catching up - a year in review, June 2012

It has been just a little over a year since I posted anything of substance, as outlined in my post earlier.  I figured I'd start off small with that recap of resolutions from years past just to get the rusty fingers used to the keyboard again.  Now it is time to get down to the actual goods.  The details, or deets as the kids call it these days.  Ok maybe they really don't call it that, but whateves.  YOLO.  LOL.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  The last 12 months have been an absolute blur. So much has truly happened since May of 2012 that I think the best way to break this down is to give you a little blurb about each month.  If you don't like my style stop reading.  No one invited you anyway.  

June 2012

House
In the end of May 2012, a lovely couple made an offer on our house that we promptly accepted.  Once this happened, we kicked our house hunting into overdrive.  We knew from the start that wherever we moved to, it was going to be our"forever home" (yes, we know it is a cheesey term, we're cheesey kind of people).  Our search area was in South Jersey, as close as possible to my parents, still a reasonable distance from my office in the city and the house was to be everything we wanted it be to and more.  We never ever ever expected to want to move into an old house.  In fact both Pope and I agreed that we didn't even want to look at houses that were more than 40 years old.  After looking at a number of different neighborhoods we decided that we loved the character of an old house.  A new Toll Brother's community could offer us all the amenities in the universe, but it could not offer us character.  

Character is what lead to our two final choices, both of which were built in the 1800's (a little past that 40 year cut off) in Woodstown Borough.  While both houses were fantastic, the one we decided on was just perfect.  You could tell the previous owners loved the house and took pride in their home (bonus, it was the house a fellow WHS class of 2000 graduate grew up in).  The decision was a no brain-er.   Anyway, we made an offer, they accepted and we set a date for settlement on both homes (7/30 and 8/1 respectively) which started a mad dash to get everything done and packed up before settlement.  I would post pictures, but I just realized that I actually don't have any, which I'll promptly correct tomorrow (yay vacation day) and add them to a later post.  

Obligatory Mommy & Me Selfie
June 2012

A3

We started calling Ari "Bly" or "The Bly Bot" around this time last year.  One of us texted the other about A3 and our iPhone auto corrected whatever the term was to "Bly Bot" which found to be incredibly hilarious for no real reason. This is actually completely irrelevant, I just wanted to fill up some text so I'm not just randomly posting pictures of the kid.  But seriously, he's really f-ing cute and the center of my universe, so why wouldn't I be posting pictures of him?  Besides, I'm sure you'll all want to see him grow over the months.

Me

Normally I wouldn't have a little section all dedicated to me.  I mean really, this is MY blog, so by default it's already kinda already about me or my life anyway, so having a little section dedicated to me is slightly obnoxious.  But June 2012 was a big deal for me as on June 7, 2012, I turned 30 years old.  The big 3-0.  Halfway to 60.  Using my youngest sister's logic, being 10 years away from 40 makes me almost 40.  Being that it is my 31st birthday tomorrow (by the time I post this it might already be midnight), I'm sure I'm now officially a senior citizen to my sister.

On that note, this old lady has to hit the hay!

...baaaacccckkkk

Way back when I went on about these things called "resolutions".  Apparently in the beginning of 2012 I was still living in denial of my lack of follow through with resolutions.  Lets review how they worked out, shall we?

1. Blogging at least once a week: I don't really count the last post I made in August as a real post, but rather a much overdue explanation of my random deafness, so my last real post was in May of 2012.  On that same day in May, I (ironically) posted a long winded rant about how I needed to get my shit together.  One would think I would follow up with getting my shit together.  Not so much.
2. Take pictures, lots and lots of pictures:So this is really one I should have focused more on.  I will say I did manage to get the camera out here and there over the past year, but not nearly as much as I should.  A3's life is super well documented for just about the first year, then there is a quick drop-off.  Though I can't feel too bad about it; we do have an f-ton of iPhone pictures which I guess is better than nothing.
3. Lose weight/Get Healthy:I didn't do too shabby on this one actually.  I didn't get my shit together in enough time to lose all of the weight before getting pregnant with number two, but I did end up coming down about 20 pounds before the pregnancy.  Is it what I wanted?  No.  Is it ideal?  No.  But it is better than nothing.  The bonus here is that I started a really good workout routine and weight loss coaching at Lady Fitness.  Seriously, if you live in the area and are looking for a low key place to work out in a super supporting environment, give Debbie a call and get in there.   Anyway, with Debbie's help, I was getting on track.  I also quit smoking, like quit quit.  Quit as in I gave it up BEFORE I got pregnant type quit.  Might not seem like that big of a deal to distinguish the two, but it is much different to quit because I wanted to versus quitting because I had to.  So overall, I wouldn't call this one a resolution fail.
4. Get to Crafting:
   Not a total fail here.  I did finish the redo of Ari's baby blanket and started building the granny squares for my granny square blanket.  I do somewhat hate them right now though, so I may be restarting.  
5. Get Organized:
   Well I can safely say that I actually accomplished this one.  You should see my awesome binders in all their glory.  I even already made one for Penners (more about her in a later post).

