God might not want me to blog

I was all pumped up and ready to go when I made my last post.  I told myself "I'm going to post every day like I used to!  I still have so much to talk about!  I have so many stories saved up!"  But one fateful day soon after I made my comeback post, I fell ill. 

So I've been laying around, listening to Sarah's Key on audiobook...which it turns out is very, very depressing so far.  And then I told myself that of course it's going to be depressing, it's about the Holocaust.  But then I found myself angry with the author:  it's not a true story, so why be so brutal?  Why can't anything actually go right in this story?  Will there be some sort of happy ending?  I like happy endings.  And then I told myself to shut up because most real life Holocaust victims didn't have happy endings.

When I'm not listening to the book, I'm ordering from a pizza place just so that I can get milk delivered since I am too sick to pack everybody into the car and go get it myself.  "I have a really weird question for you," I said to the thick-accented Italian man on the other end of the phone, "would it be possible for you to send me, like, just a gigantic cup of milk?"  Of course I asked this after I ordered some actual food.  For a reason I still don't understand, he handed off the phone to an equally accented woman who asked if I would mind if the driver picked up a gallon from CVS Pharmacy.  I said of course not and that I would be eternally grateful.

The delivery man showed up here about 20 minutes later and handed me my sandwich and "mac n cheese bites".  I said "where my mo'fo milk, man?"  and he said "I don't know dawg, they wrote milk here on the receipt but never told me to pick any up, but I can go get some if you want, homez" and I said "Fo real man, I'd 'preciate it."

So he came back another 10 minutes later with my milk and I gave him a $10 tip for his time.  Though $4 of it was to cover the milk. 

I have MUCH to talk about!

I've been gone a long time, I know, I'm sorry.  But I promise, I'm going to be around for awhile from now on. Here's a tl;dr rundown of what I've been up to:

June - July: my husband and I were house hunting.  We looked at...I don't know, maybe about 15 houses in all.  We put offers in on 3 total.

The first, well it was a major fixer-upper.  It was a ranch-style house that clearly hadn't been updated since the 70's.  But it had a nice, spacious, fenced-in backyard and was right on a quiet cul-de-sac in a great neighborhood.  We offered at asking price, but the lady just didn't seem to be ready to let go of it...it was her mother's house, who had just passed on.  

The second house was also nice, although it was pretty small.  We loved that it had a fireplace in the livingroom and a finished basement.  The downside was that it had endured a little bit of flood damage with the Great Rhode Island Floods of '10, but honestly we were sick of looking and said the house was good enough for us.  Our offer was outbid by somebody else.

We were ready to give up hope.  We were really crunched for time, and wanted to have a house before my husband left (explanation below).  But we pushed on and decided to go for one more round of walk-throughs.  The moment I walked into the house, I fell in love with it.  It smelled new, with fresh paint and new wood flooring...but the house is over a hundred years old.  It's got beautiful original woodwork throughout.  It's pretty big, at almost 2000 sq ft.   After our first tour around, we came back into the mudroom and I told my husband "you do whatever you can to get me this house.  I HAVE to have this house!"

It had only been on the market for 4 days, and we were offering less than the asking price, so it would take a miracle to get it.  I prayed and prayed all day.  I felt nauseous I was so nervous.  The sellers accepted our offer that night.

So, my dream house also became our first house.  No starter home necessary.  Unfortunately, closing took a bit longer than expected so I moved in by myself...since my husband had gone by then.  We were living in hotels for 3 weeks, as our lease was up at the townhome we were renting.  It seems like that might be a luxurious way to live...but with three kids and a cat in one room with two beds, it wasn't.  I finally signed the paperwork and got my keys on September 16th.  I spent the first few nights on an AeroBed set up in the dining room.

September 5th - My husband got shipped off to Afghanistan.  You see, when he first got out of the military almost two years ago, he was briefly unemployed before getting hired by the police department.  During that time, he had joined the Air Force Reserves for the extra $400 a month, he was told he could get out before his contract was up.  Well, recruiters lie.  Big surprise.  So long story short, about 12 people in his unit became active and now he's over there until the spring of '11.


That's him on the far left.   It was really hard at first.  The kids cried every day.  I cried every day.  We worried about him.  I still cry sometimes.  Sometimes, it still feels like more than I can bear.  But I find it a blessing that I had this new house to buy things for, the holidays, and the kids to shop for...I signed the kids up for an asinine amount of activities to keep us all busy (scouts, sports, etc), and I've been going to the gym regularly to keep my spirits up.  I live 10 minutes away from my mother-in-law, so she watches the kids a few times a week so I can run errands and just have some time to myself.  Which really helps.  I can't wait for him to come home.

 This was taken the day he left at a USO family send-off

I'm glad to be back to my blog.  I always found blogging therapeutic.  I think I'll stick around.