It's Thursday! When did that happen??
I say this because WE CLOSED ON OUR HOUSE ON MONDAY morning and I just realized I didn't even mention it here yet!! It was definitely not my intention to withhold that information all week. After all we've been through with it, you'd think I would be standing up on the roof shouting, "We're homeowners! It's OURS! Yaaaaaay!"
It was a quiet affair. We met at the bank and signed the papers, then he went off to work and I came home to Sadie and a pee puddle. For all of the lead up to and waiting for we did, the day felt pretty normal. I'd expected to feel different when it was a done deal, but I didn't. I still don't. No Cloud 9 moment for me. Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet??
A friend of mine said, "Wait until you make that first mortgage payment. Then it'll hit you." I don't think I believe that, though. We've been paying rent for ten years. I'm used to making monthly payments on our living arrangements, so I don't think mailing off a check is going to bring about any epiphanies.
No, I think the slide into homeownership mentality is going to be gradual. Little realizations here and there, like when we decide we want to paint a room or pull up a rug, and don't have to ask (and be denied) permission. Or, when we don't mow our lawn for another week because it really doesn't need to be done and there is no one out there all but measuring the blades of grass with a ruler because she has some sort of complex about the length grass should be. (Not kidding about that.)
Now that I think about it, I do feel something: relief. Relief in knowing those days of answering to someone else about our home are over. That, quite possibly, may be the best feeling of all.
You know what? This feeling of peace and the huge smile on my face make me think it may have hit me just now :)
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012
little miss sadie
We have wanted a dog for years --specifically a German Shepherd-- but as renters, weren't allowed to have dogs in any of the homes we lived in.
Today, finally, we brought one home. A little girl.
Today, finally, we brought one home. A little girl.
Sadie.
She is eight and a half weeks old, and a complete cuddlebug. At this point, she is pretty attached to me specifically and won't leave my side. When she sleeps, she has to be touching some part of me. Right now, she's curled against my right calf.
And even though she's been part of our family for just about 12 hours, we already adore her.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
a race and a request...
On October 13th, I'll be participating in my FOURTH year of the Dempsey Challenge! As I did last year, I'll be running the 10K in memory of my Auntie, who lost her life to lymphoma on July 20, 2011.
There are so many families out there like mine; whose lives are touched and torn by cancer. Please consider supporting me as I try to help in making their journeys a little easier by raising funds for the Dempsey Center.
I appreciate it so very much!!
Monday, September 10, 2012
embarking on a creative adventure
I get so caught up with how I think others will see the end product that I don't allow myself to simply enjoy the process of creating it. This is something I've desperately been wanting to change about myself.
One day last spring while surfing around the web, I stumbled on a link to the website of an e-course called Inside Out: A Creative Adventure of Self-Discovery. As soon as I read the description, I knew I had to enroll in the next session.
Since the I registered at the end of April, I've been anxiously waiting all summer for it to begin and today was (finally!!!!!) the big day.
I'm not going to go into details about my lessons here because Shannon puts a lot of love into them, but I will share that the photo* above is of my first creative play exercise in my new journal. I'm absolutely thrilled with how it turned out, and how easy it actually was for me to make something without second guessing every little step. I'm really quite proud of this page.
And, you know what? I'm proud of me, too.
*Sorry that the photo quality is so poor. I had to use my iPhone because my camera battery charger is still in a box somewhere :(
Sunday, September 9, 2012
what summer?
When I started this blog back in February, I meant what I said. I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and chronicle the journey of my next thirty (and, hopefully, way beyond) years. It was --and still very much is-- my intention to live life to the fullest. To better myself, to bloom creatively. To dare to be all I did not during my first thirty years.
While I don't have any excuse for my hiatus from the end of February until my post at the beginning of June, I have a fabulous one from then until...now.
It was mid-April when Mike and I decided it was time to stop renting and become homeowners. Not only was it getting old paying a payment every month (rent) and having nothing to show for it, but our landlord always carried a high stress aura with her and she seemed to be hanging around our home more and more. It got old; having her mow the lawn of her property next door (also a rental) and being concerned she was going to drop by just because she could. I was nice to her because we lived in her house (and because she had an extremely short fuse), and that made her feel we were "friends".
Our lease ended in March. She kept mentioning bringing over a lease extension for us to sign but did not, and we stopped mentioning it because of our decision to leave. As volatile as we knew she was, we felt that she would not take kindly to our leaving, even if it was to take the awesome, amazing step of home ownership. A "friend" would be happy for us. We were quite sure she wouldn't be.
On June 1st, just a few hours after my last post on this blog, she finally cornered me with the paperwork and I had to inform her of our plans. She reacted just as we thought she would, and returned later that afternoon with a notice for us to vacate the premises within thirty days, which she could do as we became at-will tenants at the end of our lease. "It's not personal, it's business," she said. Right. Three years of being perfect tenants and this is how we are treated when we want to buy our own home. I guess we were expected to rent for the rest of our lives.
At that point, we hadn't even found a home we wanted to buy, so closing on something in that time frame was not going to happen. What were we going to do? We toyed with Lily, our cats, and I moving back to our hometown while Mike stayed in a hotel, but in the end decided we didn't want to be separated. We would rent something, somewhere. In the meantime, we scoured the realtor listings.