So right.  Let me go back to my original idea that resolutions are for suckers.  My plan right now is to catch you kids up on the last 13 months (a lot has happened) and hopefully get in the routine to keep this going on, well, a routine basis.  We'll see. 

WHAT? Speak up, I can't hear you...

In other words, this is the reason why I was completely deaf in my right ear for two days...

Most of you know that John had back surgery in September. For over ten years he was living with constant pain in his back. This past summer the pain reached new levels and the compression on the nerves started to severely decrease the strength on his left side. We decided to bite the bullet and go for surgery. John's PCP pulled a few favors and got us in with the Chair of Neurosurgey at Penn. Normally there is a six-ten month waiting list for surgery, but considering John's level of weakness he was fast tracked and had surgery within three weeks. Surgery went well and we can safely say that it was a success. John can now function like a normal human being.  One "side effect" of this new normal functioning John, is that he now can sleep soundly through the night. Which means we've discovered that soundly-sleeping John snores like a bear.

What does this have to do with me being deaf?

I used to be able to sleep through just about anything - ask my mom, you could have set a bomb off in my room and if I managed to survive the blast, I still would have been sleeping soundly. Something happened in the last year, I don't know if being a mom has the added benefit of being a super light sleeper, but now I can't sleep through loud noises. This includes John's newfound habit of snoring. Once we realized that John's snoring was keeping me up, we decided we had three options:

1. I could continue to get shitty sleep
2. I could smother John with a pillow
3. I could start wearing earplugs 

Considering I'm one cranky bitch when I don't get enough sleep and really wouldn't be fair to Ari if I was sentenced to life in prison (we've all watched enough CSI to know I wouldn't get away with smothering John) we opted for number three.  I started wearing the pink foam earplugs and life was good.  John decided we should take a good thing and make it better, so he grabbed me a pack of silicone mold-able earplugs which were supposed to work better than the little pink foam ones.  Sounds good right?  Thinking it wouldn't be much more difficult than molding my old field hockey mouthpieces, I decided to give it a go and mold these things. The whole process was supposed to work as follows:

• Mix the two putty like substances together until it is a teal color
• Gently push in ear
• Wait 10 minutes to harden
• Remove

This was working well up to the 60 minute mark when the putty was still putty like.  I tried to remove the putty and it wouldn't come out.  Then John offered to "help" me get it out.  In a moment of weakness, I consented to have my husband attempt to extract the putty from my ear.  I'm sure you can imagine where this goes - in an attempt to extract the putty from my ear, John pushed a piece down into my ear canal.  Instantly I lost hearing in my right ear.  The sound was not muffled, sound was entirely gone.  John offered to get a BBQ skewer to try to stab it and pull it out.  Thankfully, my better judgement returned and I declined.  The following morning I made an appointment with an ENT, who couldn't see me until the next day (Friday).  When I finally saw the ENT and she pulled this little piece of (now) hard silicone out of my ear, it was damn near orgasmic.  I could hear again!

Lesson learned here kids?  Never confuse your engineer husband with a medical professional.

still selling the house - a lovely Cape Cod

So as I previously mentioned, I'm a little behind on the posting so just hang tight, I'm slowly updating you on everything that's been going on.  I've had a few people reach out about the progress on selling the house, so I figured it should have its own little post...

