Stop me before I start carrying around wallet-sized photos of my house and forcing strangers to look at them.

Hey! It's my blog's anniversary! Three whole years of this nonsense.

To celebrate, I thought I'd do something really unique and wild and crazy and actually...wait for it...update my stupid blog. I know! Stand back, for we do know how to party around here.

Don't even get me started on the barn burner that was our Thanksgiving.

Hey there, good-looking. I'm a venture capitalist from Vermont. I have an emerging maple syrup conglomerate. Wanna dance?

This past week has been a blur. Everything got kick-started into crazy fast motion last Sunday when we officially accepted an offer on our condo. Our real estate agent neatly shuffled the papers and glanced at her watch, noting that it was 3:30 pm and we had exactly 30 minutes left of Open House time. And then we were all, BREAK! GOOOO ESCROWS! and high-tailed it over to see a couple townhouses.

We actually thought we were lost and almost turned around. (And by "we" I mean "I thought we were lost and demanded Jason turn around because THIS ISN'T RIGHT AND WE ONLY HAVE 15 MINUTES BEFORE THE OPEN HOUSES CLOSE OH MY GAWWWWD" and Jason reminded me that it's not like the realtors lock the doors PRECISELY at 4 pm and like, hiss at you through the mail slot to go away after that, so we kept driving.)

We saw two townhouses. The first one was cheap and had a lot of potential, provided you were willing to spend the next six months of your life scraping wallpaper off of every flat-ish surface in the entire house.

The second one was a 2,600-square-foot end unit with a remodeled kitchen, three bedrooms, a den, a finished basement rec room and four remodeled bathrooms. It was not as cheap.

Guess which one I liked. Guess!

For the first time since we started looking at houses, I got that weird little fluttery feeling in my stomach as we walked around. They'd knocked out a wall in the kitchen to make it big and open and bright. The basement wasn't basementy at all, but was more like a real part of the house. Was that a pantry? And is this ANOTHER closet?

Then I went into the master bedroom, turned a corner and saw the little sitting room. They'd set it up as an office.

"This is it." I told Jason. "This is the perfect house."

(And that was BEFORE I saw the remodeled master bath with two goddamned sinks oh my holy lord.)

It took all my willpower to refrain from throwing myself at the brick exterior to give the house a hug as we left.

We went back on Monday night with our agent, who confirmed the awesomeness of the house and the neighborhood.*

Then we found out that the sellers had received an offer from somebody else already.

I was crushed yet took it all in stride no, mostly just crushed. But the last thing we wanted to do was get into a bidding war in a damn BUYER'S MARKET, especially after being lowballed by our own buyers. So we went out again on Tuesday to look at a slew of other places, each more disappointing and laughable and fucking EXPENSIVE then the last. (Highlight of the day: the 1920s farmhouse with ceilings so low that Jason took out a light fixture with his forehead.)

Then! (Why is this story taking me so long to tell? Even my mom doesn't have this kind of patience for the minutae of my life.)

It turned out that the other offer on the townhouse was not very good. Were we still interested?

Yes! And then we lowballed them anyway. HA HA.

Anyway, after some frantic back and forthing on Wednesday night, when we were supposed to be on our way up to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, our offer was accepted. We left for PA around 8 pm and got there around 2 am, oh my God.

We still had both home inspections to get through before we could consider everything officially cool, so I ate a lot of extra stuffing. You know, for the coping.

(ALMOST DONE, I SWEAR.)

The inspections were yesterday. We spent several hours at the new house in the morning (the place is perfect and I love it more every time I see it, even though we don't have nearly enough furniture and will have zero money for new furniture, so hello guests! Pull up a box and stay awhile!) (also I forgot the camera so I don't have any pictures I can post yet). And then we were kicked out of our condo for mannnnnnnnnny more hours in the late afternoon.

