Judecorp.

Not much to write about these days because there isn't much of anything going on. I don't have any fun and exciting work stories because I don't see too many people in my day-to-day. We have some student workers who are funny and entertaining but I am just meeting them so it's not like we're having a grand old time. I miss my EI buds in Boston and all of the time we spent cracking up and being stupid. Heck, yesterday I asked everyone in the office if they wanted to "eat my big nuts" (I buy a nut assortment but really only like the almonds and peanuts, not the bigger ones) and it didn't generate much fun. So sad.

I'm going to a three-day conference here in Northampton from Thursday to Saturday. I asked the woman in charge if there was some way I could volunteer to get a discount, and she said that if I helped people check out on Friday and Saturday I could come for free on Thursday. I agreed, but I got the volunteer schedule this morning and now I'm still doing check-outs on Saturday but I'm no longer checking out on Friday, instead checking in on Thursday AND Saturday. WTF? Checking in involves being there at like 8am (conference starts at 9, I think) and no one EVER mentioned checking in to me. So I don't get it. And now I have to ask about it, and feel like a jerk. But I don't really want to have to be up an hour earlier on Saturday.

I basically don't do much anymore besides go to work, eat, and go to bed. Exciting life, I know. I get home from work around 5:30. At some point we eat dinner. I fall asleep watching television between 9:30 and 10, and eventually make the trip into bed where I get /terrible/ sleep because I end up with three cats on top of me and I can't move and then my back and legs start to hurt. How glamorous. But when you have 35lb of cat on you, it's not like you can just shove them off gracefully... it's heavy!

So yeah, that's pretty much it around here. I thought when we moved here I would resurrect my exciting life but I see that it was either a pipe dream or is going to take a lot of time. You know, that's okay because I have a lot of time.

It is HARD to go out for fancy-pants food when you are knocked up, let me just tell you.

Since Rick and Gretchen were going to be spending NYE with us last night, Rick had asked that I find someplace to eat dinner. Well, I didn't want to go somewhere in downtown N'ton because it was First Night there and it would probably be PACKED. And I looked at some places in the other towns but noplace seemed to have anything special for NYE, and I kind of like going whole hog on NYE when it comes to food. Last year we went out with Olex and Jen and had delicious foodles, there were years where we got into formal wear and ate boatloads of sushi, so yeah... just some reservations at a brewpub were not going to cut it.

I found a place in Sunderland called the Blue Heron that had a quite lovely prix fixe for New Year's Eve. The website made it look like a nice place and I made reservations for a late dinner (9pm). I had quickly looked over the menu for Things A Pregnant Chick Can Eat and called it a go.

Well, when we got there, there were a lot of delicious options but most of them had to be nixed for one reason or another - either for main ingredients like pate or swordfish or lamb (which is never fully cooked) or for ingredients like caviar or booze. And then even when I thought I had something safe (like the salad, I mean, hello, it's salad), the server warned me that the DELICIOUS-looking hunk of bleu cheese was not pasteurized. Dang it!

I ended up having the salad (minus the cheese), an appetizer of a pan-seared sea scallop with bacon and fennel, a main course of quail stuffed with chorizo stuffing over a bed of grits, and a dessert of a trio of chocolate mousses. (My original dessert was a chocolate cake that was too rich for me, and I traded with Gretchen.) All of the dishes were quite tasty, but my body is not used to eating so much rich food and I don't usually eat a four-course meal right before bed! So my slow-moving guts are still a little unhappy with this development.

There was a live band (jazz) that was pretty good, and they had dancing and hats and noisemakers as well. Our server was very perceptive and picked up via eavesdropping that I was pregnant, and aside from the bleu cheese warning, she also brought me sparkling cider in lieu of my champagne toast. Nice.

I highly recommend the Blue Heron, especially for New Year's Eve.

There hasn't been much going on to post about, unless you want to hear all of my ire at people who want to sell their houses for ridiculous prices and aren't willing to concede AT ALL that the current market is not at all the same market as, say, two years ago's market. They're hardly distant cousins twice removed. I mean, they both involve houses, and that's about it.