Our house has been for sale now for a little under four months.  In that amount of time we've had over 30 appointments plus our open house, so we're definitely getting a lot of foot traffic through. On two separate occasions we had people that were pretty close to making an offer - two different buyers asked to come back a second time to see the house with their parents.  The first couple came back a second time with their parents, after the apointment their realtor noted "they really love the house but have decided it's just not quite big enough for them. Lovely home", which means their parents talked them out of it (you don't come back to see a house for a second time with your parents and then realize it's too small; mom and dad pointed out it was too small).  Another couple came back, again with their parents, and the feedback from that second appointment was "She loves the house, but he really wants a basement OR a garage. They are still thinking about it and I will keep you posted".  I can't blame this one on the parents; I guess magically between the first appointment and the second appointment our house was going to grow a basement or a garage.  Hmm.  Anyway, the second appointments got both John & I pretty excited, we really thought we were going to get an offer!  It was kind of a let down to read the feedback and see the "they love it but..." statements and know we weren't going to get an offer from either couple.  Sadly, the disappointment we would feel over not getting an offer is greatly overshadowed by the disappointment of getting a shitty offer.  A few weeks back we did get our first offer in, but it was insultingly low.  The couple offered us 30k less than what we were asking for.  Now at the time, our house had been up for a little over two months, we're anxious to move so we can get on with our lives, but we're far from "lets take any offer that crosses our plates".  Best part?  Their realtor told our realtor that their max price was 25k less than our asking price.  Really people? 

Lovely Cape-Cod, looking for a LTR...

So what has this whole process taught me so far?  There are a lot of reatlors out there who are complete ass hats.  I'm amazed with some of the feedback we get, for example the showing from Sunday left the following feedback "while the house is beautifully done, she does not want a Cape Cod".   Why in God's name are you showing your client a Cape Cod if she really doesn't want a Cape Cod?  Seeing it in person doesn't change the fact that it is a Cape Cod style house.  Or to another realtor, "my client really liked the house, but she needs to get comfortable with the area".  Why are you showing your client houses in a neighborhood that they don't like?  We've had realtors show up insanely late (the cape-cod lady was here 5 minutes after her one hour long appointment window ended) or some not show up at all.  At the end of the day we still live here!  Please respect our time by showing up on time, canceling appointments if you have no intention of coming and, above all, know your own client and don't show them something they would have ZERO interest in!  Ugh, it annoys me so much I even brought out the ctrl+B on that one.  Asshats (my guy excluded). 

As far as where we're looking to go, I'm started slowing down my searches on Realtor.com etc.  I've fallen in love with a number of houses, one in particular that's in Woodstown Borough, but I'm afraid to get too excited.  We've watched other houses we like be sold and we haven't even had a legit offer yet.  At this point I'm frustrated, but I'm trying to keep a good outlook.  John and I didn't expect to have the house on the market for less than a year, so to be in month 4 and to be this antsy is a little silly on my part.  I guess I didn't expect to have so much traffic through the house, which is why it is discouraging.  To have so many people come through and not one make a legit offer is what gets me down about the process.  We've had others leave awesome feedback ("top of their list, when do your clients want to close?" or "they love the house, keep us posted") but it hasn't turned into anything.  One of the appointments this past weekend, obviously not the one who hates cape-cods, expressed interest so time will only tell if anything comes out of that.  In the meantime, I'm trying to be patient!  

catching up - how I need to get my shit together

Well, my resolution of posting once a week has been shot to shit considering it has been over two months since I last posted.  I apologize to all seven of my trusty readers out there (Hi Mom) that I left you hanging for so long, but it has been a hectic few months.

Basically, this is all about how I need to get my shit together.

When I found out I was pregnant, I change a lot of behaviors.  I realized that a lot of what was normal for me would not be healthy for the baby.  Some stuff was an absolute no-brainer, I immediately stopped smoking as soon as I saw the positive test.  I also decided to make some less obvious changes - I stopped working all the time and started doing normal hours. I started eating better, I cut out coffee (though I did indulge in decaff as a treat) and I even managed to completely stop drinking Diet Coke which is amazing considering I'd have at least 20-30oz a day (with the exception of a few happy hours, where I cheated and had a DC). I manged to keep some of these habits up for a bit even when I returned to work from FMLA, but slowly they started creeping back.  My good eating habits pretty much went out the window, fast-food has become a way too frequent part of my weekly routine.  DC and massive amounts of coffee fuel my everyday existence.   In January, shit hit the fan and I started smoking again at work (for what its worth, only at work).  I'm back working 11-12 hour days again, yesterday was beginning of week three of me coming into work at 4am.  I'm generally not taking very good care of myself.

So basically, I need to get my shit together.

