Ah, the joys of homeownership!  We spent to day doing yard work and I’m unbelievably sore. My hubby trimmed five out of our gazillion trees (Seriously!  We have 15 trees!) I spent the time pulling out three dead bushes and 7 Mexican Petunias that were looking pretty ragged.

Even though I’m exhausted, I’ve managed to gather house pictures to share with you.  Yes, we’ve owned the house for a month. And have been living here for three weeks. By the way, these are pics of the inside of the house. I have yet to download the pictures from the backyard from the camera yet. I’ve never claimed to rush into anything.

So, without further ado, here are the pics (of the inside of the house)!

This is the living room, while standing at the entrance.  Around the corner is…

the dining area.

And this is the family room, once again standing at the entrance of the house.

Here’s the kitchen, which is adjacent to the family room.

Here’s my hubby’s office.  The house used to be a three bedroom, but the owners added on a section at the front of the house.  When they did this, they chopped one of the original bedrooms in half (or thereabouts) and made it into this office.

The other original bedroom is this one, which will be our guest room.

This is one of the additional bedrooms.  It’ll be my office, although it’s also the only bedroom the cats are allowed in.  So, it’s kinda the cats’ room.

This is the other room addition and it’s my… ready to be jealous??…. CRAFT ROOM!!  hee,hee!

At last, we come back to the original part of the house and find the master bedroom.  And its hideous wallpaper.  I can’t begin to tell you how much I dislike this wallpaper.  It’ll be coming down as soon as the popcorn ceiling comes down.

Now, there’s one last picture to show you.  However, I don’t want to offend anyone.  So this is your chance.  If you don’t want to see the “screwdriver” (if you don’t remember the “screwdriver,” I recommend you refresh your memory by re-reading the post – the picture will make much more sense!) then this is your chance to turn away.

You’re not turning away, eh?

Really? You’re that curious?

Or are you one sick puppy?

Does anyone use that phrase anymore? Sick puppy? My brother used to use that all the time when I was a kid, and I loved it.

Wow! You really want to see the picture!

Ok, then.  Here you go…

Amazingly, it’s still in the cabinet. Partly because neither of us want to the be the one to remove it. And partly because I’m having fun showing it to people when they come over to check out our new house. (Yes, I’m a sick puppy.) We’re thinking of just removing the cabinet. That way neither of us have to touch it.

By the way, as a “treat” for those of you brave enough to see the “screwdriver” picture (and if you know me by now, you know the quotes are a warning), I’ll let you know that I went to the specialist about my abdominal pain.  I get to have a colonoscopy (lucky me!). The Monday before Thanksgiving. (It keeps getting better, doesn’t it?!)

Have a great week!  It’s my last week at the law library, so things should be interesting for me.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  I was intending to a really long post tonight with pics of the new house.  But I’m tired.  And it’s my birthday.  So I’ve decided that I don’t feel like resizing a gajillion pics.  Instead, I stole a picture of the front of the house from the listing service, so you can at least see what the front looks like.

I’ll work on getting the other pictures resized so I can show you them this weekend (maybe sooner?).

We moved in on the 21st, and I was sick as a dog that day.  While many of you may be thinking, “Ah-ha! Sneaky way to get out of lifting heavy objects!” it really wasn’t much fun and I don’t recommend it to anyone.  I did manage to christen the house in ways that I hadn’t intended.  ha,ha!  Unfortunately, we’re thinking that the problem I was having that day is related to the abdominal pains I’ve been having, so I’m going to see a gastroenterologist this week.

In any case, we’re in!  We have boxes everywhere, and can’t find a thing.  We haven’t had as much time to unpack as we’d like, because we have the lease on our rental through the end of the month.  We’ve been running over there every few days to water plants, check mail, etc.  The good news is that we’re dropping off the keys tomorrow and then we can focus on getting our house in order.  Yay!

