Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law states, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Stipulation: "Most likely to occur when your husband is away."

We bought a new stove and gas dryer on Saturday, with the thought that Dave would install the gas appliances himself to save us $300.  I know nothing about installing gas appliances but Dave thought we'd get them delivered on Sunday so he could do it... obviously that didn't happen since Dave was on a plane Monday morning at 8am. So here I am, on my fourth trip to Lowe's to figure it all out. I did install it all, but then I felt like I was smelling gas, so I uninstalled the gas lines, just for peace of mind. I bought an electric gas leak detector and sure enough, it came up with a leak. I am glad I was cautious and trusted my instincts, but i am really ready just to be able to use the stove! 

The washer/dryer is a separate story. The gas line looked too short to reach the gas input on the dryer in order for the appliances to be installed so the doors wouldn't open towards each other. So they tried to do me a favor by putting them in a more user friendly layout. The issue arose when I tried to connect the gas line. I couldn't pull out the washer enough to connect the line, and then the end that connected to the dryer was too far away. I went back to Lowe's (after sitting on hold with the store operator and being transferred unsuccessfully five times) and arranged for the delivery guys to come back out and switch the units so that the hose could be connected. The guys who delivered the washer/dryer took pity on me and installed the gas line for me, which they aren't legally supposed to do. So at last/at least I got caught up on laundry and had clean sheets to sleep in. 

The stove is still sitting askew. But I am realllllly tired of moving to stove in and out, which isn't easy 5mo pregnant! However, I do not want to be inhaling gas... Another trip to Lowe's is in the future today, after my cold shower, to load up on supplies and attempt again. If I can't get a secure connection I am going to live without a stove until Friday at 11pm at which point Dave will return home and be forced immediately into manual labor. 

And then the water heater just randomly stopped working..... !?!?! baahhhhh. The home warranty hasn't been paid for with escrow yet, and can take up to 30 days, so I couldn't use any of the automated prompts to schedule the repair. And then when I finally had a customer service rep schedule it, the company they scheduled me for doesn't work on tankless systems. So then, again can't schedule through automated systems, so I have to do the whole waiting-on-hold-screaming-account-numbers-into-the-phone game to get them to reschedule with another company. 


But at least the painting is done.


Almost. 

The House Hunt

So we've been on the house hunt since February.

We've had zero luck. It's awful. It sucks!!!!!!!! What makes it harder is watching friends in places put an offer on the house and get it. I don't know all the details of thier home purchase, of course, but I feel like their purchase process has been easier than ours has been.

Here's our history. Keep in mind, these are only the houses we've put an offer on. We've looked at probably 18-20 houses. (We looked at 12 houses within the first week Dave was home from deployment.)

Mid-February: Hanford Dream-House - $265k
3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, bonus room in basement, pool
I found my dream house. And it's in HANFORD. Who knew?! Priced at the very top of our budget, this house had it all. Located walking distance to Downtown (Superior Dairy, Thursday Night Markets), built in 1911, purchased from second owner in 2000, the house was rebuilt from the studs up in the keeping with the original design of the time period. There were even some old original doors with original glass doorknobs. GLASS DOORKNOBS! It was on a half-acre with a fenced off garden, pool, covered patio. A single car detached garage - which may have been part of the original NAS Lemoore barracks). The only house I will love in Hanford. Since Dave was still deployed, I inserted a contingency that the approval of the house was based on Dave seeing it within 15 days.

......Le sigh.......

Not accepted. Contingency and VA loan were stated as reasons.

Late February: Conklin Approved - $235k
4 bedrooms (one without a closet), 2 full baths, open floor plan, pool
This foreclosure had the Conklin's approval since it was one block away. Needed some TLC, but in general good repair. A good easily rentable investment.

Outbid, possibly a cash offer.


Early March: The Random One - $225
4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, pool
A Short Sale. This one was not in the neighborhoods we'd been looking in, but it met all the other prequalifications. A nice house that needed some work on the back yard (who puts gravel throughout one-fourth of the backyard?). We put in an offer (total low-ball offer), went to Hawaii, three days in the vacay, we get a counter offer with notification that the seller's have received another offer that was higher than the counter offer they offered. UGH. We decided to significantly - when I say significantly, I mean SIG-NIF-I-CANT-LY - increase our offer.

