Showing posts with label condo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label condo. Show all posts

Sunday, October 20, 2013

big doings

Lots of stuff happening in the O'G household.   The 881SF Of Hell is on the market  (did I say 881SF of hell?  I meant Happy Land!  Where unicorns serve you breakfast in bed every day!).   You know what's fun - cleaning out 8 years of crap in order to have an open house.  It took us two weeks and we didn't even touch the attic... except to put some more stuff up there. 

We're sort of in limbo right now.   We can only buy a new place if we sell the current one, and we have to sell this one for a specific amount of money.   We are still very much underwater and there is a limit to how much cash we can muster up to bring to the closing (never mind the down payment on the next house!)  What that all means is we cannot accept any offers below our magic number.   It isn't as though we AREN'T motivated to sell this place,  it's that Wells Fargo isn't letting us walk away without getting their cash.   We aren't willing to ruin our credit with a short sale, so we are still stuck between a rock and a hard place.   Since we do have a hard bottom when it comes to what we can and cannot accept,  we literally don't know if we will be able to sell.   Looking for our next place is kind of hard to do when you really have no idea if or when you would be able to buy it.

Keeping Baby Girl in the dark has been hard too.  I don't want her too confused - she's only 4 and she doesn't need to know details yet, especially when so much is still up in the air.  She knows that something is going on though so I don't know how long I can keep it from her.   She's becoming very attached to her toys these days,  probably because they keep disappearing and reappearing every time the realtor comes over to take pictures or there's an open house.

This would be so much easier if we hadn't bought at the height of the market!  Ah well,  lesson learned.

Between cleaning out our place and the Cold of Death that I'm still fighting off,  I hadn't run at all since the half marathon until today.    I forced myself to run a 5K and it was slow and painful.   I swear it's one step forward and two steps back with this running.   I know I can be better with regular practice and a much healthier diet,  but I seem to lack to motivation to get there.  

TL:DR - house for sale,  haven't run in awhile.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

Mickey

Yesterday was a long day and we didn't get home until 8:00.   Baby Girl went straight from being asleep in her car seat to being sound asleep in her bed without so much as a momentary wake up while Andrew was bringing her up three flights of stairs.   We had big plans of lying on the couch and watching some more of season 2 of Downton Abbey  (I know I'm behind on DA and this isn't new to most of you,  but really?  Anna and Bates?  Gross.   He's like 30 years older than Anna.   Also, William?  You can totes do better than Daisy.  From the 'just sayin' category)

I went into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of juice and as I was putting my glass down, I found something that shouldn't be there.  

Maybe it's a speck of dirt, maybe it's just dirt, please be dirt PLEASEFORTHELOVEOFALLTHATIS HOLYBEDIRT

Guess what.   It wasn't dirt.    Our very own Mickey the Mouse had left his calling cards ON MY COUNTER.    Gross gross gross.

Andrew also went through a brief period of denial.  He tried to tell me it couldn't possibly be from a mouse because they were too small.   I know that he knew what it was,  so I let him work through that on his own.   Everyone needs a little bit of denial when it comes to field mice in your home.  I know that field mice are little and tiny and probably the least gross kind of of mice there are,  but still.  EW.   He finally submitted to reality when we found that Mr. Mouse had been in the pantry (but luckily only got into one Fiber One Bar!)

So at a little past 8 last night we got to undertake the pleasant task of cleaning out the kitchen and going through every piece/container/box of food that we have.  We found some more tell tale evidence that Mickey had come to visit,  and I'm pretty sure I used an entire spray bottle of Lysol with bleach on every surface in the kitchen.     And for good measure,  an entire bottle of disposable wipes.    But on the plus side, the cold virus that my family cannot shake must be gone from the kitchen after all that bleach!  And our pantry seems much more organized now that we have all of the granola bars,  Fiber One bars, rice, (basically everything that isn't in a hard plastic container already) in new Tupperware boxes!

So I bleached my kitchen for a few hours last night,  how was your Saturday night? 

