Category: Diary

Well flying to Boston was even more exhausting than usual airport flying. I was hoping there would be little TVs on the plane to keep lucas somewhat distacted, but there weren’t (this is why I only ever fly international), so paul had to deal with lucas constantly kicking the seat of the guy in front of him, crying when paul made him stop, and talking loudlyfor two+ hours. Walking thru airports meant dragging a car seat around with us and having lucas randomly flop over on the ground being silly rather than just walking.
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stephanie’s house is really cool. it is sooo much like my house in london (only double the size). she also actually has more pets than i do (ok well they belong to her roommate, but theyre in the house with her).
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This morning we got up bright and early at 5am. Why the hell would we get up at 5am you ask? BECAUSE THAT IS WHEN THE SUN RISES IN BOSTON! an hour and a half earlier than it does in the georgia!! at least this gave us ample time to drive to Gloucester, an hour north of Boston where we caught a boat out to sea to go whale watching.
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Not a good plan. Paul got really seasick. I didn’t know he got seasick so I didn’t bring any medicine for him. So he spent the whole time feeling super miserable. And by whole time i mean 4.5 hours! they said it would be 3-4 hours which didn’t sound like long at the time, but when one of you is sick and youre yet again dealing with a toddler than wants to run around and climb on everything but can’t because he could fall overboard so requires not only careful watching, but *hand holding* most of the time, it gets old fast. and oh yeah, youre out to sea and there’s no getting off the ride now.
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so now that im done bitching, here are the positives. they don’t really have those awful accents here, and everyone is really nice. seeing the whales was really cool. they are insanely huge! even seeing the top of their backs from far away you dont realize how freakin big they are until one was right up next to the boat. we saw a bunch of humpbacks and one other that i forget the name of.

So I’m working in the kitchen and I look in on Lucas who is sitting at the table eating his food and saying “mmm”. I go back across the kitchen, and wait a minute, here is lucas’s cereal bowl over here on the floor, so what is he eating? I go back in the dining room, and he is sitting at the table with the cat food bowl! He went in the cat room and took one of their bowls, brought it to the table, sat in a chair, and began eating it.

The Seller accepted our offer!
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House was listed at 170k. Our offer was 160k+closing costs, so really $154.
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The seller accepted our offer, they were considering dropping their list price to 160k anyway since they hadn’t had any foot traffic. but now it has to go to the bank for approval. Should go out today, and hopes are to hear back in about 10 days which would be June 1.
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we found out that the seller’s mortgage is an FHA loan (easier to deal with) through Bank of America.This means that they will only pay 1% of the closing costs (around $1600 of the 5700 estimate). We also found out that the bank will typically approve up to 84% of the appraised value of the home, so our offer of 160 should be fine as long as the house doesn’t appraise for over 190k. Terence will find out if an appraisal or something similar has already been done on the house to get an idea of what it would be. At a rough guess from what I’ve seen online, I’m guessing 167k area.
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we are trying to get the utilities turned on for a day for the home inspection, hopefully before we leave for boston, but if not we are going to try to change the due diligence clause to be june 1-10 when we get back. shouldn’t be an issue.
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that’s all for now, cuz im heading to lunch with sarah. ill post more about the house itself later. i think i might go buy some uhaul boxes and yell at paul’s mom a bit today, too.

lucas loves it. he just ate 3 slices!! i mean i ordered a smaller pizza than usual, so each piece is smaller than the usual slice, but still. 3 pieces!!
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doc update: weight 28.8lbs (61%), height 38.25″ (95%), head 19.5″
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ok moving and getting a new house is *no fun at all.* every time i get excited about a new house, something turns out to be wrong with it and it gets scrapped. Holly Mill subdivision that at first i loved turns out to be a neighborhood in decline and on top of that, the two houses i was interested in there were waaayyy over priced. then i liked the brand new constructions in Summer Walk (despite them being in an awful school district), but turns out the builder company has had the worst reviews of any company ive ever come across. the fox hollow house needs work and has no pool, the mill creek house it too small if we hafta stay there longer than like 7 years.

being me, i have analyzed and cross analyzed every bit of data i could find on my housing search and now im at the end and fed up. more specifically, i am disheartened, discouraged, disparaged, depressed, dismayed, and destroyed. i told paul to just go pick a house and leave me out of it – im not gonna like anything we can afford anyhow.

