- We’re packing, packing, packing… I finally feel like we’re making a bit of progress.
- The “big move” with the moving truck is on Friday and we’ll be sleeping in our new house on Saturday night. Most of the utilities will be on tomorrow – the phone & internet will be hooked up on the weekend.
- Munchkin’s last day at his old school is Friday and first day of his new school is on Monday. Lots of paperwork!
- Its chilly & raining here and I’m making homemade chili for dinner tonight. Its a great meal b/c it always provides leftovers.. which means tonight is the last night I’m cooking in our old house.
- Living in limbo is sort of getting on everyone’s nerves and the amount of stuff to do is staggering.
- I’m pretty sure that my new daily Ashtanga yoga practice (I’m attempting to do 5 sun salutations a day.. every day) is the only thing stopping me from killing people or curling up in the corner with my teddybear.
- I need a new yoga mat – daily practice with a skimpy mat on a hardwood floor is very hard on ones body. I decided that if I continue daily practice for a week or two that I would put out the money on a nice comfy thick mat – maybe one of the pretty Gaiam ones from Target. Our new house also has hardwood floors in the living room.. which is most likely where I’ll continue practicing.
- One of the major advantages of having dreads is that you never need a hair tie. I just take one of the dreads from the under side of my head, wrap it around the rest of the hair and tuck it under to form a ponytail wrap… its very handy.
- We’ve removed about 12-14 trash bags full of stuff from the house and sent it to the Goodwill. We’re on our third & final giant trash bin full of garbage. I could probably get rid of much more but we’re running out of time and the trash company is picking up our trash can tomorrow.
- The kitties have gotten completely clingy and I’m ending up sleeping with BOTH of them every night. They smother me while I’m trying to read in bed and they’ve taken to getting in the cars & trying to stuff themselves into moving boxes. Clearly they’re afraid that someone’s going to leave them behind.
- This will definitely be my last post from the old house… I’ll write again from the new place!
Nov 182009
Nov 112009
I wanted to thank everyone for the good vibes they sent our way because we found a new home! We will be moving to a new city and Munchkin will have to start a new school but we’ve found a house that seems like its going to be a good match for us. It’s smaller than our current home but it is in good condition, has HEAT, a nice deck & small fenced yard, accepts pets, is close to the new school, has 3 small bedrooms (no more desk in the living room!) + a large converted garage room which will be perfect for my husband’s home office. The house is also closer to friends & family and cuts serious mileage off of my husband’s travel time when he does work on location for his business.
The search for a new Mouse House was definitely stressful and we did have to give up ‘extras’ such as a fireplace & a more rural setting because there was nothing available like that in our price range. Our new neighborhood is a family friendly established (aka: older houses) sub-division which is very close to a shopping area with tons of great stores & restaurants– something totally different from the other places we’ve lived. I’m both nervous and excited to be moving to a new location.. and Munchkin is excited to make new friends in his new school and in our neighborhood.
In the last few days (we went to see the house on Saturday) I’ve already sent SEVEN trash bags of clothes, toys & household items to the Goodwill & my husband has filled our giant trash bin to the brim. I’m usually a serious pack(mouse) but knowing that we’re moving to a totally different environment has sort of prompted us to do a heavy duty clean-out… I think we’re all ready for a change and opening up space in our closets & cabinets is just one way of welcoming the prospect of new and better things into our lives.
Our current situation has prompted a lot of plans for change & shifts in ways of thinking. I’ve noticed that thinking about the new house as “cozy” is a much more positive way of dealing with the fact that yes, we’re losing a whole bunch of square footage in this move – AGAIN. In reality, its not a problem with the house, its a problem with the fact that we have more shit than 3 people reasonably should own. Thinking again in matters of perception, I’ve also decided that I’m boycotting the words “throw out”, ” get rid of”, and “chuck” in favor of the word “edit” in regards to what I’m doing with my STUFF. The idea of “editing” is much more suggestive of making things better and keeping only the best and most useful of items while letting the others go.
We have to be out of here before Thanksgiving and our big move is ‘scheduled’ for the weekend of the 20′th, so I’m not entirely sure how much I’m going to be online from now until then. Judging from last move, we could be without internet & tv for a few days… but I’m going to hope for the best.
Nov 072009
(*bullet post list without the bullets because the formatting was pissing me off)
–I’m going to bail out of NaBloPoMo after tonight because I realized that with moving this month I won’t be able to post every day… especially if we have an internet hookup delay like we did last time.
–We went looking for houses today and should find out in a few days whether the one we wanted is ours. Good mojo is needed for our application being accepted please!!
–After looking at houses we sort of realized how freakin’ lucky we were to find a house with such large rooms this time around.
We also realized JUST HOW MUCH SHIT WE HAVE. I’m currently trying to get up the motivation to go through and reduce what we own by half if possible.
–One of the cats (I’m going to assume its Ms. Kitty) has taken to peeing in Munchkin’s bed. Last night, it happened WHILE MY SON WAS IN THE BED. Yes, my cat peed on my son’s feet. I don’t know if she’s jealous of Jack being friendly with Munchkin or if she’s upset about moving (AGAIN) because she usually has a tear of bad behaviour and peeing on things before we move.
