Enter the protagonist.

We found a place on the east side of town that had two-bedrooms available for a little more than what we are paying at our current place. The apartments were bigger, though, and all came with balconies! We would have a bigger kitchen and living area, and the bedrooms were sensibly sized. We toured one and we were very impressed with not only the size and appearance but also the other amenities. There was a workout room in one of the buildings, open to all tenants, a party room in each building, and a billiard room in each building. The place has a heated garage (which I don’t foresee us paying for), a bike cage in said garage, and a big swimming pool – bigger and deeper than at our current place. We put our names down on a waiting list to be called if there was a vacancy that came up around the time we needed to move.

Johnathan called them in late June out of curiosity, just to see if they thought they would have any coming up soon. As it turns out, that waiting list meant absolutely nothing. Nada. They had a couple of apartments available, but none that fit our request (two bedroom, one bathroom in the main building – where the fitness center was). Well, actually, they did. But they had promised it to someone who would be bringing the deposit the next morning. They followed that up with, “Whoever gets here first gets the apartment.” Bzuh! Okay, so we bit. Hard.

We spent that evening figuring out how to acquire the money necessary to make the transaction happen. We withdrew cash from one bank account, then went to our local bank to get a money order (as we had neglected to ask what name to put on the check). We showed up bright and early that morning. Excessively early. The office didn’t open until 10AM, but the lady had said that they would be there starting at 9:30. I thought that meant they could let us in starting in then, but Johnathan insisted it meant that they were saying we could show up at 9:30 and be fine. The other person wasn’t schedule to get there until 11AM, so I thought it would be polite to at least wait until they were actually “open” to go in. One minute to 10, Johnathan knocked on the door. It turns out I was wrong – she was inviting us to show up at 9:30.

It didn’t matter, though. The person who had been promised the apartment came back the night before, just before the office closed for the night, to put down her deposit. She didn’t want to miss out on it! We had gone through all that, only to end up disappointed. “But,” she said,  “I have another that you might be interested in.” She gave us the details. It was a two-bedroom one-point-five bath with an L-kitchen instead of a square one. Hmm. It was $40/month more, but it also had more square feet. We said okay, we’d look at it. The advantage that I could see to this one was that it had an air conditioner in the second bedroom – something I desperately wish we had now. It was also on the eighth floor. Well, heck yes!

Oh, the apartment was wonderful, especially compared to our current abode. It has four ceiling fans – one in each bedroom, one in the dining area and one in, of all places, the kitchen. It has a pantry. It has a big storage closet and a linen closet, a coat closet, and of course closets in both bedrooms. The bathrooms are nothing really special, but I didn’t expect anything special. It has lots of windows, and a 32 foot balcony. 32 feet! There are two doors out onto the balcony – one from the smaller bedroom and one from the living area. I am just amazed by the apartment. It’s a lot more than we’re paying right now, but after juggling numbers, we can easily afford this move, and still arrange for some savings as well. Heck. Yes.

There are some downsides to the apartment, though. The kitchen is… dated, I think, is the word I’m looking for. The floors look old, and the counters and cabinets look worn. They were maybe stylish 30 years ago! The hallway is narrow, which leads to some worries about fitting furniture down the hall into the bedrooms. The master bedroom closet is a bit on the small side, which means we’re going to need to get some additional bedroom storage, I think. (Our current dressers are falling apart; they weren’t well-constructed when they were built years and years ago, and are obviously not meant to last forever.) Other than that, I ‘m pretty excited!

We asked for a new stove if they’re able and willing, and we got to pick our carpet color from four different colors since they were going to replace it anyway. We ended up picking the color they were planning on using, but it was definitely the best choice, I think. Not too dark, but certainly not white.

I am really looking forward to living on the top floor. Living in a new place where we can settle in with a little more sensibly-organized space, with thing that will hopefully not fall apart after regular use (our “brand new” refrigerator in our current place had the door come off within about a month of moving in – we fixed it ourselves because the manager couldn’t be bothered to remember). I look forward to being able to cook without tripping over the other counter, and being able to have two people in the kitchen at the same time without being stuck. Some days I feel like Sims in the kitchen, putting up protest because yet again there’s another Sim– erm, person… in the way.