Outbid. Currently the back-up offer.


Early April: Superb Rentablity with Conklin Approval - $220
3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, pool, hot-tub, open floor plan
So this one is an interesting one. Another Short Sale. By a CDR/squadron CO. They were only $40k underwater, so we were confused as to why it was a short sale to begin with. It also was priced low for the neighborhood/amenities to create a mulitple offers situation. Well, congrats, jerks. You did. The house was listed on Friday, seen by four potential sellers. By Monday there were three offers. The buyer countered all offers asking for "H&B," highest and best offers. I'm not gonna lie. We offered a significant amount of the asking price and included all closing costs. We thought we had a strong offer. And it was. But who can compete with an all cash offer. UGH. FOR SERIOUSLY!?

Outbid by all cash offer.


So that's our story. I know that "normal" length of time it takes to find a house is six months. And we aren't there yet. But I am sooooo flippin' tired of getting outbid. On every house we've been one of at least three offers! Seriously!! I have to remind myself that Hanford, because of its proximity to NAS Lemoore, is not representational of the rest of the market. I feel like nowhere else are people fighting to get a house. This market feels more like 2007 than post-crash 2012.

That's the rational side of me.

The emotional side of me is more like this: Is our realtor actually doing her job? Is she representing us well? We are a NO-RISK LOAN. Really - the loan agent double ran our credit because she hadn't seen anything that high in a while. And we were the first offers on each of these houses. How is that fair? That people who are Johnny-come-lately get the house that we saw first? It's not fair. Also, I think that most realors as skeezeballs.

Additional worries include the spring-summer bump. Housing prices go up. Poopface.

Typos

I love finding typos or grammatical mistakes. And it's not too difficult, if you just keep a watchful eye. I found one at the doctor's office last week. I suppose I find it gratifying. Here's one I found this morning one World Market.com .

Disclaimer: Just because I enjoy finding typos doesn't mean I never make them!

Scary Movies

Dave and I were talking last night about scary movies. I used to love scary movies. When I was in grade school, my friend, Stephanie, and I watched all six of the "Children of the Corn" thrillers. Of course, they were late 80s or early 90s scary movies - can't really be compared to the gore of modern scary movies.  My parents even went to see Blair Witch Project to see if I could see it. I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre on opening night in college. And now I won't even watch the previews.  So what changed? I used to love having the pants scared off me.  Here's my theory.

Up through college life was very care free, I still had my parents to fall back on if I needed them. My biggest fear was getting a low GPA and failing a final. Post-college I got married and had something to lose. Moving away from my family, having my husband deploy, living in a completely foreign culture: all of this was much scarier than Children of the Corn or Blair Witch.

Life's a lot scarier when it's real. I don't need to be a thrill seeker or an adrenaline junkie and watch scary movies to get a buzz. Real life is much, much scarier than whatever Hollywood can make.

Horror films over-do the blood, guts, and gore to make it scary - to prove a point. But emotional films do the same thing. Think about any movie that makes you cry. Like the Notebook. Both the Notebook and Texas Chainsaw over-embellish to evoke emotion. They just evoke different types of emotion. I can't watch super emotional movies any more either. It used to be that my roommates and I would watch Legends of the Fall once a semester, to get the emotional catharsis that accompanies the viewing. Now I don't need to watch movies to feel something because once again life has proven to be much more emotionally draining than I could have anticipated in my care-free college days.

Noah's photoshoot

Full-body view of Noah, he looks like he's sucking his thumb, maybe. Omphalecele also apparent. (We learned how to spell it today.)

Noah's little legs/feet, crossed at the ankles. This is probably what's poking me every day...

Little fist! It's his hand, but his fingers are clenched so they're folded under.

Sucking on the umbilical cord...

Obviously he can't hear me tell him not to put that in his mouth....

Noah's boy parts! We had the tech, Jeff, show us because we found out he was a boy via amnio results. The big blob in the bottom left is his butt.  :)

We had an overall good visit with the doctor today. The Tech was disappointed when we had to schedule our next ultrasound while he is out of town. (Having to plan around Dave's schedule.) We had a minorly traumatic event as we witnessed a massive heart deceleration from 130s to mid 70s. So that was upsetting, but apparently not wholly abnormal. We spoke with Dr. Chao, who is our favorite, aside from Dr. Shipper. He has very good interpersonal skills. Dr. Chao arranged for a neonatologist from the hospital to stop by and meet with us. Dr Savid was helpful in discussing what options we have available - which aren't a lot, but we already knew that. We're planning on delivering at the Fresno hospital, where they'd provide some basic comfort care support. So overall, not a bad visit, but always emotionally draining. We're getting take out for dinner because a) we have no food and b) no energy to cook. 

