Grinding My Teeth Off

Yes, it's been a while since I ventured onto Blogspot to write anything.  I think my mind has been in a bit of a fog.  Most of them time when I feel like writing about something, it's because it was on the top of my mind and I had a clear vision of what I wanted to say.  Not the case lately.

We have been struggling with the mind-numbing task of trying to purchase a home.  My husband's military orders changed, but allowed us to stay here for another three years (at least) so we decided to take the plunge again.  We found a house right around the corner.  And by right around the corner, I mean everytime we had a showing or inspection I've walked to it in about 3 minutes.  The house is in pretty rough shape.  The bones are good, but the inside is pretty nasty.  Grimey, nasty carpet.  Walls that have never known a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  Laminate flooring which was horribly installed - and that's hard to do with a fool-proof product like this one.  A strange little room built in the garage, with a hole punched in one of the walls.  But surprisingly for a foreclosed home, the kitchen still has all the cabinets and appliances in place - although they are "vintage" (circa 1990) so will need to be pulled eventually.  The house is one story, with 3 bedrooms.  High ceilings in the living room, a big family room that is in the same open area as the kitchen.  A huge yard.  Big deck.  Gigantic garage with shelving built in - well, huge once we get that strange room out of there.

Needless to say, we are excited to get in there and start ripping the nastiness out and putting in the newness.  But here we sit.  I have spent the last month pulling paperwork on a daily basis for the mortgage company.  This process would be so easy if I wasn't going back to school, or trying to grow a business.  If only our bank statement was only one page long, and we only had to show a W2 for my husband... ah, how easy that would be.  But with our complicated finances come days of tedious tasks to prove that the deposit that entered our personal account, from the business account had come from a legitimate source.  And what was this deposit over here, and please write an explanation for your screw-up over here.  I seriously got to the point one day where I thought I was going to lose it.  It simply felt like they were just digging deeper and deeper just looking for that one solid document that indicated that we were huge losers.  :(  My husband wanted to walk away, watching what it was doing to me.  We aren't horrible people.  We owned a home before... in fact, we bought that home with the help of sub-prime lending, maintained the home and when it came time to sell, we were not foreclosed upon or involved in a short sale.  Shouldn't that speak volumes to this mortgage company?? 

We shall see.  Projected closing date for the house around the corner is next week.  Fingers crossed that I don't have to unearth more dusty documents before then.  Hoping everything goes smoothly, because anyone who knows me is aware that I have more than enough things to keep me busy aside from mortgage paperwork... and each one of them has been seriously neglected lately.

Snowboot Sock Magnet

We just got our first snow of the season!  Weather report is calling for a couple days of snow and the expectancy that it will stay is ZERO.  Temperatures here in Washington are just too warm to support snow on the ground.  It's so unfortunate because the boys finally want to play in the snow, whereas when we were in Maine the snow was just too high and they were too small.  I love days when it snows.  Even in Maine the temperature seemed to warm up when the snow was flying... well, warmed up to tolerable levels.  I actually really like to go out and shovel while the boys play.  Great to have a reason to get out and do some purposeful exercise and get some fresh air.

Took the boys to go sledding.  G still wants me to ride with him, which is fine by me.  P is more adventurous so I think he took about three times as many runs down the hill.  During one of my treks up the hill I began to wonder what it is about the mechanics of the snowboot that encourage sock removal.  Anyone who does not know what I'm referring to has clearly never experienced playing in the snow to the fullest.  It's when you've moved around enough in the snow and suddenly you start to feel your warm sock creeping off your foot.  As a kid I recall my mom wrapping my feet in sandwich baggies or bread bags.  This was to keep your feet drier since we would play in the snow for hours.  By the time we came in to warm up our sock was hanging on by a toe and our feet were slipping all around in those sweaty plastic bags.  For some reason I guess I thought the snowboot would have evolved since childhood.  Or maybe my socks would be tight enough to withstand the "foot stripping" appeal.  I was wrong.  The toe of my snowboot was like a sock magnet, tugging relentlessly at my wimpy socks.  Four trips up the hill and I could feel exposed heels.  Felt like I needed some sweet sock garters.  And on that note, I'm now going in search of a picture of a 1950's husband, home from work wearing the black sock garters and gigantic starched boxers...  wish me luck.  This could be a whole new market for the sock garter manufacturers.