We’re moving! … In the middle of September! The first day of our lease is September 15, and Johnathan and I are like-minded in that we want to make sure our stuff gets moved that weekend. I’m not sure when we’re going back to sign the lease, but I can hardly wait. A new chance to make a place into home!

Speaking of making places into home, we have big plans for this place, and many of them involve IKEA. We have built an entertainment center with many bookshelves, and a place to mount our TV. We have come up with a good sewing table for Johnathan, which will have more storage. There’s a kitchen cart for extra workspace. There’s a wardrobe for bedroom storage. There’s a couch to go with my modern/minimalist idea of what our living room should look like. There are vases and dishes and silverware — okay, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The priority is going to be the entertainment center and sewing desk, and possibly the kitchen cart if we don’t find one locally that we like. We’re going to drive to Pittsburgh, possibly with Johnathan’s mom’s van, and pick up everything that we put on a very restricted wishlist to make this place into home. I am hoping that we can make this look like the home of two adults rather than two young twenty-somethings who are struggling along with whatever they can. We had our bookshelves fall apart lately, so I don’t want to deal with that again.

I can hardly wait to move in to our new place and make it home.

One laundromat was in a city a couple of miles away. It was… okay. Sketchy and old, but cheap. Unfortunately, our very first time there, we ran into disaster with one of the machines. We ended up with some snags on some of our work clothes. The clothes were salvaged, but that was the last time we ever went to that laundromat.

The second is one that Johnathan went to relatively frequently before I moved, and it was our laundromat of choice for a while, for being 24-hours and less expensive than the machines at our complex. It seemed that there were often many broken machines when we were there, though, which made things hard when you need three of washer size A and only two are functioning, particularly if someone else is already using them. So we kept looking for our perfect laundromat.

Johnathan found Leo’s.  We gave it a shot because it seemed newer than the other two places and, hey, it was worth a shot, right? They had a card system which served to simplify things as far as needing quarters. The washers were newer and faster, and there were more of the larger sizes. The dryers were faster. Heaven? We thought so. We saw their ads for laundry drop-off service, and an idea started to form. It seemed extravagant, though, so until a post on Get Rich Slowly about outsourcing parts of your life, we didn’t really consider it. The post talked about how outsourcing daily tasks (cleaning for some, cooking for others, etc) could be financially beneficial in the sense that it frees the person from the hated task, and he or she regains the time that would otherwise be spent on that task. It seemed like an endorsement for us to go ahead and try the laundry drop-off service that was offered. So we did!

The first time we tried it, we had to buy the bag. That was $5, which isn’t really so bad. Then it was about $25 to have the load done. We left it with them and went on our merry way, intending to pick it up the next day. We picked it up and took it home. We were met with a bit of an unpleasant sight when we started to unpack the clothes. A lot of the clothes had mysterious stains on them that looked like grease or oil stains of some kind. We had some irreplaceable shirts stained and some of our work clothes. I was not happy. In fact, I was livid. We took the clothes in, or rather Johnathan did, and talked to the people there. Ultimately, he ended up on the phone with the owner of the place, who offered to send the clothes off to be claimed for insurance (which meant we’d get a lot less than they’re worth and be out the clothes), or we could let one of the attendants try to get the stains out and he could offer us some credit. We took the latter since it meant we might be able to wear the clothes again. The girl was able to get the stains out for the most part, so that was a satisfactory resolution.

The next time we brought in our laundry, nothing went wrong. Hurrah! Unfortunately, the next time we brought the laundry in, we were informed that we couldn’t drop laundry off after 7PM. Really? That seemed odd. The attendant explained that his coworkers would accuse him of not doing his work if we brought it in after that, because he wouldn’t have time to complete it before closing. Well, we thought it was a stupid rule, but accepted it and went home with our full bag of laundry. We dropped it off the next day and got a clean bag of clothes back. A person could get used to that!

