Failing miserably at being frugal

We have been failing miserably at being frugal lately. Once we got the offer on the house for some reason we just decided that it was time to spend money like it was going out of style. I keep having to transfer money out of savings, the money we are supposed to be saving for our house, to spend on everyday stuff and everytime I mutter, "where the hell did it all go?" And so I ran a cash flow report in Quicken yesterday so that I could answer this question rather than it being rhetorical. Damn you Quicken. We have spent $648 on EATING OUT THIS MONTH ALONE! Can you believe it? How do you even do that? It's not like we're going to Ruth Chris' every night or something? Tim was like, "well, we did take some friends out to dinner one night..." Ah, yes, that's it, we must have spent 100's of dollars on our modest little dinner at Freddie's. But unfortunately that only accounts for 1/10th of the dining out figure. Oh, yeah, and we bought both Tim and I laptops in the last month. And we did spend about $450 on repairs to the old house. So I guess my question is answered. We should have oodles of money saved towards the new house by now. We don't. So now is the time. Bootstraps must be tightened. Belts must be tightened. Dinners must be prepared at home. I am DETERMINED to have the entire 20% down payment saved by the time our house is built, so help me God!

Oh, well, yeah, we're going on vacation, but other than that, FRUGALITY WILL REIGN SUPREME!

And I need to buy some organizers for the bathroom, but after that, CHEAPNESS RETURNS TO THE LAND!

Or maybe I just believe if I type this up here, I'll feel that I have to do it.

Houston, we have roads

I drove by the neighborhood yesterday afternoon on my way to pick up Tim and glanced over to see how the new neighborhood was. THERE WERE ROADS! Beautiful roads, stretching as far as the eye could see. I could have wept. Instead I started screaming with happiness and joy, probably scared the crap out of Stella, and tried to call Tim so I could yell "WE HAVE ROADS!" He didn't answer.

But anyway, hope springs anew. We have roads when they said we would have roads. Could we perhaps have house when they say we will have house? We just might! Can't wait to drive through tonight on the ROADS!

FINALLY Funded!

So the old house is finally closed, the money is in our hot little bank account, the buyer can put his For Rent sign out front and we can go on living our lives. I shed some tears as I left closing Friday afternoon where we signed our house away. I asked Paul, our real estate agent, if he thought this guy was an investor and he said yes. He said that the buyer's agent kept saying, "he's moving, but not quite yet." If you sold your old house, wouldn't you be moving to your new house? So the downward spiral of our old neighborhood continues. Actually, it's still a very nice neighborhood, the vast majority of people care about keeping up their house and their lawns, but I worry it's destined for a lot of rentals. I don't know why, it's much prettier than most of the neighborhoods around here, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I read in a Time magazine article that your house value goes down by 1% for every foreclosure within 200km of your house. Glad we got out before the one diagonal from us went into foreclosure. We've had several foreclosures in our old neighborhood, so perhaps this is what is affecting value.

To celebrate finally closing our our old house, I just booked a condo in Port Aransas. We're going there for a long weekend in September. I'm really looking forward to it. Originally, we were going to take Stella with us, but we just really need a weekend alone, so she's going to Houston to have fun fun fun with her Meme for the weekend. We were supposed to use Tim's Grandmother's timeshare, but unfortunately everything within driving distance, including every single time share in Texas, is booked. We thought about flying because Tim's Grandmother offered to pay for the timeshare fee, which would have brought our lodging costs to zero, but it still was more stress and cost than we wanted to put into a little weekend getaway. Hopefully she'll let us use it again and we can plan better in advance. I'm a little concerned that we'll get bored in Port Aransas because everyone describes it as "quiet" and "off the beaten path", but we'll have CABLE again, so I'm sure we'll enjoy vegging out in front of the tv for hours on end when we're not on the beach. And we'll be all alone so who knows what else might happen:)

Our new house was supposed to have the roads finished today. Somehow I'm doubting that has happened, since when I drove by Monday they were still working on laying the supports for the entrance to the neighborhood. They're supposed to start framing our house next week, but that seemed to depend on getting the roads finished, so we'll just have to see. I had a dream last night that I saw them putting out all the materials to frame our house in front of our slab, so hopefully that's a prescient dream. Still hoping for November close. Still worrying that if it doesn't close in November, I may run screaming off a cliff.

