( Tonight is my last night in this house )

In an attempt to distract myself from all the emo and avoid all the work I need to be doing, I have turned to a well loved and long neglected fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How anyone can prefer Twilight's SparkleMotion vamps to Joss Whedon's ass-kicking, snark-wielding, dead-sexy vampires, I just do not know. I miss the Scooby gang, I miss Sunnydale and I really really miss Spike. Ah fanfic, how I love thee...

If anyone knows of any awesome post-Not Fade Away Spuffy reunion fics, please lob them in my direction. kthnx.

I have NO idea what I was thinking signing up for the labyrinth_ex exchange this time around. I suspect incipient hysteria. That said, I love my prompts and am four pages into my fic offering so maybe I just needed something other than real estate to focus on.

( Since all the cool kids are doing it... )

Oh and the house dealie is all worked out. Assuming neither my existing nor prospective houses fall into a previously undiscovered sinkhole, we should be golden. Closing date on this house: June 30th. Closing date on the new digs: July 17th.

Ohx2 I am going radio silent this weekend since we are turning in our cable box. Will be back on the intarwebs HOPEFULLY by the 27th assuming my FIL can get me jacked into their wireless. *praying*

We are having problems securing the offer on the house in Warrenton. Frickity-frick-frick. The issue appears to be that the house is actually owned by the relocation company that is moving the current residents not the residents themselves and since it's just one of many for them, they quite frankly don't give a damn. We need to show proof that the people who are buying our house are legitimately locked into a contract to sell THEIR house. This seems a bit far removed to me since the buyers of OUR house are in no way obligated to helping us buy ours. My knees are getting sore from jumping through all of these hoops.

Sigh. It's a good thing I believe God is in control because otherwise I'd be tearing my hair out right about now.

So yes, the lowballing house hunters of yesterday took a nice long sleep on our counteroffer (10K more than they were offering *snort* please) and decided we weren't complete morons and that the house was worth it (it is, by the way; I watch an *awful* lot of HGTV). They came back today accepting our counteroffer and as of this evening all the pages are signed and held breaths are being let out all around. Our realtor of course is THRILLED because she had to put in less than a weeks worth of effort on our listing and gets the same cut she would have gotten had she spent six months on it. I guess this one worked out well for everyone!

The only down side to this deal is that the new peeps need to be IN the house by the end of this month. As in the 30th. As in 20 days from now. A closing normally takes 30-45 and we get to do it all in 20. Yay? What makes this a down side is that I presently have no where to live at the end of those 20 days. Thankfully, hubby's new company is paying for the move which includes up to a month of storage so our stuff will have a place to call home even if I and the boy do not (hubby has a short term lease in an apartment since he already works up there - the boy and I will not fit).

I am heading up to NoVA on Friday to do some house hunting and try in a VERY short period of time to figure the area out so I know where is a good place to live and where is ghetto that I should not approach after dark. These are not necessarily things that are obvious on first blush. Once that is established I have to find a house that 1) we like and B) we can afford. This is going to be the ultimate test of fiscal restraint. Wish us luck!

We got an offer on our house today. We're doing that obnoxious back and forth game of psychological ping pong that goes with offloading real estate and I gotta say; I'm not a fan. We priced our house to sell in order to avoid these silly games and still the offer came in at $15,000 under our asking price. $15,000! Gah! We gave a little bit of ground and countered a couple of times, but it didn't get settled tonight like we had hoped it would. I guess the prospective buyers are going to sleep on it and get back to us in the morning.

Someone make a note and remind me to NEVER move again, m'kay?

Hubby starts his new job tomorrow which means he is out of town Sunday evening through Friday night every week until we manage to sell this house and buy another one on the other end. Suck.

Fortunately I have a ton of packing, painting, reorganizing, decorating, cleaning and panicking to do so I should have plenty to keep me busy. The realtor comes on Friday to let me know how much little we can hope for in this lovely market and to let me know how much MORE work I get to add to me 23 page to-do list. Keeping track of the two year old speed demon in the midst of all this is the epitome of relaxing, let me tell you. *iz exhausted*

On that note. I am going to bed.

Went to Disney.

Came back exhausted and fat.

Started packing.

What have YOU been up to?

There is a psychotic bird living in the exhaust box of my gas fireplace.

Birds often nest there, though why they choose to do this is beyond me since it is right off of our back deck so we freak them out about 30 times a day just by opening our door. They fly off and scream at us from the neighbors trees when Jack is playing in his pool too. It's quite musical.

Now for some reason the bird keeps flying up to the big second story windows in our family room and flapping up against the glass. I'm talking like 20 times a day, no exaggeration. I don't know if it's seeing a reflection and trying to protect its nest or what, but the damn thing startles the hell out of me all day long.

I wonder if we have to disclose this to the realtor?

At 6 PM...on Friday...while we were on the interstate in West VA heading for a wedding rehearsal. Not leaving it 'til last thing, were they?

All the crap waiting aside, we are thrilled. The offer came through and was more than fair and that means that after six long months, hubby is once again among the working. The job starts the end of this month, well before the house will be ready to sell so he'll be spliting his time between NoVA and here until I can get casa de Tallulah ready and sold.

My GOD have I got a lot of painting to do.

Thanks to all of you for being supportive and putting up with my absence and occasional surly posts while we waited for this situation to resolve itself. Hopefully now that part of my stress has been settled I will be able to crawl out of my self-induced seclusion and once again be my usual sociable and gregarious self.

