I unexpectedly received another week of vacation before I start my new job, because one of the people I’m going to be working most closely with had a trial this week and wasn’t there to orient/train me.

Extra week of vacation!  Excellent, right?

Yeah, I suppose.  Except the extra week means I really have no excuse not to do a bunch of very grown-up, practical, relentlessly necessary-yet-boring things.  Sometimes being a grown up sucks.

Things I have done this week which really are annoying and not my most-preferred use of vacation days:

• Bought badly-needed new tires for our car.
• Drove several boxes of things to various donation stations.
• Scrubbed stove.
• Bought (and used!) silver polish.
• Mopped/vacuumed all floors in house.
• Researched and price-compared various kitchen faucets to replace our annoying one.
• Hung pictures.
• Filed.
• Broke down a zillion moving boxes and took to recycling.
• Hired carpet cleaners to clean old condo, took pictures, and prepared place for listing.
• Dropped off and picked up dry cleaning.
• Did 5 loads of laundry.  (What, me? Let it build up? NEVER.)
• Fought with AT&T and finally got our bill corrected.
• Received quotes from three different heating and cooling experts to install a new furnace.  (Remind me to tell you the furnace story w/r/t the sellers of this house sometime.  It involves a squirrel, and a lawyer dressed like Stevie Nicks.  It’s a good one.)

I’ve also managed to squeeze in some fun stuff- a trip to buy new running shoes, dinner with a friend, a nice long walk with a fellow pregnant lady- but it’s been a lot of checking things off lists around here this week.  And there is no point to this, really, except to whine a little, and perhaps see if anyone is handing out medals for “wife who sacrifices her fun time so that her poor husband, who is working and in school full time, is spared these annoying tasks.”

I’ll be ready to go back to work on Monday, is what I’m saying.

Oh, friends. There has been woe, and there has been misery, and it has come in the form of moving. I am generally a glass half-full, able to
buck up and push through even the unpleasant stuff kind of person, but my usual optimism and cheer positively abandons me when it comes to the subject of moving. Even thinking about packing makes me droop, and the process of actually doing it is enough to make me so grumpy I’m virtually impossible to live with. (Sorry, John.)

But move we did, and though we are temporarily staying at my parents’ house while some work gets done at the new place, all of our
furniture, and all of our clothes, and all of my cookbooks, (and, for that matter, my computer, which has been kind of painful) now reside at a new address. That’s exciting, right? I have to keep reminding myself of that, you see, in an effort to motivate myself for the next task: packing’s only-slightly-less-heinous cousin, unpacking. At the rate we’re going, we should be finished and my sunny disposition should return by around Thanksgiving. Pray for us.

So, you want to know a really exceptional way to tire yourself right out?  Buy a house.  Holy god, friends.  I am WIPED.  We closed on Friday (a torturous, drawn-out affair involving misstated easements from the 60s, fights about tax escrows, and a lawyer dressed as Stevie Nicks) and ever since then it’s been a long slog of trips back and forth, bringing over breakable stuff that we don’t want the movers to carry, planning paint colors (soft sage is our winner!) and plotting home improvements.

It’s that last part that’s killing me slowly.  I am married to the world’s biggest planner.  This is often a really good thing- on vacations, for example, I know that in The Dossier he brings with us will be a copy of every reservation, every confirmation email, every flight number, and every emergency phone number- it’s great.  When it comes to the house, though, I’m growing a little weary.

“What color tile do you think we should use to redo the first floor bathroom?”

“What?  When we do what?”

“When we redo the first floor bathroom!  What color tile do you want?”

“When exactly are we redoing the first floor bathroom?”

“You know, 3 or 4 years from now, when we’ve saved up some money.”

*headdesk*

The movers aren’t actually coming for a few more weeks, so the next several weeks are going to be a rich stew of packing, living amongst chaos, and trying to convince Mr. Plansahead that maybe, just maybe, we can hold off on choosing what kind of bushes we want to plant in our eventual one-day dream garden makeover.  End of September.  That’s the goal.  I just have to make it to the end of September.  Then things will calm down.  Wish me luck.

Friends, we did a brave and fearful thing this weekend: we went to Home Depot.  To look at paint.  For a house on which we have not yet closed.

