Judecorp.

This is my last day of work for a while. I am off on two weeks of "vacation" (to extend my health insurance) and then I come back for an Official Last Day on December 11.

I changed my address with the post office and with the RMV. Sometime soon I need to start contacting the credit cards, student loans, etc. I'd forgotten how manic moving can be. Though I am not ashamed to say that I am excited to see the drop in our car insurance now that our residence is waaaay out of Boston. *crosses fingers*

There is significant vermin activity coming from the direction of my closet. I hear a lot of moving around, thumping, and chewing. I am scared to go look for clothes. Maybe I will wear something I've already packed. ;)

I have two appointments today, both with coworkers, both with families I really like. Who am I kidding? I like all of my families. (But there are certainly some I like better!)

The going-away shindig was a good time and a pleasant distraction. Since most of my coworkers don't know I'm knocked up (although they are ALL gossiping about it) I didn't have to talk about it AT ALL which was quite nice and made for a more enjoyable evening. Perhaps I should set off on a new course of Complication Denial. I think I will get right on that, minus the part where I make Jen mad by doing too much around the house.

vorpalbla is going to stop by our new place on Saturday. How fun! Everyone is welcome. Even YOU.

I should get off my butt and get ready for work, but it is soo snuggly in bed. I woke up early due to the chewing and I am already feeling a wee bit sleepy. Dang.

p.s. My wife comes home tonight, and we officially have no more nights apart starting NOW. There is much rejoicing.

I need a do-over for yesterday. I'm trying to think of one thing that went right and I keep coming up empty. Bollocks.

I got crap for sleep, and it was an awful day, weather-wise. Very rainy. Cold. Sheets of rain that sent our leaky skylight into overdrive. I went to the grocery store to do our shopping and it was positively /brimming/ with people. So it took forEVer, especially at check-out time. Which means that I was running late to check out an apartment in Winthrop. So I raced home, Jen was on her way home sick from work because she was coughing really badly. We got home at the same time, she put the groceries away while I got directions to the apartment, and we left 15 minutes later than I wanted to. And Jen was wheezing really badly and I didn't think she should come along, but she wanted to.

When we walked in the door of the apartment, the woman said, "I will show it to you but I just took a deposit on this apartment a few minutes ago." This means, of course, that we loved the apartment. It was very simple and charming, a decent size but things were in weird places - BUT the rent is $500 /less/ than our current rent AND it includes heat and hot water. We would have taken it in a heartbeat. But someone else beat us to it. We took rental applications in case the first people fall through, but I don't have high hopes.

We got home and Jen laid down for a while after I made her some soup. I went in to check on her and she couldn't get enough breath to talk, and I panicked. She said she wanted to go to the ER so we went to Carney Hospital because it was the closest. And it's kind of scary there. Jen got 3 (yes, THREE) nebulizer treatments in the time that we were there, and the doctor was leaning towards saying that Jen probably has developed asthma considering she is now getting bronchitis regularly. Now she is sick as a dog, coughing and sneezing and wheezing, and needless to say we did not go out last night like we'd planned and she won't be coming to RI with me today so I won't be going to my dad's grave. (I don't want to go alone.) Mostly I'm just worried. (And haven't been in the bowels of a hospital since Dad died in one.)

I'm /really/ concerned about Jen's general health. In the last couple of weeks, she has ended up with a whole host of prescription drugs for a number of chronic health concerns throughout her body. She's been taking medicine for high blood pressure for the last 10 years or so, and they just upped her dose. She also is now taking prescription stomach medicine for acid reflux and heartburn (and is supplementing with OTC Zantac also) and has recently been diagnosed with a hiatal hernia. She was recently given prescription drugs for migraines that seem to have come out of nowhere as she has never had migraines before and now complains of headaches 3+ times a week. She recently saw a doctor for foot pain (a couple of months ago), and also complains of knee pain and frequent back pain. She has started taking BCPs for long, painful periods. She is now on an albuterol inhaler. And she is still getting those hives. So now on any given day, she is taking: blood pressure medicine, prescription stomach medicine, zantac, birth control, claritin and benadryl for the hives, and possibly headache medicine. This has me majorly freaking out.

We've been talking about taking steps to increase our fitness and health for quite a long time now, and I really think I have come a long way in terms of what I eat, what I do, and how I look. I'm really worried that if something doesn't change soon, I'm going to lose her too early, too.

It's late. I have to work in the morning. Jen is trying to do more vacuuming. I have done probably 8 loads of laundry by this point, with 9 and 10 in the machines. I gave in and bagged all of my sweaters in the closet to either wash or dry clean. There are a bunch that shouldn't be washed that I don't wear much anyway, so I will experiment and if they get ruined I guess I will just toss them. There are probably 10 garbage bags full of things to wash STILL. It is pure insanity. Jen is planning to get up before 7 to shower and do more vacuuming/laundry.

I get out of work at 1:00 and then I will rush home and fetch Jen for her Upper GI. I hope the bug dude is done by then because otherwise I don't know what to do! He is supposed to arrive anytime between 8 and 11 and it supposedly takes about 4 hours.

Jen's NOLA luggage was in her closet. Right next to my internal frame pack. I sure don't know what to do about that, but I /do/ know that it was quite ch-ching! and I have no desire to have to replace it.

This is such a huge pain in the ass. Normally laundry is one of my favorite chores. I am so sick of laundry.