At one point we stood forlornly on the sidewalk outside our building, watching the inspector walk up and down and up and down our stairs through the window. Jason kept reminding himself that our stairs are in great shape, while I kept trying to forget all the times I'd walked up those stairs naked, because Jesus CHRIST, you can see RIGHT IN FROM DOWN HERE, WHAT KIND OF CRAZY PEEP SHOW HAVE I BEEN RUNNING THESE PAST FIVE YEARS?

Our agent called this morning with the good news: the inspection went perfectly. No issues, no repairs, just smooth sailing until settlement.

We move in 20 days.

There's really only one thing I can say about that...

(I'm sorry, but this photo is pretty much the BEST EMOTICON EVER, and conveys more than all the exclamation points in the world.)

*I'm going to keep that info to myself, if y'all don't mind. I'm simply going to say I live somewhere in the MD-DC-VA metro area. Look at me! Learning lessons and defining boundaries! And it only took me three years!

 

Giving Thanks for the Whole "Not Going To Be Homeless" Thing

My very dark eyebags and I are pleased to report that we have a house. Okay, a townhouse. Okay, a contract on a townhouse. Okay, everything could still possibly go to fucking hell and back, but didn't the first sentence sound better and way less neurotic?

I did not get my dancing monkey, but I did get four toilets, which is a downright decadent ratio of bathrooms-to-bladders, and of course no one will be allowed to use at least two or three of them because Jesus Christ, you think I am scrubbing four damn toilets on a regular basis? But still, is a very nice little house with a nice little yard. I love it to pieces. Except for the carpet. I really hate the carpet. Am going to think about all my closet space instead.

Ahhh, closets.

Okay. Now I have to start packing, and freaking out about the home inspections on Monday, and then work on some entries in which I complain some more about how much I hate my new carpet.

Flipping Coins. And Nuts.

So. We hand over the keys to the new owners in 30 days 27 days. They are newlyweds and apparently we've "made their dreams come true." They are also going to "paint over everything, including the leaves I painted with my OWN HANDS in my son's nursery, letsnotthinktoohardaboutthatokaythanksbye."

I've been saying "30 days" since Saturday, and yet it turns out that time is not a static concept but rather keeps on slipping (slipping!) into the future. Like dust in the wind, like sands through the hourglass, time marches on. I know! I am shocked, and frankly, I blame popular culture for not reinforcing this idea in a way I could easily understand.

As it stands now, we are going to be homeless in 27 days, because we are so. flipping. nuts.

When we first started this whole moving nonsense, we drove through a charming little suburban neighborhood with our realtor and I pointed at a charming little brick house and said I wanted a house just like that. And our realtor said awesome, because there are no less than 40 bazillion houses just like that around here. And I said awesome, and Jason said awesome and it was like, totally going to be awesome.

REAL ESTATE RULE NUMBER ONE: You should probably go inside the house you are thinking of buying.

After touring about 39 bazillion of these charming little brick houses, it finally occurred to me that I actually don't like them much after all. They are very small and kind of musty. And have very inconvenient toilets, and after living with one toilet, and one that's on a different floor than my bedroom, I am pretty much insistent that our next house have a toilet on every level. In fact, if I have to pee, I'd like to walk no more than 10 feet before hitting the nearest toilet.

I think I might be more of a...townhouse person? Or maybe a mansion person? I do like mansions. 

Then Jason test-drove his commute from the charming little suburban neighborhood and came home with an eyelid twitch and an overwhelming sense of homicidal rage.

REAL ESTATE RULE NUMBER TWO: Choosing a neighborhood you sort-of drove through once -- you know, we were on our way to IKEA? and we stopped at that bakery where I got that scone? that was a fucking delicious scone -- is probably not very smart.

And of course, there's the issue of the C-H-I-L-D and the S-C-H-O-O-L-S and those shifty-looking, no-good-punk T-E-E-N-A-G-E-R-S hanging around the playground, just waiting to sell my precious son drugs and get him hooked on meth and completely ruin his chances of getting into a good preschool. 