Monday, January 31, 2011

good and bad

good: January is over! February is short month! Winter is slowly chugging along!
bad: We are supposed to get 20 inches of snow over the next 48 hours

good: Monday is over!
bad: Still 4 more days till the weekend

good: I went to the gym today!
bad: apparently, I'm still chubby

good: Andrew made dinner tonight
bad: now I have to clean up

So that's my current status.

My copy of Black Heels to Tractor Wheels shipped today!!!!! Because we have a problem with UPS delivering to our building (881 SF of hell, what?) I have all my packages shipped to my parent's house, and with the copious amounts of snow coming, I doubt I will see my parents till the weekend - so I won't get to read it right away. But my husband would tell me I need to feel the burn, so I'm probably not going to get a lot of sympathy. I'm not done with with The Girl Who Played With Fire yet - what should I do? See what trouble Lisbeth Salander is getting into now, or put it aside to read about the Pioneer Woman and her hawt Marlboro Man?

INTERNET!!! TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

I've got a new way to walk!

So Baby Girl is taking a few steps here and there. Only when she feels like it, and certainly never when you ask her to do it! But she can do it and she has done it, so it's only going to be a few more days until she's doing it regularly. Thank god we don't have an upstairs - for once my condo is making my life easier!

Also, I have decided that I want an iPad. I'm not sure what I would do with it, but I think I want one. While I'm at it, I also want an iPhone 4. OS4 killed my 3G. Like brought it out back and shot it with a rifle kind of killed it.

Friday, July 23, 2010

June Cleaver, I am not

I cannot keep my house clean. Or I should say, we cannot keep our house clean. I know what you're saying... "it's well documented on the interwebz that you live in 881 SF. That can fit in my living room. How hard could it possibly be to keep 881 SF clean??". To that I say:

Eff. You.

It's hard, okay? I leave my house at 6:20 and I get home by 5:20. And then it's all about my baby until she goes to bed. Though I have to say, she'd much rather me leave her alone at times. She's always giving me a look that says "Mama, you have no idea how hard and busy my life is. Today at school we blew bubbles AND painted pictures. You just don't get it.". To that I say:

TAKE ME WITH YOU!! I WANT TO PLAY AT SCHOOL ALL DAY!!

But, alas, someone has to earn the money. So between working and caring for my child, the cleaning just doesn't get done. I've seriously considered on many many occasions getting a cleaning lady because I just don't have the time, but then I feel stupid for not being able to keep a condo the size of some people's living rooms clean. I feel like this is a huge character flaw. I've also thought about some sort of sticker chart and when I get all my stickers then I get a prize. I feel like that might work. I like stickers and prizes. And clean houses.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Before and After

If you've ever been to my house, you'll have noticed that it looks slightly like we live in a dorm room. We've slowly been making changes as we can, but they've been slow in coming. But we were both 24 when we bought this place, so we weren't exactly rolling in dough. One of the remaining dorm room qualities in our living room was the $20 TV stand from Walmart. It was made of plastic and particleboard and was beyond ugly:


You can see in the above photos how our TV warped the top layer of the particle board so it didn't lay flat anymore. Everything about it is ugly and you can see all the wires. I never liked it, but who had the money to fix it?

However, due to a few factors (namely a child coming in the near future, and the fact that we sold $300 worth of text books while cleaning out the future child's bedroom) we were able to finally swing an actual piece of furniture that was made of real wood. And didn't even come from Ikea!It looks nicer in person, and if I had a better camera, I could probably take a better picture. But it looks nice, as if it were made from something that had once been a tree. Yes, that's seasons 1 - 7 of the Gilmore Girls in the top left shelf. But don't worry, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy is down there on the bottom right shelf!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Mad props to AJG

For reals.