So I thought we were on to House #3 but for a brief time yesterday it looked like we were REALLY on to House #4. After we let go of House #2 for it's crazy overpricing with no hope of coming down ever (beggers can't say "final offer" ever, not in my book, but hey that's cool, keep your house), we got word from our realtor that someone was going to offer on House #3, so we bumped our offer up a couple thousand clams when we heard the people really really wanted to move out.

This is the part I love, I admit: when the realtor calls with the "situation" and I get to figure out what's between the lines and what the REAL situation is. I may not be able to solve ghost mysteries like Scooby Doo, but I'm a goddamned interpersonal Encyclopedia Brown. It's kind of my job, and why I love social work. But anyway.

So our realtor (hereby known as Crash) calls and says that the seller's realtor told her that the did in fact receive a second offer but if we wanted to offer the full price ($7K more than our high offer), it would be ours. We said no and hung up, and at this point I told Jen, "Their other offer is lower than ours, otherwise they wouldn't be calling us. They are lying." Sure enough, several hours later we received /another/ call, and Crash said they had dropped their price $1K. Ummm, no.

(See, the part THEY don't know is that we'd decided when we got the first call that we weren't moving on our offer at all, not a penny, because if we are going to buy a ranch house in Easthampton we are paying that much only because it is cheap. If we're going to go up $7K we might as well go up $10K and buy that first overpriced ranch which is in a better location (Florence) and has a carport. And Florence Ranch is still on the market with no bites and has already been Price Changed, so umm, no worries there.)

I told Jen after the second call, "They are going to realize that they are not going to get their asking price for their house, and that our $7K lower generous offer is the best ever. And they are going to call us back and 'generously' offer us their house." Jen was dubious and said that sellers agents don't call people back. But they do, of course, if they are trying to unload overpriced houses on a timeframe.

Crash called last night while we were at Shani's for Game Night and lo and behold, the sellers want an extra 24 hours to think about our offer - likely because they have some showings or an open house today.

Think hard, dudes. No one in THIS market makes an offer right at showing, especially not one that is not a really lowball offer.

I may be cheap, and I may be cocky, but one thing this househunt has taught me is that I have some weird psychic ability to know the situation.

( House Stuff: )

( Fertility Stuff: )

( Lara and Wedding Stuff: )

( Cute Kitten Stuff: )

( New Car Stuff: )

I think that'll do me for now. Night!

We had quite a whirlwind day today and I am bone tired. It didn't help that I was rudely awakened at 5am by cramps that came earlier than they were supposed to. I guess I never should have rescheduled my beta a day early (I was trying to have less things to do today) because I just would have ended up not showing up today.

We headed out to Northampton to meet our realtor and see as many places as we could in about three hours. We actually made it to eight, and now my head is swimming with random details that are all coming together in one big, chaotic house. Our realtor is an interesting woman - she was really direct and honest about what she thought which I really appreciated, but sometimes "direct" can border on "pushy" which turns me off. She also is the worst driver I've been in a car with in a LONG time, and not only did she almost get us killed once, she also bonked her side-view mirror on someone else's side-view by getting too close AND totally dug a chunk out of her rubber bumper (Subaru Outback of course) by driving directly into a street sign pole. No joke. Two hits and a near miss in three hours.

She really REALLY wanted us to immediately bid on this one house in Florence that is over our max price - she wants us to bid $5K under our max so the seller will meet us at our max. She was totally harping on this and it was making me hate the house, even though it was a nice house and it was pretty close to Northampton proper. But I didn't want to go that high and there were some things I didn't like, so I really wanted her to let it go. The selling realtor is a friend of hers and they were all chatty chat and I kept wondering if she had some ulterior motive for that house.

We later saw a house that we both really really liked - this house right here - which has everything we wanted except a garage (multiple floors, more than one bathroom, finished basement, fireplace) and a couple of things that we didn't really want (electric heat and a private septic system) but are doable. The one thing that kind of bites is that it's pretty far out, way over in that weird area where Easthampton, Southampton, and Holyoke kind of meet each other. That makes for a pretty crappy commute for Jen, and also puts us out of the way of pretty much everything. But of course we kind of knew going in that we were going to have to move further away to get more house for less money.

There was another house that was doable for me but not so much for Jen - here. It's in Florence and therefore slightly closer to Northampton, but is in the farthest part of Florence so there's not THAT much difference in distance, just in town and school system and all of that. This one has gas heat and also has a finished basement, but is smaller and one level and has no fireplace. And it's overpriced. It's a cute starter home but since we'll likely be living somewhere for a LONG time with no moving in sight, will we want to live in a starter home in our 40s?