Then we had another problem. We dropped off and paid for our laundry to be done and got back… a bag of unwashed clothes. It didn’t get done. This was apparently due to a miscommunication where one employee put the bag in the wrong place and the other didn’t bother to check whether the work had been done. So, more fussing to make sure that the load got done. Then we would get our clothes haphazardly folded. Overdried. Not even folded at all, on occasion. Smelling like no detergent was used.

The last straw came in two parts. The last time we dropped off our laundry, the lady asked Johnathan if he was “the one who tips.” He kind of gave her a funny look, and she went on to say that, oh yeah, people tip all the time! This statement doesn’t jive with the first, since the question was, “are you the guy who tips?” He said he would talk to me about it. I should state now that I think tipping for a service that we are paying for is stupid, so I was absolutely against tipping these people for the consistently inconsistent service we’ve been getting. I tip servers at restaurants because I know they don’t make even the minimum wage that everyone else is paid. I think tipping as a rule is stupid except for when exceptional service is given, and the people at Leo’s Laundromat were certainly not giving it. I mean, we still haven’t gotten all of our credit for our original problem because apparently only one employee even knows how to use the computer. Our name is in the system something like ten times because nobody knows how to use it and apparently nobody cares to learn, either. These people were not helping their case.

We were going to drop off a load of laundry on Monday, and the same lady with the tip comment was there. The first words out of her mouth were not “Hello” or “How’s it going?”, but “Did you talk to your wife about tipping?” Johnathan restrained himself from saying what he really wanted to say (“HOW RUDE!”) and just said, “You know what? Nevermind.” And then we became former customers.

Being expected to tip for a service that we are paying for is a bit ridiculous. I don’t tip the guys who change the oil on my car or the service technician who comes to install internet service at my apartment. I am not tipping for inconsistent laundry service that I am paying for. It is an advertised service that they don’t even do very well. We won’t be going back except maybe to use up the rest of the money on our cards if we absolutely have to do that. We won’t be going back otherwise. We’re going back to the 24-hour place with the creepy lady who asks too many personal questions because at least we know what kind of service we’ll get there.

I’m sad that it happened this way. I still don’t like doing laundry because it takes so long and, well, I just don’t like doing it! But if it means we know our clothes are cleaned, unharmed, unstretched and we don’t have to tip someone for a service we’ve already paid for, I’m for it. We’ll look out for another service, but I’m not hopeful we’ll find any reasonable alternatives. The owner of that laundromat was so nice, but I have to think he must be really disconnected from his property because things there are not exactly running smoothly. It’s a great idea, and their machines are nice, but would I recommend it to anyone else? Not a chance. The swank machines are not worth the headache of dealing with the staff.

The thing is, I know, in my head, that what I want is the inclusion in that world. I want all the cute. I want the experience. I want the excuse to knit itty bitty things – and then actually see them used. But I don’t have the patience right now for a child. It would not be a good time for us to intentionally bring a small person into the world. I would prefer to live in a house, first. I would prefer to be out of debt and well on our way funding our retirement funds. I want to be closer to a normal BMI before I put my body through all of that. So there’s a lot that needs to change before I feel like we’ll be ready for that step in life.

Additionally, I struggle with feelings that maybe I don’t want kids after all. Those temper the mania at times – until the mania pushes them completely out of my head. I mean, truly, most of the time, I find other peoples’ kids really annoying. There are well-behaved kids, and there are badly behaved parents who don’t properly teach their kids, thereby creating badly behaved kids. I know that. But the latter category seems to put me off having kids more than anything else. It was our biggest annoyance when we were at Walt Disney World last fall. Not the children who stayed with their parents and played normally, but the ones who roughhoused and kicked and kneed me, the ones who kept pseudo-accidentally spitting on our heads before Spectromagic, the ones who would scream and shout because they couldn’t have yet another expensive souvenir… those are the ones that really ruin it for me.