Argh!

My mother-in-law has kidnapped my child again. I am supposed to be in-route over to Ashley's for the ladies lunch which is in 12 minutes, but I can't leave because I don't have my daughter. I left for Weight Watchers about an hour and fifteen minutes ago and she asked if she could take Stella for a walk. I stupidly said yes. I got back about 13 minutes ago and they were still gone for the walk. Even though she KNEW that I was going to lunch today and that I also have closing, PLUS we're going to Houston, so I need to stay on schedule. And Ashley was so sweet and is making me a special WW lunch.

oh, they're finally back! Speaking of WW, I lost 2.4 more pounds, so 21 total. Whoo!

Stella can catch a ball!

So she goes from being able to say ball to being able to catch it in one day. She's so proud of herself too, she just gets so excited when she catches it. Of course, so do I:)

Dancing, Dancing, DANCING!

Stella gets her groove on at the Ice Cream Festival

Cool new things Stella does

I always forget the cool things Stella does, so I'm going to take a moment to chronicle them:

This morning she was playing with her ball and said "ball"

Yesterday she said "hi, doggie" (sounded more like "dogah")

We think she said "gotta go" Sunday night when we were leaving the Larsons

She added a new dance move to her repertoire this Saturday. I promise to post the video ASAP.

She read her book out loud the entire time Tim took a shower this morning.

We had the best weekend. Saturday morning we got up and went to the Austin Ice Cream Festival with the Larsons and the Holmeses. Stella LOVED dancing to the band that was playing. She threw a fit when the music ended and we left. We also took her to her first petting zoo. She wanted to pet all the animals and wave at them and say "hi." Of course, it was a million degrees, so we were all extremely sweaty, but it was still fun.

Saturday night, Tim and I went to see Mr. Marmalade, which was excellent, then afterwards got to hang out with Nicole, Steven, Eric, Scott and Michael. It was a blast, although I drank WAY too much and felt like crap pretty much all day Sunday. I also blew my extra points, so I'm trying to figure out where I can eat dinner tonight with Seth, Mindy and Oli where I can get cardboard to chew on.

Sunday we ate at Galaxy (fun), cleaned out the garage (not fun), and went to dinner at the Larsons (fun). All in all a very busy, good weekend!

House Update!

From Jamie at Newmar, our very own Andy McCarthy:

"I just wanted to give you your weekly update. The developer is currently working on getting the roads finished for us. They are saying they will be finished with the roads on the 29th of August.
This means we can have your material dropped once we get back. You guys are in the first set of five homes to get started once we get back. So we should be framing your house the first week in September.
I would say you guys will be closing in November sometime currently. Please let me know if you have any questions. "

Oh, pleasepleasepleaseplease, happy day, please!

A girl in my WW meeting today was like, "hold out for the trees." She's a landscape architect. She said, "otherwise you'll be calling me in a few months and have a heart attack when I tell you how much it will cost to put in trees, even little trees." And she's so right. Must hold on. Must think of money I am saving. Ca-ching, ca-ching.

Speaking of things I must do, I must eat some protein! Last night's dinner was pasta and vegetables and I was starving by the time bedtime came. I ate some sort of Zone bar that I thought was a Kashi bar because it had been shoved into the Kashi box. I came down in the dark, grabbed a bar, took it back upstairs, took a bite and was like, "hmm, this is much better than I remembered." Then I turned on the light and realized that it was not what I thought it was. And it had about 5 grams more of fat than what I had planned to eat. Sigh. Sometimes it sucks not to be in your own house. Then today for lunch I had pasta salad at Anna's (which was yummy), but it also lacked protein. Think I'll be eating some peanut butter for my snack today!

Speaking of fat, I lost another 1.2 pounds. I also had a "lifetime goal" conference with Jamie, my WW leader. (Huh, isn't that weird, our salesperson at Independence is a male Jamie and my WW leader is a female Jamie. Probably the two most important areas of my life lately are headed by Jamies). Chick Jamie said that I should set my goal about 5 pounds higher than I had originally planned to because it would be very difficult to maintain the lower weight. She said I would thank her later and that I could totally lose the 5 pounds more on my own if I wanted. The lower weight is the absolutely lowest healthy BMI for me, so she's probably right. I was a bit disappointed, but on the plus side, it means that I only have 11.6 pounds more to go! I've already lost 18.6, so this should be a piece of cake, right?

