The trip back to Chicago went well. I even had an entire row on the plane to myself on the way out. It was good to get a chance to go out to dinner with some of my friends, too. There was a lot to do at the house to prepare. Between Curtis and myself, we shoveled the driveway which was full of snow, especially the end where to snowplows shove all the extra snow from the street. I think there was at least three feet piled up there. I also had to shovel out the garbage cans which were buried very deep next to the alley.
Once everything was loaded, I had about half an hour to wait until my ride to the airport arrived. It was really weird standing around waiting in the empty house. A little sad, a little exciting, there were lots of things to think about while I waited in silence. Every time I heard a creak, I would look around and expect to see Sid creeping around the corner or sitting on the stairs in between the banisters.
My reverie was enjoyable but then I remembered one of the reasons we wanted to leave that neighborhood in the first place when I heard a snow shovel outside. I lightly pulled open one of the slats in the blinds covering the side door window. One of the nearby alley neighbors was shoveling snow back into our driveway from the alley. I don't know why. Nothing was preventing him from getting in and out of his garage. It really was not a whole lot of snow. He glared at me and I closed the blinds. People there were nice enough but it really wasn't a neighborhood, just a collection of houses with people living inside of them. We lived there four years and only at the very end when a young couple moved in next to us to the east did we really meet anybody. They were very nice and we will miss them, but otherwise, there really isn't a whole lot I will miss about that neighborhood.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Loose Ends
Nicholas has improved over the last three nights. I have now had two out of three nights of (mostly) uninterrupted sleep. What I really want to know is this: what switch is in his little brain that flips after a couple of days of using a timed response method? It's like night and day, on and off, 0 and 1, rather than a smooth downward curve as I would expect. One night he screams and screams. Then, next to nothing. No matter the explanation, though. I'll take the result.
The house sale and rental has hit a couple of small bumps but nothing too bad. Our buyers need a two week extension to let their mortgage lenders take their sweet time because, you know, now that they actually care about their lending practices, it's time to batten down the hatches. On the rental side of the coin, we're still waiting on the lease to be drafted, but we've been promised sometime today. We're hoping that Amy can sign first with me to follow if necessary because I will be out of town all weekend.
I leave for Chicago tomorrow morning. I'll be flying in to monitor the movers on Sunday as they clear all of our possessions from the old property. It will be my first time there since August and the last visit I will ever make to that house. Amy says she's glad I'm going. I can't say that I would disagree if the shoe were on the other foot.
The house sale and rental has hit a couple of small bumps but nothing too bad. Our buyers need a two week extension to let their mortgage lenders take their sweet time because, you know, now that they actually care about their lending practices, it's time to batten down the hatches. On the rental side of the coin, we're still waiting on the lease to be drafted, but we've been promised sometime today. We're hoping that Amy can sign first with me to follow if necessary because I will be out of town all weekend.
I leave for Chicago tomorrow morning. I'll be flying in to monitor the movers on Sunday as they clear all of our possessions from the old property. It will be my first time there since August and the last visit I will ever make to that house. Amy says she's glad I'm going. I can't say that I would disagree if the shoe were on the other foot.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Asi-asi
We heard from our potential lessors yesterday. They sounded eager to get the ball rolling on the rental process, too. They want a 6 month lease with the option to buy at the end. We're totally willing to go along with that. We just need to hear from their agent now. Fingers crossed.
Nicholas decided to be a real stinker again last night. He cried for four hours, not in a row, but FOUR HOURS. He feels fine. He just got used to us holding and rocking him to sleep while he was sick. Of course, he still wants us to stay up all night with him now that both of us have what he had. So tired...
Again, I can't imagine how any of you with more than one get anything done at all.
Nicholas decided to be a real stinker again last night. He cried for four hours, not in a row, but FOUR HOURS. He feels fine. He just got used to us holding and rocking him to sleep while he was sick. Of course, he still wants us to stay up all night with him now that both of us have what he had. So tired...
Again, I can't imagine how any of you with more than one get anything done at all.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Darkness
There have been a few moments these past months when things have been really dark: losing lots of money on our potential house sale, not being able to find a place to buy in time for our move, neighbors that don't seem to care that our building is on fire, Nicholas being sick twice in a row just when we have more work to do than ever to get things done for both work and house, Nicholas refusing to give us a full night's sleep, my school announcing massive budget cuts, no raises in the near future, and the potential to cut low-enrollment programs (i.e. mine) in the coming months. It just seemed to be getting worse by the day.
But there have been good things happening too. For instance, during the first week at least, I'm not finding my job an unending well of stress like I did last semester. Don't get me wrong, it's still stressful. But I can see how things fit together now. I can see the big picture for most of my classes because I've been through them once, so I know what I want to change and how to change it to communicate the concepts more clearly. I no longer feel the need to work 70+ hours a week to keep up. If something goes wrong, I'm trying to let myself write it off as experience instead of berating my lackluster abilities, which is something I've done for a very long time and a hard habit to break.