What if I have kids like that? What if I’m one of those parents? I would hate to walk around in a public place with little monsters for children, knowing full well that everyone around me thought the same of my spawn. I would like to say, I know that not all parents are like that, and not all kids are like that. But the ones that most people have to notice are like that. And those are the ones that stand out in my memory from our trip at WDW. Those are the ones that get all the attention at the store because their child is pitching a category 4 hissyfit over some toy that mom and dad has said they can’t have. Or, worse, the kid is wreaking havoc over a section and the parents are nowhere to be found. Those are the parents that make me worried about becoming one myself.

Then there’s also the responsibility factor. There are times when I feel like I can barely keep up with myself, let alone care for another human being. There are days when I have to argue with myself to get into the shower. I mean, really, if I can’t even take a shower in peace, how am I going to convince a small human being that they’re going to be alright in my care? I just have a feeling that reproducing is not in the cards for us for a while.

Or maybe never. We have talked extensively about social responsibility when it comes to having a family. I feel like there are so many children out there who don’t have homes or families for one reason or another, and for us to bring another person into the world, knowing full well there are kids out there who are victims of a system overburdened and underfunded, who will never experience the same kind of family love that we have had in our lives. (It isn’t perfect, but it’s still love!) So, why would we, then, willingly strive to bring into the world another human being to tax our natural resources, and shun those children who have had circumstances which threw them into a system that can’t really handle them as well as it should be able to? It just feels socially irresponsible. I struggle with that, too. There is no way that we’d be able to adopt at our age, from what I’ve heard about requirements for adoption. We don’t make enough money, and living in an apartment certainly doesn’t help. It’s just one of those things that I feel like it’s important for us to consider when it comes to parenthood.

Thinking about adoption certainly sobers up the baby mania to some extent, but then I still occasionally get those physical urges to be pregnant and have a natural child, one made up of our DNA. I am sure that, no matter what we decide, I will struggle with this for a very long time, whether we have children or not. I know it is not a decision to be made lightly – having children cannot be undone! You don’t just get to ‘give them back’ at the end of the day if  you don’t feel like having kids after all. So I know it’s something that I have to be sure about before I do it, or I may end up regretting that, and I think that would be far, far worse than regretting not having children.

But, oh man, could someone please hand me a screaming child? I need to quell this urge before something inside me explodes.

Once I found a job, things got a little better. Things weren’t so tight and we could breathe again, but I wouldn’t say we were financially stable. I wasn’t making a lot of money, and Johnathan was underpaid and overworked. But we were both employed, and making plans to get out of debt as soon as we stabilized. We got stable financially (well, enough, anyway) around the time we got married in September 2008, so we set up a “snowball” structure for our debts and began working toward paying that off.

I won’t say we haven’t had setbacks along the way. That would be a bald-faced lie. Some months, our debt went up instead of down, but for every single one of them, we can identify the cause (couch, new TV, vacation, etc), and since our debt graph was still going down, it wasn’t something to worry about. We’re now over a year and a half into the process and we’ve paid off all credit card debt, and I sent off the last payment for my student loan last week. That leaves our cars and my loan for the current school term. Three quarters of our debt is gone, and all of our truly harmful debt is gone.

After going through our bills the other day, it was interesting to realize that we’re… fine. We’re fine! If something were to happen, we would float. In fact, we’re talking about funneling all of my paychecks into savings as soon as the debt is gone, because there won’t be any other draw for it. This means that we’ll be able to put aside money for big things like a down payment for a house, like big vacations, college… anything, really! It’s already very freeing to be out from under so much debt, and heading toward true financial freedom. Realizing that we’d only have a few recurring bills left after we’re done paying down debt, and some of them may be able to be reduced in frequency.

We’re so close to being finished with debt payment – it feels absolutely wonderful. We should have both of our cars paid off totally within a couple of months, and I expect to see our total debt fall under $5,000 on Tuesday when I get paid. We’re saving for two vacations and have plenty set aside for the one in September, and are instead looking toward the one we’ve planned for May of next year. With any luck, we’ll be able to contribute the maximum to our IRA next year and start accumulating significant savings. Our financial outlook is beautiful!

