and in further shit economic news, we’re being sued by the bank for foreclosure on the st. pete house, too. this was my first house, and i love it so much… but there’s nothing to be done about it now. all that’s missing to make this excellent time complete is for me to be diagnosed with renal failure at my doctor appointment on friday. (haha, that won’t happen. only a nephrologist would have that sort of expertise, and would have to run a ton of expensive tests first!)

sohei’s dad came by on saturday, in a professional capacity, and we all sat down and discussed what to do about the houses. we came to the conclusion that we should try to short sell both of them, but if that didn’t work, we’d have to let them foreclose. i stopped paying the mortgage on the tallahassee place last month, out of necessity, and will stop paying on the pinellas park house this month. we could afford to keep this house and stay in it, but it’s too much of a commute for sohei. i’m really sad to be losing this house. i know it’s impractical, but i love it. and i love this neighborhood. there’s a big park and recreation center across the street, and a lot of really good non-chain restaurants nearby. i’ll miss la teresita and the sub shop, that’s for sure.

i’ve lived in a lot of houses in my lifetime, and this is my favorite. it’s small, but i like that. i love the layout, and how there are walls of sliding glass doors instead of windows. today, i have the doors open upstairs and down, and there is this wonderful breeze coming through. i’ll miss living so close to the ocean, and the weather it brings. (not that brandon is hours inland, but pinellas county is surrounded by sea on three sides.) i like hearing seagulls outside, and seeing trees, however brushy. there was so much i wanted to do with this place. as much as i like the way it looks now, it could have been even cooler. this house has great bones. little bear’s nursery is perfect, too. there’s just one small window at the top of one wall, so the room never got too hot. (also, no one could break in and steal him, but that probably won’t happen no matter what his next bedroom is like.) and there’s a big closet for his stuff, and a shelf with all his stuffed animals on it. i’ll take some pictures and post them one of these days. and i always liked how, despite being built in the 80s, there isn’t one fluorescent light in this house. not the tube kind i hate, anyway. and it’s so open and bright and there are skylights in the sunken living room. and a cute screened porch out back. for being such a small house, it feels like there’s a lot of space. it manages to be open yet cozy. and it was our first house, and the house we brought our baby home to.

i’ve long since stopped caring about bankruptcy and foreclosure as far as credit scores and stuff go. i know that if sohei has his way, i’ll probably never own another house anyway. (though his dad says you can still get a mortgage, and that a lot of his former clients go on to buy another house, which made me feel better. maybe someday when i’m working again, i can find another house i love and buy it and sohei can just deal with it.) we’ll have about another year here before the bank kicks us out, i guess. then sohei’s dad is supposed to be renting out his house to us. which is very nice of him, and it’s a good house, don’t get me wrong. it’s just that there are no trees, and it was built during the florida housing boom so the plumbing is all cruddy and stuff. (i tend to prefer the architecture/look of 80s houses, as well as the established trees and stuff.) and i never really wanted to live in the suburbs. or, as it’s brandon, exurbs. i guess i’ll just keep making sacrifices for his career and hope that he’ll remember it when i want to stay home with little bear an extra year, or when i want to buy a house in the future… [i would have put my laughing emoticon here, but they're not working again. there seems to be something wrong with my wordpress install lately.]

hmm. updatery…

things have been pretty good. i love being back in my house, of course. i’m waiting to hear back about the tenant paying to fix the broken closet door. the unpacking has been slow going, as i can barely manage keeping up with chores. i’m huge and sore and tired. the playard sohei’s mum got us arrived yesterday, and we put it together without too much trouble. it was confusing at first, but i think after a couple tries, we’ll be good at packing and unpacking it for trips. i can’t wait to get the crib from no-chan’s house and get it set up, but it’s looking like we won’t be doing that until after sohei finishes his bar exam. (he’s going to be away from me for two days next week. ) i think the nursery will be pretty cute when it’s all set up. and my mother-in-law and no-chan are throwing me a baby shower in about a week. i already have everything i need except a stroller and carseat. there are some odds and ends i could use, but i have some gift cards and stuff, so it should be fine. so i don’t really need a baby shower, but it’s always nice to see family. there are going to be a bunch of people there i don’t know, too, which is a little awkward. (hi! i don’t know you! give me presents!) but i’m not throwing it, so whatevs.