And, as if buying a new house wasn’t enough of a drastic life change in one month, I received a job offer this past Friday that I accepted.  I’ll be working as a reference librarian for a college, so I’ll be going back to the type of position I was in when I was living in California.  I’m really excited, but it’s going to be a huge change from everything I’ve known in the past.  The school is in a small, somewhat rural, town.  The area is experiencing exponential growth, so there is a lot of opportunity there.  But I’m not used to working in such a remote area.  It’s definitely going to take some getting used to.  On the upside, everyone who works there seems really nice and supportive.  And the position will allow me to do a little bit of everything, which I like.  Oh, and in case you’re curious, I start on the 13th.

Ok, I’m going to finish my laundry and enjoy some b-day cake (courtesy of my friend Amy from work) with my hubby.  Have a great week!

Warning: venting post ahead.  It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks.

First, we gave the seller of the house we’re buying a list of inspection items.  He agreed to fix all but one of the items after close of escrow.  Gee, let’s agree to have some guy we don’t know well enough to trust come in after all contractual obligations are complete to make repairs.  Uh, no way.  We didn’t realize that the reason he asked for this was because he’s strapped for cash.  Instead, we thought that he simply needed more time to get the repairs done (we were originally scheduled to close September 21st).  So in our counter offer, we gave him until mid-October, which the seller agreed to.  Unfortunately, the whole response and counter offer process went so quickly that I didn’t question the use of “or sooner” that our agent put into our counter offer.  We just found out this past weekend (after already giving our rental agency notice to October 31st) that the seller cruised through the repairs in order to close by the end of this month and get the money matters settled.  We’re willing to close a week earlier than planned, but we’re not willing to close almost a month earlier than planned.  Of course, our buyers agent (who is supposed to be on our side) keeps calling us trying to convince us to move up the date.  We can’t seem to get through to him that we’ve already committed to our rental agency until the end of October and if we close sooner, it means more money to cover both mortgage and rent.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I started getting abdominal pains.  On the right side of my abdomin.  I’ve also been running a fever off and on.  Not good, right?  I went to the doctor last week and they did a blood work up (which came back normal) and scheduled a CAT Scan.  I did the scan on Thursday morning and I had to drink barium and have iodine injected for contrast.  Later in the afternoon I the startings of a headache.  I get migraines a lot, so I figured it was a migraine.  But this headache became the worst headache of my life.  Then, as the pain was becoming severe, I got the shakes, difficulty breathing, nausea, and a bunch of other scary things.  After talking to the doctor on call at my physician’s office, we went to the emergency room (when someone says they’re concerned about a blood vessel in my head, I’m not arguing). 

After sitting in really uncomfortable chairs in the ER for 3 hours, I was finally given a bed.  Of course, by this time I was starting to feel pretty good, but I got checked out just to be safe.  They did a head CAT Scan and even more blood work and everything was normal except for my blood pressure which was through the roof (I always have normal blood pressure, so this is highly unusual for me and probably the cause of my excruciating headache).  Every doctor, nurse, and tech in the hospital told me that what I went through wasn’t a result of the barium or iodine of my earlier CAT Scan.  But I don’t buy it.  And there’s no freaking way I’m doing a procedure that requires the use of either of these things again until I can be convinced otherwise. 

Anyhoo, after all that hassle, my CAT Scan showed no abnormalities.  Which means that I don’t have appendicitis or kidney stones as first suspected.  And my liver doesn’t appear to be the cause.  This is good news, but it also means that we’re back at square one.  The physician’s assistant that I’ve been seeing for this is thinking that maybe it has something to do with my bile duct.  I had my gallbladder removed three years ago (two weeks before getting married, in fact).  So the theory now is that I’ve formed a stone in the duct.  If this is the case, am I the only one who considers this ironic?  You know, the fact that I had to deal with my gallbladder right before getting married and then my bile duct (which is related) right before buying our first house.  I’d be surprised if anyone is still reading at this point, so I’m not expecting an answer to this.  In any case, I have to wait until I hear back from my regular doctor to find out what torture, er, procedure I have to go through next to see if the PA’s theory is correct.