like wedding planning, it is really fun in the abstract and really exciting when you get started…and then just keeps going…and becoming stressful…and everyone has an opinion and a criticism.
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so our first meeting with our agent, Terence, was to see a foreclosure in Senators Ridge right behind where I live now. i was really excited about this one because it is an awesome neighborhood and normally more than we can afford. ok so that house was trashed! in fact, it was in the worst condition of any we have seen since. this really surprised me due to the caliber of people living in that neighborhood. altho with myself as an example, we aren’t normally the type to have a house in a condition like the one we are living in now, but hey, this one aint ours.
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our first full day of looking at properties on friday was for the dallas/hiram area. we looked at 8+ houses and it gave us a good idea of what stuff was out there, what we did/didn’t like, stuff to compare to. there is one in hiram which is *great*, but im really hung up on it being so far away -esp since everyone (except sarah) has already told me they wont ever visit me if i move there — so id hafta make all new friends. but the house was so great, i havent totally discarded it yet.
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sunday lauren joined us and we looked at all the canton ones. the ones in canton are smaller than in the west, and cost more, but the location is so much better. i was getting really excited about the idea of being soooo close to lauren and jenn and even my mom wouldnt be too far. we found a house that seemed perfect here – just the right size for goldie locks! pretty confident we are ready to make an offer, we find out it is already under contract! it really annoys me that real estate agents can’t keep their information current to *tell* people that the house is under contract and not still available. the selling agent is pretty confident that the deal will go through, but we will put a back up offer on it anyhow, which just means we get first dibs if for some reason the first seller doesn’t buy it.
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so left on the list to view are 3 in woodstock, 1 in acworth, 1 in kennesaw (bells ferry school district lol!), and one in marietta. i dont have much faith in these tho, because the closer to marietta we get, the houses get older and smaller and more expensive. every time i think about paul’s mom, i get so mad.
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today’s assignment is to go back through the ones i had looked at online and discarded for whatever reason, and see if any of those i should go look at afterall. but it seems like we are going to have to make a concession somewhere – either smaller, older, or further (farhter?) away.

ok, we’ve had it. we’re moving.
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(insert random note: because im a fail mom, lucas just peed on the chair)
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so those of you that followed the roofing incident, the CCKL (Crazy Communist Korean Lady) kept insisting we pay half the roof since in her head we own half the house. it was last left at paul saying “and they know we arent paying for it, right?” and her answer being unclear as to whether she understood this or not, screaming on both sides, and paul hanging up on her. roofers are coming thursday morning. we’re just gonna make sure they know that we aren’t paying them before they get started and let them deal with payment collection.
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so based on the roofing incident and her telling me she won’t pay to fix the downstairs toilet since she isn’t the one using it, we aren’t even going to bother mentioning that our downstairs A/C is dead and so is our dishwasher. instead, we’re going to get new ones ourselves…attached to a whole new house.
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well kristie isn’t an agent anymore so we weren’t able to use her as our agent, but she found us another guy, Terence, to use and he seems pretty great. so we have an agent and a lender, now i’m doing the house hunt. the search engine terence (via Kristie) gave me is really cool. it lets me put in “must haves” and “want to haves” and gives me matches that way.
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(insert random note: lucas wheeled his roller coaster car to the top of the stairs and was sitting on it rolling it back and forth towards the edge of the steps. i guess he’s the next Johnny Blaze.)
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so i’ve now run into the problem of not finding many houses that match my criteria of must haves, which are having a big house in a nice neighborhood near nice schools for no money. sooo, i guess somethings gotta give.
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this mornings mission: research elementary schools to see which ones make the cut s i know which areas i can look in for a house
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to be continued…

so i just actually read the old draft post that i threw up earlier today and saw why it was a draft…i never finished writing it!

so the rest of the story was: he still couldnt reach the dresser top since the table wasnt flush with the dresser due to the obstruction. he gets back of the table, looks under it, sees a toy underneath it, removes it, tries to push the table more against the dresser and it still doesnt work. so he goes back around, looks again, and sees the stuffed dog, so he then pulls that out. now he is able to push the table flush with the dresser, stand on the table, and reach the top to pull down all his books. i was just really impressed with how he was able to look at the base of the table and see items that could be causing the problem and remove them in order to get what he wants. i also admire his perseverance at getting those dang books down!

found this in the drafts folder from march 8th, thought id go ahead and post it

– so we dont use a diaper genie or any diaper pail. we just take the dirty diapers and put them in a grocery bag and put them in the trash. well this morning i was lying on the couch and i heard him pulling all the clean diapers out of the grocery bag that they were in but i didnt care. then a minute later lucas comes over and holds out the bag to me and says “yuck.” he had taken the two dirty diapers id already changed this morning and left on the changing table, emptied out a plastic bag, and put the dirty diapers into it

– problem solving: i’d put his books on top of the dresser in his play room. he tried to reach for them but was a little too short. he tried to do a pull-up to grab them, but couldn’t get them. he glances around the room and sees his play table. he grabs it and drags it over to the dresser to stand on, but there is a stuffed dog at the base of the dresser that it is stuck on.
– said bye bye to alphapal

and ill add to it with one from today – we just yelled at lucas for hitting, and he walked off and got in time out (on his own)

– I think pajamas should have pockets. Then I would carry my cell phone around with me more. And chapstick

– I have to set up alllll my season passes again now that we have the new ATT uverse…that’s 30+ shows…although im not sure if all of them are still on the air…

rather than retyping this, ill post my convo with sarah:

ally: just went in and got blood drawn
Hetz Hetzler: when do you get the results?
ally: next couple of days
Hetz Hetzler: i will be hoping for good news
ally: im not sure what i want the news to be
Hetz Hetzler: why is that?
ally: well if i *do* have hypothyroidism, then simply taking a pill every day will fix it, and having it would explain why im always tired and hopefully put my cycle back on track…so having it and then taking pills for it would hopefully improve my life….but should i really be hoping that i *am* sick?
ally: but if i *dont* have it, then im just a lazy shit with a screwed up period
ally: and it will take more work to figure out whats wrong with my cycle