Thankful For...

So I'm going to try to post every day something good that happened to me or something I'm thankful for.

I was looking through my pictures for the past 2 or 3 years, and for 2005 - 2007 I have SO many photographs I took, a lot of great times I want to remember. I think I've spent the better part of 2008 just... waiting. Waiting for the next thing, waiting for something else to happen. I took a crappy job at the end of '07, then a few months later Andrew moved 100 miles north to take a job. From then on, it was a waiting game to finish my degree, get our house rented, and move north to be with him in Phoenix. Now I'm working a job I enjoy, but it's LOOONG hours and stressful as hell, and I'm just counting down until the election... 79 days from today.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, for 2008 so far I have... two pictures. Two. Surely I've done more fun and interesting things that than! There must be more I want to remember and be happy about than that! There definitely is.

So every day, I am going to try to make a note of the good things. To remind myself that things are good NOW.

Let's get on with it.

Today, Sunday August 17, I'm thankful that I just found out V. won't be working with us anymore.

I'm also thankful because I made some AWESOME blondies with pecans and chocolate chips. Andrew's favorite, and so fast... yumm!

Blondies with Pecans and Chocolate Chips

Adapted from Bon Appetit, July 1998

2 cups all purpose flour + 2 tbsp

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

10 tbsp unsalted butter

2 cups golden brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup dark chocolate chips

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Mix 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in medium bowl. Melt butter in large saucepan over low heat. Remove saucepan from heat. Add sugar and whisk to blend. Whisk in eggs and vanilla extract. Gradually stir in flour mixture (batter will be thick). Toss chocolate chips and pecans with

remaining 2T flour and fold into batter. Spread batter in prepared pan. Bake blondies until tester inserted into center comes out with moist crumbs attached, about 25 minutes. Cool blondies in pan on rack. Cut into squares and serve.

I first made this in February of this year. Andrew loved them! Every time I've made them, however, I've had issues with the edges getting way too brown before the center is anywhere near done. Tonight was no exception, but instead of letting them get too brown I just went with gooey blondies. To each his own, I suppose... we're eating them now, and they're just as delicious. I guess now I just can't bring them to the office tomorrow, but oh well, more for us!!

Pictures

This is my living room when we first moved in right after we painted... it's a great color for cozying-up a big empty space, but it definitely needed art. I'll take a picture of what it looks like now, soon.















This is my kitchen table. Andrew liked it because his parents back in Illinois have a coffee table just like it. :)













This is my kitchen... sorry it's blurry... but you can see our sweet stainless appliances!!!




These are our dogs!!!

This is the place that I live. Seriously. I just stepped out onto my front porch and took this picture, totally un-edited. Love!!!!

Oops, forgot I had a blog!

Soooo I totally forgot that I have this blog until I went to comment on something today and found myself mysteriously logged in to this account haha
Anyway, we are successfully in the house... I love it... We got super busy right after moving in, tho, so we haven't done nearly as much as I wanted to. Here's the run-down:

• Painted the LR and adjoining dining room this great pale mocha
• Got the new couches, lamps, side tables into the LR
• Hung some art in the LR
• New dining room table and chairs
• Just recently hung some art and a huuuge mirror in the dining room, because it has no windows and was dark
• Replaced all the appliances in the kitchen with stainless... SO gorgeous!
• Set up the office with two little desks and two little filing cabinets :)
• Painted our bedroom this bright azure blue... a lot brighter than I intended!
• Hung curtains in our bedroom
• Got a new bed (queen sized instead of just double, yay!) and pretty bed linens to try to pull our otherwise empty bedroom together
• Got two puppies!!!!! Yay puppies!!!!!

Well, I just found out that my gramma, who helped us with the downpayment, is coming to AZ for the first time in years this January, so I want to make sure the place is totally ready for her to see and love. Projects that must happen:

• Get some sort of side tables for the bedroom so I can get the crap off the floor
• Move a shelving unit from our LR into the laundry-- kills two birds with one stone-- declutters the LR and gives storage in our dinky laundry closet
• Hang some shelves in the dining room to display the china she gave me
• Fix the drawer I broke off in our kitchen haha
• Buy a shower curtain for the master bath
• Fix up the front entry, inside and out, so it looks inviting

Annnnd, final list, if I can scrap together enough money I would like to:

• Put together the guest bedroom nicely-- paint, new linens, curtains, maybe a new end table, hang a piece of art or two
• Get some art for behind our couch, like we've meant to forever
• Best case toal dream scenario: finally put in our back patio like we've wanted to forever... right now it's all just dirt!

I quit my job and went back to school as of August, so money is tight right now. We're basically living off of one income, Andrew's, plus the $800 per month I'm making working part time on a political campaign. We were talking about trying to rent out the house, but know that I know gramma's coming, I absolutely have to stay in the house long enough for her to see it. So ummm yeah I'm getting a 2nd job working nights at a hotel, in addition to working 20 hrs / week at this political thing, in addition to taking 6 courses at the U of A, in addition to being the on-campus coordinator for Obama for President. Oh, and I like to sleep and play poker sometimes too, but I guess we all make sacrifices... haha

It's Always Something

Okay. The signed addendum has been faxed to my mortgage company.
Check.