Thankfully, our realtors (we have two, actually, who work as a team so there's pretty much ALWAYS someone available to listen to my latest crazy wishlist of home features) ("Toilets no more than 10 feet away at all times! And I also want a little monkey in a hat who dances for nickels!") have been super great about hauling us all over creation to look at houses, pretty much non-stop the past couple days.

Which is why I have to wrap this entry up now, without any kind of conclusion or point, because we have to go look at some more houses that we will probably hate.

REAL ESTATE RULE NUMBER THREE: Just flip a damn coin already. If your kid gets hooked on drugs it will most certainly be your fault, but Jesus Christ, it won't have anything to do with the neighborhood, but rather because you made him spend the majority of his formative years at an extended-stay hotel while you complained about countertops and phantom cat odors, because you are so. flipping. nuts.

Photo repeated for emphasis.

Under Contract

We are once again free to live with unmade beds, visible paper towels and brazenly exposed toasters.

We have 30 days to find a new house, buy a new house, and get the fuck out.

Uhh.

Look! Here is a picture of my dog wearing a onesie.

That pretty much sums everything up.

Unfortunately, pulling off the "skinny jean" generally requires one to get off one's fat ass occasionally

Realtor: There is a very good possibility that an offer will be coming in. Will you be available?

Amy & Jason: YES! WE WILL BE AVAILABLE! EEEEEEE.

Amy: *sits by phone, stares*

Jason: *reloads realtor.com for the millionth time*

Amy: *PHONE. STARES. HARD*

Noah: *cuts two enormous molars, FINALLY, thus ending a week-long streak of non-stop torment and snot and fever and screaming because Amy was so used to ignoring the endless dance of the bulging-cutting-swelling-disappearing molars that it never occurred to her to maybe give the poor child some Motrin*

 So that's pretty much all that's been going on around here. Um.

Yeah.

I'll try to do something a little more interesting or embarrassing this weekend. We're going to the Oyster Riot tonight (shockingly enough I was NOT asked to come judge the wine again, haaaaaaaa loser) so maybe I'll fall down or spill wine on somebody important. Or -- horrors of horrors -- I'll show up wearing LEGGINGS.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

What the hell is wrong with me?

On second thought, don't answer that. We don't have that many hours.

Here's one obvious problem, at least:

Just wait. It gets worse.

For the record, I am ashamed. Deeply ashamed. And yet...

Um. Hee?

The best part is that's an EXTRA SMALL sweatshirt. For dogs "5 lbs +/-"  And Ceiba will ALWAYS be an extra small, because she will never grow up and stop being my eensy weensy baby, unlike SOME PEOPLE AROUND HERE who are suddenly wearing size 24 month clothing, which is totally not as cute as those little polka-dot footie jammies, and the hats hardly ever have ears on them anymore, and why do all the stores want to dress my child like a damn lumberjack?

Seriously: this plus these plus this equals:

This. Minus the ladies' undergarments, obviously, but still.

Okay, Noah might have the suspenders. And I think we do maybe have a similar kind of hat. And how damn awesome is this? But I draw the line at the shirt! I have my limits!

GOD. FINE. I totally don't, since the doggie sweatshirt wasn't even close to being the most obnoxious thing I purchased that day.

The hypocrisy! It burns!

Again: so deeply ashamed. I can't even bring myself to try them on, because what if I think they look kind of cute? WHAT THEN?

I am disgusted to be your pursedog, you silly fashion sheep-type person.

Just Lose It

(The title of this post was meant to convey the Losing Of Amy's Mind, but is also [for those of y'all who are not as down and gritty and street as me] the title of an Eminem song where he goes "just lose it AH-AH-AH-AH-AH" in this weird voice, and I have been walking around the house singing that for hours now, and I don't know why I feel compelled to tell you this, except to say: I have for dead serious lost my everloving mind.)

Noah has another cold. This is probably cold number five or six or 17 or so. I've lost track. Am I supposed to keep track? Because sometimes I just feel like scribbling "MUCUS!" on every page of Noah's baby book and calling it an infancy.