Okay, here's the story. After I got the turkey meatloaf all loafed up, I preheated the oven to 350º, waited till it beeped, popped in my over priced Food Network loaf pan in the oven, set the time for 30 minutes and went back to watch the Gilmore Girls (yes, I watch it every night at 5, despite the fact I own the entire series on DVD. What's your point). 30 minutes later my buzzer beeped again and I mosey on into the kitchen. Hmmm.... odd.... you can't feel the heat of the oven when you're touching the top of the stove. Huh. I open the oven door. Not blast of heat warming up my face. Even odder. I then touch the racks with my bare hands, and conclude that the inside of the oven is NOT actually 350º. I thought I was being a dumbass and somehow turned off the oven when I turned on the timer. So I did the whole thing over again. 30 minutes later, by which time Andrew had come home, I went back. No cooked meatloaf. Crap. Meatloaf went into the fridge.

We called the management company to see if maybe they had shut off the main gas line into our building. Usually whenever they have to do any work they give us a few days notice, and we hadn't seen any fliers. But we called anyway, because we were hoping they just forgot. Nope, they haven't touched anything. So we call Bay State Gas. (we were hoping we hadn't paid them in awhile, and they turned off our gas, but no such luck. We're paid up). They said they'll send someone out within an hour. So I trot off to D&E to get subs for dinner (silver lining to the gas mess - take out for dinner!) and Andrew waits at home. Two and a half hours later the gas man arrives (he said he was caught up in a gas leak in Brockton. I think he was watching the Sox). He and Andrew fiddle wit some things knock on people's doors and do their manly gas man thing (okay, so the gas man was doing his manly gas man thing, Andrew was wandering about). Final story? I have no idea what the technical terms are, but some ball that is supposed to be on the inside of the building is on the outside of the building and it melted, limiting the gas to all the units inside. Apparently we were the only ones to try to use our stove today, because no one else called the gas company. So thanks to Andrew calling Bay State Gas and having them come out here, all our neighbors can use their stove tomorrow.

They should all thank Andrew with a nice bottle of wine, beccause I went to Crate and Barrel today and replaced our wine glasses, since we were down to 1. Yeah, we break a lot of wine glasses.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

busy bee

Another crazy weekend. I took tomorrow as a vacation day, but Andrew has to work. I'm really happy I can sleep in tomorrow. I'm exhausted and the Patriots are going to keep me up past my bedtime. Though the way this game is going, I may go to bed at halftime.

Yesterday we spent a lot of money at Lowe's and bought a new vanity, sink, toilet, and medicine cabinet/light fixture. The first weekend in November everything will be installed. If you haven't seen my turquoise bathroom you've got about two weeks to come view it. Though the bathroom is staying blue at this point, we'll tackle that later. We're still debating whether to do bathfitters or re-tile ourselves and have the tub glazed white. Re-tiling will look better, but we have no idea what we're doing, so there's a huge possibility we will mess it up. We're still debating what to do... I'd like to get it all done now, but it will look much better with what we're going to be doing.

Last night was my cousin's wedding. It was a really nice affair, but it was a late night. And we got up early this morning to head to Keene where we spent a few hours putting the in-laws' new TV together. It's a pretty sweet TV, it made coming back to our little 37" TV hard.

So we're home now, I'm exhausted, the Pats are sucking, and my lips are ridiculously chapped. I'm not at my best right now

Sunday, September 14, 2008

On our long drive home from New Hampshire today, we were talking about all the improvements we have to make in the condo before we can put it on the market. We're still a few years away from selling it, but we need to time to bring it up to this century. We've already replaced the dishwasher, stove, and air conditioner. That took us 2 years to do. Now we've got to step it up, if we want to sell in the next 10 years. Next up is the bathroom, which will be halfway completed by the beginning of November.

So, in other words, things are starting to change around here. By the time we sell this place it's going to look good. Just in time for us to buy a house that will undoubtedly need all the same work that we are doing now. Home ownership is for the birds. At least right now people shovel and rake for us.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Exciting things in the life o' Meghan

So what is new with us... We FINALLY are getting a new air conditioner. We're both pretty excited about it. No longer will we have to seek shelter from the heat at my parent's house. No longer will be sleep bathed in a puddle of our sweat, no longer will we dread the heat. We have an air conditioner. If you've lived without any kind of air condtioning, you'll understand my glee around getting one.