little bear seems to be doing okay, as far as i can tell. my diabetes is pretty much under control, so i only have to test twice a day, rather than the four times/day i was doing. strangely, my numbers got a lot better, and i haven’t been throwing ketones (i got ketone test sticks at the pharmacy), when i started eating normally again. i read this forum on gestational diabetes, and some women found that eating 1/2 cup of ice cream before bed helped their fasting numbers and ketone issues. so i started doing that on monday, and my fasting numbers have really improved. also, i haven’t had a positive ketone test all week. i tested after eating the ice cream, too, to make sure it wasn’t causing too much of a spike, and my numbers were still under the limit. i was told my numbers would get worse as the pregnancy progressed, and they still might, but now that i’m pretty much back to eating like i used to, everything’s a lot better. that isn’t to say i’m drinking juice and eating donuts and stuff. i don’t consume as much sugar as i did before the diagnosis. but i’m not being as strict, either. i’ve been eating onion bagels with no problems, for example. i put butter and whipped cream cheese on them, which also seems to help, glycemically. i learned in the nutrition class i took as an elective that eating fats with carbs changes the way you digest the carbs, kind of slowing things down. (which means less of a spike.) the stupid nutritionist i talked to told me to limit fats, and when i asked about the fact that fats delay the conversion to glucose, she hemmed and hawed and said something about how it wasn’t worth it or some half-assed thing. it was like she was claiming i’d only done well on a test because i’d cheated by studying for it. anyway, i find that if i eat “bad” foods like bagels and ice cream, if they’re good and full of fat, it doesn’t cause a negative impact. i knew that lady was an idiot. even sohei now thinks my gd diagnosis is bullshit. (i was borderline before i got pregnant, and being pregnant made things slightly worse, seems like. i will be eating more carefully from now on – not so many icees and sodas and candy bars – but the diet they had me on is ridiculous.) anyway, i thought this was interesting, considering my dieting history and my mum’s tendency to not eat anything and my resulting low birth weight, and how that all ties into my insulin resistance.

unfortunately, brumby isn’t doing too well. he’s had diarrhea for a couple of days, and threw up today, too. if he’s still doing this tomorrow, i’m going to have to make him a vet appointment. (i don’t know how we’re going to pay for it, considering i can’t even afford to pay all our bills in full this month, but if he’s sick, he needs to go to the vet. ) i just hope it’s a bit of a bug and he’ll be fine…

and in other randomness, i got an invite for google voice, and now have a phone number with “gish” in it. which i got stupidly excited about. (i’m probably going to put a widget on here soon that’ll allow you to call me. i don’t know why you’d want to, but it’s a neat idea.) i fixed whatever was causing the issue that wouldn’t allow me to post pics here from my phone, too. and i got this neat app on my ipod that updates my sidebar music thingy with whatever i’m listening to on my ipod at the time, as long as i have wi-fi access.

i think there was more i was going to talk about, but this has gone rather long, and i need to go get a snack.

Now that I know sohei wants to keep the st. Pete house, too, I’m making it my mission to do that. (not that I wasn’t willing to help out or try before, but I feel a lot less depressed after learning we’re on the same page.)

I’m fed up trying to get the Tallahassee house rented. The property manager is useless and I’ve had to do everything myself or watch her like a hawk the whole time to get shit done. So I decided to contact our realtor and she’s willing to try to sell. Since we can’t afford to pay the mortgage after July, I’m going to lower the rent price to the point we’re taking a big loss but still have some help. Hopefully, with the rent price ridiculously low, someone will be interested. If I had my druthers, we’d pay until sohei’s licensed in September, then just quit paying on it while trying to sell. (it’s harder to sell a house as a rental property, but we haven’t much choice at this point.) anyway, if we sell now, we might break even. I just kind of wish we’d given selling it a go earlier, but stupid me trusted the idiot property manager when she said we’d be able to rent the house out at our original asking price. (yeah, she’s pretty much lied to us from day one.) so it’s not the greatest plan ever, but it’s all I have to work with at this point.

As plans are kind of in place for the Tallahassee house now, I have to try to focus on saving the st. Pete house. I looked into government help today so maybe we can get a new mortgage or something, but i think we’ll have to get rid of the Tallahassee house first. At any rate, once we’re settled back into the house, I’ll be talking options with someone over at this community outreach type place. Also, a rather sizable problem is the $400/mo condo fee, and we just got a letter last night saying it’s going up again. I’ll be going to that meeting, and I’ll be running for a position on the board at the next election.

So things aren’t perfect, but considering the circumstances, I think I’ve got this.

the property manager at the tallahassee house is a fucking idiot. if i did go with sohei on saturday, i’d just burn the fucking place down. i don’t want any more ties to that stupid fucking town or the stupid fucking people therein.

some updatery is necessary, i reckon.

yesterday morning, i went to the doctor. he took a quick look and my numbers, said everything is fine, and pretty much left. i asked about the whole losing five pounds thing, and he said there are ketones in my urine and i’m probably not eating enough and to take it up with the nutritionist. wham, bam, thank you ma’am. (i do not like the male doctors at this practice so far, and am hoping like hell i get dr. miller on delivery day. i told sohei i’m thinking about just arranging for a c-section in advance so i know for sure that she’ll be doing it. )

then we left and went to pick up the keys to our house. we went home, and things mostly looked great! i was sooo relieved. there was a rotten spot near the door, which is not the tenant’s fault, but the condo association’s. you’d think for $400/mo they could fix that shit, but no. and there was a similar spot by the garage door. i’ll be calling about that once i’m back in the house. the carpet was mostly fine with the sort of wear and tear you’d expect with a carpet that age. i still dream of replacing it with a nice, light-colored pergo, but that’ll have to wait until we’re not broke. (also, i want to make sure we’ll be there a couple years before undertaking a bunch of projects.) the walls had chips in places that looked like moving-related damage, but should be easy enough to touch up. the walls were always a little spotty in places, due to the previous owner’s smoking habit, but i lived with it before, i can live with it now. while the house is a bit dated (having been built in ‘89), it’s still the house i remember being madly in love with. again, updating will be nice, but is based on finances and how long we expect to stay. i think sohei remembered how much he loved the house, too, because he was talking about maybe staying 2-3 years. dare i dream? also, i think watching the kids play in the fire hydrant in the park across the street and hearing their cries of glee re-endeared him to the neighborhood, and how nice it might be to raise our little guy there.

