Hey Pam--this is why I was disappointed in the cakes I made for you. This cake I made for my sister-in-law's baby shower. I had more time to work on it, more space, and my kids were being watched over, as I spent the day at my mother-in-law's house. This took about 6 hours. It's one of the rare times I've been really proud of something I've made.
With that said, I think I'd be pretty comfortable using fondant on any cakes I'd make for you in the future (if you'd want me to make cakes for you again) because that's what I used to sculpt the baby, moon, and stars on this one. All handsculpted, except for the stars, when I used a cookie cutter. The fondant tasted yummy, and I know it's easy enough to make now.
Finally, today Illyria started walking! I was visiting an old coworker of mine back from when I worked in the call center. She just lives a few streets down, so I wanted to take the girls down to talk to her and let her know that we're moving. Illyria was standing quite a bit while we were talking, and she finally took more than one step at a time. I think the count was up to 5, so I'd say that counts as walking :).
I finished those cakes I was making for a birthday party for the two daughters of a friend of mine. I put in about 9-10 hours between the both of them baking and decorating. So, after that I was pretty worn out. So what do I then proceed to do? Offer to make the cake for my sister-in-law's baby shower on May 4th. I am just a little crazy :P. However, I won't have to make that cake in the middle of the week, as the 4th is a Sunday. I can probably spend all day Saturday working on it, and I bet I can even convince the mother-in-law to let me make the cakes over there so she can watch over the girls. Transport of the cake will be much easier that way, too.
Not much else is going on. I'm packing, cleaning, and trying to get other things in order. Our workload is increasing, not only by the amount of dictations, but we have to complete 200 more lines per day by the end of May. I thought it was 1300 total lines at first, as my boss mentioned that in her email, but she was just referring to what she was required to do in a job she had before this current one.
Ok, so a friend of mine and I were talking about how he finally lost track of his hypoglycemia anniversary after 9 years. For me, it’s not so easy to forget.
Actually, the anniversary of the condition was yesterday. April 2003 was set up exactly like this April date-wise--my birthday was on a Tuesday. I was working at a call center at the time. My roommate had recently been deployed to Iraq, and my boyfriend (now husband) had moved in with me to help out.
Since my birthday was on Tuesday, I took a four-day weekend. That year I had a pirate party. The party was either Saturday or Sunday. Regardless, I remember waking up Saturday morning, and after a few minutes of talking my voice went out. I thought that was strange, but I just didn’t talk that much, even when I had my pirate party, which we spent watching stuff like Muppet Treasure Island and eating Long John Silver’s. I assumed that maybe it was just a case of laryngitis, but it felt different. My voice didn’t hurt; it just wasn’t there.
Of course, this led to a really nasty situation at work with being accused of faking it, and I ended up leaving the job and being unemployed for a while. I didn’t know what I had until years later, which is documented in this journal around the beginning of January 2005, or late December. It was basically a New Year’s discovery. I had gone to a doctor and was being treated, but we didn’t really know what it was until I did the research myself a couple of years later.
Today I called my dad, and he looked at the anniversary in a positive way. He didn’t look at in a "look what you have to deal with for the rest of your life" way, but "look how far you’ve come since then" way. Since I got spasmodic dysphonia, I got married, had two kids, I’m moving into my first house, and I’ve got a better paying, more steady job after going to school (the aforementioned job was shut down and moved elsewhere a couple of years back, I believe, and that’s after they cut down on staff members and closed a bunch of stores. My aunt (mom’s sister) was included in the downsizing). It’s a good thing I got out of that job, but the circumstances behind it weren’t that great.
Anyway, today we went to a birthday party for my husband’s grandma. We went to the Avenue Bar. HORRIBLE food. I can’t see how they got such rave reviews, but I got a veggie burger, which shouldn’t be too hard to make right, and the thing was so dry it was crumbling. I wasn’t even sure if we were going at first, because Seluna puked at 4:00 this morning. So, we’re all tired, and I’m just about to head to bed myself. Later on I have to work. We’re probably doing a birthday party for me tomorrow, as my husband has off of work that day (today he was working, so I rode in with his parents to his grandma’s party). My aunt (dad’s side) called me about where to send a birthday card to. I don’t think I’ve gotten a card from them for my birthday in years. I guess the fact that we’re moving just a few blocks away has reminded them I do celebrate a birthday from time to time :). I’m not bitter--I just think it’s kind of funny. As long as my kids have their birthdays recognized, I really couldn’t care less about mine.
Now I know I shouldn’t be really comparing my kids to each other, and certainly not to other children. But I’ve been wondering about how Illyria is compared to Seluna. Sometimes I’ve wondered if Illyria was developing more slowly, and maybe this is clouded by the fact that I’ve been used to a chattering toddler for years. Seluna was walking at 13 1/2 months or so, and Illyria’s 15 months and is still worried about taking those few steps--she’s taken one here or there but she really prefers to crawl. That isn’t a big deal, but I wondered about stuff like speech, too. I think I remember Seluna talking more, or at least more clearly. But then I started reading about things. Illyria is very technically-minded. I had my suspicions earlier, but now that I’ve read some milestone information, she’s definitely ahead in that area. She’s been stacking blocks for a while, takes things apart, and really tries to understand how things work. Seluna definitely wasn’t like that, so I think that’s one way the girls will be very different. I wouldn’t be surprised if Seluna is the social butterfly while Illyria spends her time studying. Illyria’s also very musically inclined. She dances (well, as much as one can dance without walking) and is a great mimic--if you make a sound, she parrots it back note for note. It’s just amazing how different two siblings can be.
