Oopsy... from Friday

More real estate stress…

We were told that there were 2 appraisals needed on our current house (for the buyer’s 2 mortgage companies – confusing). The first appraisal went nicely on time, and a very pleasant lady all round. The second… well that’s another story.

This guy, Rick, phoned me at work at 6:30pm (go figure I wasn’t there). So I returned his call the next day, left him a voicemail, which he never returned. This was probably about 3 weeks ago now. He calls me last night on my cell after 6 (again!). I return his call. He says we need to get this appraisal done, so I say of course, and we will need an evening appointment. Well at this point he gets all huffy. I say, well perhaps a weekend? He gets even more pissed and says “I work 60 hrs a week as it is, if I work more I may as well get a divorce.” This is not my problem!

I was told when he first contacted my agent that I could make the appointment at my discretion, and not to go out of my way to take time off work, etc. So, that’s what I did. Then he says “Don’t you want to sell your house?” which puts me into a panic. “Our house is sold, they take possession June 30,” I say. He then responds “Well if they don’t get their money then your house isn’t sold” So now I’m having a fit. He finally agrees to come at 4:45pm almost 2 weeks from now. M’s trying to stay calm and calm me down as well.

I phone my agent (who is awesome!) and have him paged, twice. Poor guy. He was at the hockey game. He calls me back, I explain the situation. My agent reassures me, and even volunteers to deal with this guy. So this morning I gave him the guy’s contact info, we’ll see what happens.

But on a good news note, the house we bought in St. Albert has increased in value by $25,000 since we bought it, and we haven’t even moved in yet.

Thank goodness for Ya Ya tonight. Good company, good food and cheesecake!

May? Where'd May go?

Well things improved, and then they didn’t. There was some confusion on Friday about where C was going after school. Suffice to say, he got himself grounded a bit again for the weekend. Essentially stuck inside all weekend helping us at the mother-in-laws getting her house ready to put on the market.

On that, I think yesterday I finally saw some progress in how the house was shaping up. You can’t park even a motorcycle in their oversized double garage, but the house looks nice and roomy. This is what we’ve been spending our past few weekends doing this all consuming project. If anything it has been a lesson in how not to let out house fall into disrepair. I love my mother in law, but omg I’ve been wanting to pull my hair out.

It has taken a number of people about month to get this house cosmetically acceptable to show. The electrical sucks, but that is beyond us, and hopefully the roof is being redone, so that’s a good thing.

Our house is of course, falling apart during all this. By the time we get home, all we want to do is climb on the computers for about an hour of WoW, and then fall into bed.

That’s about what my past week has been, a blur of paint, pain, moving things, etc…

Let’s hope this week is calmer. M’s b-day is today and I want to take him out for dinner and have a relaxing evening. Tomorrow the real estate agent is supposed to come by, if the mom-in-law remembered to phone him.

Oh and to top it off, I went to the doc to get my wrists checked out, I'd been having some numbness while riding my bike... bingo, carpal tunnel (however it's spelled) so now I get to sleep with my wrists splinted straight. I guess it's better than needing surgery right away, perhaps we can correct it before it gets too much worse.

Yesterday was a good day

Wednesday:

So talked to C's teacher finally around 4pm on Wed. His behaviour has been better, although he's now turned into the class pig. Tossing his coat, bag, etc on the floor rather than hanging them up. When confronted with this, he says some other kid has been using his hook. We told him if that keeps up to talk to his teacher rather than just leave his stuff on the floor, we'll see I guess.

Then C put his foot so far in his mouth that he couldn't get it out. Hard way to learn to think before you speak, but nothing else has been getting through his head. C asked if he could go to the dog park with a friend, M said "but you have soccer tonight, do you still want to keep playing? or shall I take you off the team". C chose to be taken off the team and ran off to the park with is friend. Upon getting home and settling down, I asked who was going to call coach to say that C was not going to continue playing soccer and the fit hit the shan so to speak. He has to learn not to manipulate people (especially his father) to get his own way. But we stuck by our guns and took him out of soccer, if it takes this drastic to teach him a lesson, so be it. We both feel like crap about it, and maybe if his attitude improves we'll look at swimming lessons or something else he likes for June.

So after a lot of crying, yelling, talking, and an hour past bedtime, I think we might have made some progress.

The honeymoon is definately over.

Thursday:

Suprisingly, the grouchy child normally with little sleep was very pleasant this morning. He seems to have accepted that he will not be playing soccer. He has a friend who plays in U12 so he says he can still "keep in touch with soccer that way", whatever works I guess.

He actually talked to his dad about being pushed around at the park! YAY! We have been trying for months to get him to talk to us about this kind of thing. Also when I got home he was playing in the back yard with his friend, I wasn't happy about it, but really in all this, I figured he was honest with me when I asked him "You said, no friends in the house...". So at least they were playing in OUR yard and not someone elses. Only issue I had after that is that he hadn't finished his homework. But when I called him in to finish it, he did it without complaint. Also I told him he'd have to tell his dad he had a friend over... and he did!

I really hope these improvements continue. He'll get his PS2 controllers back today so he can play that again. And we'll discuss tonight about playing outside of the yard.

Cross your fingers...

Please, someone else take this stress?

Ok, there has to be an end to it somewhere right?

Sheesh! So I get a call from my hubby, someone's drowned their lunch/spilled vinegar at his office. Now he has a violent reaction to vinegar, violent and probably almost projectile. Lovely. Now he's feeling miserable, he had to leave work early, and probably won't be able to eat today.

Following this, my lawyer calls regarding the house sale/purchase. I'm amazed that they are working on it already, thinking yay, cool! Then she tells me that changing our possession date may be a problem since the sale of our house won't go through until the next day, she says have you talked to your bank about this? I'm thinking no one said anything about this 1 day being a problem, wouldn't my real estate agent have warned us if it was going to be? So now I'm in a panic, I say I'll call the bank and find out.