Rain, Rain Go Away!

Damn you Tropical Storm Erin and your rain! So this rain has cooled things off (I assume it's cooled things off, I haven't been outside yet today), but it puts more delays on the building of roads for our new neighborhood! And it ruined a bunch of boxes we had outside that we were trying to get rid of. I just found out today that Laurie needs boxes, too! Man, if only I'd sent an email out to my friends instead of just Craig's List and Austin Mama where apparently no one needs free moving boxes. Sigh.

I have been looking on the MLS again (bad Julie!) and found a house that has an absolutely gorgeous setting. Lots of trees, a really cool kid's playscape, and it backs up to the Karst Goat Preserve. As a bonus, it is significantly cheaper than the house we are building. I had all but decided to call Paul, our realtor, and have him take us over there. Then I drove by it. It is rather cute, but the neighborhood is quite fugly. Then I started thinking about whether I wanted my house to back up to a public park and started having irrational fears of burglars and kidnappers hopping over the chainlink fence to snatch my valuables or my child. So I kind of put the kibbosh on that. Night before last Tim and I walked around his parent's neighborhood and it's really quite cute. There are some cute houses for sale that I also checked out online. But they are still smaller than the house we're building, even though a lot of them are cheaper, and, the kicker, they don't have trees. Our new house will have trees out the wazoo. I'm just getting impatient. I have to keep tallying in my head how much money we are going to save living here. It's hard when you have so much time before your house is finished and you are living with your in-laws. Your eye starts to wander. You start to look at other houses with moving on your mind.

I need to cool my jets. We don't even have all the money saved up for a downpayment yet. It's just hard when you have no clue when your house is going to be ready!

Ah, the Stella's awake, better go get her.

And now for a little bit about me

So I signed up to be interviewed by Holmes and here are the questions he came up with and my answers.

1. What is Tom Cruise's greatest crime against the people of the Earth?

That horrible smirk he has. Or perhaps just existing.

2. What reality show would you do best on? And yes, COPS counts.

Hmm... They had a reality show to cast Grease, but it was lame and I don't sing and I only dance better than people who REALLY can't dance. But I think that a reality show should be invented where you are competing to be cast in a Broadway play. I want to be in that. Although I'd probably suck, I'd still want to do it. I guess that doesn't answer the question, does it? Isn't there a show called "Are you Smarter than a 5th grader?" I've never seen it, but I think I'm at least equal in intelligence to a 5th grader, so I think I would kick ass on that show.

3. Do you find yourself to be frequently misunderstood in any way or by certain people? Explain.

Directors just don't understand me. Don't they realize I CAN play a lead? Really, I'm quite sure of it. I don't have to just play second fiddles and cowboys who are supposed to be men played by women.

4. Your band has one album left on your contract to your record label. You're in a hurry to get it done so you can focus on your burgeoning acting career, so you decide to do an album of covers. What songs do you bring to the band meeting and why?

Hmm, at first I thought this question was just what band's songs do I bring to the table. That's easy, The Smiths because they are the best band on earth, but then I realized you asked for specific songs. Here's a few that come to mind:

-For Real by Okkervil River - I was cleaning the old house yesterday and took a break when this song came up on my Ipod. I turned it up loud enough for my ears to bleed and danced like a banshee in my empty living room. This is the coolest goth song. It's all about violence and destructive behavior. Awesome. It gives me goose bumps. Also, it has a reference to a bus almost coming crashing to its side as it swerves from us. I like songs with fatalistic people and buses, as you'll see from my second choice-

-There is a Light that Never Goes Out by The Smiths - "And if a Double-decker bus comes crashing into us, to die by your side, such a heavenly way to die." When I was 15 or 16, we were all riding in a car with this chick Laura and she just started freaking out, playing this song over and over, (which was REALLY difficult in those days as we only had tape players in our cars), and finally she broke down crying and screaming and pulled over and my friend Philip, who I would have totally sung this song to because I worshipped him, had to drive. It was such a Smiths moment.

-Valerie Loves Me by Material Issue - Oh, I love this song. Ever since I first heard it, when it comes on, I have to stop what I was doing and dance like a maniac and sing at the top of my lungs.