I’m just posting this mostly to show this revelation I had. I get so worked up about various things sometimes, and wondering about Illyria being "behind," so to speak, is just one of them. I just have to realize that the girls are very different individuals. I mean, Seluna was a pain when she was a baby. She had colic and cried a lot. Illyria was just about perfect in that regard. She also hasn’t made the big poop painting masterpieces like Seluna did :).
In other news, we’re slowly getting through what we need to for the house. I’ve been going through stuff in the garage and inside the house. I’ve been thinking about when to set up Charter at the new place and when to disconnect it here, but I guess maybe I’ll have to think about that more when the time comes. I’ll probably finally drop Vonage--who knows how long they’ll be around now, anyway--and take Charter’s phone service, just because I’ll get that discount for having all three, and it saves my having yet another service bill.
Before I started cleaning out the garage, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you how destructive mice are.
Yesterday we had the house inspector go to our new house, and he found very little wrong with the place. Even up in the attic, there were no signs of any infestations ever, which is not what one would normally expect, even though this place is newer.
That’s not the case with our current garage. Now, when we found out we were for sure moving in June, I decided to finally go through the boxes in the garage. Many were just left open with toys and books showing.
I don’t think that there had been mice in the garage till this past year. I’ve looked at boxes in there before, and there was never anything in them outside of some spiders--which are everywhere around here, and such a pain to deal with. But now, just about every box I’ve looked in has had shredded paper and mouse droppings. One box, which was the first that clued me into there being mice in the garage, had a tunnel formed in some shredded paper.
Today I went through a couple of boxes. One box had some of my husband’s old Hallmark ornaments in them. I got on his case years ago about not caring about his ornaments (as my family always kept our ornaments in their original boxes and stored them in a cedar chest), and I eventually ended up buying about half of them again. His Cat in the Hat ornament (one I had replaced, but I didn’t know where the original was) had about half of the ball gnawed on. This cheap Frazetta statue/figure I had was also chewed on, but I thought about just giving that to my dad or giving it away at a garage sale prior to discovering the destruction. I hadn’t known this, but some candy products that had been gifted to us that had stayed in their original boxes were thrown into the garage, too. One such item was an M&M Minis toy that apparently had a couple of packages of M&M Minis. The mouse/mice had left the box in good condition except for a small area where it nibbled through the plastic to grab the M&M Minis packages, then it shredded open those bags and left them in the box. Persistent little buggers. I’d have thought they would have chewed through the cardboard before the plastic.
I’ll have to let the office know at some point that there had been a mice infestation in the garages. Our garages are these cheap particle board things that are detached. You know how storage units are set up? That’s essentially how these garages are set up--they are built with multiple garages set up next to each other, maybe 8-10 at most depending on where in the complex they are. Last year there was a fire in one of them a few streets down, which, due to the cheap construction, the unit was rebuilt quickly. Stupid garages don’t even have garage openers, and they are such a pain to open--many of the garages are broken in some way. Ours is just missing the rope to pull the thing down, and the light is out in it. It was because of the missing rope and my stupidity that I broke a finger a few years ago. An almost completely flattened finger is an interesting sight.
Anyway, stuff I’m most looking forward to with having this house: -A big kitchen that has lots of storage space and counter space. -New appliances that are energy efficient and actually work like they should. -Overall more space with the ability to have another bathroom, bedroom, and rec room in the basement. -Not having to deal with all of these insects from the woods including the colony of ants that sneaks in every year and the nasty spiders and harvestmen that are all over. I know I have to expect some at some point, but since I’ve already been to the house and have seen areas that haven’t been messed with in at least months, I’m guessing I’ll deal with less than here. I have never dealt with so many bugs before I moved into this apartment, including the trailer and my two previous apartments. This house is horrible for someone with arachnophobia, as the spiders will come in by the dozens a few times a year. -Having a garage with a garage opener that is attached to the house and can fit more than one vehicle in it. -Not dealing with people parking like idiots blocking our car in (most people know not to park in front of your driveway, and that’s a quiet street, too--no churches or businesses around that would cause a lot of people to park on the street). -Being able to have a garden and do basically whatever I want to the yard within reason, since there isn’t anything in the condo docs saying we can’t.
No, I’m not excited about getting out of here at all :P. June 4th can’t come soon enough.
The inspection is on for 3:00 Monday. I received confirmation about that today. All of my husband’s family wants to go, but it’s imperative that we hear what the inspector is saying. As such, I doubt it we would be able to tell his family they could not come, so we will have to make it clear to them that we need to know what is being told to us.
