Once More Unto the Breach and All That

I'm 35 now.  Thirty effing five.  I've been having a bit of a hard time adjusting to the change.  Some of this angst is because I'm now officially old and must admit that I will now never do some of the things I wanted to do in my life (be thin while I'm young, can't think of anything else, it must just be that).  More of the sturm und drang though comes from us getting back on the TTC bandwagon.

I made the appointment for the consultation.  It's real.  I'm actually signing up to go through all this another time.

I'm out of practice here -- there's so much going on in my head and I'm finding it difficult to articulate.  Hopefully, I'll be less rusty as I keep posting.  I would like to keep a record of this time -- not for my child(ren, hopefully) to read later, but more for myself -- to have it memorialized that I was here, I went through this, I wanted this.

I am in a better space to be starting a new IF journey.  I've lost a lot of weight since we first started trying.  Thanks to hyperemesis during the pregnancy and gallstones afterwards, I lost 70 pounds all tolled.  Of course, once my gall bladder came out, I started eating and eating and eating.  I'm still down 25 lbs though and I'm doing Weight Watchers to inculcate those healthy eating and exercise habits again.

We're also in a new (to us) house, in a new (to JD, but home to me) state.  Yay Maryland!!  It's lovely to be back on this side of the river.  I've got a 10 minute commute and it's just lover-ly.  Sure, our home has been invaded by packing boxes which multiply like Gremlins, but otherwise, I'm really happy with the house.

We'll see where we go from here, eh?

Veni, Vidi, Ve no buy-ee

Today, John Dear and I went out looking for a new dining room set (table + chairs+ china cabinet). Anyone who knows me IRL knows my obsession with finding a good china cabinet.

Don't tell JD, but we're slowly replacing all the furniture that he brought into the marriage, because, well, because it's really cheap-looking, literally falling apart furniture. Plus, it's all really "geeky swinging bachelor"-oriented. Actually, my mother christened it the "Skeletor Collection" because most of it is large and black and might fit in Castle Greyskull.

So, we're trying to look for something formal but casual, contemporary but traditional, cheap but expensive. (H/t to Richard Crenna in Sabrina). Important items: the set must have comfortable chairs, fit 10 people when all leaves are used, must be sturdy and the china cabinet may not be so tall that we can't fit it in our dining room. Oh, it also has to go with our living room furniture because of the way the house is set up (the living room and dining room are just one large room).

We went to a mega furniture store, Pottery Barn and Arhaus Furniture. Crate&Barrel was closed today, much to their detriment as we were one of 40 couples we saw trying to go in. Arhaus seemed to have some really cool stuff. Pottery Barn (or at least, our location) did not show all of their furniture and the mega store didn't have anything we liked. I am not just buying something to buy something. I want to love it.

We may try and go to one of those DirectBuy stores this weekend and see if we have any luck there. I think we're Pottery Barn-type people, but I do not want to buy something so expensive without at least seeing a version in person. Any hints on where to go for nice furniture?

House Search

Here's the results:

1. John Dear and I need to make more money (or be able to sell our condo) in order to buy the kind of house that we would like to buy.
Our thinking was that we could buy a new house and rent out our condo until the market improved. We may still be able to do this, but we've got a lot of equity in our condo that we wouldn't be able to use in the purchase of a home. This cuts down our options quite a bit (as does the fact that JD is unemployed right now, but let's put that aside).

2. We are not people who could buy a "cute" house. We're just not handy enough.
What's the opposite of handy? Footy? We're footy. We saw a house that really can only be described as a cottage -- very cute, very close to Metro, very small. The house had radiators. We are not handy enough to handle radiators. John Dear almost freaked when he saw the radiators.

We also saw a house with dark blue and green, very thick shag carpets in two of the bedrooms. The realtor didn't even wait for us to ask. She volunteered that the owners had been in the house since it was built (circa 1960s) and the husband had picked out the rug himself and refused to have it removed in order to show the house and its gorgeous hardwood floors.

3. We learned that we need a driveway w/ either a garage or carport. We also need the laundry to be on the ground floor or 2nd floor.
No basement laundries for me! Also, we've lived in too many places where parking was an issue to give up on this point. It shouldn't be that much of a problem in suburbia, but there are actually a lot of homes where we're looking that don't have dedicated spots or garages.

Now, of course, this was just a preliminary trip into house-hunting. We are really just learning what kinds of houses we like, where we want to be, etc. We had a really fun time on Sunday, and I'm looking forward to going out again.