5. Was Stella so named so that your house could be full of Brando moments? Or is it just a name you liked?

Actually, I naively thought that no one knew "Streetcar Named Desire" except a few theatre geeks, seeing as the play was written nearly 60 years ago and the movie is nearly that old as well. I forgot at the time, I suppose that I am a theatre geek and therefore surround myself with them. I was even more surprised at how many "civilians" apparently are familiar with Tennesee Williams. We get a lot of "STELLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" from total strangers all the time. We also once got a "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" reference from an African American guy who was making my sandwich at Subway in Huntsville once. That was interesting.
We picked the name because we both absolutely loved it and just kept coming back to it, but here are some of the reasons why we loved it:
-it sounds tough like a 1940's movie heroine
-Stella Lily could be the stage name of a Grand Dame of the theatre (we want all our daughters to have the option of being grande dames of the theatre)
-Stella Artois is an excellent beer we drank a lot of in England, so it reminds us of our time there
-Stella Was a Diver and She was Always Down is a great song we love by Interpol that has the line "Stella, I love you, Stella I love you, Stella I love you" in it. Although we think the song is about something we definitely don't want to relate to our child...
-Stella means Star in Latin and I love stars
-We do like the Tennessee Williams connection, yes, because we love theatre and I in particular love Tennessee Williams

If you'd like to be tagged for this one and answer a series of questions written specially for you by me, just follow the instructions below.

Interview rules:1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Pretty easy!

Another night at home

So yesterday the reason it was 1 million degrees here was that the A/C was broken! So we went to the old house to sleep last night since it was about 86 degrees upstairs when it was time to put Stella down for bed last night. Luckily, I'd left the air mattress in the office closet (so glad we missed it!), so we packed up the dogs, the pack n' play and some bedding and diapers and headed back home. Stella was really wound up so it took us a while to get her to sleep, but once she settled down we watched "Monster Squad" on my laptop on the floor in the living room while drinking some tasty beers. Another stroke of luck: I'd accidentally left a knife on the kitchen counter, so I was able to cut up a lime for my Dos Equis. Rock!

We came back over here this morning so Tim could shower and go to work, and it seems that the A/C is working again. The filter was filthy (it was my suggestion they check it; I so love it when I can help identify the source of a problem), and the A/C guy said that often if it gets all clogged up, you have to turn it off overnight and in the morning it will work again. It seems to be working, at the very least it is cooling down, so that is awesome!

I'm kind of looking forward to cleaning the old house out. It's a bit of a challenge to get all those last minute things out and clean a blank slate. I know it's sick but there is a part of me that actually enjoys cleaning. It's a great stress reliever. I am very conscious of abusing Tim's Mom though in terms of having her watch Stella some more. I think I may just see if she's cool with watching her for an hour or two a day and I'll get a little done each day. Luckily I won't have anything at the old house to distract me from getting things done!

We're also going to splurge and pay the nice lesbeterian couple with a lawn business across the street from Tim's parents to mow our lawn one last time. It's $40, but our lawn is pretty out of control, we no longer have an edger because it broke, and I'm pretty sure Tim would really appreciate not having an added stress. We have plenty to do without worrying about that!

Moved

So we had the big moving extravaganza yesterday. We have the absolute BESTEST friends and family on earth! They helped us and didn't even complain, not once, they were cheerful and wonderful and jokey and actually made moving about as fun as it could be. I have to give a big star and shout-out to Brandon, Ian, Bill, Sean, Erin, Brian, Daniel, Caroline, Christine, Katie and Ryan for all their help. Guys, you rock!

So although we got everything moved yesterday, then gorged ourselves on pizza and good beer (I don't cheap out on paying my movers), everything is still in chaos right now. There is a box floating around somewhere that was supposed to go in our room that somehow must have wound up in the garage because I Have No Clue where it went. And it contains a lot of important toiletries, the baby monitor, and a fortune in "feminine hygeniene products" that I do not want to replace. I remember dumping everything in it, but then I have no clue what happened to it.

