Nuances of moving

We have secured a place to live! I forgot to take a picture of it but it is a rental in the housing complex near the base. They are all cookie cutter houses but it came with a new free washer and dryer, which I happened to need, so we signed on the line and do not have to move into a POD. Just a Uhaul for a day.

Last week's problems:

I started my Wednesday of last week off by running after the garbage truck. 635am. No shoes. Basketball shorts and a T-shirt. (Thank goodness I don't sleep in anything attractive or flattering, although maybe that would have helped this one time?) I had scheduled him to come to pick up a mattress but because of the rain,  we didn't leave it out the night before.

I didn't catch him.

Now I have had an extra king sized mattress and box spring in my living room for another week on top of all the other stuff that we actually want to keep.

I also scheduled the mail forwarding to start on May 31, but they promptly began forwarding it anyway. After 3 days of no mail and one Amazon order that didn't arrive I started to clue in that we had a problem.

We had traveled down to get the keys for the new place and on the way back, this happened. We hit someone's muffler or something that they carelessly left for us in the road. Jeremy got the tire changed, and we headed to the tire place to get a new one where they said it is time to replace them all. 4 new tires, please. 

And Saturday some a guy hit my car just after the light had changed. I found this ironic because I called to change my address for my insurance and the lady told me, "Living in Dayton will save you $200 a year on insurance because it is a safer place to drive." You don't say.

This week's problems:

We have run out of milk, most food items, and plastic knives. Thankfully, I have 300 plastic forks that can pick up the slack for the lack of knives. You can even use the other end to pick up something that falls out of the banana and nutella sandwich. It's kind of like a spork concept. Maybe we don't need knives anymore anyway.

My family room looks like this. That is a 55" TV back there. You can't even tell.

The mattress is still here. It will have to sit outside tonight, though. We don't need a repeat of last week.

And I think I am losing my patience and mind. My daughter, who has no spatial awareness, walked in front of me and then flung her leg backward and kicked me in the shin. Of course I did what any rational parent would do. I swore at her and then shoved her just like a 2 year old would. Yes, I am very proud of how I handled that.

And my last thought for the day is that when we were trying to negotiate a closing date, we had asked our realtor if we could close on the 23rd of May (like they wanted) and then pay them to rent the house back for 2 weeks. He said that this was not a good idea... something about how mortgage lenders don't like to see it turned into a rental, etc. Instead he suggested that we close on the June 1st and then just live there (maintain occupancy) for another week. This is something that you do not have to pay rent for.

You know, I always thought that buying and selling houses was a capitalist venture. Apparently the welfare program has infiltrated this industry too. We will take option B, then. Can I get free cable since we are on the new owner's dime, then? No? Oh, okay.

I have to get back to packing now, guys. Tomorrow is the big day!

Life update

When cleaning a house to try to sell it, am I the only one who feels like Maleficent at the top of the stairs? "I dare you to touch anything, kids." I say as I am holding Benadryl. "Don't make me give this to you and your friends."

I'm sure you are all wondering what kind of plans we are making when we sell our house in 2 hours. I know I am.

This has been and continues to be a complete walk of faith. We have been praying for a while that we would get a good offer on our house.  We and mostly Jeremy have worked so hard on this beast over the last 3 years. Check out the basement pictures.  That was 98% him.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/420-Lilyfield-Ln-Galloway-OH-43119/80901119_zpid/

So here is what happened and how prayers are answered. 

I felt like we needed to list it for sale the first week of May. We were told to plan on 45 days to closing plus whatever time it would take to get an offer. We are not the biggest house in our neighborhood but we priced it the highest. Since we had planned on showings that day, we went to Cedar Point Amusement Park.

Our first showing was at 4:30. At 6:20, our realtor called. I'm thinking,  "Oh great. The sump pump is broken and the basement is flooding." Or something equivalent.

He said that we won't believe it. It was an offer on the house that was more than full price, more than appraisal (if necessary), and they offered $1500 more than any other offer we might receive. They don't even want us to fix anything on the inspection (if anything comes back.) Their only request... "Get out"...in 20 days.

Where do people like that come from? And why do they want my house? :)

We sheepishly countered and asked if we could have until June since my kids are still in school. I doubt they would walk away with that kind of offer but holy moly. I think they like my house more than I do.

Anyway, our plans so far... a pod.

Yes, we have secured a pod to live in. We are looking for houses to buy, rent,  borrow... I don't even know. We will only be in Dayton for 18 months. We don't even have orders from the military (which are the magic papers that let you order a moving company on the military's dollar).

Insanely, I feel completely at peace right now. I have no specific plan, I'm not sure if we are going to pack and move ourselves, I'm not sure where we would move to anyway,  and I'm just sitting here substituting for a first grade class. (The kids are at art class. I'm not that bad of a teacher. ) I wonder if this is how people who are admitted to an asylum feel?  Maybe they feel this great too.

So that is where we are at currently. The Lord got us into this mess so I'm waiting to see what we need to do to clean it up. (We will be heading out to Idaho after we load that pod. I just don't know if we will have somewhere to come back to.)

Now for some other drama in our life... let me preface this by saying that what you are about to see might seem shocking but maybe some of you live with preteens, or mental health patients and are used to this kind of thing. This is funny to my family. 

Our daughter was specifically sent to our family because we could handle her and laugh her "craziness" off.

We keep finding all our technology devices in her room each morning even though they weren't there when we went to bed.  To counter this, we put passwords on all the devices without telling her. This is what we found:

In case you can't read this "poem," it says:

I Know Why You Don't TrusT ME.

It is Because you HATE ME so sence you HATE Me, 

I HATE YOU!!

You Never Loved me!!

The deductive reasoning on this message is Spot. On.

I need to teach her how to spell "since," though. I wasn't sure it would be appropriate to correct that on the board.

So that is our life for now. Here are some funny first grade comments from today:

They are supposed to be writing about whatever they want.

"Mrs. Miller, can you spell "went?"

I spell it for him.

"Mrs. Miller, you are supposed to use it in a sentence."

Me: Actually, I think that you are. Can you write the sentence you were thinking about?

Kid: "Can you just write all these words on a sticky note, then: "went down the slide?"

Meanwhile the entire first grade class is out of control and this kid wants me to write his paper for him.

Another kid is just drawing pictures. I say, "I need you to write a story for me, not just color a picture, silly."

Kid: "I don't know how to write so I get to just draw pictures."

Now, I am not sure if this is an excuse or a real issue but since he is only drawing pictures I am thinking that this is not an excuse. This is one of those things where it feels like you need to call for backup. "Clean up on aisle 4." This is more than I can tackle in an afternoon. Color on, my friend. Color on.

And another little girl keeps giving me hugs, goes to art, comes back, and tries to give me her mother's day picture she made. I would feel bad but I am pretty sure that my own daughter would give away something she made at school that was meant for me, so it's fair, right?

PS. This is how I feel about roller coasters: Constipated, apparently. You can see from this picture how we each handle roller coasters. I found myself on this dumb thing as I got stuck in the line after excitedly explaining to Jeremy about the offer on the house. These black ladies in line were like, "You can handle it, Boo. You got this." Yeah, I got this, alright.