anyway, the only problem was that one of the bedroom closet doors is shattered. the closet doors in both rooms are glass, and one of the panes in the master bedroom is smashed. i called the property management lady right away (after taking a picture with my camera phone), and she said to have it fixed and let them know how much it costs, so we can be reimbursed out of the deposit. i also think, after looking at the red wall in the bedroom again, that i might paint it to match the rest of the room. i’m not sure i want to change the red in the kitchen, though. i’m also not sure i want to paint little bear’s nursery. i kind of like the color the way it is, and the ceiling is realllly high. i think i’ll just put up some wall art or something. but everything is mostly good, and i’m hoping we stay a few years and i can fix some stuff up a little.

then we went to the sound exchange near our house and got some lunch and went to the nutritionist. (the sound exchange trip also seemed to help reaffirm sohei’s liking of the old neighborhood. this could have been possibly further cemented by a lunch trip to hao wah, but chinese buffets aren’t good eating for diabetics, so we went to chik-fil-a instead.) the nutritionist i saw this time seemed, to me, to be completely grasping at straws the whole time. i asked why my fasting sugar jumped 20 points in two weeks, when i was eating a better diet, and she said my sugars were just going to get worse as the pregnancy progressed. okay, i can kind of buy that, but not by that much. she said my liver was putting out too much glucose overnight. i thought that might be the case, too. and when i showed her the numbers i got when i experimented with taking my sugars every couple of hours one night, she didn’t really have anything to say about the pattern. she also started in on me about my food choices, and said in one instance my numbers were elevated due to eating fried chicken and the breading, etc. i pointed out where it said, right in front of her, that i had taken the skin off and hadn’t eaten the breading at all, but she didn’t have anything to say about that either. (i wouldn’t have eated fried chicken to begin with except that i don’t always have a choice about what to eat for dinner.) then she tried blaming the sugar-free pudding i ate, even though there was no evidence of it raising my numbers at all. i said that, yes, i was absolutely sure it was completely sugar-free, and got pretty snippy at that point considering that she was treating me like a freaking idiot. she pointed out that it has 14 carbs, and i said 1) those come from the fact that it’s a dairy product, which is a perfectly allowable carb, and 2) it’s on the freaking list of approved foods, and as such, i assumed it was okay to eat. i hope if i go back, i get to see the lady i saw the first time, because this one irritated the hell out of me. if you aren’t familiar with your own list of allowed foods, i don’t see why i should trust you regarding anything else. (she said i could fix the ketone issue by eating my morning snack. since it’s an overnight issue, i’d think it has more to do with my bedtime snack not having enough carbs or something, but she didn’t like my bedtime snack choice either. couldn’t really give me a suggestion about what to eat, but again, i was an idiot for eating an approved food on the list and expecting not to go into ketosis overnight, apparently.)

the nurse, however, i love. she was the same one i saw last time, who showed me how to use my meter. we talked about possible solutions to my numbers. and because she didn’t spend the entire time insulting my intelligence and instead gave me actual ideas about solutions, i think i understand better what i need to do. i’m probably going to have to go on insulin, though.

then today i woke up feeling kind of ick. i made my breakfast of yogurt and strawberries, with a sprinkling of no-chan’s homemade granola on top (’twas a good idea, empress, thanks! ), and ate part of it when my vision suddenly went nuts. sohei was out getting his own breakfast, and i was eating and watching tv. out of nowhere, i was unable to focus my eyes. everything got all blurry and “buzzy” and this weird pattern showed up. i tried squinting and closing my eyes, but it just got worse. then i lost peripheral vision in my right eye. as you can imagine, i freaked right the fuck out. when sohei got home, i told him what was going on, and he said to call the doctor. he was supposed to be studying for the bar, since he had the day off, but that never seems to work out for him, poor guy. i tried lying down and calming myself, but i started feeling this weird pressure behind my eyes, so i gave up and made the call. a pre-ecclampsia symptom is nothing to ignore, after all. i got the answering service (because the 3rd of july is now a holiday as well, apparently) and explained what was going on, and one of the doctors i’d never met called back a few minutes later. i told him what happened, and he said to go to labor and delivery for assessment. shit. (we’re still in brandon, and the hospital is in clearwater, over an hour away.)

