of course, I’m like Drew Barrymore in the that baseball movie she was in with Jimmy Fallon and he’s a total Red Sox fan and she covers his ears in a restaurant so that he can’t hear people talk about how the game played out. I covered Zoe’s ears immediately and shot the chick a shut your freakin’ mouth what in the hell are you thinking saying C.E.C. around a child when we are clearly not going to C.E.C.!
A debate soon followed were we begged her NOT to say C.E.C. around the little ears and that we weren’t going to C.E.C., we were going to the Italian restaurant. She kept hollering to us, “You can’t park here if you are going to Chuck E. Cheese!!!!!” I seriously thought I was going to strangle her because we told her we weren’t going there, AND of course, she kept saying the dreaded name, C.E.C.
Ugh.
So then we had to sit through dinner while Zoe asked about a gabillion times if we could go to Chuck E. Cheese.
I’m sure all parents can relate to wanting to enjoy my dinner without having my daughter constantly ask (beg) if we could go somewhere else.
We put in an offer!
We found a house today, and immediately put in an offer to buy it! We’ll know more on Tuesday, but I feel good about it. It’s a newer ranch, and was built in 1994. This is a huge step up from our 1920’s bungalow.
If they accept our offer, we need to immediately put our house on the market. I think it’ll sell quickly, however I married a my-glass-is-empty-and-broken kinda guy, so this’ll be interesting. Wish us luck!
Here is the floorplan …..
Can I get you a cup of coffee?
I love it when I wake up on the weekends and everyone else in the house is still sound asleep. There is nothing more peaceful to me than a quiet house … one that I have all to myself, or so it seems.
My dog woke me up at 6:15 a.m. and in all honesty, I really wasn’t looking to be up that early. But so far I’ve pretended that I’ve got the house to myself, had two cups of a coffee, watched Andy Roddick win his tennis match for the NASDAQ-100 (thanks to DVR), and have read a few sections of the newspaper.
A long time ago, when I first got married and before I was pregnant, I’d get up before my husband (or since he was a third shifter, as he was going to bed), take the newspaper, or whatever book I was reading at the time, and go to my nearest coffee shop for a few hours. I’d order an egg bagel, not toasted, with butter, and a large vanilla-hazelnut coffee. I loved to start my morning off with what I called “me time”.
Everything changed once Zoe was born. And my “me time” at the coffee shop on the weekends quickly became a part of my past. That was one of the hardest things to let go when I became a mother, and I think part of the reason that I enjoy getting up so early on the weekends and having the house (kinda) to myself is because it takes me back to those weekend mornings that I’d spend at the coffee shop.
Now, you’ll still find me at the coffee shop on the weekends, but it’s usually around lunchtime, and it’s after I’ve been to the YMCA for a workout. I’ve got my sidekick with me, a cute little (almost) five year old who lets me stand in line to place our order, while she goes to find us a place to sit. She’ll walk around and introduce herself to anyone who makes eye contact with her, and instead of reading the newspaper, I’m chatting up my daughter and reminding her that she needs to eat her bagel before she eats her cookie.
“Me time” has grown into “our time”, and while I still enjoy quiet mornings, like today, when everyone is asleep in the house, I look forward to lunch with my daughter just as much as I used to look forward to getting up at the crack of dawn and tip toeing out of the house with the newspaper, as I headed off to the coffee shop.
The Silent Screen
Here is a rerun from last summer …. it’s one of my favorites.
One day Hubby found himself locked out of the house, so he cut two small holes in the screen window in our dining room, slid the screen up, and crawled in. He took the screen off and put it in the basement so that bugs couldn’t get in through the holes. Somehow it became my responsibility to take the screen to be repaired. Don’t ask me how, but it was, and since I’m all about procrastination — the screen sat in the basement for quite some time.
One day he hands it to me as I’m walking out the door to go to the Y. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t even look closely at the screen. I just grabbed it, and dropped it off hardware store.
The next week he picked it up. As he walked into the dining room with it, I eyed up the screen, and then the window, back to the screen again, and then back to the window.
Uh oh, he had the wrong screen.
Our dining room windows are tall and narrow, like 42”x 20″, and the screen he had was more square, probably 30″ x 30″.
Me: That’s not the right screen.
Hubby: Sure it is.
Me: It’s not going to fit.
Hubby: Yes it will, just watch, you don’t do it right.
So I sat and watched as he tried to jam this square screen into a rectangular window.
Me: it doesn’t have the clippy things to slide the screen up and down in the window.
Hubby: Hmmmm maybe this isn’t the right screen.
We went down to the basement, and sure enough, leaning against the cement wall was the dining room screen, holes and all.
Do you want the know what the most hilarious part of this story is? When we brought back the screen from the hardware store the second time, it was also the wrong size to fit the window. Thinking we were going out of our minds, we accepted defeat and put it in the basement, next to the other new screen.
Months later the hardware store called to ask, when will you be picking up your screen window?What? It’s still there?
Of course it was. We had someone else’s screen. We still can’t figure out what window that first one belongs to.
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