On June 6th, we found our new home. It was a house we had originally decided against looking at due to being a short sale. We were in a time crunch, after all. Be closed and in wherever we were going to be before Lily started school. Short sales are notorious for not only only not being short, but being ginormous headaches. Our agent and theirs had talked, though, and there seemed to be the possibility of maybe renting it until we closed, if we decided we liked it. We LOVED it. We made an offer immediately and kept our fingers crossed that they would accept it and allow us to rent.
Our offer was accepted by the owners, but they weren't comfortable with renting it out to us. Frustrated --but in love with the house-- we decided to wait out the process and rented a small apartment, taking a fraction of our belongings with us --slept on mattresses on the floor, sat in lawn chairs. It was kind of like college, just less fun. The majority of our things went into two of those storage pod things and got whisked away to places unknown.
Our landlord made sure things did not end on good terms, as she does with all of her tenants who dare leave her, forcing us to bring legal action against her. Really, I just want that chapter of our life to be closed, but not quite enough to let her win, I guess. I'll leave it at that, for now, since this is ongoing and I don't think I'm supposed to be talking about it. (Or, is that just on TV?)
We spent all of July nervously waiting for the sellers' bank to accept our offer (a necessary step during a short sale). I'm sure we drove our agent crazy, calling her every other day to see if there was news. Finally, we were told to do a home inspection in case there was anything the bank needed to fix before we closed. There wasn't.
More waiting.
Finally, on August 11th, the sellers decide to let us rent until closing so that we can be in the house before Lily starts school...and on the 14th, their bank officially accepts our offer. We began moving in on the 15th, on the 17th we went to our bank to send our mortgage application "live", and on September 17th, we will be homeowners.
It has been a crazy, nervewracking ride. After Lily climbed onto the bus on her first day, there was a fleeting thought of, "Where did the summer go?" And then I remembered. I know exactly where our summer went. We spent it packing, cleaning, moving, cleaning, unpacking, packing, cleaning, and moving. In that order.
We're still unpacking. That, I think, is going to take awhile.
While I don't have any excuse for my hiatus from the end of February until my post at the beginning of June, I have a fabulous one from then until...now.
It was mid-April when Mike and I decided it was time to stop renting and become homeowners. Not only was it getting old paying a payment every month (rent) and having nothing to show for it, but our landlord always carried a high stress aura with her and she seemed to be hanging around our home more and more. It got old; having her mow the lawn of her property next door (also a rental) and being concerned she was going to drop by just because she could. I was nice to her because we lived in her house (and because she had an extremely short fuse), and that made her feel we were "friends".
Our lease ended in March. She kept mentioning bringing over a lease extension for us to sign but did not, and we stopped mentioning it because of our decision to leave. As volatile as we knew she was, we felt that she would not take kindly to our leaving, even if it was to take the awesome, amazing step of home ownership. A "friend" would be happy for us. We were quite sure she wouldn't be.
On June 1st, just a few hours after my last post on this blog, she finally cornered me with the paperwork and I had to inform her of our plans. She reacted just as we thought she would, and returned later that afternoon with a notice for us to vacate the premises within thirty days, which she could do as we became at-will tenants at the end of our lease. "It's not personal, it's business," she said. Right. Three years of being perfect tenants and this is how we are treated when we want to buy our own home. I guess we were expected to rent for the rest of our lives.
At that point, we hadn't even found a home we wanted to buy, so closing on something in that time frame was not going to happen. What were we going to do? We toyed with Lily, our cats, and I moving back to our hometown while Mike stayed in a hotel, but in the end decided we didn't want to be separated. We would rent something, somewhere. In the meantime, we scoured the realtor listings.
On June 6th, we found our new home. It was a house we had originally decided against looking at due to being a short sale. We were in a time crunch, after all. Be closed and in wherever we were going to be before Lily started school. Short sales are notorious for not only only not being short, but being ginormous headaches. Our agent and theirs had talked, though, and there seemed to be the possibility of maybe renting it until we closed, if we decided we liked it. We LOVED it. We made an offer immediately and kept our fingers crossed that they would accept it and allow us to rent.
Our offer was accepted by the owners, but they weren't comfortable with renting it out to us. Frustrated --but in love with the house-- we decided to wait out the process and rented a small apartment, taking a fraction of our belongings with us --slept on mattresses on the floor, sat in lawn chairs. It was kind of like college, just less fun. The majority of our things went into two of those storage pod things and got whisked away to places unknown.
Our landlord made sure things did not end on good terms, as she does with all of her tenants who dare leave her, forcing us to bring legal action against her. Really, I just want that chapter of our life to be closed, but not quite enough to let her win, I guess. I'll leave it at that, for now, since this is ongoing and I don't think I'm supposed to be talking about it. (Or, is that just on TV?)
We spent all of July nervously waiting for the sellers' bank to accept our offer (a necessary step during a short sale). I'm sure we drove our agent crazy, calling her every other day to see if there was news. Finally, we were told to do a home inspection in case there was anything the bank needed to fix before we closed. There wasn't.
More waiting.
Finally, on August 11th, the sellers decide to let us rent until closing so that we can be in the house before Lily starts school...and on the 14th, their bank officially accepts our offer. We began moving in on the 15th, on the 17th we went to our bank to send our mortgage application "live", and on September 17th, we will be homeowners.
It has been a crazy, nervewracking ride. After Lily climbed onto the bus on her first day, there was a fleeting thought of, "Where did the summer go?" And then I remembered. I know exactly where our summer went. We spent it packing, cleaning, moving, cleaning, unpacking, packing, cleaning, and moving. In that order.
We're still unpacking. That, I think, is going to take awhile.
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