by the time we left, my head was starting to hurt pretty bad. sohei drove like a maniac until we hit the expressway, which i both appreciate and fear. we got to the hospital alive, and i got checked in and all. after a couple of urine tests, consistent baby monitoring (yay for listening to his heartbeat for a couple hours) and a lot of waiting, i was told that my blood pressure was fine, and there wasn’t much protein in my first test, and none in my second. (i am so, so relieved by this, because it means i probably don’t have a kidney problem after all. though i will still be checking into it one of these days, to make sure.) the doctor never showed up, but the nurse said it was probably dehydration or something. which i guess makes sense because i totally overdid it yesterday. i mean, i drank tons of water yesterday evening, but whatevs. i have to get a blood pressure cuff to use at home, and no-chan has one, so i’m going to use hers. this is mainly so next time i go blind, i can check and see that my bp is fine before bothering the fine people at the hospital.

so that’s what i’ve been up to the past couple of days. is it any wonder i’ve barely been able to stop sleeping since yesterday evening?

sohei found out this morning that the tenant leaves tomorrow! while i’m nervous about what the house is going to look like after being rented out the past couple of years, i can’t wait to go back. i’m assuming that some cleaning and painting is going to have to be done. i bet the carpet’s awful, too, but i doubt i can talk sohei into replacing flooring when we might not even be there next year. we’re going to be over in pinellas on thursday anyway for a couple of appointments, so we’re going to check out the house then. we won’t be able to move our stuff until the weekend of the 11th, so that gives me some time to maybe get some cleaning and painting done.

well, i’m finally back home. we got here on tuesday. i don’t feel much like writing, so here’s the last few days in a nutshell:

may 13th was my last day at work. i went in, tied up some loose ends, went to my baby shower/going away thing, then went home. most of who i thought were my work friends didn’t show to the party, and thankfully sohei was there, because there was something kind of awkward feeling about the whole thing. little bear got a lot of cute stuff, though, so whatevs.

when we got home, we finished packing for our trip and took off for destin. it was a last minute kind of thing, and i packed really light. (as in one dress, one swimsuit, enough undies for four days, shorts, a sports bra, and some toiletries.) the drive was kind of a pain, but the hotel we ended up at was really cute, and it was right on the beach. the view from our room was amazing, and we had a private balcony to enjoy it from. we went right down to the beach to swim, and discovered that where we were swimming was pretty much jellyfish soup. little jellyfish bits were floating around everywhere, and sohei managed to get stung. (there were no whole jellyfish to be seen; just tentacle pieces. i guess something had just had a jellyfish feast and these were the leavins.) the next day we spent practically the whole day down at the beach. i had a shaded chair, but managed to get badly burnt on my legs and chest somehow, regardless. spf 70 sunblock my ass. sohei got really burnt, too, only everywhere because he didn’t have a shade chair. so now the skin on my upper boobs is crepey and blistered, and the sides of my legs are purple. it was really fun until we went inside and discovered how burnt we were. i hardly slept the next two nights because it hurt so bad. since we couldn’t really hang out on the beach on friday, we went and looked at some dunes and stuff, and went to the gulfarium. we saw every animal show and it was fun. aside from the horrible sunburn, the trip was actually pretty nice. since we had a kitchenette, we ate some of our meals on the balcony, and i spent a lot of time just reading and looking at the view. still, thanks to the sunburn and being pregnant, holy edema, batman.

then we went home on saturday and packed and cleaned until monday night. we left for tampa on tuesday morning in separate cars and got here safely despite being rained on the whole time. (i am so glad i never have to make that trip again. especially in my beater of a car.) it’s been super rainy in florida this week, for some reason, but it’s nice because it’s a lot less hotter than usual and maybe it’ll put a dent in the drought.

yesterday we went over to pinellas for my first doctor appointment here. it was so good to see her again, and she totally recognized me! but we found out there was some confusion about the ultrasound results. the doctor who did the scan said i had a marginal cord insertion, but on the report, it said velamentous insertion. the former isn’t a big deal, but the latter is. if it’s velamentous, i could lose the baby. so i’m getting another ultrasound on tuesday to see which of the two it is. if it’s marginal, i’ll have to go in for scans every few weeks to make sure the baby’s growing okay, but that’s it. if it’s velamentous, i’ll have to have an early c-section and hope the cord doesn’t come loose in the meantime so little bear makes it to delivery day. if it does come loose, there’s really nothing we can do. i think that’s what i hate most about this. i could lose him, and there’s no way to fix this so that doesn’t happen. i just have to hope it doesn’t. even if i were on bedrest for the rest of my pregnancy, he could still twist the cord or pull it somehow, and that would be that. i guess i shouldn’t worry until we find out what’s wrong, but it’s so fucking frustrating. there’s around a 1% chance of having this sort of cord problem, so of course it would happen to me.