I was looking for some new recipes to make, some with less fat and more complex carbohydrates instead of simple ones. I ran across the idea in my searches for once a month cooking. It seemed like an intriguing idea to me. We already do our shopping twice a month, but what if we did it only once a month and froze a lot of things to thaw and eat later? Interesting concept! The idea was that we’d have something at home to eat, even when were decidedly uninterested in cooking. Well, I picked out some recipes – mostly healthy ones, and very few which said anything about the freezability of the recipe – and made up a grocery list. We went shopping on the thirteenth of July for all of the ingredients for about twenty recipes, and commenced with the cooking the following weekend. The cooking went fairly well. I discovered that cooking and freezing up a few recipes on my own is a tall order, particularly as it leaves me less time to clean up after myself unless I literally want to be in the kitchen all day. However, when Johnathan and I did a bunch of cooking together things ran smoothly. One of us could clean up or do prep work while the other checked on recipe instructions or tended to something that was already in progress. We managed to use up nearly everything in our freezer with the exception of the frozen vegetables and fill it until it was absolutely packed 100% full. There was no more room in that sucker when we were done!

Now that we’ve done it once and experienced what it was like to do the work and reap the benefits, we’re going to go again this month, this time with some new knowledge. Some things we learned:

• Stuffed peppers do not freeze very well.
• White lasagna that includes a pesto sauce is pretty good but the whole thing gets oily if not baked right away because the pesto separates.
• The only way this actually works is if someone actually remembers to get something out of the freezer. Trying to quickly thaw things is a pain.
• Chilis, soups and stews freeze very well!
• Recipes that include just regular ingredients are more likely to be pleasing than those that require ingredients that we don’t even know how to find. (In other words, keep it simple, stupid!)

Overall, we’re both really happy about the whole experience. We’ve got a list of recipes already picked out to make for next month, and I expect we’ll go shopping for that pretty soon and use our experiences to our advantage. We’re making a bigger variety of meals and recipes with simpler ingredients – ones we’ve purchased before and know how to locate in the various stores. I expect we’ll come in under budget this time around, and hopefully be able to pack up our freezer just as much as last time.

I’m so glad we thought to try this. It has saved us so much time and frustration, not to mention a ton of money that was previously spent on eating out becuase we were too lazy to cook!

Now, if only we could get our hands on a bigger freezer so that we could have more storage.

With little counter space, we got creative with where we, er, stored things.

A dozen cupcakes, some thawing chicken, and a card table that's only kind of holding up the microwave.

We mentioned there's not much counter space, right? This is where the laptop lived so that we could access online recipes.

Cookin' some chicken. I have no idea which recipe this was for.

Produce storage overflow. (Note the bottle of vodka: that was for after.)

It was a long weekend, but the payoff is obvious.

Packed full. There was quite literally no more room in there.

The fridge remained pretty full throughout.

1. It’s not as hard as I had it worked up to be in my head. I made a scarf to learn cables, and quickly learned to love them. I made a neck warmer to learn how to do herringbone stitch and did a practice swatch of what appears to be daisy stitch (according to some – elsewhere called a diagonal knot stitch). I’ve learned how to cast on in the middle of a project, create stitches where once there weren’t any, do a gusset for the thumb of a mitten… I know there are a lot of techniques that I have yet to explore, and I look forward to learning them as I go. No beginner projects for me – I’m learning new techniques by doing them.
2. Hobbies can get expensive, and knitting is no exception. There are some really gorgeous colorways out there, some handspun, some themed to interesting things (like Harry Potter themed yarns among other things), and lots of them incredibly expensive. I’ve found a happy spot where I get good yardage for my dollar, but yarns that aren’t scratchy and inflexible (like the Red Heart Superwash tends to be in my still limited experience). I do have to keep reminding myself that while it’s nice that some knitters can afford to spend upwards of $50 on one hank of yarn, I just can’t do that and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point where I will.
3. Elitism is everywhere. It’s there in all aspects of life and especially in each and every hobby or interest I’ve pursued. I haven’t found anything yet that was free of it. There are some knitters who refuse to use anything but natural fibers, or even better, handspun natural fibers (which can get very expensive) and are fairly vocal about those who use anything man-made. Others swing the other direction and are fairly judgmental of those who don’t use man-made fibers. It’s inevitable that this would happen. It’s not a very nice thing to witness, but I think I’m getting better at blocking out the elitism.

