I'm Thanktastic

Holidays are a good bookmark of time.  Last Thanksgiving, we were at my parent's house, celebrating the first Thanksgiving in the new addition of their house.  It was the first Thanksgiving without my grandmother.  This year will be the first Thanksgiving without my grandfather (her husband).  This will be Baby Jonah's first Thanksgiving.  The subtractions and additions to our life don't stop.  For that, we can be thankful.

***

Beloved has been voted into the Union.  That sentence sounds a little like he's the state of New Hampshire pre-Civil War, but I've been assured this is a good thing.  But it feels a little mafia-ish to me.

Picture these guys wearing Carhartts and driving pickups and it might be Beloved's Operator crew

Now, every time I've ever seen The Sopranos, it's been all stripper poles and curse words.  Will there be piles of cocaine and nighttime body drops in my future?  Hopefully no more than usual.  But for this secure job, this opportunity to work (and to work overtime when the Bat Signal is put out there), we can be thankful. (I'm also secretly hoping this job comes with me getting a super mafia accent and the right to stay home all day and cook for my unthankful, mafioso family.)

***

Our house has been nothing short of amazing for us.  The oddity of an upstairs kitchen:

I have it decorated differently.  But can you see why I fell in love with it?

The fantastic window seats in the kitchen, living room, and upstairs bedroom.  The pool.  The pellet stove:

Again, it looks different now that it's ours.  I don't even have a Kane.  But you can see the pool through the windows.  Deuces!

And Beloved would have me mention the biggest garage in Clifton.  

He will be in there in the dead of winter.  Because it's his.

Man-cave extraordinaire. Buying that little piece of heaven was hell.  But worth it.  And for all the lawn raking-induced blisters, the gray paint under the fingernails, the mouse traps working effectively, the hot meals, the old-school Nintendo games played at night, the quietness of the locale we picked, we can be thankful.

The Recipe For Keeping Warm

This isn't my kitchen...allegedly

I'm not normally a drinker of hard liquor.  I have relatives for that.  But, I do love supporting local businesses, and if something is supposed to taste like cake, I'm pretty much gonna go for it.  How has someone not come up with cake-flavored vitamins?  Cake-flavored anti-depressants?  Cake-flavored celery?  I'm just saying...
Back to topic, then:  Pinnacle is from Lewiston.  While I wouldn't normally support anything from such a scary-sounding place, they make whipped cream flavored vodka.  And they make rebate forms.  And the IGA has lowered their prices on said whipped cream hangovers.  I got a vodka sized bottle of whipped, and it came with a travel-size portion of Cake flavored.  All in all, with rebate form, it cost 6$.  I'm a cheap drunk*, in the best way. 
Now, if the cost of heating oil makes you want to day drink, here is my suggested nighttime drink:

1-2 oz Pinnacle whipped (I used 3/4 oz, because, again, I'm not a hard liquor drinker and I don't know what the appropriate amount of hard liquor per serving is...if you drink as a daytime job, it's probably more than 3/4 oz)
Mug full of milk (I used skim...if you're going whole hog (and, really, why wouldn't you?  You can just work it off on Monday), use a higher fat milk)
Dark Chocolate hot cocoa mix

Heat the mug of milk in the microwave for 1.5-2 minutes (unless you have the world's oldest microwave, like Beloved's parents do (he heated their dog's METAL dish without any fiery repercussions!!), or until your milk is hot.)  Add the vodka, then the cocoa mix.  Stir, don't drive, and enjoy!


*All talk of day drinking and whatnotery is clearly me being humorous.  I don't have a drinking problem.  I don't have a vodka mustache.  My stomach is too tiny to support all the joke drinking I do.  Don't be worried.  Don't call the AA.  Oh, quick story:  Beloved's uncle wanted to name our house the AA Ranch, but with us being homebrewers, I thought it implied something else, and we're on the hunt for a different name for the property...

Timeline

Thursday, August 25 (day before closing; anxiety level:6):
Noontime:  Text Beloved to see if he wants me to work a half-day tomorrow in order to help him with our move.
Noon-oh-two:  He replies I should stay at work and make money.  Believe this is a polite way of telling me to stay the hell away while he moves all my stuff into our new home.  We both know I'm more useful at work, anyhow.
My plot to escape work early has failed.  Sorry, boss.