I keep saying to myself it was so easy to stop these bad habits when I found out I was pregnant, because I wasn't doing it for myself I was doing it for the baby.  You know what?  Just because Ari isn't inside of me any longer doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to have a healthy mom.  You know what else?  I need to change for me.  I have taken some steps to work towards being a healthier Andrea.  I joined Weight Watchers, and I'm down about 15 pounds from when I started.  I've committed to not smoking, and so far today I haven't a smoke at all and only two yesterday and none over the weekend, and no one has been murdered yet.  I've started a couch-to-5k type program and I've committed to doing some sort of activity at least five times a week. When I've gotten my ass up and out, I feel much better. Not just physically but mentally as well.  The hardest thing I'm going to have to do is let go of the work baggage.  My work related stress drives so many of the other things, I have no choice but to let go.  I'm trying to reconcile the fact that I will never be as caught up at work as I would like to be even if I worked 24/7 and there will always be work related stress.  I stopped working all hours of the day when I found out I was pregnant, and you know what?  The office didn't close down, production did not stop.  All was well.  And you know what?   If I stop coming in at 4am, the office won't close down.  Production will not stop.  All will be well.

So this is it.  The last of making excuses and not pushing myself to change.  The last of saying "it was so easy when I was pregnant" or "I'll go to the gym tomorrow, I'm too tired".  I'm not pregnant, but being pregnant shouldn't be the only time in my life when I get my health in check.  There will always be a reason not to change, but none of them outweigh the reasons to change.  This is me, getting my shit together for my son, for my husband and above all, for myself.  And don't you worry, I'll keep you posted along the way.

reflecting - Ari's ears & old Greek ladies

Wow!  I can't believe it has been almost 2 weeks since I've enlightened all of you with tales from my life!  I know, you all weep a thousand tears...So what have I been up to?  Cleaning, crocheting, mommy-ing, working, wife-ing, you know the usual.   I've been working really hard on my granny square blanket crochet project, I can't wait to share the progress with all of you!  I'll do that in a separate post considering that little squares of yarn pale in comparison to photos of the kiddo.

Mom!  My ears are just fine

The other day John and I were discussing, yet again, who we think Ari looks like the most.  It really throws us off that this kid has blonde hair and blue eyes - it looks like we stole him from a Swedish couple!  When I look at Ari, I see a lot of John especially from the nose down.  One thing we realized the other day when we were looking back through our pictures was that we think Ari has John's ears.  You can already see them starting to stick out!

Ari's adorable ears got us thinking about the strange advice we've received over the last 11 months, particularly the strange advice we've received by older Greek ladies.  We were warned that Ari's car seat was going to make his ears stick out.  We've also been told that we shouldn't buy shoes that are too big for him because it will encourage his feet to grow larger than normal.  John's mom was convinced that something was wrong with Ari because, according to her, John was able to hold conversations and run around by the time he was 9 months old.  Around Ari's first birthday we should shave his head so his hair will grow in thicker and healthier.  Hands down though, my favorite piece of advice was about the cats. We were told not to allow the cats near Ari's crib.  Reasonable right?  Probably thinking maybe there are some allergy concerns? Nope, not to allow the cats near Ari because they'll steal his breath (apparently this is a popular enough of a legend that Snopes has an article on it).  What kind of crazy advice have you been given?

sick - the first CY12 office cold

My office has notoriously horrible ventilation. By "my office" I mean the suite I work in - I dont want you to think I'm all fancy and have a door an whatnot, I'm a cube monkey. All 30 of us breathe the same recycled air. Think airplane cabin air minus the filtration. Whenever one person gets sick it makes it's way around the office. I pulled the short straw this week, lucky me.

I was saying to John that I would much rather have the flu for two days then deal with a cold. At least with the flu you know it's going to end and no one expects anything from you because, well you have the flu. A cold on the other hand can last two days or three weeks. There's never an end in sight. All of your symptoms are crappy but not bad enough to really take time off. And no matter how bad your head hurts or how wonderful it feels to feel like you're swallowing razor blades, no one gives a shit. Case in point, today at the office a co-worker commented on my pathetic sounding voice and even more pathetic appearance and asked sweetly "are you coming down with the flu", to which I replied "no, I think it's a cold". Her tone completely changed and she said "oh. It's JUST a cold" and rolled her eyes and walked away! No love for us cold sufferers out there.

Anyway, cold or no cold, I'm still crocheting away. Right now I'm enjoying a cup of tea, watching my new favorite show Infested (more on that later) and crocheting. I'm almost finished with the blanket! This isn't the best picture, it's from my iPhone (actually this whole post was written on my Blogger app, thanks technology), but here's a shot of my work in progress. Should be done soon!