then we found out today that our tenant is freaking out about having to find a new place to live, so he may not leave when he’s supposed to. which means we’ll have to go through eviction proceedings. which will further fuck up bar stuff for sohei, and i won’t be able to get the house ready before little bear gets here. in fact, we may be bringing the baby home to the room we’re sharing at my father-in-law’s house. great. of course we’d have to rent out our goddamn house to some idiot nutjob. i don’t even like to think about what he’s done to it since he’s been there. i wish he’d just fuck off so i could fix it up and have it ready for the baby. as it is, i’m not going to be able to do much with it, since sohei’s already talking about letting the bank foreclose on it. i love that house so much. i wanted to paint and put in some new floors and stuff, but there’s no point. even if psycho tenant leaves like he’s supposed to, we’re not keeping it anyway. instead we get to be renters for the foreseeable future. i just wanted my own house. i didn’t care if it was small or attached to another house or whatever. i hoped when we came back that we’d stay in the st. pete house for a long time, but it seems like it’s going to be temporary. i’m sick of moving. i want to settle down for a few years in a house that’s mine and that i love.

i guess this ended up being a lot longer than i’d meant it to, but there’s been so much other shit going on, i haven’t been able to vent about this stuff. i don’t really have anyone to talk to about it, and sohei has enough on his mind. besides which, he hates that house for some reason, so there’s really no point in talking to him about it. i thought things would be better when i came back home, but everything’s just a damn mess now. it is good to be back, because i missed it, but nothing’s going right at all. nothing ever does, though, so it’s not like i should be surprised.

yet more bad news today… we got an email from our st. pete realtor suggesting we lower the price on our house, since the market has gone completely to hell. at this point, i guess we’re going to be lucky if we get anything in addition to the money we spent on a down payment for this house. we were kind of relying on that money to, you know, live on. after watching a steady increase on the price of our house over the last two years, i can’t help but feel disgusted that the minute we put our fucking house on the market, it suddenly goes down in value by $10,000. figures.

that was the bad news. this is the worse news: sohei’s boss has died. i’m kind of torn on this. i’m pretty upset that she got sick and now she’s gone. but since she was sick with a pretty painful disease, it’s kind of good that she didn’t have to suffer for the six months they originally gave her. i guess i just wish she hadn’t been so sick at all, of course. i don’t know what else to say about it… it’s obviously pretty depressing. i wish we could be there for the service, but i doubt we’ll be able to make it, especially if it’s on a weekday. there doesn’t even seem to be anyone to send a card to.

i wish sohei didn’t make me keep everything to myself all the time.

woke up late this morning
a storm was really rolling
frogs and dogs are raining from the sky
everything seems awkward to me
nothing is as it should be
if this keeps on i’m sure i won’t get by
then i close my eyes and try to smile
i know things are bad and getting worse
but after this i can rest a while
then i’ll party party

crayon shin-chan english theme

we actually closed on the house yesterday. the termite documents weren’t there, and we didn’t get the rent check, but hopefully this won’t be a problem. i can’t believe that we’re moving in two weeks. i can’t help but feel sad about leaving this house. it really is the coolest house i’ve ever lived in. i do like the new house, but i’m going to miss this one.

and sohei’s home from his trip to the cd store, so i’d better go see what he got.

i. don’t. believe. this.

after getting only three hours of sleep last night, i am unable to sleep again tonight. by nine, i was falling asleep, so i went to bed. sohei came in at around 10:30, which woke me up. i figured i’d be able to get right back to sleep. nope. so here i am, once again, awake.

today was utter hell anyway. we’re supposed to close on our house tomorrow. we didn’t want to have to make the ten hour round trip to tallahassee just to sign a bunch of stuff, so we arranged to have the documents sent to us by this morning (thursday) at the latest. turns out, the idiots at the title company “forgot” to send them. oops. too bad they’re impossible to contact, or we may have been able to salvage the day and send everything back by tomorrow. instead, we will be going up there tomorrow, because now we can’t trust them not to fuck everything up. they couldn’t even spell my fucking name right, and it’s really not that difficult of a name to spell. sohei had to take the day off today because he thought he’d be dealing with paperwork all day. instead, he had to deal with the useless shits at the title company. so now he has to take tomorrow off, too. wonderful.

and i’m not even going to get into the bullshit we’ve had to put up with so far regarding selling our house. we have potential buyers, but they’re morons and assholes. i’ll probably go into detail later, but i’m just not in the mood to have a coronary right now.

and i kind of think i know what i might be interested in doing with my life, but i know sohei will never go for it, so i’m a bit sad and still discouraged. i am interested in law, but i’m afraid i’m not cut out for it. i’m not even sure i can make it into the program… going to school for the rest of my life would be nice, if i could just afford it…

i am going to kill everyone. i am going to go on a murderous rampage, and it’s going to start in hell hole. sorry, tallahassee. i am seriously about to call this off. if one more thing goes wrong between now and wednesday (the last day we can cancel and not pay anything), i am going to sit my husband down and say, we are not going. i am done. this is not worth it. i’m beginning to be really sorry i didn’t call this off a month ago. this is idiocy, and i don’t know why i’m still even doing it.

