Archive for January, 2010
So Andy and I are planning on buying a house in the next few months, hoping to take advantage of that nice $8000 tax credit. All we’ve done so far is look around at various open houses around town and browse the internet…and think about our finances.
We’re planning to meet with someone to talk about mortgages and all that fantastically scary stuff soon. I’m so utterly clueless. And of course, we want to put as much money down on a house as possible, but to me this is the frightening part. We can’t deplete our disposable savings because we’ll still need a lot for other expenses–washer/dryer, possibly fridge if we buy a new house, and god knows what else (like I said, clueless).
I have excellent credit, and Andy at least has very good credit, though he hasn’t checked his score in a while. Combine that with our incomes and we could afford more than we need as far as monthly payments go—the limiting factor in the whole thing being the down payment. We have a decent amount we could put down, but I don’t know if we could come up with 20% of the house cost. Parents may be able to help and maybe there’s other options available I don’t know about, but the whole thing makes me antsy and I want to just get it figured out already.
I’m also ready to look at more than just open houses–i.e., I’m ready for a realtor to show us some stuff. Since we’ve only been browsing around by ourselves, we’ve only looked at new homes. Which is entirely too much fun. I like new stuff. I have a feeling it might be hard to convince Andy or I to get a used home at this point. Then again, we’re pretty clueless right now still.
I’ve spent entirely too much time browsing listings online, and I seriously question the decorative choices of the people who live around me. Fuchsia paint? Insane wall paper? Taking pictures of your amazingly ugly furniture instead of the house…UGH. I even saw one house where the pictures showed trash and empty hangers all over the place. Too distracting for looking at pictures. So to even consider these houses, I’d need to see them in person.
Also, the idea of painting and dealing with wallpaper (unacceptable that I would live with any wallpaper!) does not thrill me. But then again as my dad pointed out, you can often get a better price on the home by willing to look past other people’s hideous choices and paint yourself.
If we do end up going with a new home, we could have it built. Maybe. I’m not sure how the timing would work out with that and the tax credit. I think Andy is more for this than I am at this point. But we’ll see.
I will say this about the experience so far: I am the more practical/cautious one of our relationship. 
Blarf!
It’s almost Monday again. Damn it all.
With jury duty and MLK day last week, I barely had to work at all. It was pretty fucking sweet. I go through this every year after Christmas break: I cannot get back on the ball for the life of me. It stays this way definitely through spring, partially recovering in the summer and fall. Sometimes I think I never get over the burnout, and just get suckier at being an adult the more time passes.
Anyway, jury duty? I highly recommend it. Why are people so negative about getting out of work and sitting around doing nothing for a few days? I got to read–a LOT. It was awesome! I hope I get picked next time, so long as it isn’t a murder trial or something scary like that. Haha. Of course, now that I know I like it, I’ll probably never be called again. Can I volunteer?
I’ve been a big pile of poop about eating and doing well at boot camp the past two weeks. Partly monthly hormones making me insane as usual, and also part burnout from EXTREME boot camp the first week in January, I think. I don’t know, but I really need to stop eating like shit. Why will I never have control over this? They say anorexia is about control: the person feels she can’t control anything in her life, so she controls food/her body.
I’m the exact opposite. My entire life is well controlled–particularly diabetes. Diabetes makes my world revolve around constant complete and utter control. Therefore my ability to control my hunger (or false sense there of) goes down the toilet. And it’s interesting really, because control of my diabetes revolves around carbs–which is the food I love most. So even when I’m going out of control with binging on food, I’m still in this sick twisted sense of control because of diabetes and my unwillingness to let that go to hell. It’s so absurd and mental, and I’m completely self-aware of it and still can’t make myself stop.
Kind of like picking out my eyebrows, my other lack of control issue. Same situation really. I think I have some kind of warped OCD tendencies.
If I could ever fix those two problems with myself, I feel like my life would be completely settled. Like the end of a novel. How ridiculous does that sound? And I’ve felt like that with food since I hit puberty.
Who’s crazy? ME.
Hmmm mmmm mmmm.
So I sat through a jury selection process this afternoon, and guess what? I got selected.
Hahaha. I’m not surprised at all. But, I don’t really mind either. It seems like it might be interesting. For a few minutes anyway. We’ll see how long it takes me before I get over my initial amusement.
At least I get out of work for a few more days.
That’s about all there is to say about that.
So we’ve been watching Weeds on DVD lately; currently in the middle of season 2. This was the greatest thing ever by the way. How many times did he have to practice that?
The premise of this show interested me from the beginning because the Botwins experienced something very similar to what I went through growing up… except my mother didn’t take up selling pot to keep our lives from being uprooted. Like the Botwins, my dad died suddenly from a heart attack when I was 12, right in front of my brother (then 8 years old) and I. And similarly, my mom didn’t have a job, or a college degree. Of course, we didn’t live in a community anything like Agrestic, nor did we have some crazy uncle move in with us. It sure has made me think more about how in the world my mom did manage to keep everything together though.
Anyway, I can’t get Little Boxes out my head for the life of me. We watched about a million episodes so far this weekend, so I’m pretty sure it’s stuck there for an eternity at least. It amuses me how they’ve started having a different artist perform the song every episode. It doesn’t matter how many other versions I hear, the original with Malvina’s lovely voice, is what is engraved in my brain.
Ugh.
Prince’s Erotic City came up on my itunes the other day, and now it’s in my head for a good month at least.
When I was very little (3 or so) I had a super awesome brown Fisher Price record player and my parents bought me lots of fantastic ’80s pop singles, such as Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Beat It by Michael Jackson, some Madonna, Ghostbusters… and Let’s Go Crazy, by Prince, the B-side of which is this song, Erotic City.
And this song was always my favorite! Way cooler than Let’s Go Crazy. Of course, I had no idea what they were saying or referring to in this song. It just cracks me up… I really wonder what my parents were thinking when I was playing this in my room all the time. For years. Really. Ha.
I remember playing again when I was a bit older and thinking, “wait, did he just say ‘fuck until the dawn’?” And that’s what I assumed he was saying from then on. I don’t think I played it as loudly in my room when my parents were home after that.
Anyway, it wasn’t until much later that I looked it up on the internet and saw there was some controversy around the use of the word “fuck” and that maybe he was actually saying “funk.” Oh horse shit, that is so fuck.
Funny none the less. Oh and I just looked up George Clinton’s cover and it freaks me out. And there is no way they’re saying funk.