As for the school's budget cuts, I've been assured by my dean that my program will not be cut. The justification was something that I'd thought about, too, but needed to hear from someone more in the know to believe or trust. Basically, my program is new. They've just dumped thousands of dollars into it and it has the potential to grow rapidly if we can figure out how to best capitalize on the demand. Therefore, music tech stays despite only having about 12 majors to speak of right now.
Finding a place to live has been a giant bummer so far. We've basically resigned ourselves to renting. With the astounding amount of money lost on our house in Illinois, we cannot afford the healthy down payment we need to get the loan we want. We'd pretty much tap our liquid resources to muster 8-10%, which in the current climate, is still not enough for some banks to grant you the loan. So, the rentals we've seen so far have been pretty terrible until yesterday. We found a very nice house that a couple would like to sell but is willing to rent for $1100/month, about the same amount we'd pay in mortgage for anything we could currently afford to buy. It has three bedrooms, a family room with fireplace, a relatively new kitchen, a two car attached garage, and a mostly finished basement. It's very clean and well-kept, something we can't say of most of the other places we've seen. The only catch is that the owners would rather sell. So, we're hoping to get a lease drafted and signed before any potential buyers swoop in and snatch it away from us, not to mention our stuff is moving out here next week and we'd like to put it where we are going to live rather than a storage facility.
Again, I won't lie, things have been looking rather bleak around here. I look at our situation and in some ways it's the same as when we first started out, me working 60 hours a week for the $17K yearly salary that would just barely pay for meager shelter, food, and clothing, while Amy finished her graduate degree. It's certainly just as difficult, we just have higher bills to match the higher salaries. But if we can get out from under the house in Illinois and rent the house that we found yesterday, things will start to look up, some pressure will be relieved. If one thing should fall in our favor right now, we need this to be it. I hope it works out.
But there have been good things happening too. For instance, during the first week at least, I'm not finding my job an unending well of stress like I did last semester. Don't get me wrong, it's still stressful. But I can see how things fit together now. I can see the big picture for most of my classes because I've been through them once, so I know what I want to change and how to change it to communicate the concepts more clearly. I no longer feel the need to work 70+ hours a week to keep up. If something goes wrong, I'm trying to let myself write it off as experience instead of berating my lackluster abilities, which is something I've done for a very long time and a hard habit to break.
As for the school's budget cuts, I've been assured by my dean that my program will not be cut. The justification was something that I'd thought about, too, but needed to hear from someone more in the know to believe or trust. Basically, my program is new. They've just dumped thousands of dollars into it and it has the potential to grow rapidly if we can figure out how to best capitalize on the demand. Therefore, music tech stays despite only having about 12 majors to speak of right now.
Finding a place to live has been a giant bummer so far. We've basically resigned ourselves to renting. With the astounding amount of money lost on our house in Illinois, we cannot afford the healthy down payment we need to get the loan we want. We'd pretty much tap our liquid resources to muster 8-10%, which in the current climate, is still not enough for some banks to grant you the loan. So, the rentals we've seen so far have been pretty terrible until yesterday. We found a very nice house that a couple would like to sell but is willing to rent for $1100/month, about the same amount we'd pay in mortgage for anything we could currently afford to buy. It has three bedrooms, a family room with fireplace, a relatively new kitchen, a two car attached garage, and a mostly finished basement. It's very clean and well-kept, something we can't say of most of the other places we've seen. The only catch is that the owners would rather sell. So, we're hoping to get a lease drafted and signed before any potential buyers swoop in and snatch it away from us, not to mention our stuff is moving out here next week and we'd like to put it where we are going to live rather than a storage facility.
Again, I won't lie, things have been looking rather bleak around here. I look at our situation and in some ways it's the same as when we first started out, me working 60 hours a week for the $17K yearly salary that would just barely pay for meager shelter, food, and clothing, while Amy finished her graduate degree. It's certainly just as difficult, we just have higher bills to match the higher salaries. But if we can get out from under the house in Illinois and rent the house that we found yesterday, things will start to look up, some pressure will be relieved. If one thing should fall in our favor right now, we need this to be it. I hope it works out.
Friday, January 16, 2009
stopstopstopstopstoppleasestop
We are at the end of our rope with Nicholas. Nobody has had a full night's sleep in weeks. He wakes up every night, sometimes multiple times, between 1am and 5am. We rock him, pat him, walk him, everything we can do, but as soon as we put him back down, he cries. This process takes hours and by 6am we need to get up and start our day. This is just about the time he's worn himself out. What really cheeses me is that I had him in such a great pattern last summer, sleeping through the night consistently by five months, but daycare has utterly destroyed it by letting him sleep whenever he wants and for however long he wants. We don't have the energy to put up with Ferber right now but even if we did neither of us feel comfortable with hours of crying in our paper-thin apartment.