The only thing that gives Noah any relief is this stuff, however I currently cannot find our bottle since Noah loves chewing on the rubber top of the dropper and has probably chucked it behind the couch somewhere. And before you yell at me for letting my child use a bottle of medicine as a plaything, let me explain: I am a really rotten mother.

I am so rotten, in fact, that I dragged him out shopping with Bunny and Max (Julie: STOP CALLING ME BUNNY) (Amy: NO) yesterday, and I didn't even give them the benefit of a "hey, we're awash in snot, you still want us to come over and gum on your furniture?" heads up. Then I almost got us lost on the way to the mall, then was minutes away from buying Noah and Max matching penguin hats, and then I ordered garlic fries at lunch.

And then I wondered why I have no friends.

In between snot patrol, we're also waiting to maybe possibly potentially get an offer on our condo. A young couple came to see the place on Friday and then again on Sunday. We walked in on them after a long day of touring open houses out in the suburbs, clutching a stack of glossy info sheets on houses that ran the gamut of crap to awful crap, and were both thrown into existential chaos when we saw them sitting on our couch, gazing around our home with That Look of Real Estate Love, and I nearly passed out when I realized one of them had brought their MOM, like holy shit, they are going to buy our house and we won't be allowed to live here any more.

This is alternatively terrifying and...terrifying. What if they change their minds (which does seem increasingly likely as the hours tick by this morning with no word from the realtor)? I will be mad. And annoyed. But what if they DO submit an offer AND WE HAVE TO MOVE?

We've toured dozens of houses over the past month, in dozens of different neighborhoods, across three different damn states, thanks to a recent attack of WE CANNOT LIVE IN THE SUBURBS NO NO NO. Our realtor must think we're nuts, since when we started this whole thing we named exactly two neighborhoods we liked and even had them further narrowed down to a specific four-block range. Now Jason is in love with some insanely renovated rowhouse with no yard in the DC hood and I'm hung up on some little colonial in Silver Spring with no living room and our realtor is all, "What happened to Arlington?" and then we're all, "Oh yeah! What's available there? And while you're on it, please run a search on Alexandria, Del Ray, Falls Church, Wheaton, Kensington, Takoma Park, Bethesda and the entire District of Columbia. Thanks."

Every house in our pathetic little price range smells like old people. Old people who liked powder blue shag carpet and sponge-painted kitchens and one place still had visible outlines of three litter boxes lined up on the yellowed lineoleum. And everytime we tour a vacant house like that I cannot stop wondering if the previous owner was old like, "time to retire with the cats to a condo in Boca old" or "sooner or later the neighbors noticed the smell old." I am sick. And then I cannot even think about living in that house, fuck the "good bones" or "tons of potential," I want a notarized document promising that NO ONE DIED HERE, accompanied by photos of the previous owners holding today's newspaper.

There was this one house that was a smidge out of our price range* with a three-person hot tub on the deck out back. That was highly rocking, and could have probably made up for the sponge-painted kitchen if I hadn't decided to make some kind of highly inappropriate boom-chicka-bow joke about elderly swingers and threesomes and COMPLETELY RUINED the "lush private backyard oasis" for both of us, forever.

*Is there any price point in real estate where this stops happening? Like if you can afford to spend a million dollars**, do you still ever go, "but if we could just afford $1.5 million, we could get that third wing and an au pair suite! dammit!"

**Do you know what you get in the DC area for a million dollars? We got mixed up one Sunday and wandered into the wrong open house -- because it was just another fucking CAPE COD like every other fucking CAPE COD we've seen -- and it was pretty nice except the basement wasn't finished and the kitchen needed new countertops (hunter green formica! aeeeii!), and then we picked up the info sheet and realized they wanted 1.3 MILLION DOLLARS for this house, at which point I began choking violently, like I was having some kind of socioeconomic disparity allergy and we had to leave.

