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An update (or how we dilly dallied until we totally missed the historic housing boom!)

Posted on April 11, 2008

OK so I promised the low down on our hous­ing sit­u­a­tion. When I last left you we had looked at a mod­ern town­house and had gone to see a finan­cial per­son to see about keep­ing our cur­rent house by releas­ing the equity to finance our new house. Can you believe they won’t give me the money with­out charg­ing me inter­est! The NERVE! I was a bit bummed out that my com­pletely delu­sional idea of a prop­erty empire required more risk than I was will­ing to live with. Oh and the fact that I would have to go back to work sooner rather than later and that would mean no more babies. So I decided I still want to have another baby (NO I’M NOT PREGNANT) so no crazy debt for us. While we have been look­ing on right­move at houses I kept hear­ing about banks no longer offer­ing this mort­gage or that mor­gatage but think­ing this was not going to affect us. In real­ity it does affect us because the mort­gages that are out there suck– high inter­est, fees, penal­ties… I kept think­ing it was the per­fect time to buy and not such a good time to sell. In real­ity it’s just a crappy time to do either. We can get a mort­gage but at what cost… Our game plan at the moment is to do some DIY around the house to get it ready to sell. We’re plan­ning on a new kitchen and bath­room. Why are we doing that you might ask. Well we’ll be able to get more for the house if we update those rooms. So as much as it pains me (and BOY DOES IT PAIN ME!!) we’re com­mit­ted to being here for another six months (please god don’t let it be any longer). Oh and don’t for a sec­ond think I don’t know that will take me weeeell into the sum­mer parking/noisy pub sea­son, *sigh* it really can’t be avoided. We don’t want to rush it and want to get as much for our house as pos­si­ble. We’re also hop­ing that the hous­ing mar­ket will bounce back in that time.

I’m also very aware that I have been talk­ing about mov­ing since before Squidge was born. I love my man deeply, whole­heart­edly but a quick deci­sion maker he is not. He also loves his lit­tle house– his bach­e­lor pad. It’s taken him a long time to come to terms that the house just doesn’t work for us. That we are too old to deal with loud drunks walk­ing by our house at 2am. That peo­ple block­ing our dri­ve­way just really sucks and that deal­ing with the irri­ta­tion isn’t nec­ces­sary. I think the thing he is mourn­ing the most is real­iz­ing that we do not use the neigh­bor­hood to it’s full poten­tial. That we are par­ents now and hav­ing really nice trendy pubs and restau­rants around the cor­ner is fine and dandy but we hardly ever go to them. The real­iza­tion that we are not a young pro­fes­sional cou­ple and that the world is no longer our lob­ster has FINALLY set in. Hur­rah!! I’m totally happy being a 30 some­thing SAHM w/ my 40 some­thing man who brings home the lardons!

I also need to take some respon­si­bil­ity for the lack of action. I’ve been try­ing to come up with alter­na­tives to mov­ing. Try­ing to fig­ure out how to let my man keep his love shack. It’s the rea­son we thought about and actu­ally went so far as to get plan­ning per­mis­sion to extend. The real­ity was that it was going to cost us more than it was worth. Once we got a few quotes we real­ized we would not recoup that money when we sold. If we had been adding another bed­room then yes but we aren’t. Did we do it the wrong way around? Should we have got­ten quotes before we had plans drawn up? I don’t know. So there you go folks– the good. the bad. the idi­otic. Some­one please shoot me if we change our minds AGAIN. I don’t think I can han­dle it. So this week­end we’re off to the local gia­mondo DIY cen­ter to order a new bath­room. We already have the tiles. Yes folks I will be pee­ing in a bucket in the back gar­den some­time soon– pho­tos will be posted!! Of the bucket not of me pee­ing– you pervs!

Because I think my aunt Lil­iana is hav­ing Squidge with­drawals and I expect my mother will call soon to tell me to post photos.

Worrywart

Posted on February 9, 2008

Squidge is 19 months old.  She’s  smart, funny, inquis­i­tive, fear­less, happy… I could go on and on.   She started ‘rolling’ at 3 months, crawl­ing by 6, creep­ing around fur­ni­ture like a pro by 9 1/2 months and walked by a week shy of 11 months.  I’ve never really stressed out about her devel­op­ment.  I sup­pose I never had to. 

At 19 months my lit­tle Squidgy­boo should be (accord­ing to the ‘experts’) using 50 sin­gle words, iden­tify 2 pic­tures by point­ing (one by nam­ing), name 6 body parts and speak and be under­stood half the time.

Can you see where I’m going here?  FIFTY words?!?!  Holy Jebus that’s a lot.  She chats all.the.time.  but hell if I can under­stand her.  The only word I under­stand is stuck.  She gets stuck A LOT.  I know she knows what is going on because I can ask her to get or do some­thing and she does it.  She can put her dishes in the sink when asked, her trash in the bin and retrieve her shoes from the hall­way.  So I know she under­stands but she just refuses to say words.  So tell me not to worry.  Tell me I’m being an idiot.  Tell me she’s going to wake up next week speak­ing in com­plete sen­tences.  I get really frus­trated with her when she just looks at me with her big brown eyes when I ask her to say cow.  I KNOW she knows cow because she can pick up the cow card when I ask her to.   

Wal’s back tonight– we’re off to Liv­er­pool to pick him up in a cou­ple of hours.  Yippee!! Oh and I also signed up as a fit friend.  I’ve been totally slack­ing and it’s already almost the mid­dle of the month!!  Sorry Cami.  I’ve also been try­ing to fig­ure out how to put this badge on my side­bar– appar­ently I’m an idiot and I don’t know how so I’ll add it here.

*sigh*

Posted on December 13, 2007

Yes­ter­day I went to take a shower.  I scanned the living-room– all clear, noth­ing that could do her any harm.  So off I popped to take a shower.  This is what I found when I came back down…

How the hell did she find it??  How the hell did she know what to do with it??  Sorry Madrinha!!

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