The last frustrating straw came this past Friday when I was recovering from my late night ER romp.  Our rental agency called us asking if they could show our place to potential renters on Saturday.  How about no?  There was no way I could get this place cleaned up and ready for strangers to come tromping through in 24 hours.  So I played the pity card and told the woman I had been in the ER.  It worked, thankfully, and they’re going to call us sometime this week to schedule the showing instead.

That’s about it.  Sorry about the rant today.  I hate complaining and venting here, which is partly why I haven’t been posting much (that and lack of time).  But it sure feels good to get it out there!  I’ll try to have a fun post next time.  In fact, I need to show you the yarn that I spun a few weeks ago and an unrelated trip to the frog pond.  Fun stuff!

One last thing… I know a bunch of you are dying to see pics of the house.  I’ve been debating on whether to post them now or after we close (I tend to be a bit on the superstitious side and don’t want anything to happen because I posted these before we have keys in hand and the house is ours).  Any arguments either way?

We’re buying a house!  Yes, I know I said that we were going to buy a house back in January.  But now, 8 months later, we’re actually in contract on a house.  I was hesitant to blog about it, because we weren’t sure if we were going to get the seller to agree to our inspection demands.  But they did and now we’re moving along nicely.  We don’t close on the house until October 18th, so we have a good five weeks to get packed and ready to move the weekend after.  Wanna know what house we’re buying?  Remember this post?  And the “screwdriver” house?  As awful as the decorating is, the house has everything we’ve been looking for (including a room that will become my craft room!). 

Speaking of crafts… I went to the Arizona Diamondbacks Stitch n Pitch game this past weekend.  We had a lot of fun and got some incredible giveaways.  I also discovered that my sister is terrified of heights.  While this prevented us from sitting in the stands, I did get the chance to tease her mercilessly and sitting in the “beer garden” behind the vendor demonstrations provided us with a great view of the stands.  Can you see the knitters?

No?  How about now?

No?  Ah, there they are!

I’ve been very blah lately.  As I’m sure you’ve noticed by my lack of blogging.  Not sure if it’s the heat.  Or the fact that I’m kinda sick of house hunting.  Or maybe the heat.  Or maybe the house hunting.  Can you tell that my life is a tad boring right now?  The good news is that my hubby needed to take some time off from work because he’s almost maxed out on the amount he can accrue.  So, at the last minute, we both decided to take a few days off from work this upcoming week and try to relax and get reinspired.

To kick things off, I met up with Pam and Melanie yesterday for a little knitting R&R.  I had such a great time!  It was nice to be able to hang out for a couple of hours and not have to rush out like I do on Tuedsay nights (I feel so old… I have to get up for work at 5am, so I start getting ready for bed at 9pm).  Anyhoo, we stopped by Tempe Yarn and Fiber and signed up for Stich ‘n Pitch night at the Arizona Diamondbacks game in September, which should be lots of fun.  I’ll have to come up with a small, no-brainer project I can work on during the game.  You know what that means?  Project hunting!  I’m feeling inspired already!

Then, today, my hubby and I looked at a couple of houses.  Of all the days to forget my camera!  Before we went to the first house, our agent had warned us that there had been some confusion with the seller’s listing agent and we weren’t really sure what to expect when we got there.  Out agent made sure to knock on the door, ring the bell, and yell loudly before we entered.  As we walked around the living room and kitchen, the house seemed… oddly quiet.  I’m not sure how to describe it exactly, but something seemed amiss.  We walked into the garage and there was a truck inside.  My hubby said, do you think they’re still sleeping?  As soon as he said it, I knew it had to be true.  We went back into the house and our agent went back to the bedrooms and began calling out.  Sure enough, the guy who owns the house was out and had forgotten to tell his roommates, who were still sleeping, that we might be stopping by.  Oops!  The guys were nice and we went ahead and looked around, but it was certainly a bit odd.

