Athene Numphe

Well, it looks as though in 10 days lordaerith and I will own a house in the suburbs of Austin. It's an amazing house. It's huge and we love it. The neighbourhood is great and the schools look good. It's also close to some of my mommy friends, a giganticly awesome park, and the outlet mall. I still can't believe that we're doing this. This could seriously be our forever-house. At minimum it is going to be our 5-to-10 year house.

We decided that we love the house that we are currently renting, but we didn't want to be renting anymore, and the market is really good for buying. We actually made what we thought was a reasonable an offer on our current house, but the owner totally rejected it. So we went looking elsewhere. When we saw the house we're buying for the first time, we both couldn't stop grinning the entire time. We made an offer. The owners countered. We took their counter. The inspection went well and our mortgage is now being sent to the underwriter (who I keep picturing as the Underminer from The Incredibles.

I'm still sort of in shock/denial about the whole thing. Somehow I didn't think we'd find a house that we love, especially not in the suburbs. And when we did I kept expecting the mortgage to fall through or the inspection to come back bad or something. But nothing did. Of course we haven't packed anything yet. But my dad will be in town soon to help out with things and we're going to have a month to move (provided no one breaks their arm this time around).

And while I'm excited, I'm also kind of conflicted. Every time we've moved before it's either been because the place we were renting got sold from under us, we were moving to another state, or we had so outgrown where we were living that we just felt like we were on top of each other all the time (and not in a good way). This is the first time we decided to move before I've felt like I was done living in the place. Rationally I know that we'd only have a few more years here before we'd want to move (or do a major renovation to the rooms/how they're organized/the living spaces) and that it's a great time to buy. But emotionally I'm very attached to this house. It's in the neighbourhood in Austin where I always wanted to live and I like our neighbours. I love the layout. I love the open floor plan, the high ceilings, and the windows. It's the house where I conceived and brought home my son to when he was born. I have a lot of fond memories of this house.

But as things start looking up, as we're starting to set up utilities at our new house, and look at what we need to buy (like a refridgerator), I'm getting more and more mentally and emotionally ready to start this new chapter of our lives as a family that owns their own house.

Yesterday was the first day where things really felt normal again.

I got up and went to work. At work I played on the internet, did a bit of work, and helped a person. yay. Also got to see people that I haven't seen in a month and feed some of them homemade chocolate-raspberry chip cookies :)

After work I did 30 min on an elliptical at the gym. Yay for me with the working out and stuff.

Then I ran a few errands both on campus and on the way home. Stopping by B&N to pick up the new book by otterdance that came out yesterday and then reading it while walking home totally counts as an errand.

I made dinner last night. I totally under estimated how long the chicken was going to take to cook, but it turned out okay anyway. One of these days I'll figure out this timing thing.

To end the night I went to karaoke with FireCat and zyrain. We were almost the whole rotation so we got to sing a lot. Various and sundry silliness was had. My favorite moment was when FireCat was singing "Stand By Me" and Zyrain and I ran up to either side of her and started swaying with her. It was sweet. :)

Ok, back to alternating between reading and watching lion cubs. At some point I'll get more work done.

So, in the world of insanities, lordaerith quit his job yesterday. The owner of the company was a real dickhead and finally pushed him too far. The lead craftsman there quit today, so that has to say something about the working conditions. Actually, i'm really proud of lordaerith because the owner wanted them to sign a contract giving up their 15 minute morning and afternoon breaks and aerith stood up to him because that isn't fair to the workers (and is possibly illegal).

Due to him having no employment, we decided to leave early to go to New Orleans. Therefore we will be leaving tomorrow (Thursday) and returning to Austin a week from Saturday. Hurray for a long vacation. Even found someone to watch the cats, so we don't have to worry about bringing them along.

Spent yesterday after lordaerith got home from quitting running errands. Found an ice rink inside of a mall...very weird. Spent most of today cleaning up the apartment so the cats don't wreak it while we're out of town. With the exception of the study (which they're not really allowed into anyway) the place looks amazing! Some of the clean up was stuff left over from when we moved in and never put everything away. Now hopefully we can just keep it like that.

Off to clean the cat's water fountain and then pack for the trip.

well, i am safely at home. On my sister's laptop (much thanks to her and Natasha - the laptop). aerith and i have been working to find the nasty smell in my mom's kitchen. he cleaned the freazer and we cleaned the fridge (and i broke on of the glass shelves) but the smell was still there. Today I was cleaning up some of the pots that were lying around and two of them smelled really really badly...one almost made me retch. i think that i found the oder. hurray. i hope the smell is gone now. well, i really should get back to cleaning.

it's much warmer here than in NoHo. not hot hot, but at least it's not cold. Aerith was complaning about it *G*