I’m really enjoying knitting things up. I stayed up late on Saturday night to finish the mitten, and it was absolutely amazing to see how it ended up shaped like a mitten, without any truly complicated techniques. As far as finished objects go, here’s what I have:

• Sharfik for Allison: Nine feet and one inch of scarf pre-fringe. -faint- It took me just under three weeks to actually finish the scarf, mostly because I think I was losing motivation for it. Scarves take a long time. There’s no real sense of reward when it’s done becasue it takes so darn long to finish. I still need to attach the fringe, but I was waiting for it to dry after washing it. I should do that soon since she’s visiting this weekend. [Pattern]
  
• Coffee Cozies [1] [2]: Johnathan got coffee pretty much every day at his old job (he started his new (old?) one today, yay!), and I figured that since he wasn’t taking his own mug to get the coffee, it was ending up being pretty unfriendly to the environment. I had about half a skein (give or take) of yarn left over from the scarf that I made for his mom’s birthday, so I figured, why not make a coffee cozy? Can’t be hard, right? I made the first one in the same woven cable pattern that the scarf I made his mom used. I seamed it up very badly, and put a pretty button on it. Where the seam is, the cozy gets pretty bulky, so I’m a little disappointed with how it came out. The second one was much better. It was a herringbone stitch pattern (which I had just made a neckwarmer out of – more on that to come), and it knitted up just as quickly as the first one, but because the edges were more straight I had an easier time seaming it. I seamed it up while watching an episode of chopped, left off any buttons and called it done. It is less loose than the first one because I made it just a little bit undersized, to let it stretch. So, all in all, #2 was much better than #1. I still have probably a quarter or more of a skein of that blue yarn, so I figure I’ll make some more, unless I can figure out something else to make with it. Any ideas? It was nice making these, though, because I didn’t use any patterns for them, so I felt kind of original in doing it. (Even if both stitch patterns came from another pattern that I originally followed.)
  
• Herringbone Neckwarmer: I’ve had this pattern bookmarked for a long time. It was one of those “someday…” projects that I had no idea when I’d be able to actually make it. I bought yarn with my birthday money from Johnathan’s mom, and had no reason, at that point, not to make it. I started it on Tuesday night, and by Thursday night, it was totally finished, including buttons and buttonholes. The buttonholes were an interesting part for me. The pattern calls for binding off, then picking up and knitting fifteen stitches with doubled yarn. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to make it work the way the pattern called for it to work, so ultimately I ignored the instructions. I looked up how to make a one-row buttonhole, and worked it into the pattern instead. It turned out pretty well! The buttonholes were a little bit big, so the buttons don’t like to stay put, but I figure I’d rather sew them smaller than have to un-knit and redo the buttonholes because the buttons won’t fit through. I really like how the neckwarmer turned out. Now I just have to wait four more months until it’s cool enough outside to actually require it! Aw, man… [Pattern]
  