We're also getting a new stove. Our old one didn't have a broiler. I know what you are thinking, and I can assure you it isn't underneath the stove. We have neither a broiler nor a drawer down there. There is no broiler. There is no pre-heat. There is no self-cleaning oven. There is no time. There is no clock. They don't even make them without broilers anymore. That's how old it is. But our new one has all of the above, and we are both more excited about it than we are willing to admit. Yeah, I'm terribly excited about a new stove. Strangely, I am okay with that.

Even MORE exciting than my new stove and AC..... VALERIE IS GETTING MARRIED!!!!! I'm super excited for her and I'm very excited to be a bridesmaid again!!! Another Saint A's wedding!!!!! Saint A's weddings are the coolest weddings ever and I'm so happy we've got another one coming up. Saint A's kids know how to party :) So a super huge Best Wishes to Val and Congratulations to Scott. I'm already mentally planning the bachelorette party. :)

Sunday, March 16, 2008

busy busy busy

Weekends go by too quickly. Luckily for me I took this coming Friday off so I only have a 4 day week coming up. 5 day weeks are a bitch.

My effort to eat cleaner (ie with natural ingredients) has led to an increase of cooking. I know I can't eat 100% clean - life gets in the way - but I try to do so at every opportunity. This weekend I made (okay, Andrew and I made it together) stuffed peppers. Unfortunately, our local S&S doesn't carry quinoa, so we had to substitute brown rice, but they still came out very good

I love orange peppers. Red and green peppers are cheaper so they are my default peppers, but I picked u 4 of these for the stuffed peppers. They look like little pumpkins! That is the finished product. They were so yummy. It's stuffed with the brown rice (should have been the quinoa) and a turkey sloppy joe recipe. The actual recipe can be found on this blog. It was really good, but definitely time consuming, as the sloppy joe recipe takes awhile to make and then you have to do the stuffed peppers. But if you have the time, it's well worth the effort.

We did a bunch of little projects this weekend. Andrew installed blinds in our second bedroom and we hung up his diploma. That end of the room looks much better now. We also hung pictures in the living room - but I haven't taken pictures of that.


And today was Molly's Christening! This is me doing my godmotherly duties and wiping all the water off her face. The priest used like a gallon of water per child! Ignore the dumb look on my face, I don't really know what I was thinking.


No running this weekend... but this is spring break for me, so hopefully I'll get some in this week. If the weather cooperates with me!

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to my house! :) A year ago yesterday, we signed on our place. In the past year we've almost completely furnished it (still need end tables and a coffee table, but that might have to wait awhile), pained the living room, replaced the dishwasher, and got two brand-spanking-new windows. So yeah, not a whole lot. :) We still need to repaint the basboard heat in the living room since the stupid window people painted it the same color as the walls. In a perfect world we would also rip out the kitchen and the bathroom and try again because they are so hideous - but until we win the lottery, that probably will not happen. Then again we'll be here for at least 2 years and 2 months (I refuse to move until I am out of school. I am not doing that again!). I actually don't even want to start looking for a new place until I am done with school, so it's not something I have to think about for a while.

On a completely unrelated note - why can't we turn Iran into a parking lot? Seriously, once we (and by "we" I do actually mean the "UK") flatten them, who cares what kind of nukes they have or don't have. They will all be dead. Oh, and once we do that, we'll really have to take out all of the Muslim countries because once Muslims go radical, they get some sort of Hitler-level crazy. So just make them all go away.... good-bye! Of course I'm kidding.... I'm not proposing some sort of WWIII - but wouldn't it be nice if God were to send some sort of plague to wipe them away because they have been bad? hmmm? Maybe a more vengeful Old Testament God come back to kick a little radical militant ass?