They have still not fucking called and I am so overwhelmingly pissed off I can't see straight. I am stressed, hubby is stressed, we can't concentrate on a damn thing other than waiting for the phone to ring. Everyone around us is holding their breaths to see if they are supposed to congratulate or comfort and God only knows what these douche bags are waiting for. We keep hearing through hubby's recruiter that everything is fine, they just have administrative issues and blah-de-blah-blah, but this is getting stupid. It has been THREE GODDAMN WEEKS since they told us he was going to get an offer. THREE.

Hubby did contact the HR people himself and got an email back from them saying they were sorry that it was taking so long, they just need a little more time. Yeah, that was TWO weeks ago.

Good fucking grief.

Unoffical because we *STILL* haven't gotten the call with the offer yet, but we HAVE gotten pretty reliable confirmation that an offer is actually on its way. And so we wait some more.

So yay...ish.

I'm chock full of nervous energy now so I have cleaned out my cabinets, refrigerator, freezer, pantry, closets and bookshelves. I also did some wood staining and spent three hours weeding my lawn. And that's just in the past two days. I am FREAKING OUT. On the plus side, if I keep this up I should have the house ready to sell in a week.

THEY DID NOT CALL!

I am going to *SCREAM*

We were supposed to get the final word on Hubby's job possibility on Thursday. They didn't call. So then we were supposed to hear on Friday. They STILL didn't call. Now we don't know what the hell is going on, but if they don't call today I am going to explode from all the stress.

If they changed their minds and decided not to offer him the job then fine. It makes them a bunch of lying douchebags, but fine; we can deal with that. I just want to KNOW. The amount of work I am going to have to put into this house to get it ready to sell makes me hyperventilate so I would just like to know if I can get started plzthnkx alfreakingready.

Smore's pancakes.

There really isn't anything else that needs to be said other than maybe mmmmmmmmm.

Hubby had an onsite interview today for a job up in Northern VA. This is a good thing in that it sounds like a dream job for him and is just the sort of applied engineering opportunity he has been looking for (although it also sounds like he'd be working for SkyNet (that's a Terminator reference by the way)), but it would necesitate packing up the old homestead and trundling about four hours north of here. Frankly, the thought terrifies me. My husband's parents live here as does his sister and her family so we have quite the support network. Babysitting is free and always available, in fact my MIL comes over EVERY DAY to watch the boy while I work out. Family outings with the cousins happen on a regular basis. All major holidays are celebrated in town with all the peeps without us ever having to travel more than fifteen minutes away from home. Also, selling a house right now is only just preferable to fighting a land war in Asia (Princess Bride reference if you're keeping score)...although now *is* the perfect time to buy a house on the other end so I guess that's a wash.

Of course God could have something else in mind for us and all this worrying could be moot, but it's next to impossible to convince your subconcious of the benefits of living in the here and now so I expect the minor panic attacks will continue unabated until we know what the hell is going to happen to us.

I don't get Facebook. I mean I get it, but I don't get it, you know? I finally caved and signed up for one since I had a veritable horde of friends and family trying to convince me that 'OMG you HAVE to get one'. So yay, I have a facebook. I'm not on for five minutes when a girl I was friends with back in elementary school (who didn't deign to speak to me for most of high school mind you) sends me a friend request. I am puzzled as to why this person wishes to be 'friends' with me, but I accepted regardless. It's always interesting to see what changes are wrought with the passing of time so I admit to poking around and looking for old boyfriends (not a single one of them is in on the facebook craze apparently) and what few actual friends that I had in highschool, but after that I lost interest pretty quickly. Within a day or so however I had friending requests practically pouring into my inbox. Why on EARTH do these people, some of whom I barely knew THEN, have any interest in finding out what I am up to NOW?

One of the requests I got today took the proverbial cake. There was a guy I rode the bus with in middle school that I loathed. I feared and hated him in equal measure and he made my life a complete and utter living hell. To this day I have nightmares about the humiliation I suffered at his hands. He made fun of and embarassed me every chance he got (which was considerable when you keep in mind we had a 45 minute bus ride each way AND were in the same grade at a small school). He was evil personified as far as I was concerned and it wasn't until differing bus routes and a bigger pool of fish in highschool that he finally started leaving me alone.

So go ahead and guess who sent me the friends request today. I'm going to be having flashbacks for weeks.

Many thanks and lots of hugs to everyone who took the time to wish me a happy birthday yesterday. I can't begin to tell you how much all of your friendships have meant to me. I apologize for not responding individually, but I ended yesterday with a monster of a migraine that is still dogging me a bit so I'm trying to stay pretty low tech for a while (laying on the sofa and moaning softly for the most part).

I love you all and appreciate so much that you thought of me.

*huggles each and every one of you*

What in the name of all that is holy have TPTB done to Battlestar Gallactica? That show used to rock and now it just plain SUCKS. I inhaled the first two seasons in like a week and a half and then breathlessly anticipated new eppys. Now it pretty much just pisses me off.

Adama is the BAD GUY, people! The citizens rising up to oppose a fascist government is a GOOD THING. They are making the rebels look like a bunch of violent animals who want nothing more than havoc and destruction, but when a government refuses to bow to the will of the people - responsible citizens MUST stand up for what is right even if it means rising up against the government.

/libertarian rant

Okay, I feel better now.