well, we’re back from tallahassee. and i think we got a house, finally. at this point, i don’t want to say anything is certain, because the seller’s realtor is an ass and will be out of town til thursday, so he isn’t able to fax all the paperwork or whatever. they accepted our offer, though, so i guess that’s the important thing. as long as the paperwork isn’t an issue and the inspection doesn’t turn up something terrible, we should be okay. it’s cute and has a fenced yard for brumby and a loft for me. no fireplace, but i told sohei we probably wouldn’t have ever used it anyway.

and while we were gone, our realtor held another open house. only one person came by. i’m trying not to be nervous about it, because houses around here take 1-2 months to sell, on average, and we’ve only been on market for about a week. here’s our house listing, if you ever wanted to know everything about my house. with pictures!

the only thing making me look forward to the trip this weekend, the house i really wanted to look at, is already contingent. it was the best prospect and it’s gone. needless to say, i didn’t end up putting an offer in on it. i emailed our realtor about doing it, and didn’t get a reply, and sohei still wasn’t too into the idea, so i didn’t do it, and now it’s gone. i knew this would happen. i don’t even want to go now. this weekend isn’t going to be any different from the weekends before it. except that the house i knew i’d really love this time is gone before we could even look at it. we’re not going to find anything, and even if we do, it will be gone the minute we want to put an offer on it. and there goes another $200 or so down the drain on another wasted trip to the stupid hellhole of a town where my husband decided to go to school.

not that it matters, because we’re not going to be able to sell our house. we had one couple come through the entire week, and only two on our open house day. i can’t help but feel that maybe we’re making a mistake here. of course, the new neighbors annoy me, i’m out of a job, and every time i see the driveway now, i think of that poor little kitten lying there.

i’m going to bed now. i have to be well-rested for the big day of disappointment and frustration ahead.

the other day, i was looking at a map of tallahassee and found a street called “sugar bear.” my pet name for sohei – in case you didn’t know – is bear. anyway, when i saw the name of the street, i was like, “awww, i wish a house would open up on sugar bear. can you imagine living on a street with that name?” well, guess what.

a house is up for sale now on sugar bear, and it’s (just) in our price range. assuming it’s still there on saturday, i’ll be going to check it out in person.

cho kawaii!!

i’ve been up for almost three hours now. my stomach is still causing me agony, and i keep breaking fevers and sweating like mad. i think i might be able to put up with this if my guts weren’t making this constant, disgusting noise. it’s really loud and makes me feel even more sick, if that’s possible.

i’m hoping that all the shit i’ve been putting up with lately will be worth it when we go on our final house hunt this weekend. (we’re going even if i have to be wheeled around on a fucking gurney with an i.v. in my arm.) i think i have found the perfect house, and i’m seriously considering just putting an offer on it, because apparently you can do that and pull out within ten days without penalty. though i’m not completely sure i believe that, which is why i haven’t done it yet. it doesn’t seem like a good idea to offer to buy something that expensive without at least looking at it first. so i risk it being gone by the time i get there. in fact, there is a pretty good chance it will be under contract by this saturday, considering the way things go up there.

wow, i’m getting really dizzy and sweaty so i guess i should go back to bed, even if i can’t sleep.

we’re not getting the house. so we have to go back next weekend and look again. and if we don’t find something next week, we’ll have to rent. i am so fucking sick of this.

sohei has pretty much decided that renting would be about as much a pain in the ass as continuing to look for a house, i think, so now i’m not sure what to do. i keep hoping that maybe we’ll still get that house i want so badly. i’ll find out today or maybe tomorrow whether the other buyers are still interested. i still can’t quite get over how completely irrational and unfair this is. we could have easily won the bidding war, and the seller would be so much better off. this whole situation is utterly stupid. it’s looking more and more like i’m going to have to settle on something i don’t entirely want. considering the cost involved, i’m pretty pissed off about that. if we could just be fucking patient and wait til i find something i don’t mind spending 150k on, i’d probably handle this a bit better. as it is, i have absolutely no desire to move anymore. i want to keep this house, which i love, and spend the home equity loan we took out on some neat improvements like wood floors and stuff. actually, sohei’s mood has been so shitty since re-suffering cigarette withdrawal and the crap going on at his job, that i’d like to just send him off to tallahassee and stay here by myself. (we thought it would be okay if we just smoke at concerts and stuff, but he can’t smoke a few for a night and just be over it the next day.)

why can’t i find a house that isn’t tiny or ugly or in need of too much work? one where all our furniture will fit and the wallpaper wasn’t picked out by a crackhead and the flooring hasn’t been completely abused? one that isn’t owned by crazy fucktards that can’t be reasoned with? for fuck’s sake, is it really too much to ask? is there not one house like this in the entirety of that hellhole of a town?

it must be out of our price range.

