details

Prompted by my dear friend coffespaz in response to a facebook status I posted that read "yay, we're moving into a house in July" (or something like that), here are the details on the moving into the house thing.

One of Joe's coworkers on the boat owns a house. She is transferring in July to another unit and is looking to rent her home. She would prefer, like most people in the military, to rent to someone she knows personally and can communicate with easily. So, knowing mine and Joe's current situation, she approached Joe and let him know the details.

I know nothing more about the actual parameters of the house than what I knew then. The house resides in Hampton, VA, in what I'm told is a nice and quiet neighborhood. My sugarbum has visited this house and says he can see himself living there. He tells me he can't see me living there, however.

Why? Why does he say that?

Because the bedrooms are significantly smaller than what we're used to in the apartments. Hm. Well, considering Eleana, Joe, and I share ONE bedroom in which to store all our toys, clothes, books, shoes, magazines, coats, purses, scarves, electronics, and pictures...I think 3 smaller than usual bedrooms sound LOVELY.

Plus, the living room is extra huge he says, as is the kitchen...and there's a back and front yard. My own grass to frolic in! My own grass to set the child loose in! Can a girl ask for more?

So I tell Joe to tell the woman who owns the house to count us in, but that we will look at apartments and come to look at the house in March to make a final decision. As a general standard for Joe, he tends to muck things up a bit...so he totally misunderstood, told the owner we're a go, not to let anyone else have the house and she's drawing up the contracts when the boat returns in two months. Panic!

This is okay. I am okay with this. It's like a deadline, really. This inevitable event of responsibility has spurred me to get my act together, so to speak. Monthly we are putting (if not bimonthly!) 200 dollars in our savings. By July that would give us 1,400 in our savings alone. We've only ever had 300 in our savings before, and kept it more than one month. Currently we have already beat that personal best, so we're doing really well! And if we keep saving the way we are with everything else, we will be looking pretty good by the time we move in July.

So, we'll have enough money for bills, rent, groceries, etc, and could probably continue with me not working, but I am doing my best to get an employer fast. I put in applications all over town and everyone tells me the same thing - "We aren't hiring new people. We just cut hours in fact, so we probably won't be hiring for a while." Damn recession! Damn economy! GAH!

Thinking positively, I'm so happy to start my new life, being the new me. I'm vowing to start buying store brand items as opposed to brand name items when possible. I'll start by switching to store brand soda because I shouldn't drink that anyway...then gradually change everything else. I'm told some store brand things aren't as good as name brands, and there are some items I really won't be willing to switch to anyway, but I'm ALL OVER saving money when I can, especially since we have so many new purchases coming along.

For starters we need a new couch. That's right folks. We sold our 3 piece red living room set before we moved here. And it's a good thing otherwise they wouldn't have fit in our storage unit. They were the most comfy pieces of furniture ever, except that eventually the middle of the couch broke and sank in, so that when you sat down you had a nail in your tush. And, yes, we are lucky to be renting a house this coming year, but who knows if that will be the case when we move in 2010? What if we are back in a small apartment after the house? No room for 3 pieces then I can tell you that. We were lucky to have fit them in our first place in MA...I know Sha and Krista know exactly what I'm talking about. It was a circus!

SO, we are instead investing in a lovely sofa and a side chair or two. I'd like a nice, neutral sofa that I can add color to with cushions/pillows. That way the sofa will look nice all year round. I'd like a smallish chair, something with a wood frame I think and minimal upulstry and a larger, softer, comfy chair (recliners need not apply!) that is all upulstery. Yeah, sounds nice right? Totally.

PLUS, we are getting a smaller, round, WHITE dining room table...and probably I will sand and paint the old dining chairs white as well. Or experiment with like, white mostly but with multi colored spindles. Yeah yeah! And since I'll have my own back yard, I can totally do all this outside! WOOP!

Ye old dining room table, (the brown top thing with the black legs) will then be moved to my guest/craftroom/office. It's going to be my new work table. When really, it's been my work table all along, it just pulled double duty as an eating surface! The poor thing really is an eyesore, and it's been burned by acetone (during a ink transfer phase I went through), so I'm just going to retire it all together. And besides, it's so big that if we have to move into an apartment with a smallish dining room, it isn't comfortable to sit at for dinner.

So, to purchase after move: small, round, white dining table, paint for chairs, couch, two living room chairs, and a lawn mower.

Also I think we need a new coffee maker. The last one once had cockroaches living in it, so we ditched it. A few other things got ditched for this reason too (including the sofa set - don't worry, the people we sold them to had cockroaches, so it wasn't like we were giving them something they didn't already had...and really I don't think we had cockroaches living in our furniture...ramble much?), our guest bed and a large area rug that was too cheap to last.

Gosh I miss my stuff so deeply! Joe checked our storage unit before his current trip to find some comic books and informs me everything is fine and safe and lonely without us. Well, all except that last part...but I just got done watching a documentary about women who love inanimate objects so it's influencing how I view my items (don't worry, I won't ever marry my desk or coffee mug!). Plus I really do miss my stuff.

My things are a piece of me, and a part of who I am and what I do. Does anyone understand that? I can't even go through any motions here aside from pitching in every so often because these things I'm living with aren't mine. Cooking dinner with foreign objects in a foreign place is strange and difficult. Every move I make here is a reminder that I'm without my things, without my life. I mean I am still me without them. I still have an identity of course, and somehow I've accumulated new things to go with this new life of mine, but I need my own space, a schedule of my own creation.

I have my scrapbook stuff here...and yet I haven't done anything creative with it since Christmas. I live with people who don't appreciate crafting, who don't appreciate hobbies, relaxing, or down-time. My grandmother is pretty much dying because she works too hard, yet she can't take the time to enjoy anything that may be considered "lazy" during daylight hours. In her waking time she does load upon load of laundry, makes her bed, cleans the bathroom, etc, all while watching soap operas at the loudest volume level. If anyone is caught by her sitting in a chair for more than 10 minutes she has to say something, she has to disrupt whatever they're doing. "In a minute I need you to do this or that...when you get a chance." It's always, "when you get a chance." Meaning - "whatever you're doing right now can't be important or productive because you're sitting on your ass so get up and carry this basket of clothes upstairs for me."

It would be different if she didn't imply things with her tone or her eyes. But she does. Why can't she just say, "hey can you carry this upstairs for me?"

Ugh. I'm rambling again. This is really another post in itself.

I truly cannot wait until we embark on this new journey of having a home, and the whole unpacking process will be an absolute delight. Think about it, I don't even remember half the things I have in storage...so when we unpack it'll be like Christmas in July! And if I don't like what I see, or have no need for the things we unpack, we can have a yard sale! Oh the possibilities are so endless.