I had a bit of a meltdown last night when I realized I couldn't find Stella's monitor. Also, I kept opening closets and cupboards to put stuff in and they were already full of Tim's parent's stuff. So I need to go buy some shelves from Ikea and put them under the sink in our bathroom to store our stuff, and a bunch of underbed boxes to put under our bed. Luckily, Stella's closet here is about twice the size of her other one, so we can use all that extra space to store stuff. The freezer and fridge are SCARY. I don't think we will be able to buy any groceries that are frozen because there just isn't room for it. Luckily my parents are going to let me use a mini-fridge they have. Originally it was going to be for storing our Al-kee-hol, but I think now it may have to store more of our groceries. We also have like 3 rubbermaid bins of food that we need to find a home for. Unfortunately, even though this house is huge (5 bedrooms and 2500 sq ft), it has a pantry about one quarter the size of our old one. And it's already packed to the gills with Tim's parents stuff. Surely they cannot need 6 boxes of the same kind of cereal:)

I could not believe we got everything in the garage either. Tim's mom is a master at stacking stuff. So is Daniel, although I was getting more than a little impatient at the constant rearranging of the truck yesterday:) But we did get it one trip!

I did a little unpacking today, but it is so hot upstairs here that I couldn't stand the 84 degree temperature for long. Unfortunately, the room we're living in here appears to be that one room in every house that doesn't get cooled properly. I lived in the non-cooling/non-heating bedroom growing up too. Every summer I would sleep in my "summer" room-the guest room, because my room was so hot. In the winter, I'd just put on longjohns and lots of blankets. I need to get one of our box fans from the garage and hopefully that will make sleeping tonight more pleasant.

Oh, this is so weird. I was walking down the street to get my car this morning and an old friend of ours, Lynn, lives 3 houses down! Really bizaare. She saw me and said that I was welcome anytime for tea and knitting. She said she'd teach me how to knit when I said I didn't knit, but really, I don't think I could take that much time around Lynn. She's a sweet girl, but quite hyper.

Well, enough rambling for now.

Go Julie, Go Julie, it's your birthday!

So I am currently sitting here enjoying the nonfat, decaf mocha from Starbucks that I rewarded myself with for reaching my 10% goal in Weight Watchers. Yay! I got the cute little key chain and everything. And I am in such a good mood, nothin's gonna bring me down, not the mess of boxes in my house, not Carpetbagging Californians, not the fact that I just poured my mocha on my new pants, nothing! I am only 6.8 pounds now away from my pre-pregnancy weight and half way to my eventual goal of recapturing the weight I had when Tim and I met nearly 11 years ago. Whoot! I even tried on a pair of size TWELVE pants the other day, and while they were too tight to be comfortable, they actually buttoned and zipped all the way up. Huzzah! (BTW, for those of you who don't think fitting into a size 12 is impressive, consider that us tall girls cannot get into those itty bitty sizes simply due to our height and frame. For example, for those of you who know Gwen who was in Anton with me, she is nearly my height -5'10"- and she can wear a size 12, even though she is a very svelte girl with a great figure. I did wear a 10 in high school and even squeezed into an 8 on occasion, but I was really, really, really thin then.) So anyway, by Christmas (or maybe even Halloween if I'm lucky), I should be working my mojo and get some serious quality time with my new figure and new wardrobe before it's time to incubate Thomas Bambino Numero Dos.

Speaking of bambinos numero dos, I was reading Sweet Juniper yesterday and they are expecting a little sibling for Junie. I got so excited and even a little teary. It's so weird how you can feel such an affinity for people that you have never met or even talked to. I particularly like Dutch and Wood because I feel so much in common with them. They are the same age as us, they also starting dating when they were 19 and now we plan to have the same spacing between our children, although Juniper a year and two months older than Stella. So I think it will be fun to see how the 3 years apart thing works when their new addition is born next February. Will give us a sneak peek as to how life will actually work. Especially since all our friends are having their children closer together. I am actually looking longingly at little babies these days, so I'm sure by the time we decide to get started on number 2, I will definitely be ready.

But Stella is sooooo much better than a newborn, she is simply a blast to be around! She does new things every day. Like her newest thing is sitting on the bottom step on our stairs like it's a little bench. I sat next to her and tried to get her to gossip with me, but I don't think she quite got the concept. She also likes to put our shoes on and try to walk around in them, and walk with her hands clasped behind her back. So cute.

