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We survived the month! Barely.... hanging on by our fingernails and racing time, but now we are on day one of a new UNcrazy month.  Sure, we are surrounded by boxes, and Derrin is the only one whose bed is put together, but all of that is trivial, and can be leisurely chipped away at.

The last four days were about fixing up the old house for renters.  I guess when you live somewhere for ten years, you can become a bit blind to everything that needs to be fixed up.  Every room needed paint.  All the trim and doors needed paint.  All the grout in the whole place (so, so much grout) needed to be thoroughly scrubbed.  And then there was just the regular cleaning you need to do when moving on.  Four days was a tight fit for everything that happened, but we passed inspection with our property management company, so now we are here at the new place and we can try to forget the whole thing ever happened.

Except for somehow in this month, I did something to my shoulder (it could have been the non-stop painting/scrubbing).  My hand has been going numb all month, and now I have shooting pains going down my shoulder, through my arm and bypassing my numb hand to land into my fingertips.  Weird.  My sis suggested a masseuse yesterday, and Derrick suggested his chiropractor "Fabio" (nick-named for his flowing locks and romance novel good looks- his real name is Tony), and I'm thinking I may be calling one or the other today.

I'm liking it at our new place.  It has amazing natural light (or other house could feel pretty dark).  I like that I can't see into any one's windows (although I can see traffic going by on Reserve, but that isn't bothering me like I thought it might).  I very much like that my couches finally made it here, with their soft, never letting you get up again, cushions.  I like that it is already feeling like a home.

As soon as we get the box population down, I will post a few pics.

Moving Beyond

We are so close to being done with this whole moving, fixing up the new place,and then fixing up the old place for the new renters thing.  So.very.close.

Sabrina and DezNik came over to help me with cleaning/painting the old place today.  Soooo much help.  Sabrina is such a fast painter. Daaaang.  She knocked out about 45% of what needs to get done in one day.  And DezNik made my refrigerator look like new.  Awesome- that was one of my most dreaded jobs over there.

While we were getting ready to leave, the subject of a wedding came up.  The whole wedding photography thing was sure to follow.  I have to admit, it's a bit of a sore subject with me.

It's one of those topics where I need to sort of stand outside myself and watch myself talk about it.  Obviously (at least to anyone who has ever heard me rant), I've been a bit hurt and burnt by the whole subject.  I'm not going to make this post be another rant about the whole thing.

Tonight, I watched myself rant (I didn't stop myself though), and I realized I've turned some corner into bitterness.  I don't want that bitterness to live inside me, and I don't even realize it's there until I automatically develop verbal diarrhea when the subject comes up.  The truth is, I do believe everything I am saying is true.  The truth also is, I don't want to care so much.  I want to release all of those hurt feelings that propel the words.

I need to move on.  I've implemented a plan to avoid anymore awkward/either being used or looking like a jerk situations.  Now, I need to just more beyond any of the stuff that helped me develop my little rants in the first place. 

First World Problem (Moving On)

We are in the process of moving.  What started out as a frivolous, sorta hair-brained idea late this summer actually panned out, and now we are in the midst of the resulting craziness.

We aren't leaving town.  Actually, we are moving into the dead center of it.  We've had a rental there for years, and our renters moved out about a month ago so there was a vacancy.  The house itself is not as nice as the house we live in now, and the neighborhood also is not as nice.  BUT, what it does have is a huge yard.  A huge yard means possibilities.  Possibilities of what, you say?  Possibly a shop for Derrick.  Possibly an art studio for me.  The art studio idea was what started us on this month of insanity.  Darn you Pinterest, and all of your tempting ideas!!!  There was also the reality of looking out our windows and actually not being able to look right into our neighbor's windows (and vice versa).

After pondering the art studio idea for months, the niggling idea popped out of my mouth that we should rent our much loved house that we built ten years ago and move to the place with the big yard.  Surprisingly, Derrick said yes (although he had caveats and didn't exactly jump at the idea.... to be fair, it will save us a fair chunk of change every month...).  I think partially the reason he said yes was the possibilities of renting our house out at this time of year seemed slim.  In reality, it rented in less than a week after putting it up.  The first people who looked at it scooped it up.

The whole "be careful what you wish for" was ringing true for me.  It had been a long time since I'd been to the property I'd talked my husband into moving to.  After the property management called to say our house was rented, we visited the new property.  It was sooo much worse then the last time I had been there.  Oh man.  It was about then that the reality of the situation collided with the dream.  I spent the next two days spiraling in and out of panic attack mode, trying to get out of the whole thing (I'm sure this was a fun time for Derrick.  Nothing like trying to talk your wife back in to her own hair brained idea).  Somehow we ended up NOT getting out of it.  My husband is very much a 'let your yes mean yes' kind of person, and somehow found it distasteful to mess up the plans of the people coming from Washington state who were now dependent on renting our house to make their plans work out. Naw, the truth is he gave me one more chance to really change my mind, and it turns out I too thought it would be pretty rotten to back out at that point.  So onward we went.

I didn't take before pictures of the new house, and I am very much regretting it.  We've worked so hard the last two weeks remaking that disaster into our new home, and I have to say it is looking pretty awesome.  If there is a wall in there, it has been painted.  If there is a scrap of floor in there, it has received new flooring. We channeled all of our feelings of impending doom (well, those were my feelings about the whole thing-  Derrick had his own way of describing the situation) into fixing that place up.  The yard itself will need some serious love come Spring.  We should be finished with the remodel by the end of this week, and then next week we will be here at the little house we built, packing it all up to move out.  We should be completely moved out by next weekend, and then the following week we will be fixing up odds and ends for the new renters moving in.

Change, right?  It's scary, but it's also a new adventure for us.