We of course can go back and look at more listings at a later time (maybe even next Sunday or something) so we don't need to decide anything, but Jen can't sleep on couches forever and we need to get cracking. Far Away House is owned by an older woman who has lived there for 30+ years and now wants to downsize into a condo so she will probably want to close quickly. Tiny House is still inhabited by a family with three kids and who knows what their closing plans are.

Being a grown-up is hard. Especially when your realtor is a crazy demolition derby driver!

~//~

After the househunting frenzy, we decided to take in some fun at The Big E (think state fair) since we were in the area and this was the last weekend. $12 to park, $30 for us to get in, and we stayed for a couple of hours to wander, eat bad food, and win cheap stuffed animals. So I'd call that a success, but an exhausting day.

~//~

p.s. I called my doctor's office to start a new cycle and they totally didn't change my instructions/dose AT ALL. So I know SOMEONE who is going to get a phone call on Monday.

Nothing says "devotion" like when your wife tells you that she took out the garbage and you look over and see it all bagged up right there near the stairs... and you love her anyway.

I simply cannot eat enough food today. This always seems to happen to me at the height of my progesterone and I just want to eat and eat and eat... mostly salty carby foods. I'm not usually a chip person but right now I feel like I could eat a whole bag of chips. Yesterday due to factors beyond our control, we had chinese food for lunch and dinner... and I wanted chinese food again! Mmmm, salt. I also have the worst skin ever. Gross.

I did not have chinese food, however. I did "junky" with a bowl of pasta roni but added a chicken breast and some peas to it. Since I previously would have just eaten a whole box of pasta roni, this is a big improvement. I also ate some pineapple that Jen was lovely enough to cut for me. But I am still hungry! I'm glad we don't have any junk in the house because I would seriously eat it all. As it is right now, I want to make a banana bread and eat it all but I know it wouldn't be ready for a long time.

Want. To. Eat. More. FOOOOOOOOD.

(And no, this doesn't mean I'm pregnant. It's like this every month. I'm such a chow daddy. YOM.)

~//~

Okay, I want a house now. I hate being in "desperation housing" mode, because I'm afraid we won't have the time to shop around and really find that perfect place. I know there is no truly perfect place, but you know what I mean. Here is a place that is currently catching my eye for its "je ne sais dork." (The yard blows me away.)

But this is cute, too.

Jen just accepted a job in Amherst this morning. She went to two interviews which incurred a lot of rental car cost, so I'm excited that there will be no more rental cars. They originally really lowballed her offer with the promise of giving her $1500 raises at 3 months and 6 months, which was pretty much unacceptable because we would not be able to even think about paying bills. She told them that she couldn't take that low salary at a time when we would be buying a new car and living in two households, and they agreed to ditch the staggered raise thing. The salary is still really low and is a bare minimum of what might get her share of the bills paid, but it's not $9K less than she made last year (which was their original offer).

So it looks like she'll be moving out there in a couple of weeks and I will be here for an undisclosed amount of time. At the very least I will be here through the next two rounds of IUIs, and if one is successful, I will find out when the doctor says it is safe to realistically go (although I will probably want to boogie ASAP). Jen will be living on a friend's couch (THANK YOU, jadefu!) and I'm sure that is going to suck for her.

I'm scared at the massiveness of the expense of all of this. Thankfully she can couch-surf a little and save some "get a second apartment" expense... but there will be a ton of gas money for the back-and-forth and of course we now need to acquire a second car with our Boston address and pay Boston insurance for right now. This is the biggest, scariest expense of all. I'm confident we can get a car we can afford (we were making payments on Jen's car until my dad died, I think) but doubling our already skyhigh insurance is going to be a killer. I wish we had a fake address we could use in western MA and insure cars there. It's GOTTA be cheaper than Dorchester.

I'm hoping to be out there in November but I don't know if that will happen, because we'll have to find a place to live, too. I am REALLY not looking forward to not seeing Jen except on weekends. At all.

Maybe I can temporarily borrow my grandmother's car or something... I dunno.