Friday, August 26th (day of closing; anxiety level: 29):
7am:  Beloved meets mom and I at her house for our ritualistic Friday Bagel Central breakfast.  Commence meltdown in the driveway, uttering things such as "I don't want people touching my stuff."
7:15am:  Am mildly sedated by jalapeno cream cheese.  Judging people who walk in looking like Lady Gaga also helps to take my mind off of today's event.
8:00am-3:00pm:  Work.  Boss lovingly tells me no one will unpack my stuff.  They're just gonna dump my shit and ditch.  Feel better.  Wish I was there supervising my loving people who helped to move my many years' worth of accumulation and Beloved's one suitcase.
3:00pm:  Beloved whisks me away to the Farmhouse for dual housewarming presents.
3:15pm-3:45pm:  Wander up and down Main St. on foot,  feeling odd to be out during the day.
3:50pm:  Figure we can be early, we go in to the attorney's office.  We're nearly the last ones there, so we get this show on the road.
4:36pm:  We own a house.
4:37pm:  Stooled at Paddy's for one congratulatory beverage.
5:00pm:  Each to his own parent's house to gather belongings not scooped and dropped in this morning's move.
5:10pm:  Pizza and such with our people who helped moved us. They were good people.  One even ran after a squirrel attempting to enter the mudroom.  But I'll have no squatters in my new home.  My nephew is running round, having "adventures" and doing somersaults in the yard.
8:36pm:  Bed.  Only to be followed by...

Saturday, August 27th (first day owning a home; anxiety level: 2):
2:30am:  Up and at 'em.  Beloved sleeps and I'm upstairs unpacking the kitchen like Martha Stewart on crystal meth.  
6:00am:  I lay down on the couch in the upstairs living room, and hear padded steps and a tired-looking Beloved approach.  "You've been up this whole time?"  A girl has priorities.  And her cookie sheets are one of them.
6:36am:  Breakfast, half of which was on the house.  Thanks, one-arm-in-a-sling lady at the golden arches.
7:00am:  Lowe's.  Sellers took their mailbox so we're on the hunt.  We pick up a rake, new lighting for the upstairs bathroom, work gloves for me (I still laugh at that whole collection of words together), garage door rollers (I got the ricketier door of the two), and was doing my best to seem interested in the difference between 2-stroke and 4-stroke weed wackers, when I blurted out:  "Crap!  We need a mailbox!"  Bubble bursted, we make a mad dash to the postal aisle like a couple from Supermarket Sweep (I would give my mailbox to be able to bring that show back and be on it!)
8:00am:  Walmart.  No one should have to go into a Walmart on a weekend past 9:00am.  You're just asking for your day to be ruined.  We got in and out of there pretty quick.  Beloved has never spent more than $14 for groceries in one trip.  I had to defibrilate him at one point.  I also pointed out that toilet plungers and clothes hampers don't count as food and we weren't throwing down too much.  Be a good boy.  Wheel my groceries to the car.
11:00am:  Converge on new house with more and more stuff taken from parent's homes.  Introductions of opposite sides of family that haven't yet met (oh, Nana!  My mom just loved you!) Lunch and unpacking.
4:00pm:  More unpacking?  It's all sort of a blur.  We did hit the pool, and it was cold.  We mostly just stood in it and drank champagne.
7:30pm:  Out in these parts, we don't get "the cable" or have "the internets" so we popped in a movie.  Just as it should be.

Sunday, August 28th (second day owning a home and day of hurricane; anxiety level: -12):
4:45am:  No rest for the weary.  Beloved returns to Work-work and I am left to tackle Remaining Unpacking Projects.
7:00am:  Steal away to Hannaford and Walmart (remember my 9:00am Walmart rule!) to buy staple groceries before Irene swept Eastern Maine off the map.
9:00am:  One more haul of stuff at my parent's house (I think my stuff mated while it was in storage and produced more and more stuffs.)
10:00am:  Mom arrives and holds it DOWN in the handwashing of large items too big to be chucked in the dishwasher department.
Noontime:  Last of the Friday pizza is eaten!  House is 98% settled.  Mom departs, between sheets of rain, and I guiltily rest.
3:15pm:  No power.  Means no hot meal for the Beloved who worked very hard in the nasty storm.  My suggestion of PB&J via text message is not warmly met.  After many calls back and forth, it is decided he will bring home to-go dinner from his parent's house (yes, I hadn't showered all weekend, and there was just no need for his parents to know me like that.)
6:44pm:  Power restored.  I text Beloved.
6:45pm:  He rolls into the driveway. 

