Need to go private!

Faithful readers,

I need to make my blog private for awhile ... please send me an email or leave a comment with your email address, so I can send you the password information if you still want to be a reader.

I'll be making the change over the weekend.

THANK YOU FRIENDS!!

Love and Hate.

I both hate and love Mr. FEO's work schedule.

The love part - we sometimes have random days off together, and someday if we're ever lucky enough to be parents, we won't really need daycare since he's home a lot.

The hate part is much more extensive. I have gone to many weddings and parties on my own because Mr. FEO is stuck at the station for 24, 48, 96 or however many hours in a row. I have another wedding to attend in October....

(SIDEBAR: I just got totally interrupted by our office senior aides asking me useless questions about what mail I get - um, I get the mail addressed to me???? And they still had my maiden name on the form they were using - I changed my name 18 months ago and there's a big name plate on my cube AND mailbox in the back ... anyway, I lost my train of thought - GAH, I'm so ADD sometimes)

....Where was I? Oh yeah... I'm doing the reading at church for the wedding I'm attending in October. I'm bitter about not being a bridesmaid - this was my closest college friend who I lived with for 6 years - but that's beside the point. Mr. FEO can't come to this wedding with me because he's working. So I'm bringing one of my girlfriends because frankly, I don't really even want to go. I'm really hurt by the fact she didn't even ask me to be a bridesmaid. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding AND did one of our readings.

So I hate going to weddings and parties alone. That part sucks about Mr. FEO's work schedule.

But something else that sucks? If he wants someone to work for him without having to pay it back, we have to PAY the other person. For example, he's coming home from work around 9pm tonight since he has to teach at the college tomorrow morning. So someone is coming in for the second 12 hours of the shift ... this week and next week. We have to pay him union rate for the hours so that Mr. FEO won't have to work two 12 hour shifts for him in return. $360. So all the money he'll earn teaching is going right to this kid. What's the point????

The plus side of that I guess is that he'll sleep in bed with me tonight. <3

I think that's the hardest part ... some people say I'm fortunate that my husband is gone a lot. I don't necessarily agree. I am sometimes jealous of my friends who have husbands who work normal jobs and are home every night. I mean, can you see how having him gone a lot is probably hindering our TTC efforts too? Not that I ovulate, but if I did?

Was there really a point to this post? I don't think so. But I'm a bad blogger and wanted to say SOMETHING!!!

A trip to the Windy City

Two weeks ago, Mr. FEO and I took the train to Chicago to celebrate his 37th birthday. It was a great trip, so I thought I'd share just a couple of pictures from that weekend.




This is an old fire station, and of course we had to take a picture of it. We usually scout out a few different stations on our trips to Chicago, and this one was my favorite one that we saw this time.

When it's just the two of us traveling together, it's hard to get pictures together, unless they're self portraits, so this was a unique opportunity to take a self portrait in a mirrored sphere in Millenium Park, so you can actually see all of us, and not just our heads!

The building with the gold top is the Carbide and Carbon Building - The Hard Rock Hotel, where we always stay when we visit Chicago.

The hotel sign!!

This picture is one that I really like from this trip. The reflection on the water is really pretty, and it was a beautiful clear evening!

On our trip to Chicago I also discovered that I like Blue Moon beer. And maybe I drank a few ... and although I'd lost 9 lbs before going on the trip, I gained 4 lbs back while we were there. How that happens over a 4 day weekend, I will never understand, but whatever.

As of yesterday morning, I have officially lost 10 lbs!!! So it took me an extra 2 weeks to get to this mini-goal because of the backwards movement I had from our trip, but I am so happy!!

All in all, 2010 is turning out pretty good so far!

Looks like we'll always be condo dwellers.

I'm not happy to report that Mr. FEO and I found out over the weekend that we did not get the house that we offered on.

Why, you ask?

Because the bank accepted the other offer.

There were shady dealings going on. We're pretty sure that the realtor bought this house herself. We also don't think that the offer they accepted was put in until after ours (because she waited until we submitted ours to actually put hers in, and then made ours the 2nd offer). Additionally, we got a call on Wednesday last week that she was going to call us on Friday with a counter offer on our offer. When the call came on Friday, it was for her to tell us that we didn't get the house. She is such a lying scammer. Now we're waiting until this Friday, in case the deal falls through on the financing, but then we're going to demand a formal letter of rejection of our offer ... which basically means that the house can't sell for less than our offer.

It's maddening, I tell you!!!

In happier news ... I've lost 9 lbs (well, probably 10 but I had a lot to drink the night before my weigh in, so we'll see next week!) in the last 5 weeks. This is a refreshing change, and I'm SO glad to finally see some progress in the right direction!!

4 weeks ago today...

We made an offer on a house.

We still don't have an answer.

When I said I was going to lose all my hair over it, I was only partially kidding. I got it all chopped off, but that's another story. And no, I don't have a picture. But it's super short and flippy and I have bangs. I love it!