The girls will not be a distraction. I called up my grandfather, who is just a few blocks away, and he told me he would just "hate that" when I asked if they wanted to babysit. Of course, he said this when you could tell he was smiling on the phone. He’s excited that we will be so close to him now because he really truly loves seeing the girls. In fact, he just told me about how he was telling some friends about how we’re moving into town and how the girls are just dolls. And he was telling me that if I can’t have a garden, I can take lots of their stuff, as much of it rotted on the vine last year because they had too much.
Sometimes I’ll just be sitting here and I’ll smile, since I know it won’t be long before we have our own house.
My husband just got a raise with work, and I’ll be able to put in basically as much time as I want to with work soon, so it’s nice to know that we shouldn’t have any problems paying off the house.
Finally, after dealing with offers that have fallen through, shady realtors, and almost all houses on short sale, we finally have an accepted offer!
We’ll be moving to Columbus. Much smaller than here, but I was born there, and I grew up there for a while. I know where places are, and many are within walking distance (for those who aren’t afraid to walk a mile here or there, anyway). I’ve got more of a support network there or closer to there--we’re about halfway between Beaver Dam and Sun Prairie, so it’s easy for us to just visit my husband’s family or mine. While the distance is greater by 10 miles or so to Sun Prairie now, the difference in time is only 24 minutes away versus the 18 we have been spending, as now it’ll be mostly highway. Christmas won’t be such an exhausting event because we won’t have to go the half hour or so to Beaver Dam and back twice--it’ll only be 15 minutes (or an hour total if you take all of the transit time versus the two hours we spent before)! And the nice thing is that we won’t have to just leave presents at my husband’s parents while we go do the other Christmas houses--we can make a quick stop back to our own to drop things off. And heck, I can just walk to my grandpa’s in Columbus for Christmas, and we don’t have to just make it a short trip.
So the deal with the house is that it’s a half duplex, and the house is considered a condo, but we have no condo fees. We only have to pay insurance. They sold off the houses before they got all of the legal stuff done about lot lines and all of that, so there are no condo fees. It’s in the best shape of all of the places we looked at, and had it been available around here, it would have probably cost over $190,000. I can guarantee it wouldn’t be on the market, because it would have been snatched up immediately. Three bedrooms, two bath, and we have the option to finish off the basement for another bedroom, bath, and family room. It’s only five years old, and we don’t even have to clean the carpets or repaint before we move in, because it looks like the woman was a bit, shall we say, anal retentive. She had a kid, and outside of the fact that she had a nursery and there were pictures on the wall, you would never be able to tell with the condition of the floors and carpet. The house has been on the market for a while, and they had to keep on lowering the price. One woman looked at the place three times, but she never put in an offer.
We had some snags at first. We put in our offer of $150,000, which was higher than the low, but it was one of those value range places, meaning that they wanted the higher end of the range. The seller’s realtor called ours and said that he thought it would go through fine, as the house had been on the market for a while. I guess the husband wanted to go for it, but the wife pulled a fit and requested 1,000 earnest money (why, I have no idea, because it just sits in escrow, so it’s not like she gets it right away anyway) and she wanted the washer and dryer. I said fine--I want a front loading washer and dryer anyway. She had wanted $153,000, but our realtor made it very clear that was our limit, so that’s why she decided to hit the appliances. About 2:00 today I got the call saying that was good enough, and that we had an accepted offer. No counter offers or anything, because we had to rewrite the offer to purchase as our realtor put it on the wrong type at first. We didn’t even have to move the closing date up from June 4th, which we set so we wouldn’t have to pay both rent and a mortgage the same month. I was afraid that she would request more of the appliances or something.
So it’s all very exciting. I’ve been living in apartments for the last 8 years, and I’m just sick of it.
Soon I’ll have to plan out putting stuff on Craigslist. I’m going to get rid of our furniture set and get some new ones, since these have been hit pretty rough. I’d prefer to move as little of the large items as possible.
So, I’m catching movies that everyone else saw a year ago on the movie channels, as I just don’t go to the theater unless I really want to.
Disturbia has been on for maybe a month now. I’ve only caught it from about halfway through. Watching the movie, I would have assumed it took place in California. When I went to Wikipedia to read up on it, I found out it was supposed to take place in Springdale, WI.
If one is trying to say that a film is supposed to take place in a certain state, country, whatever--you’d think they would at least try to make it look a little convincing? I even just mentioned to my husband on the phone that it was supposed to take place in Wisconsin, and he said "It looked like California to me, so I just assumed that’s where it was." Now, it’s true that Wikipedia could be wrong, as it often can be, but jeez...
In other movie news, I guess the filmmakers in Columbus are a bit disappointed with the snow situation. See, the snow is mostly melting. I think someone needs to tell Hollywood that mid-March is when spring comes to Wisconsin, and we don’t live in three feet of snow for most of the year. Granted, it is supposed to stay cooler this next week, and even snow a little more, but we usually are mostly rid of snow by the end of March at the latest in southcentral/southeastern Wisconsin. Apparently, they were planning on using fake snow in the form of mashed potato flakes to help make up for the lack of snow. Problem is, Monday, the first day of filming (out of 1.5 days) it’s supposed to rain. Bring your sour cream and gravy.