As for the next house… we walked in the front door and, well, it was basically a country cute explosion (I realize that there are some who like the type of decorating I’m going to describe, but, to put it bluntly, I don’t.  So, I apologize to those who do for what I am about to mock).  There was green carpet everywhere.  A not-attractive-green carpet.  Every room, including the kitchen, had those wallpaper like trimmings around the rooms (you know the kind that are either right along the ground or right along the top of the walls?).  I don’t necessarily mind these accents, but they were in every single room and each room had a different theme.  The master bedroom had flowered wallpaper (not small pretty flowers, really big and ugly flowers that made your eyes water because of the pattern).  In addition to the interior-decorating-gone-bad, the garage had been converted into a workshop/storage room/media library area.  Judging by the amount of crap contained in this space, this family has lived in this house for a long, long time.  Keep in mind that the family had already moved out, they just hadn’t moved every little thing yet.  (This is an understatement.)

Now, trust me when I say that we did look past the decorating and clutter and looked at the structure of the house.  We know that wallpaper can be removed and rooms painted.  But because of the holly hobby look, the next thing that happened was that much funnier.  We were in the master bathroom looking at a cabinet that was installed over the toilet.  My concern was that it stuck out too far, but my hubby and agent agreed that it was fine.  While we were looking at it, my hubby happened to open the cabinet and took out what he first thought was a screw driver.  You know the kind of screwdriver that has interchanging pieces and the pieces are held in a little top of some sort?  Well, in a way, this was a screwdriver.  More specifically, however, it was…

Can you guess? Do you see where this is going?  Ok, I’ll tell you…  It was… a bright… blue… vibr@tor… d/ldo.  Can you imagine?  I was laughing so hard that I thought for sure I would start crying and my hubby went in desperate search of soap and really hot water.

After our, um, interesting morning of house hunting, we went to Farelli’s to see Mission Impossible 3.  I had told myself that I would never see anymore movies starring the wack job who will remain nameless.  But, I was craving a prime rib sandwich and had saved up my points for the week just to have one.  Mmmmm… it was worth it!

The fun will continue tomorrow when we head up to Sedona.  We’re just going to stay for the night, but it’ll be nice to get out of town for a bit.  I don’t think it’s that much cooler than it is here, but we’re going to try and do some hiking in the canyon trails where it’s got to be nicer than here in hell, er, Phoenix.

Many years ago, while living in Southern California, I decided to try taking swimming classes.  You see, I never learned to swim as a kid and, because of a scary incident when I was young, I have always been terrified of the water.  There was a class through the parks and rec department where we lived that offered a swimming class for adults who didn’t know how, and I decided to give it a shot.  I showed up, got in the pool with about 10 other non-swimming adults, and the teacher told us to dunk our heads under the water.  The other 10 students dunked their heads and I began to cry.  Sobbing is probably a better description.  I realized pretty quickly that there was no way I could learn to swim.  The teacher was very sweet and let me sit in the water and cry through the entire class.  After it was over, I told her I just didn’t think I could do it and that I should just drop.  She was once again very sweet and said that while she hoped I would return, she would understand if I didn’t.  I surprised her and myself when I showed up to the next class.  And the class after that.  And I showed up to every class over the next 6 weeks.  By the time the 6 weeks was over, I was able to “swim” using a kickboard or some sort of flotation device.  Although I’ve never completely overcome my fear of water enough to swim without some sort of device, the fact that I can enjoy myself in a pool is huge.  The instructor even went on to use me as an example to others in her future classes.

So… yesterday I got to the airport and started crying.  Now, this seemed downright silly to me because I’ve flown before.  It’s not like the swimming classes, in which I was so afraid of the water I simply never got into a pool.  (Actually, I attempted water aerobics in the past, but it was difficult to perform the exercises when you’re clutching the wall with one hand).  I think part of it was the stress of everything else happening in my life, but the other part was from the knowledge that I was putting myself in this fear-inducing event without any kind of reward at the end (i.e. a vacation destination and a week before having to return).  In any case, “Captain Ron” (the airline pilot who conducts the classes) was as nice as my swimming instructor and told me that if I didn’t feel like I could go through with it, I could always use the ticket another day.  When the other tudents saw me, they expressed relief that they weren’t alone. Even though they weren’t crying, they were just as scared, nervous, and anxious as I was.  I decided to attend the short lecture beforehand, where we were reminded of what causes the different sounds and sensations that we were about to experience.  We ran through several relaxation and distraction techniques.  And then it was time to leave.  I was still crying as we walked to the gate, but I decided to do it.  I even managed to muster up a smile for my hubby (who had been allowed to go through security as an escort in case I changed my mind and needed a ride home).