In bad news, we got a call from our real estate agent yesterday and the buyer wants to pay cash now since he sold his home in California, so since that house doesn't close until the 17th, we probably will not close until the 17th, best case or the 22nd, worst case. So despite the fact he wouldn't let us stay in the house any longer than 30 days, now he's pushing things out. Bastard. And we're already packed up and have lots of people helping us move tomorrow, so we're going ahead with the move. Our realtor asked the buyer's agent why the buyer didn't just continue with the mortgage and then pay it off, and she said that the guy had told the loan officer to quit processing the loan as soon as he got a buyer. So no matter what it will still take extra time to close because the loan officer has to start back up the process. Sigh. So our realtor told the other realtor that the loan officer should go ahead and start back up the loan process in case something happens with the house sale. Also, he's trying to get the buyer to pay a pro-rated amount of our mortgage payment so at least we won't be out too much extra money while this all gets sorted out. Sigh. I've said it before, I'll say it again, selling a house sucks. And it sure makes you feel like a poor yokel that some guy can come and buy your house, which was going to take you 30 years to pay off, in cash. I'm totally with Ashley: Californians are the new carpet baggers. I think we should start spitting on any cars we see with California plates.

Speaking of cars, we saw a car at HEB yesterday into which someone had carved the word "Bitch" into the hood, all caps, in about foot tall letters. Wow. She must have really pissed someone off. I think I'd find the money to fix that ASAP!

Wow, it's really late, I'd better go pack! I feel like a working mom, I've seen Stella so little this week. She's been staying with her Baba and Grandaddy while I get this house packed. Packing a 3 bedroom house solo is a lot of work!

Packing Fatigue

I have to take a break from packing. I've been packing non-stop since 1 and it's 5 now. That may not sound like very long, but it sure feels like it. Tim's Mom dropped off a ton of boxes and picked up Stella at about 11:45 so I could get work done, and I have been super-productive. I've got the office all packed up, all the stuff in our bedroom and bathroom that I won't need before Saturday packed up, and Stella's room mostly packed up. Of course, now I'm at that weird point of "what do I do next?" I know there's stuff that needs to still be packed, but it's all the odds and ends that don't go together. So I procrastinate. Mature, I know. I could go shove some more stuff in wardrobe boxes, which is probably what I'll do.

Dude, All Things Considered is doing an interview with Seth Green and the other guy who do Robot Chicken and it is totally distracting because they are playing clips. That show is weird. Too weird for me. And I LOVE Aqua Teen Hungerforce. So I know and embrace weird. But not Robot Chicken. I think the fact that it often uses beloved toys from my childhood and puts them into odd, compromising, and totally disturbing situations is what gets me. It actually kind of depresses me when I watch it. Very weird. Okay, wow, tangent much?

Yay, I'm going to go to the grocery store. I need to go and I need a break, so I'm going!

Let's Go Crazy

I need to get out more. I just went to Target and bought two of the same pair of shoes. Well, they ARE different colors at least. I bought these in silver and black. They were just so cute. And I still have birthday money from over two months ago burning a hole in my pocket. So I got both. So I now have THREE pairs of ballet flats: leopard print, silver, and black. Even I see how excessive this is. Especially for a trend I wasn't really that on board with in the first place. I mean, I wore ballet flats the first time they were popular, back when I was a teenager. And I am SO not into revisiting trends. Instead, I haven't changed my style in about ten years. I'll never be accused of being trendy. But the rest of the shoes were really odd looking or stillettos and really odd looking, so I gave in and got two pair of the ballet slippers. Plus I gave away two pairs of shoes when packing this afternoon, so I'm just replacing inventory;)

And yes, I am buying things when I am moving, which I realize is insane. But they aren't very big! And I can wear one pair of them;)

Wow, that was an exciting post! Although this is kind of exciting. You can design your own Converse tennis shoe. Just choose "design your own". Mine's a rather fetching star pair featuring brown and robins egg blue. Maybe I'll buy them. Although I probably won't. I could buy 4 more pairs of ballet flats for what those cost!

Well, I guess Stella is not going back down for another nap to supplement the hour one she had earlier. I best be going to fetch her.

I don't want %X6s89d Plastic Bags!