We extended the offer on the house for one more week. I hope to hear something by then, but I'm obviously not going to hold my breath.

And for those of you following my TTC journey, I'm still off meds. CD71 today and no sign of AF. I have a follow up appointment on April 12.

In other news, Sunday will mark my 3 week anniversary with weight watchers. In the first 2 weeks, I've lost 5lbs!! Amazing :) I might derail it all when Mr. FEO and I go to Chicago at the end of this month, but it will totally be worth every extra calorie I eat! I haven't had a cheat meal or cheat food this entire time, which is pretty impressive for the girl with the biggest sweet tooth in America!

Anyway, hope you're all doing well!! Have a good weekend!

Okay, really, I'm done with waiting.

I can't take it anymore, this waiting to hear about our offer thing.

I'm so antsy, and it doesn't help that the people IRL who know about this offer have been asking me all the time, "Hey, so have you heard anything yet?", and I have to respond that I'm still waiting, extremely impatiently.

Tomorrow is finally FRIDAY and we were told that we'd hear by FRIDAY or the following TUESDAY. I swear, if they make me wait through yet another weekend that I'm going to end up pulling out all my hairs, one by one!

I'll keep you all posted!

It happened so fast...

On Wednesday night, Mr. FEO and I were driving around the town where we'd eventually like to live when we see an adorable little house on a corner lot, with an extra half lot too. It's for sale!

We tell my parents (who are helping us with a down payment should we find a house).

My dad schedules a showing on Thursday evening after work.

We made an offer on Friday afternoon...

And now we have to WAIT until this Friday or possibly next Tuesday to hear back about our offer.

I hate waiting. Nevermind the fact that I think we've flat out lost our minds.

Some specifics:
This house is about 500sqft smaller than our existing condo ... but it has a full basement, so technically, it has more space. It's also on a lot and a half, and after calling the building department of the city, we learned that we can basically triple the size of the home on the existing lot.

The bedrooms are smaller than we have now, and there's virtually no closet space or kitchen cupboards.

It's across the street from a really old cemetary. This kind of freaks me out, but as Mr. FEO says, we'll have quiet neighbors who only come out in October. I had to laugh at that .... because I suppose he's right. It's not a bad thing to have quiet neighbors after living with people on all sides and below us for all these years. To have a house and a yard and a neighborhood is something I thought we'd only ever dream about -- not something that would ever be a reality.

It needs a TON of work. So if we get the house, our plan is as follows:

Before moving in (hopefully over 6 months):

1. Repair the drain tile. There's been water in the basement.

2. GUT the basement: including tearing up the asbestos tiles, taking down the nasty paneling on the walls (it's bowed from the water damage), tearing down existing walls, replacing windows with glass block, replacing sump pump and walling it off so it's not visible, and converting the fireplace that's down there from wood to gas, as well as adding a full bathroom.

3. Convert the entire house from boiler heat to forced air with central air conditioning, using a furnace and air compressor that will sustain up to 1200sqft more house than is already there.

4. Replace linoleum in the kitchen and replace half the cabinets (they are weird built-ins that surround the chimney), and expose the brick of the chimney. Replace the dishwasher (which we learned is broken) and hood fan with a microwave hood fan.

5. Paint walls, ceilings throughout the house.

Within the first year:

1. Replace the rest of the appliances with ones that will also work in the kitchen/laundry after the expansion.

2. Replace windows as necessary.

After the first year, we will be saving as much as possible. We plan to expand the house in 3-5 years depending on finances. The expansion will include a huge kitchen, larger living room, master suite with a full bathroom and a 2-3 car attached garage with a bonus room above. The existing 1 car detached garage will be torn down. Thoughts of the expansion will keep me sane as we live in a work zone for at least the next year! Once we're moved in, we'll get to start looking at plans so we can determine what the eventual cost will be and save accordingly. What's nice is that all the builders, electricians, contractors etc are in my family, so we'll pay cost for everything!!

We'll live in the condo during the first stage of repair. Then we hope to rent it out while we have it on the market. It would give us enough income to make it worthwhile.

I just can't believe how quickly this happened!

You might think ... wait, they don't know for sure they have the house, but they have all these plans ... and that's a very valid statement. Before we made the offer, we had to think about the possibilities of this house to know if it would even work for us. Clearly, we've decided that it will!

We were the second offer. The first offer was put in on Thursday afternoon, about an hour before our showing. Although the realtor can't tell us what the other offer was, she strongly suggested that we put in our offer anyway. We're assuming that the offer was lower than ours. Additionally, our offer was a cash offer and not a mortgage. And since we're dealing with a bank short sale, this is apparently a good thing.

All I can do is try to stay sane for the next week, and keep my fingers crossed!!!

I'm thinking this is more stressful than any fake 2ww that I've experienced in the past year!

Have a great day all!!