Caption Ron was nice enough to sit next to me on the flight and he explained everything I was experiencing as it was happening.  Before I knew it, we were landing in Burbank.  Once the other passengers had disembarked, the flight’s pilot gave us all permission to sit inside the cockpit.

I have to say that I love the fact that they have a drink cup holder just like my car has.

Anyway, once the crew changed over, we were back on the same plane and heading back to Phoenix.  I started out much less anxious during take-off, although I freaked out a bit once we had lifted off because we immediately started banking to the right.  As Captain Ron explained to me (because he was once again nice enough to sit next to me), there’s a mountain just off to the left of the runway, so once we hit 400 feet, we start banking.  The flight home was pretty uneventful, except for some really bouncy turbulence once we heat the heat of Phoenix (which was hell for about 20 minutes).

After we were on the ground, we all met up in a conference room and talked about the experience.  It ends up that we all hated the take-off and turbulence, but we were also excited to have made it through the class.  Here I am after the flights with Captain Ron and one of the class facilitators Diane.

I learned a few things by doing this flight.  One is that while I think I’m a big baby and hate that I end up crying during these stressful fear conquering events, I end up being a huge inspiration to everyone in the end.  It’s kinda like “if Nancy can do this, so can I!”  I would prefer to have someone else inspiring me once in a while, but it’s nice knowing that I can help someone else through my tears.  I also learned that even as I become more comfortable with the mechanics of flying (take-offs, landings, etc.), I will always hate banking and turbulence.  Another thing I learned is that the dizziness I was experiencing on the plane might have been coming from the antihistamine I had been taking before flying.  For these flights, I had decided that if I was going to try and conquer my fear, that I wanted to also prove to myself that I could do it without fuzzying up my mind.  It ends up that without the antihistime, I didn’t get dizzy like I normally do.  Because I wasn’t dizzy, I was able to work on the Sudoku book that I had brought with me.  Which brings me the third thing I learned.  Sudoku is evil!  I had resisted the temptation to try it until this past week, and I managed to figure out how to play it while on the plane.  I. can’t. put. it. down.  I’m not knitting.  I’m not spinning.  All I can do is play the stupid game.  Evil!

Thanks to everyone who posted their supportive comments.  I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that you all assumed I would brave the flight rather than chicken out!

Oh, by the way (and on a completely different topic), our offer on the house got rejected.  There’s a bit of a long story behind the rejection that I won’t bother going into.  But essentially, the seller won’t come down to the price we’re willing to pay.  We were disappointed, but we were prepared for the offer to be rejected (we were offering about $25k lower than they were asking for).  It’s just unfortunate because it was the first house we had seen in 6 months that we liked well enough to put an offer on.

I’ve gotta go.  I have to, uh, do laundry.  Not Sudoku.  I swear…

No, I don’t mean Brad Pitt’s fiance.  I mean, of course, my poor, neglected spinning wheel.  Between house hunting, taxes, and the like, I haven’t had much time for hobbies.  And, as a result, I’ve been pretty boring lately.  Which translates into very little blog fodder. 

I suppose I could talk about the house hunt, but it comes down to *1) We look at a bunch of houses, 2) We like about 90% of one of the houses, but we feel the list price is too high and/or not worthy of an offer, 3) Repeat from *.  We realize that we can offer a lower price than the list price, and we will if we find a place that we like enough to do so.  Well, we actually have a house that we saw last week that is close to this, but we’re going to look at some more places before we make a final decision (and, of course, once we decide that the house is worth making an offer, it’ll go off the market – we have that kind of luck). 

The difficult part about the hunt right now is that prices should be coming down.  The market has cooled a lot, and there are more houses on the market right now that there were at this time last year.  But sellers still seem to think they can get the prices they were getting last year.  Argh!