It is so hard to get baggers to use the reusable bags we bring with us to the grocery store rather than the plastic bags. Last night we went to the grocery store and put our reusable bags on the very front like we always do. Well the bagger started putting our produce in plastic bags. He was chatting to some customer and we had to say we brought our own bags like 5 times and finally wave them in his face to get him to use them. Then he put like 3 items in that bag and 4 items in the other (including the milk, which doesn't need to be bagged), and was like, "is plastic okay for the rest?" We had like 10 items total, our bags were definitely big enough for everything. So I noticed he'd bagged the milk and told him to take the milk out and put everything else in there instead. So the perfectly clean plastic bag that had held the other stuff, he balled it up and threw it away. People!

I'm certainly not a green Nazi, but I try to make a difference in little ways I can. Like using our $1 from Garden Ridge bags to put groceries in. Which actually makes our life easier because I can put one on each shoulder and get my groceries in in one trip (maybe 2), rather than at least 3 or so with plastic bags. But even when they actually use my bags, they still like to wrap each individual packet of meat in its own plastic bag. Sigh. No wonder we're ruining the planet; people just don't get it.

Sorry neighbors...

The ditzy airhead agent that our buyer is using called and left a message saying that her buyer would be in town and would like to see the house at 10am Saturday morning if that was okay and to call her back and let her know. So I called her and she said, "great, he's hasn't seen the house yet, just online, so he's really excited!" I swear, I felt my stomach drop. That is confirmation that this is an investor. Real people don't buy houses on the basis of their listing online, even though ours was fantastic. I hate the fact that my neighbors will have to deal with yet another rental in their midst. Sorry guys, unfortunately I don't have any control over what the buyer does, especially if they lie and say they are relocating and going to live in the house. The pest control guy also came out today and said there were signs that squirrels had gotten in, so we're going to go ahead and pay $265 to get the possible access points sealed off and any vermin trapped. It's only $100 more than just trapping them and it will give our asshole buyer peace of mind. Which is great, because I could give a rat's ass about our buyer. I hope one of the vermin gets stuck in here and crawls down and bites him. That would be awesome.

Maybe Private school isn't so bad after all...

Holy shit, did you see this?
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/07/25/texas-doomed/

Rick Perry has appointed a creationist to head the state board of education. If they start teaching that in science class, I actually will be tempted to put my child in the dreaded private school. I mean, do we want all Texan school children to be laughed out of Biology 101 when they go to college and try to explain that they don't know a damn thing about Darwin and think that the world was created by an old guy with a long beard and a flowy robe a few thousand years ago? Great idea! Hey, assholes, if your faith can't stand up to a little science, perhaps it ain't so strong, huh?!

I used a large number of expletives in that post, more than my usual number, but few things get my dander up more than not teaching evolution or sex ed in schools. With this clown, I'm sure we'll get a lot less of both. I already expect I'll have to teach sex ed at home, but evolution? I certainly don't have the credentials to teach that!

The downside of losing weight is...

No clothes that fit! I really wish I'd kept all 12 pairs of capris in my old size rather than planning on selling them to Buffalo Exchange, but then Tim and his Dad took them to Goodwill accidentally instead. I need to go shopping so bad, but Stella no longer allows me to run errands anymore, she just gets cranky and wants out of the stroller or cart. And if you let her walk around, she wants to walk where SHE wants to walk, not where you want her to go. I'm sure this is just a phase, but it's an annoying phase. She's also really cranky today and has a runny nose and a slight fever. I'm pretending like she is not getting sick. Because that way I don't have to deal with it:)

Once you lose a pretty significant amount of weight (I've lost 15 pounds so far), you really don't want to wear baggy clothes that are barely held up by a belt. Funny that. You want to wear clothes that actually show that you've lost weight. I don't want to go crazy with the clothes since I will hopefully drop a whole other size in the coming months, but a few more things that fit and aren't worn out would be nice. I just may have to appeal to the in-laws for some babysitting so I can get some clothes. I mean, we fed them dinner last night, I deserve some babysitting, right? ;)

And thanks to Katie and Christine for the offer of staying at their house while we're living with the in-laws. We probably will take you up on that, as well as anybody else we can possibly abuse. Whenever I don't have rehearsal for Little Murders once that starts up, that is. 3rd cousins once removed in Texarkana, I'm talking to you!