And then we came home to our overly-orange condo (we were aiming for terra cotta and missed by a wide margin). Our lovely clean condo with a phantom cat odor but no old person smell of death. Yes, we have to share the lone bathroom and the three flights of stairs are killing me some days, and okay, it really was never this clean or nice-looking until we put it on the market, but still. This is where we brought our baby home to, and okay, the sink was stopped up that day because our contractor put our garbage disposal in wrong, and okay, there's no room to bring another baby home to, and no yard and no basement and the loft is nice until you hit your head on the low ceilings for the millionth time.

God, I hope we get an offer. Maybe some sponge-painting would help.

PLAAAAAAAYDAAAAAAAATE!!!1!!1

But first, an aside.* You people CRACK MY ASS UP.  Over 220 comments about toilet paper, with the vast majority of you copping to major "over" OCD and a tendency to flip (AND FOLD) other people's rolls. Seriously, I had NO idea there was a "right" way to hang toilet paper. NO IDEA. It's like that time I read how when you make the bed, any pattern on your flat sheet is actually supposed to face the mattress, so you can "see" the pattern when you fold the covers back or something, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around that AT ALL, and still to this day make the bed wrong ON PURPOSE because I am a REBEL. I don't need your RULES, man. Our toilet paper hangs free and easy and in WHICHEVER DIRECTION IT CHOOSES.

And God help me, Flippy McOverNuts, I'll set up a webcam in there if I have to.

*Can it be an aside if I haven't actually said anything yet?

ANYWAY. The five of you who read the Quaalude Blog over at ClubMom already know my super-fun-exciting news from yesterday. As do the rest of you, I suppose, if you read the title of this post.

Yes, it's true. After many months of being, essentially, a friendless pathetic shut-in who was regularly scared off the neighborhood playground by insular groups of Spanish-speaking nannies, I finally got myself invited to a playdate.

Noah, clearly quite distressed about being forced to share his oxygen with another child.

Delicious chaos.

I was so damn jazzed about this damn playdate that it was all I could do to like, not show up with flowers and a big heart-shaped box of chocolate. Instead, I choose to show up 1) late, 2) bearing the World's Crankiest Baby Who Was Suddenly Ultra-Aware of His Personal Space, and 3) a baggie of not-very-gummable crackers that I absent-mindedly fed to a baby who is not mine and only has two teeth.

GO ME.

Julie (who will henceforth be referred to as "Bunny" because she came up with that nickname after a Corona or two and I AM HOLDING HER TO IT) and her son Max (Baby X, whom I have full permission to exploit here on this website, despite not offering a single cent of ad revenue, HA HA SUCKAHS) were both very gracious hosts, providing hummus and pita chips and community sippy cups and the most demented plastic farm animals I have ever seen, Jesus Christ, they had RED EYES and a GOAT SATAN and at least I'm not the only mother who thinks pretty much everything brown and plastic is a rogue piece of escaped poop.

There was one case of Suspected Biting, but was later determined to be nothing more than Confirmed Drama Queening.

We listened to top 40 radio instead of Noggin and were both highly alarmed by some of the songs getting the dance remix treatment (James Blunt? Wot?).

There was a LOT OF FARTING.

The doorbell rang at some point and we both promptly freaked out because WHO IS THERE?  I DON'T KNOW. OMG. SHOULD I COME WITH YOU TO ANSWER IT? DOES MAX HAVE A WIFFLE BAT? WHO IS COMING TO KILL THE HELPLESS MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN?

It was the phone company. We're jackasses. But now we are jackasses TOGETHER.

Bunny: So you work from home? What do you do?

Amy: So I have...this...blog. And another blog. And...then two more blogs and I'm kind of a huge dork and...

Bunny: Are you going to tell the Internet about how I spilled my beer just now?

Amy: No! I mean. Yes. Probably. I'm just so thrilled that I didn't spill anything. *weeps*

You know it's been a good playdate when nobody is wearing pants by the end.

On Monday we are going shopping. If I can manage to stay cool and collected and not set anyting on fire? I do believe I might actually have a new friend.