on saturday, i drove us up to tallahassee to look for a house, for what i thought would be the final time. i (stupidly) had a good feeling about the day, and toward the end of our adventure, i found a house i loved. it was the only house i had seen in all this time that i really felt good about. it was the only one that i felt was worth the asking price. the way i felt about this house was the way i felt when i first saw our current house. complete and total adoration would be an understatement. so we stopped by the last house on the list, which was nice, but didn’t compare to the one we’d just seen, so we went back to the realtor’s office to write up an offer. our realtor had been trying to reach the selling realtor since we’d been at the dream house, and hadn’t had any luck, so she said she’d call us when she heard back. and so i got back in the car and we began our five hour journey back home. (i did a lot of driving that day.) and we didn’t hear back from her. i was trying not to get too excited, because we haven’t had much luck with this so far. every place we’ve wanted goes under contract the day we look at it. but it had been more frustrating than disappointing because i hadn’t really loved those houses. they just seemed like a decent place to live out the next three years of my life. besides, this house had been on the market for about four months, unlike the other places which averaged a couple of days, so there was maybe some hope, right?

so on sunday, we were catching up with our dvr-ed world cup games, and by 2:00 i was going crazy wondering what the hell was going on with our offer. sohei called our realtor and she said she’d just been on the phone with the selling realtor and was about to call us.

i’m sure everyone can guess what happens next.

so she says that there was already an offer, and the seller didn’t even want to look at ours. the selling realtor tried to get her to at least see it, because the other offer was so bad. but, no. the stupid, irrational bitch just wanted to sell her house and didn’t care what our offer was. even though i wanted that house so fucking badly that i was willing to pay $10,000 over the asking price if i had to (our initial bid was the asking price of $150k). i would have done anything to have that house. i would have paid closing costs. i would have fixed any problems the inspection turned up. and now someone who wasn’t even willing to pay the asking price is going to get it because the seller is a fucking moron. and i have to decide whether i even want to deal with this anymore. right now, no, i don’t. we’ll know by wednesday if the sale falls through, and if it does, we’ll be putting in our offer. but it’s very unlikely for that sort of thing to happen, since anyone can get financing these days.

i’m not doing this anymore. i’m tired of the stress and expense. (these trips to tallahassee ain’t cheap.) i’m sick of being rushed to make such a big decision. and i’m damn sure sick and tired of dealing with these idiot sellers that seem completely incapable of rational thought. unless, by some miracle, we get this house, i’m giving up. we’re just going to rent something. maybe we’ll buy later, maybe we won’t. but i’m done with this. the market is insane up there, and all of the prices are far too inflated for this to even be a safe investment. there aren’t any jobs up there, so i don’t even know why so many people are buying houses and the market is this crazy. i can understand some places being like this, where land is completely built up and there’s nothing available, but this is just ridiculous.

i wish we’d never started this. i hate that place already and i don’t even live there yet.

i’m back from tallahassee. here’s how it went, in a nutshell:

it sucked.

and because real estate is so fucking irrational, we aren’t getting the house we put an offer on, despite being willing to give them the full price. which means we’re back to the fucking drawing board. i don’t even give a shit anymore. i’m so sick of this.

by the way, here’s a hint if you want to actually sell your home: set the asking price to be what you actually want for your house, or a bit higher. don’t set it too low and try to counter the buyer by asking for more than the fucking price you set on the house, because we’re going to tell you to go fuck yourselves just on principle.

after listening to the morons next door bang into the walls a million times in the past ten minutes, i finally yelled, “cut it the fuck out!”

and they did.

well, i’m finally feeling coherent enough to attempt an entry.

the trip to tally was nice. the hotel was way nicer than the one we stayed at last time, and i think it was only around $20 more per night. so that was good. oh, and there was a restaurant with bar, and the drinks were really strong, so we spent our evenings there.

as for looking at houses, it was good and bad. the good is that we found a style of townhouse we like, and it’s only about 15 minutes from the law school. the bad thing is that these are very limited, and the only ones within our price range are either rather crapped-up and need work i’m not sure we can handle, or are leased out beyond the time we’d need them. and everything else we looked at in town was yuck. we also looked at crawfordville (in wakulla “we’ll kill ya” county. the realtor said that was the nickname, and i can see why.) it takes at least 45 minutes to drive from crawfordville to tallahassee, though, so we’ve pretty much had to cross that off our list, though the pretty new houses beat the hell out of most of everything we saw in town. at my favorite house – which was surrounded by trailers – the neighbor across the street has a rooster. i really wanted to live there, but alas, commuting sucks.

and there’s other stuff, but i want to close everything down and get the fuck out of here before any students come along. sure, it’s about 15 minutes early, but it’s monday and i don’t get paid enough to look at the clock that closely.

i finally heard back from the realtor, thank god. we’ll be discussing our options later this afternoon. this leaves me time to pack and get ready for the trip, and clean up around here a little. we originally intended to put the house up on may 15, which is a week from now. which means we’ll be spending the whole weekend getting the house ready to show. we haven’t fixed everything or done any landscaping, but i’m hoping that at least the house will be clean. i think, when i go back to work next week, i’m going to make some pamphlets with info and selling points to hand out when people come to look at the house.

i’m really going to miss this place. it’s the coolest house i’ve ever lived in. i keep hoping we’ll be back someday.

i’m really, really close to going on a murderous rampage. if i have to deal with one more fuckstain this week, i’m going to kill whoever it is.