I call my banker and she says that no, it is not a problem, she just needs confirmation of the change of possession date. We will just need bridge financing for the remainder of our down payment which is minor, since it will be for all of 24hrs.

So this all settled, I still haven't heard from C's teacher even though I phoned and left a message this morning. I figure I'll give her until 4pm, then I'm heading home since I can't exactly answer my phone while I'm on my bike.

Please please please let tomorrow be less ridiculous... I need a break, and I just had one...

Life goes on

So, the past week has again had its fair share of disasters. We were doin great until Friday when the floor fell out from underneath us. We got a call from C's school. He was behaving inappropriately (easiest way to sum up without going into detail).

So, C is grounded 3 ways from Sunday... It's a bit of a shock to his system, since his father and I are a lot more strict than his grandparents. He's had almost all of his "fun" stuff taken away, he's left with the TV, books and his toys. I'll check with the teacher today on how this week has gone and we'll talk about perhaps giving the PS2 controllers back. It is very frustrating but I figured it would have happened at some point.

It's also given us the needed fire to do more "family" things together. Even if it is watching design/renovation shows together after supper while the weather is miserable. I figure once it is nicer we can go to the dog park, or C mentioned he'd like all of us to go to the playground. I think this is a good thing, we need to get him to open up, so I'm all game to do some things to get us all out together instead of all staring at computer screens.

Also this weekend we went to help the mom-in-law in getting her house ready to sell. Whoah. Lots of work. Lots and lots of work. I re-caulked their pink bathtub (erk) and forced mom to pack things she doesn't need (like kiddy cups and ancient tupperware). Just so much work.

Our living room is now packed, except for things like the PS2 and VCR etc. I think maybe the sewing room is next. I'm stacking everything in the living room so we can just haul it all out the front door on moving day.

Erk, much arguing going on behind me... more later

ERK!

Well we got confirmation of our new possession date on the new house. June 29th!

Of course, now it just hit that we have to book a truck and plan the move, and try to find volunteers! ARG!

So I called U-Haul, and at least got the truck booked. We pick it up at closing on the 28th hopefully so we can start late that night if we want (9pm). But the main stuff will be the 29th. So now we're dredging our brains to figure out who we can invite to come give us a hand either during the day or after work. For some reason I think this is going to be the hard part. Not only is the 29th a "working day" but we haven't really hung out with a lot of people in the past year. I'd feel back asking just anyone to come help, c'mon who really wants to help people move? So, if anyone wants to volunteer? :)

I did email some people that I figured I could twist an arm on without too much trouble (love ya guys!) and hopefully in the next month and a half we can recruit a few more. Once we know the numbers then we can figure out if we're promising pizza or something more :)

New link

Everyone check out the new link over there on the right --->

Cute overload, the website to go to if you ever need a pick me up on a bad day.

Found a calendar!

Coolness! I found a funky calendar which will allow me and anyone else I choose schedule things on it. So anyone who wants to organize stuff can, hint hint Ya Ya ladies!

I will be testing this out so please anyone try the link on the right and comment.

Ya Ya ladies, expect your password shortly.

Back to work

Ok dad update.

He came home Friday afternoon. I think he’s glad to be home, but he is so tired, and seems so “transparent”. Just pale, and tired. It’s going to be a long time before he feels like himself again. We now are waiting until mid May for the cardiac procedure to correct the hole in his heart. I am really glad he is home.

Me update.

Off work for a week, back today. The spells of vertigo are fewer, maybe 1 every 1-2 hours. They were less when I was running around less (go figure). Perhaps it is/was a viral infection in my inner ear, or perhaps it was a result of stress, I guess we’ll never know. The other possibility is that during the whole chaos of my dad I forgot to take my anti-depressants. Totally. Cold turkey. And it took me about 2 weeks or so to realize it. Oddly enough I felt ok other than the dizziness. So I looked up withdrawl from my meds… go figure à Vertigo. Potentially 8 weeks of it. So we’ll see. But I didn’t want to jump back on my pills after going cold turkey, so I’m gonna ride it out. See how the moods stable out. I get angry real quick right now but that seems to be the worst of it. If I can sit on the anger (ie. No fuse) I may just be alright.

Family update.

C has started walking home from school on his own (I kind of figured about time, he is more than old enough). I give him 30 mins to get home, and 4/5 days he was early. This week we are trying him coming home on his own alone. He has a house key and a bunch of rules and phone numbers. He’ll really only be home for 10-15 mins on his own today since I think I’ll leave work about 3:30-3:45. I’m trying to aim for more of a 7:30-3:30 or even 7-3 schedule for the summer.

We’re also trying to figure out what to do with him for the summer. Camps are cool, but expensive (avg. $100-150/week). We’ll see if the mom-in-law wants to take him for a week or two, and we’ll be off for a week while we move.

We actually packed a couple of bookcases on the weekend; hubby was a sweetheart and did most of it. I just labeled and stacked the boxes. We also had way too much fun at a liquidation center this weekend buying these totally cool humidifiers. Hard to explain, but imagine a 3’ tall flower that has almost dry ice mist in it. They’re totally cool! So we had to go back and get mom-in-law one, and great granny too.

Hubby got his tax return so we were able to pay off the car repairs and the loan from mom for the deposit on the house (thank you mom!). And we bought a kit to repair the bathtub, professional reglazing costs upwards of $400, totally not worth it when we are just doing it to make the tub look nice when we leave. I’ll take the $45 kit instead, even tho we’ll have to shower at mom-in-law’s for a week.

I think that catches everyone up. Hopefully.