*claps hand over mouth, goes all bug-eyed with internalized squee-ing*

*counts to 10*

*punches self in face*

For Some Reason, I Blame the Internet

Okay, so remember the time I posted a picture of my exciting new toilet paper holder? (I mean, of course you do! How could you forget?) And a whole slew of you were all, OMFG YOUR PAPER IS UNDER AND IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE OVER I AM HAVING A STROKE NOW AAAEEEIIIIIIII?

Honestly, the whole thing made me want to create an entire personality test based solely on toilet-paper-hanging preferences. Which I did. Look!

OVER: Sort of nuts, crazed OCD type-A types who probably get those eyelid twitches a lot.

UNDER: Laid back, easy-going types who probably know where to score good weed.

Anyway, my absolute favorite comment came from Jes:

"My husband and I are both OCD. And we like our toilet paper OVER. So much, in fact, that when I go over to friend's houses and the TP is headed the wrong direction? I fix it for them.

And I think I'm doing them a favor."

Ha! She's funny. The idea of anybody being that crazy as to FLIP  OTHER PEOPLE'S TOILET PAPER is funny. So very, very funny.

Y'all?

Somebody who came to our open house on Sunday flipped our toilet paper.

Somebody who has obviously never lived with a toddler.

If it was one of you I want you to tell me. I won't be mad, I promise. I just want to make sure I have the proper spelling of your name on the restraining order.

Also: Max thinks you're all nuts.

IM IN UR BATHROOM WATCHIN UR BIZNESS

(Okay. Deep breath here, but you know what? I cannot take it anymore and neither can my mom.)

Gymboree Took My Stapler

I tried to take Noah to the "open gym time" at Gymboree* on Thursday. Don't ask me why. IT IS JUST WHAT I DO.

But we had to turn around and come home instead, because Gymboree was ON FIRE.

No! Seriously! I am only sort of being overly dramatic here.

Not pictured: the two other firetrucks parked behind this one, because I wasn't sure if it was okay to be taking pictures of firetrucks, so I just snapped this one all discreetly-like from my car, lest the Invisible Photo-Taking Enforcement Police swarm me and demand my film, and no, I don't know why I live my entire life in constant fear of getting yelled at by imaginary authority figures.**

Okay, so I'm being overly dramatic. (Surprise!) I don't think Gymboree was actually on fire, but something else at the shopping center appeared to be. Or maybe it was just a power outage. I don't know. Either way, no Gymboree for us. Just an up-close encounter with a lot of firemen running around the different levels of the shopping center. While carrying AXES! That was pretty cool.

I don't know how many more signs from God it will take before I get it through my thick skull that I need to give up on this Gymboree nonsense and just...like, go to the damn park or something.

* OH MY GOD NOT ANOTHER ENTRY ABOUT GYMBOREE.

** Like I did this weekend when we had another open house for our condo and had to take the pets out of the house all afternoon and I completely freaked out in a parking garage because we had to leave them in the car while we went and got some lunch and I was convinced that someone was going to all the cops on us so I made Jason park in some really remote corner and then I ordered my lunch "to go" and sat there clutching the bag and glaring at Jason, who ordered his lunch "for here" and proceeded to eat it all calmly while I imagined an angry mob swarming around our car and refusing to be placated by the bagel I bought specifically for Ceiba because it was in the LOW 50s outside! DID I NOT CARE THAT MY PETS COULD HAVE FROZEN TO DEATH IN 12 MORE HOURS OR SO?***

*** A walking advertisement for a return to electroshock therapy, is what I am sometimes.****

**** And of course I really mean all the time.

ONLINE POST-IT NOTE FOR MY OWN FUTURE REFERENCE:

Dear Amy, At his doctor's appointment on Friday, Noah weighed 23.7 pounds (50th percentile or so) and was 32.5 inches tall (100th percentile). Perhaps one day you would like to copy this information into his baby book someday? Think about it. Love, Amy