The next non-parent who complains about sleep to me is losing their teeth.
The next non-parent who complains about sleep to me is losing their teeth.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Fell On Black Days
Some of my readers, OK my family, have been upset by the general trend in tone of my recent posts. Unfortunately, the new year hasn't really brought much better to report so far.
We finished the waiting game with the buyers in Illinois. Unless something falls through, they're getting the house for $20K less than we paid for it. In total, we're losing about $50K dollars on the deal. On one hand, it will be a relief to be out from under it, but on the other I get sick every time I look at the numbers so I try not to do that too often.
We were bidding on a property out here to close at the same time our Illinois property sold. That fell south yesterday. Can you believe the sellers actually gave us a final offer after only two bids in this market? One of the sticking points was our request for three days early occupancy. We needed that time because we have to move our stuff out of the other house the weekend prior to closing and it would have shown up here a few days later so in order for us not to need storage and an extra mover for a total of just a few days we figured it wouldn't be a problem. It was. We even offered to take it from 72 to 24 hours but no go. In my eyes the paperwork was all in their favor if anything happened. We would have been responsible. I'm not sure even their own agent understood their reticence on the issue.
Anyway, fortunately for them, they have others interested in the property so good luck to them, but our bids and requests were fair and reasonable. I think they expect to make money on a house sale right now and they might, but unless they start bending just a little to the buyer's needs, their house will remain on the market for some time. So, we're still in in the apartment for the long haul, swiping plastic silverware from fast food joints, sitting on camping furniture, and sleeping on the floor.
In other news, Nicholas has been sick a couple of times back to back. The first round was whatever stomach thing has been active recently, which he promptly gave to me. I had to miss my first day back to work because of it. Then, this weekend, right as he was getting better, he caught something nasty from day care. He now has a decreased appetite and a fever of 103 degrees. We've put a call into the doctor. Between Amy and I, we've stayed up all night with him two nights in a row because he won't sleep unless we're holding him and walking. We're both exhausted from taking care of him and an extra bit of tired from all the additional work getting the real estate, banking, and moving situations in order.
Sometimes I feel like we are a virus and Iowa is trying to kill us to make itself feel better.
We finished the waiting game with the buyers in Illinois. Unless something falls through, they're getting the house for $20K less than we paid for it. In total, we're losing about $50K dollars on the deal. On one hand, it will be a relief to be out from under it, but on the other I get sick every time I look at the numbers so I try not to do that too often.
We were bidding on a property out here to close at the same time our Illinois property sold. That fell south yesterday. Can you believe the sellers actually gave us a final offer after only two bids in this market? One of the sticking points was our request for three days early occupancy. We needed that time because we have to move our stuff out of the other house the weekend prior to closing and it would have shown up here a few days later so in order for us not to need storage and an extra mover for a total of just a few days we figured it wouldn't be a problem. It was. We even offered to take it from 72 to 24 hours but no go. In my eyes the paperwork was all in their favor if anything happened. We would have been responsible. I'm not sure even their own agent understood their reticence on the issue.
Anyway, fortunately for them, they have others interested in the property so good luck to them, but our bids and requests were fair and reasonable. I think they expect to make money on a house sale right now and they might, but unless they start bending just a little to the buyer's needs, their house will remain on the market for some time. So, we're still in in the apartment for the long haul, swiping plastic silverware from fast food joints, sitting on camping furniture, and sleeping on the floor.
In other news, Nicholas has been sick a couple of times back to back. The first round was whatever stomach thing has been active recently, which he promptly gave to me. I had to miss my first day back to work because of it. Then, this weekend, right as he was getting better, he caught something nasty from day care. He now has a decreased appetite and a fever of 103 degrees. We've put a call into the doctor. Between Amy and I, we've stayed up all night with him two nights in a row because he won't sleep unless we're holding him and walking. We're both exhausted from taking care of him and an extra bit of tired from all the additional work getting the real estate, banking, and moving situations in order.
Sometimes I feel like we are a virus and Iowa is trying to kill us to make itself feel better.
Whatsoever I've feared has come to life
And Whatsoever I've fought off became my life
Just when everyday seemed to greet me with a smile
Sunspots have faded
Now I'm doing time
Now I'm doing time
Cause I fell on black days
I fell on black days
Whomsoever I've cured I've sickened now
Whomsoever I've cradled I've put you down
I'm a search light soul they say
But I can't see it in the night
I'm only faking when I get it right
When I get it right
Cause I fell on black days
I fell on Black days
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate
So what you wanted to see good has made you blind
And what you wanted to be yours has made it mine
So don't you lock up something that you wanted to see fly
Hands are for shaking
No, not tying
No, not tying
I sure don't mind a change
I sure don't mind a change
Yeah, I said sure don't mind, I sure dont mind the change
I sure dont mind the change
Cos I fell on black days
I fell on black days
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate
I sure don't mind a change
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