The Good: - My coworkers and I went to our 5:15pm assessment and at the end of it, we kind of got to chatting about baseball. (The family is big into baseball, but Mom is a Sox fan and Dad is a Yankees fan.) And then Dad hands us, seriously just hands over, 4 tickets to a Yankee game on a Saturday in July that the family can't go to because of other commitments. I said, "Are you sure you want to give these away?" and he said it was to thank us for how much time and effort we spend with his kid. Awwwh.

The Bad: - We got our negative beta today as expected. With a heads-up that if we're not successful next cycle, we'll have to come back in to "talk about what's up" and "decide what to do next." Ugh.

The Bad: - My BIL (Jen's brother) finally got around to responding to Jen's e-mail from about 1.5 months ago asking if he would consider being a donor for us. Aside from saying no (which is totally fine), he added an addendum about how he doesn't think Jen is mature enough, stable enough, or financially secure enough to consider parenting. He spent considerable time telling her how much of a challenge and commitment kids are and how he encourages her to rethink things because she is clearly not in any position to parent. (My take on this: He has issues with his family situation and is projecting his issues on Jen.) How DARE anyone assault my wife's character that way? I seriously want to call him up and yell at him for several hours. Who does that? If he had wanted to impart some kind "older brother" wisdom, I'm sure he could have thought of more appropriate words.

The Ugly: - Jen went to the doctor again this morning for this persistent series of hives/welts she keeps getting all over her body. Her doctor continues to maintain that she is having some sort of allergic reaction. But now she believes her allergy is to a bedbug infestation in our house. I am going to vomit now.

So the apartment was really cute, the backyard was wonderful, the landlord was totally nice and chill, and the downstairs chick that we met was wicked awesome!

So what's the catch?
It's not deleaded.

Eff Dash Dash Dash. Back to the drawing board.

The furnace people came to the house today to check on our click-click-clicking furnace. And now I'm paranoid.

The dudes said that there is a large, visible crack in the heat exchanger (I love throwing these words around like I know what they mean) and that the blower motor was on the verge of failure (which is what I thought it was, since the stupid blower kept click-click-clicking). He said that these things usually cause each other or happen together and, more importantly, that it needs to be taken care of ASAP. He made me nervous by saying that the cracked heat exchanger could start causing the furnace to blow out carbon monoxide and made sure we had a CO detector in the apartment (which we do, in fact, it's all part of the smoke detector, the one that broke FOUR MONTHS AGO that we'd been hounding the landlords about since then and finally got last week).

Now, I'm relieved that we have a nice new CO detector in the house in case this /does/ start happening, but what about all of that time that we're not home? What about the cats? I admit that I'm a little, well, prone to the anxiety, but I don't want to come home to a house full of passed out cats and a beeping CO detector, either.

I left voicemails for the landlords on their home phone and one's cell phone. I'm sure he won't be pleased because it will probably be an expensive fix (unless it's still under warranty), but I /really/ want him to take care of this right away. Yuck. Heater problems give me stomach pains.

I'm glad I was able to give more detailed information about the problem. Jen was great and told them that the heater does a lot of clicking and start-stopping when we turn it on, but when I heard them talking about it I realized they were confused and thought that the whole furnace was turning on and off, not just the blower. So I like to pretend I helped solve the mystery! ;)

Jen and I looked at two apartments today - they were significantly cheaper than what we pay right now and let me tell you they were significantly crappier. Granted, we're incredibly spoiled by our renovated froo-froo luxury pad but we were willing to come down a couple of notches in the interests of affordability. The places we looked at had tiny rooms (which is okay) and no closet/cabinet space. The lack of space is a major problem because we are currently blessed with more cabinets and closets than should ever be allowed by law. What can we say, we love our place.

On the way home from our second spontaneous apartment visit, we decided that we didn't have anything to lose by talking to our landlords about our situation - namely that we didn't want to move but that there really wasn't any way we could pay the extra $75/month during the height of the winter heating bills, and that if we couldn't reach a solution, we were going to give our 30-day notice.

Jen and I talked in the car about how if they really needed the money, the LAST thing they would want is an empty apartment, and really, who wants to move in the winter? We decided that the worst he could say was no and then we would move to a crappier place, no problem.

So we sat him down and told him that we had received his letter and we were a bit concerned because we didn't want to move but we couldn't afford to pay the rent increase /and/ heat the apartment. We told him that our gas bills had pretty much doubled from last year and that we were kind of reeling about that. I added in a little "dead father's medical bills" for effect. We told him that we looked at apartments today and that we didn't want to leave our home, but we were prepared to do so.

He emphatically stated that he did not want to lose us as tenants (hello, we're the best!) and he pretty much acknowledged that he knew it was better to have the old payment than no payment. He told us that their property tax had recently increased by $150/month, which I know from the news is true. We told him that we understood that they were in a jam too, and would be willing to pay the increase when the heat bills started to come down - as a compromise, we offered April 1st. And he agreed to it!!!

So we get two additional months of rent at our old rate, and then we'll pay the increased rate until we can sell my dad's place and buy our dream house in Western Mass. We're hoping to be in the Valley by June or July so that's only a couple of months of paying the extra $75 - extra money we would have spent on packing/moving this month anyway. And hopefully by then our gas bills will be out of the double digits and we'll be well on our way to being hippie homeowners!