(Did you hear that?  That’s the sound of me throwing salt over my shoulder while rubbing a rabbit’s foot and picking up an abandoned penny in an effort to ward off the jinx that we surely have brought upon ourselves by daring to start planning decor before everything is fully squared away.)

Anyway, the current (soon-to-be previous) owners of our new house had…aggressive taste in paint.  They have two children, and boy and a girl.  The girl’s room is PINK! Like the color of Strawberry Shortcake toys or Disney Princess costumes or something else that is some horrible, saturated shade of pink. PINK.  The boy’s room, not surprisingly, is blue.  Deep, rich, color-of-the-ocean blue.  Now, normally I wouldn’t have such strong objections to the blue, but immediately adjacent to the PINK! room, it’s too much.  Add to these the weird yellow wallpaper covered with random Italian words (“pizza!” “Opera!” “grazie!”) and the bathroom that’s painted in candy cane stripes and we’ve got some work to do, is what I’m saying.

So we went to Home Depot to look at paint colors.

News flash: we are really boring.

We left Home Depot with every single shade of celery green, greenish-gray, and khaki that they had, I swear to god.  We probably selected 20 paint chips, from which you could randomly select 3 and they would all match because they are all a mere shade or two apart from one another.  I know that having choices in life is good, but I can safely say that when it comes to paint?  TOO MANY CHOICES.

Currently spread out on our dining room are three paint chips: palest sage, hazy sage, and gentle sage.  John and I are currently locked in a battle of wills over the correct shade of sage. I wish I were kidding.  We’re going to be lucky if we select paint colors by the time winter rolls around.  Can you imagine if we had to actually do any real work to the house?  We’d be those people who had a hole in the side of the house for years where the addition was supposed to go.

I am growing rather weary of explaining to various mortgage-related employees why my husband will not be signing any forms until he returns on August 1.

“So if you and John could just sign that and fax it right back to us…”

“John is out of town, but I’ll sign it to get things rolling.”

“Oh, well if you’ll just fax it to him where he is, have him sign, and then fax it back to us….”

“He’s in remote Turkey.  He doesn’t even have email.  I’m reasonably certain he’s not going to be able to print it, sign it, and return it.  Why don’t we have him sign when he gets back on August 1, as we have previously discussed approximately 43 times?”

“I’m sure his hotel has a fax machine.  If you’ll just call him and check…”

“RURAL. TURKEY.  I cannot even get him on the phone, let alone confirm that whatever tiny guest house he’s staying in has a fax machine.”

(Related: what’s with all the faxing?  I’m convinced the mortgage application industry is single-handedly keeping faxing technology alive.)

“Oh.  Well, ok then, I guess we could just have him sign when he gets back.  When will that be again?”

“August 1″

“Okay, then.  August 1.”

“Yeah, I thought you might say that.”

“Now, on this next form, if you and John could just sign it and fax it back….”

/ scene

My weekend fun to unfun ratio is entirely out of whack.  Over the weekend, I:

• Went to the City Clerk’s office to get a replacement sticker since I was issued one without adhesive.  (Smooth move, city sticker makers)
• Went to state vehicle emission testing center to get a smog check (shouldn’t Priuses be exempt?  I mean, seriously.)
• Went to the post office to mail packages, where the line stretched out the door
• (For those keeping track, yes, that is one city, one state, and one federal agency visited in a single Saturday morning.)
• Took knives to get sharpened (the “fun” errand)
• Filled out property purchase contract
• Dropped off earnest money check at broker’s
• Fought with broker over his attempts to add conditions to the contract after it was fully executed.  (Lawyered!)
• Applied for mortgage
• Wept with frustration

So, yeah, it appears we are buying a house.  This was not my idea, though I’ll admit that it feels pretty exciting, and also terrifying.  Did I mention that we saw this house for the first time on Thursday morning and decided to put an offer in that afternoon?  And that the seller accepted what we thought was a lowball offer, without countering?  And that my husband then left for a two-week vacation on Friday morning? Because he did.  That was good timing.

So yeah.  Busy, stressed, gnashing teeth, rending garments, etc. etc.  How YOU doin’?

Jury Update:  I sat in an overcrowded room with a static-y tv blaring for 8 hours and did not even get called to a courtroom, let alone selected for a jury.  TOTAL BUST.