Warning, the following includes judgmental comments. I'm just letting you know that I know they're judgmental. 

As always, we have many tales of the fall of the human race from sitting in the waiting room. Today's future-mom-of-notice was.... almost indescribable... Dave and I were unbelievably appalled. The office closes for lunch from 12-1pm. Having the appointments right after lunch are good because that hour gives the morning's rush time to even out, and you generally wait less. Well little-miss-Thang obviously didn't notice this, and continued to complain about the wait (they lock the doors until exactly 1pm). While we had to wait with her for 15 minutes, she drank a soda, pulled out some nothing-but-sugar-blue-and-pink candies, proceeded to announce to the other 10 of us waiting to get in that she was a gestational diabetic, but she didn't care since her due date is in 6weeks anyway. "I really shouldn't be eating all this sugar, but who cares." We also learned that this was her 7th child, (she's 31, I checked her birthday when I signed in.... come to think of it, she cut in front of me, but I don't care because I didn't want to have to deal with her); she has a baby girl, and a dead 12-week-old fetus in her that's causes extra fluid build up; she has the mentality of a 10 year old; she was wearing a tube top with a strapped bra. (Ok those last two aren't observations, they're judgements.)  I managed to avoid eye contact enough so that she didn't seek me out as a social companion in the waiting room (thank the Lord), but latched on to a 10year old boy who was there and talked about how many stitches and staples she'd had... There was also discussion of being in and out of jail, but I didn't hear the details, I don't think it was her that was in and out of jail, though, so that's.... good? 

Dave also thinks she's on welfare. Pure speculation, and judgement, but hey, if we can beat .007% odds and have a Trisomy 18 baby, it's almost a safe bet she's on welfare or unemployment. Or both.

When Dave and I over heard that she's had 7 kids, we just about lost it. How in the world can people like this get SEVEN kids and our FIRST has Trisomy 18? Why do bad things happen to good people, and why is stupidity continually recognized and rewarded in our society?!?!

To the Movies... No, let's stay home..

This was originally a response to a friend's recent posting about their experience at the movies. However, I deemed it too lengthy and decided I wanted to share it. (Take note to those overseas and think they are missing anything...)

Why Netflix is 100x Better Than Movie Theaters

We rarely see movies on weekends now a days... We saw Slumdog Millionaire two weeks ago (good movie!), and i was reminded why I don't see movies in theaters anymore!
1) Stank smell
2) Stank smell
3) No AC This is odd; it's usually cold in theaters, but this also accounts for some stank smells.
4) "Those darn kids" Uuugh I'm positive I was not that obnoxious in high school.
5) Constant repetition of words just said on screen. Not everyone will understand this reference. However, I will say in certain demographic areas, the theaters are louder than others because viewers find it necessary to repeat the line just siad on screen. And not whisper it to their friend and laugh,no. Repeat at a loud volume and laugh at a loud volume.
6) The smell of artifical butter. GROSS. Ew. I think i can count the number of time's i've purchased popcorn at theaters: twice. I'm sorry if you really enjoy it, I just don't.
7) People who arrive at 735pm to a 730pm showing, and then make YOU move so they can sit in the best seats. Look. If I'd wanted to sit in those two seats, I would have. So yes, I do mind scooting over a seat so that you and your date can have MY seat. I had built a nest here, my coat was my blanket, my water was posed just so in my cup holder, my husband's arm is in just the right place to attach to. I am very comfortable right here!!!!!!!! But no, you can't say no, and these late comers know it and abuse my planning.
8) Stank smell.

Netflix, however, is now invaluable because I do not have to compromise my comfort to view the movie of my choice. After my most recent theater experience, I vowed to Dave that we will not see movies on weekends (Fri and Sat nights). Weekdays, perhaps. However, there is always a movie I like playing at my convenience waiting for me in my mailbox.