So I did what any warm-blooded American woman would do in a situation like this: I went out and spent a ton of money. This is something I never do; I'm called frugal on a good day and Cheapy McCheaperson on another. I forced myself to go to Target to get the toilet paper by convincing myself I would look at all of the pretty bed linens that I always avoid because I want them and they are too expensive. My bonus from work (go productivity go!) came in so it's not like these are desperate times, and hey, it's Target.

I fell in love with these gorgeous and silky sheets and a matching coverlet. They're light for summer (we have big bulky comforters) and the pattern was just gorgeous. Most of our linens are on the masculine side so it is a nice change (I just hope Jen likes them). I may even get some curtains to seal the deal.

I just read a couple of reviews on target.com (when I was looking for a link to show y'all the sheets) and I see that the trim on the sheets/blanket can run in the wash and ruin everything, so now I'm a little nervous about this but confident that if other people have avoided this problem with a cold water wash and maybe a little vinegar, I can, too. Besides, they're gorgeous.

~//~

So I'm trying to come to some sort of internal resultion on this waiting game that we keep playing with the doctor (it didn't strike me how much waiting we've done until I talked to hope_persists and realized that we've been doing this since February and have only had TWO inseminations!). I am going to call them back on Wednesday and see if there is ANY way at all I can be squeezed in this month. But Jen and I are going to talk over the next several days about whether it makes more sense to stop putting off the move and our future to keep getting put on hold, and buy a house, get jobs, and resume TTC with doctors out there (provided we can get insurance coverage) while we can move forward on foster-to-adopt plans. The idea of staying here any longer than we have to, especially with Dad's house likely selling soon, is a painful one and not one we're terribly keen on.

We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I have pretty sheets!

Netflix delivered the first disc of the last season of Queer as Folk today, and we have already devoured it. Three solid hours of television. I think my brain is mush, but I just want to see what happens next! (No spoilers, please.) We should get another disc on Thursday or Friday, whoopee!

We decided to do a trial period of acupuncture - 4 sessions, more than we can afford, but then we can see how we like it and whether we think it's helpful. And also see what they recommend, because if they recommend way more than we could manage we'll have to say no. There have been studies, though, which say that acupuncture can increase effectiveness of infertility treatments by almost half! We'll see what happens.

I also think we decided (though I could be wrong, I always think we've decided and then find out we're still deciding) not to continue looking at apartments. We do want to stick around here long enough to give the TTC thing a good try, but we also want to get on with our lives and head to Western Mass. So we have our doctor appointment on the 26th and will see what he recommends. Then we will try that for a little while and hope for success. Then we can talk about when to house hunt, whether we're successful or we've decided to move on to adoption. It's just so frustrating to look at cheaper apartments and find that they aren't anywhere near as good as what we have... and we really want a house. I grew up in an apartment and don't want to die in an apartment, KWIM?

Another hot one today. Love it.

My temp was up a little bit this morning, so that's good. If it keeps going up into the 98s (it was 97.91) I'll have my confirmed O and will be quite happy. But I'm pretty confident it happened yesterday anyway - that's what the trigger shot is for.

I can talk about other things, I swear. No, really.

Jen and I went to Coworker Gina's house last night where she made us cheese fondue and chocolate fondue. I feel bad because Gina is /always/ feeding us. We have promised her dinner a million times and have never come through. So we really need to get on that. I do like eating her food, though. :)

I have an appointment for a haircut at 1:00 with the Dark Overlord. I think I want to jazz up my hair a little bit, make it a little more punk rock. Okay, not really, but I need /something/. Maybe. I'm starting to realize that I'm quite boring in my old age.

'stina got into WNEC for law school (go 'stina go!) and I'm all dizzy with the possibility that she and Jenny could be moving to Western Mass, too. Oh my gosh, that would be the awesomest thing ever - we'd have Jessica, 'stina and Jenny, Lisa, j and Jen, another Jen, and all of Jessica's groovy friends. Major good times in homo-ownership. We should all just live on one enormous farm! Viva la cooperative living!

I let Jen sleep in majorly this morning and I kind of wish I hadn't, because she ended up kind of oversleepy and we didn't get as much smooch time. Aah well, there's always tonight/tomorrow! This babymaking junk has been really good for our relationship. I wish I'd convinced her YEARS ago!