And that is how you buy a house, avoid moving all the really heavy stuff, come to terms with people touching your stuff, and eat your first meal at home together, prepared by someone else.

Like A Virgin

Now that we have a set-in-stone date for the closing, I'm still in baffle-mode that it's all happening.  Eight months ago, when we started the process of buying a short-sale house, it was like practice purchasing.  We went through all the motions of attempted home acquisition:  offer a price, sign some purchase and sale paperwork, and dazzle them with some earnest money.  Oh, and attend a first time homebuyer's class put on by a man WHO RENTS AN APARTMENT.  Because homebuying "isn't his thing."  But apparently, having a comfy little racket is.

No one told us that trying to buy a short-sale home is worse than high school.  Ok, well maybe Real Estate Man said something to that effect, but he's seven feet tall, there was an echo, and I thought he was complimenting me on my outfit that day.

So when we ditched that first house and fell head-over-heels for the "Double A Ranch" (I'd type it out "AA Ranch" but with our hobby of Homebrew, that just seems...fitting?), things came together so much faster.  Too fast, actually, for my experience.  The other house was ok with going slow, but this one wants to go all the way.  Where is an afterschool special on thirty-year mortgages when you need one?

And now we're being handed off to The Attorneys.  I've had no dry-run for this part of the show.  Everything in me wants to push Beloved out of the way next week, sign all the forms for both us, grab the keys to the house, and cart him away to our new zip code.  Because sometimes love means never having to sign your initials yourself.  This will not be the case, though.  We will sit across from the very nice sellers and ping pong paperwork back and forth (I assume; this is all secondhand information gleaned from HGTV shows like Property Virgins who have budgets of $200,000.  We probably get some sort of value-meal closing in a greasy brown paper bag.) 

I do envision some tears (him) and some cursing (me) as soon as the last Ford is signed.  And then more cursing (him) and tears (me) as we try to move my 31-gallon tote of cookbooks into our upstairs kitchen.  I'll be sure to have 10cc's The Things We Do For Love blaring.  Note to self:  move the boombox in first.

T minus Someday...

I have a feeling that Realtor Man and Bank Guy will throw back a few cold ones the day they get to be rid of me. 

Having more time on my hand than Beloved to handle the communications aspect of homebuying, I have made a habit of emailing both of these men at least 25 times a day.  Realtor Man gets most of my worry-infused emails; Bank Guy gets the virtual foot-tapping 'are we there yet?' emails.  After six months of a stalled short-sale purchase attempt, Realtor Man suggested to Beloved that we look for a different home to buy.  It was just the push that I didn't want to give him.  Coming from a seven-foot man, it was probably more effective. 

The House We Really Are Buying was worth waiting for in Dante's Fourth Ring of Homebuying Hell.  The first time I saw the picture of my kitchen, I knew it.  And then when I saw the size of the garage, I knew that Beloved would probably feel the same as when he first met me.  I suspect he won't try to casually avoid the garage, causing the garage to change its phone number, and forcing him to try to find the garage on Facebook to try to win it back. 

Anyhow, we are in the last leg of this ridiculous venture.  Awaiting appraisal information, we've done all the other adult things, such as radon testing and Homeowner's Insurance buying (Convicted of Arson, you say?  Well, not recently.  Better than the question my parents were asked:  'Do You Plan On Making Methamphetamines? Ha!)  We're now in the hurry-up-and-wait stage again.  Only we're sure this one will be ours. 

And if Realtor Man and Bank Guy are reading this, I'll make you cookies when this is all said and done.  I have no plans to leave my beautiful kitchen.