Jon and I have been looking for houses lately, since our rent is going up 25% in August and we figure we might as well take advantage of the $8K tax credit courtesy of the President.
It’s exciting to be thinking about moving into a house, especially now that we officially need that second bedroom for Maddox. But I have to confess: for me, one of the major perks of getting a house is having the opportunity to sort through all of my stuff and get rid of everything that I don’t use.
Jon (and most everybody else) finds this attitude crazy. I don’t blame him, but I still can’t stop myself from twitching with glee when I picture rooting through all my belongings and lightening my load.
I can trace this behavior back to my childhood. My father used to encourage us to get rid of our excess “stuff” and would cheer every full trash bag that went out. (Full of possessions, not just trash. He was not that excited about plain trash, although it would have been great if he had been.)
So now, I derive intense satisfaction from hauling out trash bags (and they have to be hefty black ones) full of things I’m ready to part with. My siblings probably have this same complex, but it’s okay, because someone has to support the garbage bag industry.
The bags can be headed for the Salvation Army or to those big yellow clothes collecting bins, or just out to our dumpster. It doesn’t matter. It’s psychologically liberating. Except of course when I realize I’ve tossed out something important in my zeal, and have to go buy a replacement.
Don’t get me wrong - I dig my stuff. I have no sentimentality about belongings, but I have a lot of items that I appreciate, and other items that would be extremely unpleasant to live without.
And, before anyone gets excited about what will be on the curb outside Leanne’s house the day of the move, let me clarify and tell you that the ginormous tv, our laptops and my ceramic rooster cookie jar are coming with me.
But all that other stuff? (Insert delighted teehee here). Hand me that trash bag, we’re just getting started.
I was holding Maddox in our living room when Jon started playing a series of song clips on his laptop. Man, I thought, those are some great songs! I listened to them for a moment more, and realized that there was something…familiar about them.
It turns out, our friend Paul had sent Jon a link to this video:
As explained in the video, each of these 36 songs use the same four chords. It’s amazing how many of these songs were popular, and how many of them are still recognizable. This mix even includes two of my favorite songs, With or Without You and Glycerine (a personal nostalgia-fest). I feel so deceived.
And yet - I kind of want to get the entire playlist. I mean, there’s only four of them, but those are some great chords.
Take a look at the video - how many of these songs do you recognize as songs that you like, or at least liked until they were hideously overplayed? Have you also been suckered?
Right now, we’re playing the waiting game. We’re half past week 38, and the baby could come any time. I’ve got a few thing to wrap up at work, but am feeling pretty good about having things in order. Our bag is packed, the house is tidied up, and a kind co-worker has offered to show us how to install our Graco car seat, so we don’t have to enlist aid from the fire department.
Physically, he’s a lot lower now, and still moving up a storm. He’s pretty big now, so when he turns over, you can see a bulge of baby sticking out between my ribs or smack in the middle of my stomach. The only other change is that I’ve been feeling more of a compulsion to do family get-togethers lately, because I want the baby to enjoy an extended family like I had while growing up.
This means trips to Kristy’s farm as well, which is a win-win, because the baby will get to see his cousin AND learn about that whole “nature” thing, which he is unlikely to discover in our overly-technological household.
The Mommy
I’ve been down with a mild cold for the past few days, courtesy of a mucus-spewing waitress who perhaps should have 1) stayed home instead of serving food or 2) worn a suave swine-flu mask to work.
Being 8 1/2 months pregnant and sick is frustrating, because you’re never sure which symptoms are from the baby and which are from being sick. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, since in about 2 weeks, I should be either recovering or recovered from both and enjoying the nice summer weather on maternity leave. So, it’s just a matter of getting there.
Housing
We’re still looking at open houses - lately, there’s been an increase in available houses, which is nice, since there haven’t been many for the past year. We may go look at a house in Danvers today, right after we stop by Lowes or Home Depot, which are wonderful, wonderful stores.
Jon Vs. Cats
The reason we are going to Home Depot is that Jon has recently declared war on our cats, and refuses to let them wander around freely at night. I can buy into that, because I’m up already about 3 times a night from the baby, and being woken up by cats as well is just not okay.
Unfortunately, our cats do not share this feeling, and need special precautions, like a rug wedged under the door so they don’t scratch up our hall carpet and cost us deposit money from the apartment complex, a new compact litter box, and the door handles reversed - I had to put the one with the lock button on the outside, because otherwise they engage the push handles and let themselves out. I would be irritated, but I kind of have to applaud their talents. Then, there’s the morning sweeping to take care of the spilled litter, food and rug shreds.
All in all, this is almost more trouble then just being woken up a couple of times during the night. I’m looking forward to having a house with a big basement, where they can roam about all night, or maybe even a kitchen where they could be locked in. And then, we could train them to make us breakfast, so when we got up in the morning, the coffee would be ready.
You know you’re loved when you’re in the shower for about 5 minutes and you start hearing loud, insistent meows outside your bathroom door. If cats spoke English, you would hear “HEY! What are you doing in there? Why aren’t I in there, too?” and “We has shower time now? Why iz door closed?”
When someone wants to hang out with you to the extent that they can’t deal with the 15 minutes of separation it takes for you to get ready in the morning, it really makes you feel appreciated.