–I think I’m getting sick.
–My anxiety level is through the roof and I’m having trouble holding food down. I constantly feel like I’m being chased by a bear.. its miserable. This happened last time we moved as well…
–If anyone has any links for awesome decluttering help sites, I’m all (mouse) ears.
Nov 062009
…brought to you by Captain Jack.
House hunting tomorrow.. good vibes needed!
Nov 052009
On Monday we received some depressing news that our credit score was a handful of points too low to qualify us for the home loan that we applied for on my birthday. I have been pretty hush hush about the potential house purchase because I didn’t want to jinx anything and I’m sort of sad to have to announce the crap news rather than a happy house buying post. We were really hoping that we’d get approved so that we could purchase something of our own from the massive amount of foreclosures out there because the mortgage on them would be HALF of what we’re going to pay for rent on anything not in a horrible area.
Unfortunately we haven’t had any luck finding anything to rent in a decent area or for an amount of money we can afford. I’ve been searching Craigs List, the Atlanta newspaper, the ‘local’ newspaper (which covers where we are now and where we intended to move), and have everyone we know keeping an eye out for anything we could live in. Time is ticking down – apparently we have TEN days to find another place to live so that we can notify the company that owns the house and they can prepare our check for the date our 30 days is up. That means that technically we never had 30 days to get ready to leave.. we had TWENTY. Our 30 days is up on Thanksgiving. Our 10 days is up on the 16th. I have to pack a whole house, find a place to live, figure out how to afford first & last months rent + security deposit + TWO pet deposits, AND move my kid to a new school district & school.
Oh yeah, the kicker to this whole situation is that on top of having to mow the whole lawn (the property is huge and its something we never have had to do) and clean the house before we leave that we also have to remove EVERYTHING from the storage building out back!!! When we moved in, it was chocked full of old car parts, chemicals, junk, trash, and covered in rat pee & tons of rat crap IF we want ANY money we have to remove all of this because the property has to be COMPLETELY EMPTY regardless of whether it was our junk.
Good vibes… I needs them.
Nov 042009
Please excuse the lack of pictures in this post… it really has been a shit sort of day and I forgot to take photos of dinner tonight. I almost thought of blowing off NaBloPoMo because I didn’t particularly have anything decent to say to anyone and then dinner came out of the oven and I filled my tummy with comfort food.
Janice over at Knitting w/ Dogs pointed me to the Budget Bytes blog earlier in the week and I was totally impressed by the fact that the recipes are actually budget! I get really tired of these websites that call themselves budget conscious or money saving and you go there and they’re patting themselves on the back for getting through the week on like $100 (groceries only, non food items and eating out are extra) for 2 city dwelling vegetarians. While that’s great for them (and while I’ve got nothing against city dwelling vegetarians..) -it doesn’t really help those of us who for one reason or another aren’t vegetarians and don’t even have the luxury of the sort of weekly budget that they are “challenging” themselves to live on. The other extreme is often menus that are loaded down with mayonnaise filled casseroles and things that are deep fried… two things my family won’t eat.
We here at Chez Mousie live on a very tight grocery budget due to being a single income family and honestly, I’m sort of proud of how much money I can save us each week by shopping wisely and menu planning. Of course I’d love to have more weekly grocery money and be able to buy ‘extras’ like snack foods or better cuts of meat and organic produce but there is a hot meal on the table every night and for that I’m eternally thankful.
Tonight’s meal, the Cheesy Shepherd’s Pie from Budget Bytes was tasty, filling, and even provided some lunch leftovers after the 3 of us gorged ourselves stupid. Because I buy our meat in bulk when its on sale, omitted the cheese, and used bulk instant mashed potatoes instead of fresh I’m pretty sure that I cut down the cost of the recipe (not to mention the prep time) from the site by another few dollars.. making this a keeper for our family recipe book. I’ll even be able to use the open can of tomato paste for homemade spaghetti sauce in tomorrow’s dinner and I’ll freeze the remainder of the beef broth for another meal. The meal was a big hit with hubby and also Munchkin, who usually doesn’t care for the beef stew I used to make because the meat was sometimes tough (using stew meat) or ‘too stringy’ (beef roast) for his 8 year old taste buds.
Nov 032009
Quick & easy ‘tawashi’ scrubber made from leftover Red Heart acrylic yarn & a size H crochet hook. I chained 4 and just increased in a circle (using a half-double stitch) until the scrubber was about the size of the palm of my hand. I should have used a larger hook because I wanted it a bit softer than this (I crochet VERY tightly) but otherwise I love it and it works great! I’ve become a big fan of using acrylic yarn for dish scrubbers/ cloths because they don’t “sour” like cotton yarns do in our humid climate.
Nov 022009
Pattern: Panta
Yarn: Plymouth Encore
Needles: size 7 US
Mods: stopped before the last increase b/c it was getting too large. fudged the rest of the numbers to make the headband work.
Nov 012009
Thinking about trying NaBloPoMo again this year… we’ll see what happens. Life here at Chez Mousie is so up in the air with packing and moving – no new house has been found as of yet – that I might need something to keep me sane.