first, i had to deal with that stupid bitch of a professor. i sent a polite (incredibly difficult), well thought-out email with proof of why i felt my grade was inappropriate, and of course all i get back is bullshit. she either deliberately misread what i wrote, or she’s a fucking idiot. she didn’t address any of my points and her reply pretty much boiled down to: “i’m always right and i’m not conceding an inch, and don’t bother trying to go over my head because i’ve already warned the head of the department that you’re a liar.” needless to say, i will be requesting a different advisor, since i’m stuck at this fucking awful school. so much for a perfect gpa.

then, i just got a call from our realtor. he decided he doesn’t want to help us if we’re not buying right away, and doesn’t want to work within our price range. a little inconvenient, seeing as sohei already asked for those days off, and i made non-refundable reservations for a hotel, and we’re leaving on wednesday. it’s not like i didn’t tell him, when i first contacted him a month ago, what we needed and what we expected out of this trip. that’s what really pisses me off about this whole thing. i was honest and up-front about the fact that we knew nothing about the town, and didn’t intend to buy/close until july or august. he knew this from the start. i also made him aware of what price range we intended to work with. so he decides, a month later, two days before we’re supposed to meet, that he doesn’t want to help us. he was incredibly insulting about it, too, insinuating that it was a waste of time and resources considering how little we wanted to pay for a house. little does he know, we met with our mortgage broker yesterday, and it turns out we can pretty much afford nearly twice as much as i first estimated, which is a reasonably big chunk of change, indeed. oh well. that’s what he gets for being such an asshole i guess. i’ll be sure to let his boss know all about it when i write his company to complain about his shitty attitude.

in the meantime, despite having such incredibly short notice, sohei managed to find a different agent that might be able to help us out. i’ll be talking to her when she gets out of her meeting at five. i appreciate that he went to the trouble (considering i was incapable of voicing anything but loud obscenity at the time), but i’m not holding my breath. he says he told her everything about our situation, but we’ve obviously been there before. so we’ll see what happens. we’re still going up to tally, since we can’t get a refund on our hotel, but i don’t think we’ll be doing quite as much house hunting as i previously thought.

anyway, i have to go drink some olive oil now, for my kooky diet.

i think i’ve already infuriated the realtor. and possibly the mortgage broker. this isn’t going to end well.

i’m a sad sod today…

i think it has something to do with another night that went back and forth between sleepless and nightmare. the worst nightmare being the following:

it seemed very real, to begin with. it was the middle of the night, and i got up to look out the sliding glass doors in our bedroom, stopping to pet sleeping brumby on the way. i pull one of the blinds aside and look down at my car, in the driveway. the trunk is open, and then someone lowers it a bit, and it turns out to be mum. i start screaming, and she looks up at me, and seems kind of sad, and then i wake up, sweating like crazy.

pain woke me up again last night around 3:00, and i took my next-to-last painkiller and tried to go back to sleep. but then i couldn’t because i kept thinking about all the stuff i’m supposed to do today. like rsvp for a baby shower, and call our mortgage guy to see if he’ll help us again, and dealing with the new realtor, etc. don’t forget, i hate calling people. and i hate having all this responsibility, regarding the house. i pretty much dealt with the whole mess single-handedly when we bought this house. and now i have to sell it and find a new one, and sohei expects me to time these things perfectly somehow, so we go right from one to the other. and i’m wondering if we’ll even be able to get a loan, seeing as he’ll be a student, and i’ll be unemployed at first.

so i’ve spent the morning looking at some of the properties the realtor sent, and crying off and on. i’m so tired. i feel guilty that i screamed in terror upon seeing my mum, instead of running outside and hugging her or something. (i take this to mean, however, that i’m fully conscious of the fact that she’s dead, instead of having those dreams where i think she’s alive, and then remember she’s not, and get really depressed. i think screaming upon seeing someone standing outside your house, who is supposed to be dead, is not an unusual response.) i’m also stressed and bummed about the listings i got. i have no idea what we can afford, but the ones that seem more reasonable are tiny and/or ugly. we’ll be listing our current house at $170,000 since that’s what the other houses like ours are selling for, but i didn’t want to spend more than $110,000 which is what we paid for this house. i reckon we can afford more, but i want to have some money available in case of emergency and whatnot. since, you know, we’re going to be broke college kids again. at first, i was just going to get an apartment, but since a lot of them seem to be populated by drunk, noisy undergrads, i thought maybe we should just get a house after all. especially since we’ll be heavily taxed on our house profit if we don’t put it into another house.

and my sister is leaving for mexico this weekend. by herself. to live with strangers in a place where two cops were just beheaded. and she won’t be back for a month or so, i guess.

i want to fast-forward to august. i want my sister back, safe and sound. i want to have sold the house and bought a new one that i actually like.

but the next few months are going to be long and hellish, i reckon. i’m moving to a town i don’t know anything about, where i don’t know anyone. i don’t know which neighborhoods are scary or noisy. i don’t know where i’m going to work. i’ve been really nonchalant about this, but i’m beginning to panic. as usual, i’m supporting sohei, but no one’s supporting me.

i’m feeling really alone again.