Also, it helps you to conserve water, because it’s very distracting to hear MEOW! MEOW! MEOW MEOW MEOW! while you’re trying to relax, so you usually just get out.
As I type this, Sam is siting next to Jon on the couch, all blissed out on a blanket, and Horace is on the couch back behind me, as close as you can get without actually sitting on my shoulder. Purrrr. Purrrrr.
If we ever run out of cash and can’t pay our heating bills, we could probably just get 4 or 5 more cats like Sam and Horace. Since they like to be within 2 feet of us at all times, this would probably be a very efficient heating system - we could call it “living furs” and start our own company.
Of course, we would also have to account for the flailing claws whenever something startled your “coat.” Caution: sudden movements towards tuna may result in serious injury.
When I was in high school, I took a psych class that covered the different theories of why humans dream. One of the ideas was that we dream to solve problems from our waking hours. Our subconscious keeps hacking away at the problem while we sleep, so our brains don’t explode when we wake up and are faced with the same issues.
The theory seemed a little pat to me at the time, but it’s true that if I’m concentrating on something intensely during the day, sometimes I’ll dream about it. And sometimes after this type of dream, I’ll wake up feeling more able to cope with the situation.
Last night, during a completely routine dream about purging a church of hordes of bloodsucking undead (there was holy water in Poland Springs bottles stashed all around the church), my dream shifted and suddenly I was faced with a more pressing problem: how to organize my tasks and projects for work.
I guess I’ve been more stressed than I thought about getting my work in good shape before maternity leave. You’d think 5 weeks would leave plenty of time, but I keep getting wrapped up in day to day work, and postponing getting organized for leave. Lately, I’ve started working from home at night to have some uninterrupted time to get things together.
I’ve been working with Things and Evernote lately, and I recently tried out Daylite. I won’t go into detail here, because I plan on reviewing each application separately in later posts, but basically they are task and project manager applications with varying interfaces and features. A combination of these applications made an appearance in my dream, while I frantically tried to categorize tasks in time for other people to use the information.
It’s bad when your dream of fighting vampires is interrupted with work responsibilities. It’s even worse when you don’t technically consider it to be a nightmare until that point.
If you don’t have a key, it’s actually very hard to get into our building. It’s not that the security is tight, it’s just totally confusing.
When someone rings our doorbell, we have it set up so that the system calls a Grand Central (now Google Voice) number, which rings through to my cell phone.
When I get a call from “door?” (I labeled it back when I was only 85% sure that the number spamming my cell phone was the door) I pick up, and am asked if I want to accept the call. I press the button for yes, and am connected to whatever anonymous jerk is ringing my doorbell.
To explain the animosity: it’s never for us - we live in apartment 12, and our door system isn’t very intuitive, so people dial 1-2 all the time and just hope for the best. Not the best deductive reasoning there, but hey, it takes all sorts of people to run a world.
Consequently, I am usually irate, and after saying, “hello? hello?” and waiting about 4 additional seconds, I generally hang up. Lately, the calls have been more frequent, so I just hang up.
Even if I wanted to let this person in (which I don’t, because I don’t know them, and what if they are an axe-murderer?), I would hold down 9 until the door released. This works about half of the time. If I am actually expecting someone, I just go down and let them in.
So, while I appreciate most high tech things, and certainly support electronic systems that make it easier for me to control things from my couch, our doorbell system needs work. Manual systems are a pain, but automated systems that are broken are even worse because they are a tease.
Boo, apartment complex. Although, while you fail at doors, you are kind of accidentally spectacular at security - you can’t automatically let someone in even if you want to. So, good job, I guess.
I need to take a post to highlight this useful site.
Before you purchase anything online, take a second to visit RetailMeNot.com.
This site offers coupon codes and discounts for just about anything. Do a search for the product you are interested in and for the company you are buying from. If there are any coupons available, the site will list the coupon code, the discount amount and the success rate.
Success rate is pretty useful. Once people try the code, they have the option to indicate if it worked for them or not. Coupons with high success appear at the top, with less successful or unreliable coupons below, marked as such.
I’ve used this site for 2 purchases online - my MacBook Speck Hard Shell case and for Shari’s Berries, a company that decorates chocolate covered strawberries the size of oranges. Multiple coupon codes worked on the laptop case, and the Berries coupon took off more than the cost of shipping.
In addition to offering discounts on products, this site also has coupons for services. Jon purchased another web hosting solution yesterday, and received a monthly discount.
So, thanks, RetailMeNot, for offering this service!
If you buy online, check the site out and save some money. Barring that, always Google “the product you want to buy + coupon code” when you purchase online. You may not find anything, but the Internet is pretty amazing due to the sheer number of contributors and a 30 second search is probably adequate to find any readily available, current coupons.
Jon and I have been looking for houses lately, since our rent is going up 25% in August and we figure we might as well take advantage of the $8K tax credit courtesy of the President.
I can trace this behavior back to my childhood. My father used to encourage us to get rid of our excess “stuff” and would cheer every full trash bag that went out. (Full of possessions, not just trash. He was not that excited about plain trash, although it would have been great if he had been.)
Don’t get me wrong - I dig my stuff. I have no sentimentality about belongings, but I have a lot of items that I appreciate, and other items that would be extremely unpleasant to live without. 