Remaining problems / issues:
--Waiting a little while to call my lender and find out when he's emailing the loan docs to my escrow officer. Then I need to pin the title company down on when this will record, and then I need to call Joe and tell him I want the keys AT closing, not after we record.
--Actually, I need to make sure that the title company will still let us close at 11am tomorrow. She said we might not be able to if the loan docs don't arrive in a timely fashion... gah!
--Andrew thinks we can get the appliances delivered in the afternoon afterall... now we need to find out HOW late. Anything before 4pm I think is pushing it, if Joe won't agree to hand over the keys until we record.

My heart is beating about a million miles a minute right now... I'm alone in the office and there's nothing to distract me from the thought that I must have dropped the ball somewhere... or, worse, someone else did...

I just got off the phone with my mom. My family is coming down from Phoenix on Saturday to bring me all the junk that's been cluttering up their garage for 9+ months and to help move the crap from my apartment to the house. Yay! They're going to pick up my coffee table too, so that will be fun! My mom is great, talking to her calmed me down a little at least.

A Little Good News

I just called my loan officer, who told me that we can probably just get this bad boy signed at closing. So that's good.

Last hurdle seems to be that I want Andrew's name on the property, even though only mine is on the mortgage (for now-- we're going to re-fi once we both improve our credit a little). My escrow officer told me that I'll have to get a letter from National Bank of Kansas faxed over approving it... not sure why...
I mean, if it's going to slow things down, then I have no problem owning my own house! But I would really prefer he be on there. We want joint tenancy with right of survivorship, that way if anything happens to one of us the other will not have to deal with trusts, weird inheritance issues, family disputes, etc. We recently signed the domestic partnership register here in the City of Tucson, so that seems to be the way to go.
UPDATE: I just got off the phone again with my loan officer... he says this will be no problem to have Andrew on the title. The only problem is that he has to come to the closing. This throws a serious wrench into our idea of having the appliances delivered tomorrow, but mayyyybe we can find someone to go wait at the house for us? Or something??? I guess Andrew will have to decided whether he would rather have his appliances on time, or be on the title to the house. His call!

Speaking of which, I'm still worried about the legalities and logistics of having just my name on the mortgage right now. My realtor went to law school, and keeps telling me we'll get some sort of protection written up for us to sign and have notarized... but so far, we haven't. Understandable, he's busy, but it's scary to think that if (god forbid) anything happened between me and Andrew and he walked out, I'd have a $1200 / month mortgage all on my own. Or that once he's on the title, he could claim have of the house even though right now only my money has gone into it.
And of course I do not think there's the slightest possibility this could happen. But I'm so tired of seeing women get screwed because they're too much in love to do the smart thing, they're too worried about looking bitchy / greedy / suspicious to get some protections for themselves. This is OUR house, but should "we" cease to exist, but bet your sweet ass I'm going to get my time and money's worth back out of it-- with interest haha.

Yesterday I signed and faxed back the Seller's Property Disclosure, but the Seller's agent has already lost it. Surprise surprise, he's lost just about every document we've ever sent him (including an HOA questionnaire which he MUST get back to us today but apparently has never heard of... idiot...). So I faxed it again.
If he ruins this closing date for me, he is in BIG trouble!! But I'm being nice right now, because I want him to give me the keys tonight... that way Andrew can wait at the house for his darn appliances while I'm signing closing papers.

I'M EXCITED!
(AND SCARED!)

The Waiting Game

I'm feeling sick to my stomach from waiting to hear from my realtor... I want to know what's happening!!!
He said last night that we may be able to work this out with just a signed thing from me, maybe the seller won't even have to sign it... so that would most definately speed things along.
Which is good, because I found out last night that Andrew scheduled all of our new appliances to be delivered ON Friday!!!

...I wish someone had warned me that closing dates are never set in stone. Seriously. Isn't there a manual about this stuff??

Contract Problems

Wouldn't you know it, not 10 minutes after my last post but I already have a headache to blog about.

So I'm walking back from the bank, I had just gotten my income verification, when I gave my realtor a call. He says, "We have one more hurdle to jump through with the contract."
Oh my god, my heart just sank!!
So I know that National Bank of Kansas won't give you "extra" money on your loan for home improvements, etc. I know this because I asked-- the one thing I HATE HATE HATE about the house is the master bath / closet sitch. You have to go into the (already a little cramped) master bath in order to access the closet. What? Who's idea was that?? What if Andrew is in the bathroom and I need to find shoes... or something??? Well anyway, I wanted to take off the doorframe from the closet door and patch that over w/ drywall, and then create like an arch or a cut-out or something from the bedroom itself into the closet.
But that's a story for another day (and a larger budget). The point is, NBK wouldn't fund my nonsense. So we had standard contract language that said "this includes any built-in speakers, blinds...." so on and so forth. But the new underwriter at NBK is being a TOTAL bureaucrat and won't approve the contract without an addendum stating that the price of the house was not inflated to get those things. What!
So now my realtor has to WRITE UP an addendum... get it to me... get it to the seller's agent (who is so awful, we're pretty sure he's on crack)... get the seller's agent to get it to the seller... get it faxed back... and hopefully get everything approved so that I can close at 11AM ON FRIDAY!!!
...Because I have appliances, couches and a kitchen table being delivered Saturday morning. Gah!!