I’m having lunch with Eva tomorrow after looking at houses.  Maybe I’ll have something interesting to blog about.  ‘Cause I’m putting myself to sleep just writing this.  Zzzzzz…

Well, in terms of finishing my Olympic project, I’d say I won a pewter medal at best.  But in terms of learning a new skill and finding out that it’s not nearly as difficult or as intimidating as I had expected, I personally think I’m a gold medal winner!

Here’s where I am so far

And here’s a close-up of the fair isle work

I was cruising on this while at Stitches, but then I got back home and reality hit… house hunting is nearly a full-time job.  Every night after work we went through listings.  Then, this past Saturday, we finally went out and looked at a bunch of places.  After which I promptly got a massive migraine.  Needless to say, I haven’t done a lot of knitting or spinning.  I’m getting to the point where I want to buy a house just to have some free time.  But then I remind myself that buying a house is just the beginning.  At some point we have to move.  Again.  Yuck!

By the way, I know you’re all waiting to see the loot I brought home from Stitches.  Well, I hate to break this to you, but… I didn’t buy a single hank, skein, or ball of yarn.  Sorry!

I wish I could say that I’m tearing myself away from my new wheel in order to write this, but I’ve actually been running around all day today. 

 First, I had to bring my cat in for her vaccinations.  I repeatedly warned the receptionist, the vet tech, and the vet herself that my cat hates all vets (I don’t think this applies to war veterans, just veterinarians, but I don’t personally know any war vets so I can’t guarantee this) and would probably need a muzzle.  However, regardless of the fact that my cat growled and gave warning bites, it wasn’t until after the vet was bitten so badly that she had to go put several bandages on that she listened to me and put a muzzle on her.

After bringing my cat back home, where she proceeded to act as though nothing happened, I went out and drove by a couple of houses for sale and discovered that the descriptions and pictures provided online are, ahem, creative.  I realize that current homeowners who have been through this already know this.  But other than knowing that “cozy” really means “small and cramped,”  I’m new to this.

THEN, as my hubby and I were collecting financial documents that the mortgage lender wants to see, we came across the requirements for breaking our lease (which isn’t up until August) and realized how expensive this could be.  We aren’t sure, though, if this cost would be off-set by the interest rate we can get on a mortgage right now versus waiting until August after the rates have increased (which they will).

And that brings us to me writing this blog post in which I finally get to tell you about my new wheel.  As you know, I opened up the box Thursday night after our realtor left.

After taking all of the parts out of the box, this is what we had.

After staring at all of the parts, I started reading the instructions and decided it might be best to wait until Friday when I was fresh and able to concentrate.  So, I put all of the pieces back into the box.

When I came home from work on Friday, my hubby, who knows that I’m mechanically challenged, helped me put the wheel together.  Thanks to him, within an hour, I was spinning!

My hubby took several pictures, but here’s my favorite.

I know that many spinners name their wheels, and I’m no different.  I knew that I wanted a name that would make me think of happy fiber thoughts.  My hubby suggested several names, but they wouldn’t result in “happy” fiber thoughts (although some of them were funny).  But then I remembered my trip to the alpaca ranch in California (I’d link to it, but blogspot is down and for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place) and the wonderful alpaca that I met.

Her name is Jolie.  My hubby looked her name up and it’s a French name that means pretty.  How appropriate, huh?  So, here’s the first official portrait of me and my new wheel Jolie.

 

My wheel is here!  It’s still in the box right at the moment, however, because my hubby and I met with a realtor tonight to start the whole house buying experience.  (Ack!  We’re actually going to buy a house!  Ack!)  After the realtor left, I opened the box and discovered that there are a lot of pieces that need to be assembled.  So, it looks like I’ll have to be patient and wait until I get home from work Friday night.  Have I ever mentioned that I am not a patient person?  sigh…

By the way, I know that some folks are having problems subscribing to my RSS feed (if you have no idea what this means, then you probably don’t need to worry about this).  In any case, I do have some subscribers in Bloglines, so it seems to be working to some degree.  If you’re having problems, try using the Bloglines button that I have over in the sidebar and see if that works.