Moving on.

Am I the only one who spends an embarrassing amount of time crafting elaborate backstories for near-strangers?  Like, if I find myself in a crowded restaurant, it takes actual effort for me not to listen in on the conversations of those around me.  Or! On the train? I can spend an entire commute imagining what combination of factors conspired to create that guy who wears dockers and Mephisto shoes with a Boblbee backpack and huge hip-hop style headphones.  (True story.  I see that guy regularly and he is a total puzzle.)

But by far the greatest source of fodder for this hobby is our building.  There are some weird people living here, y’all.  Nice! Very nice! But WEIRD.  Remember the disappearing dress?  Yeah.  Weird.

Most recent case in point: Neighbor 1 just sent out an email reminding us that our windows are being washed tomorrow, so we need to remove our screens.  No more than five minutes later, Neighbor 2 sends an email saying “great, thanks for the reminder, I’ll do that tonight!  Thanks for setting this up, [neighbor 1]!”

Normal, right?  Except Neighbor 2 is married to Neighbor 1.  They live in the same unit.  They actually both work from home, and thus (presumably) see each other fairly regularly.  Why, then, the reply all to thank her husband for setting up the window washing?  SO ODD.

And don’t even get me STARTED on the girl who recently purchased a new stroller.  For her dog.

Last week, I ordered a dress online.  It was adorable, on sale, and perfect for a bridal shower I’m going to this weekend.

A few days ago, I realized that the dress had not arrived.

“Strange,” I thought.  “Perhaps I should investigate.”

I looked up the UPS tracking number.

Status: delivered.
Delivery date: Wednesday, July 22

Wha-huh?  It was delivered over a week ago?  I called UPS.

“Yes ma’am, according to our records, that package was delivered on Wednesday, July 22.”

“Right, I had to give you the tracking number earlier in this call.  You have just told me exactly what the tracking number had already told me.  I’m calling to see what I should do since the package did not, in fact, arrive.”

“Have you tried looking in the bushes around your door?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The drivers will sometimes hide a package in the bushes to make it harder for someone to notice it and steal it.  Maybe check under the bushes, too.  Or, do you have any gardening equipment or kids big wheels or anything outside your door?”

“No”

“Oh.  Well sometimes drivers hide them under that stuff, too.”

(WTF?)

“Well, we don’t really have any bushes or anything for a driver to hide a package in.  Which, for what it’s worth, seems like an odd strategy since it may well also fool the person who is receiving the package.  My silk dress would definitely be ruined by now if it had been sitting under the bushes for a week, especially given the 4 days of rain we’ve had since then.”

“Well then, ma’am, there’s nothing I can do.  You can call the company you ordered it from and ask them to set up a trace with us to try to get your money back, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Terrific.

I called the company I ordered it from, at 2pm on a Wednesday.

“We’re sorry, we are currently closed.  Please try your call again during normal business hours.”

(Last time I checked, 2pm on Wednesday IS normal business hours.  Perhaps the company is located in Finland.)

Desperate to take SOME dress-finding action, I emailed all the people in my building.  (There are only 8 units, including ours, so we all know each other.  I wasn’t spamming like 100 people or anything.)  “Um, does anyone have a photographic memory for other people’s packages who might remember seeing one for me about a week ago?”

I got 6 emails back, from 6 different units, all with some variation of “that sucks, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see anything, hope you find it.”

Yesterday after work, I walked into the vestibule and, lo and behold, what should I find?  My dress!  In a box that had already been opened.

Dear new wife of the guy who lives in the only unit I didn’t hear from when I sent out my email seeking my dress: BITCH, I AM TOTALLY ON TO YOU.  STOP STEALING MY DRESSES.

I’m sure it was an honest mistake: she took it upstairs, realized it wasn’t hers, and then forgot to bring it back down.  But how weird that she didn’t just say that, right? In a building this small, did she think I would think that the dress had just coincidentally appeared, in a box that’s been neatly cut open, and wouldn’t put two and two together? (And if it wasn’t an accident: wouldn’t it have been awesome if she, like, wore the dress out somewhere and I ran into her?  Summer sundress wrestlemania!)

Of course, I tried it on and it’s too small.  But at least now I have something to send back in exchange for my money, instead of having to beg them to give me a store credit or something.