Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Concussed, lack of housing

This weekend I took Peter ice skating at a birthday party.  I haven't been on ice skates for thirty years.  However, I used to rollerskate frequently as a kid, and the concept is the same, so I did all right on the skates.  I even got Peter up and moving, and we were having a great time.  Until one moment I was skating and the next I was flat on my back, slamming my head on the ice like a basketball.

Those cartoons where the character's eyes bug out and go all swirly?  That was me.

I have been laying on the sofa for a few days now.  I didn't black out, have dizziness or nausea or vomiting, and my head pain is limited to the giant goose egg on my noggin, so I don't think I have a concussion.  However, I feel as though someone picked me up and body slammed me on the floor.

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All sorts of other fun things have been going on around here.  We put our house on the market and it is currently under contract (fingers crossed it all finishes smoothly). (It has not all gone smoothly thus far.)

After the mortgage contingency was released we began hunting for a place to live.  We are moving in 12 days.

We do not yet have a place to live.

We are moving back to the town we lived in two years ago, because it has a great location.  It also has a very tight (and expensive) rental market.  We put in an application on a house that had really gorgeous brand-new quartz countertops and really crappy everything else (hideous tile floors, hideous painted walls, disgusting carpets, nasty bathrooms, but it is the right size and it is in within walking distance of all our friends).  Our application asked if we could paint the walls white and we offered $200 below the rental price, because it has been on the market for over two months and it is overpriced for the area.  What's the worst that could happen?  The landlord says no, we can't paint?

The landlord said "no."  We said, "ok fine, we will pay full price and keep the ugly walls."  The landlord said "no, I don't want to deal with you, you will be a pain." Our real estate agent pointed out that we have an exceptional credit rating and that the supposed reason that the house has been on the market for months is because they keep getting applicants with poor credit.  Nope.  They don't want us.

Ok then.  On to the next.  Except there isn't much next.

We have applications in on two other houses, both with significant drawbacks (one is small, has very little parking, and we will have to get rid of four appliances; the other one is more than we want to spend).  Both houses already have multiple applications submitted, so it is entirely possible that we will not get either of these underwhelming choices.

We should know by the end of the week if we got either house.  If not, we will be putting our stuff in storage for a month, living temporarily with our inlaws, and hoping that we can find something in the next month. (This option is kind of expensive.)

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I should be in decluttering mode and getting rid of all the stuff I don't want to move to the next (much smaller) house, but I am laying on the sofa, gingerly touching my giant goose egg and putting ice packs on my hips.

SERENITY NOW, people, serenity now.


Monday, March 2, 2015

red dresser in the foyer

The dresser that we use in our front hallway for hats and gloves has gotten a bit dinged up over the past two years.  I can't seem to find a head-on picture, but here is a bit of it:


Remember a few years ago I painted the dresser with 11 coats of different blues, and there was no way to replicate the paint mixture to fix all the dings.

I've been wanting to paint it red for a while now.



You can also see that I took down the gallery wall for staging the house (sad face).


I liked it better blue.  I have some leftover paint of the color that I painted the door in the above picture (unknown color match, but it is a deep purply blue), or I can paint it the Behr Deep Cobalt Blue (the blue from the painting in my bedroom--much more mid-toned blue).