• Mary Sue’s Bella’s Mittens: I am not a Twilight fan. I read the book last year and more than once wanted to throw the book through a window. It’s horrible. However, when I saw a picture of a pair of look-alike mittens that a friend on LJ made, I couldn’t help myself. I was in love! These mittens are great. They’re long, which I like, and have a neat horseshoe cable going up the top side. I started the first one on Friday night, after acquiring a longer cable needle so that I could do the magic loop to make the mitten. It took me a few hours on Friday night to make most of the cuff, then a few hours spent on Saturday got me the rest of the way finished with the mitten. Unfortunately, I stayed up until 3:30AM to finish it, because I just wanted to see it completed. As such, I didn’t get much sleep, so didn’t knit at all yesterday. As of this moment, I have exactly twenty of the requisite forty-three stitches cast on for the second mitten, so today’s looking like a knitting bust, too. Maybe this is second sock syndrom, but for mittens? I’m not sure. Either way, I’m really happy with how it turned out. I just need to finish the second one now. [Pattern]
  

Before I started my mitten, I also threaded beads for and cast on for an Odessa hat (another pattern I’ve had my eye on for quite a while), so that’s “in progress”as well. Coming up, I have plans to make a couple of pairs of socks (my first self-made socks!), a couple of things for my mom for Chirstmas, a couple of things for a friend who is moving to a colder climate at the end of the year, and a pair of Space Invaders socks for Johnathan (don’t worry, he already knows about them!). I should have plenty of projects to keep me busy until I find a new job. (Hopefully longer than that, too!)

My only real wish is that I could subsist on knitting commissions. I have exactly one so far, and that one won’t start until finances are in the right place for her, so I’m not sure when I’ll need to start on that. I’m excited to do it, though! So, uh, want something knitted? I’ll do it for you! If you pay me, of course.

Since I now have Saturdays free, it meant we could go together to the market, and since it’s going on Summer, we figured it would be good to go back to the market to get some fresh vegetables and support local growers. This past Saturday, we headed out fairly early to get there before the place was absolutely packed with people. It was nice to walk from stand to stand and take in what each one had to offer. We tried to keep from buying too much from any one stand and we did our best to scope out the cheapest prices that were offered. In the end, we came away with four zucchini, four yellow squash, two limes, two lemons, two things of broccoli, two enormous vidalia onions, one very large red onion, an orange, about six peppers (at least four red, not sure why), two ham hocks and a loaf of bread. We spent about $30 total while we were there.

Incidentally, we loved doing our shopping on Saturday morning for a change instead of a weekday evening. People are so much friendlier! Both the customers and the cashiers at the stores were less pushy and stressed out. It was fantastic. It took us three hours from when we left for the market until we got home and finished putting all of the groceries away. I’d say that’s pretty good for three stops and a massive amount of groceries. (We needed to stock up on pretty much everything.)

I was feeling pretty good about our choice to buy our veggies at the market, until Tuesday morning, when I got up and wondered what the foul smell in the kitchen was. It took me a little while to figure out what it was, but I did eventually find the source. The first thing I found was that our orange was half molded over. Following that, I discovered that the foul smell actually originated from our zucchini and yellow squash. One zucchini was so rotted through it fell apart and was oozing in the bowl where I had put it. Another was almost at the same point, and a third had mold all down one side. One yellow squash had an enormous rot spot on one side. Four days after we purchased this produce, it was going bad. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to lose so much produce in such a short span from purchase. All in all, we lost about $8 worth of produce. I was able to salvage the orange – thankfully the mold was only on the outside and I only needed its juice, but everything else was a total loss.

Needless to say, we weren’t very happy about how that turned out. We wanted our trip to the market to be a nice change to our usual shopping habits, and I really wanted to be able to support more local commerce than megamarts. I’m disappointed that we put so much faith in the people who put these stands together and that their produce ended up being sub-par. We will be going back to the market, but with this in mind, the way we shop will change:

• We won’t buy as much. Obviously this stuff is so close to being on its way out that it doesn’t last as long as expected, so we might as well go more often if we need to.
• We’ll keep track of which vendors have given us produce that’s gone south in a hurry, and which ones have given us quality produce. We might as well play favorites in this kind of scenario.
• We won’t let them pick for us from the back. With the squash and zucchini, we let them do this for us, and I think that may have been part of the cause – it was the older produce to begin with. (The orange we picked out ourselves. I have no idea what happened there.)

It’s not a lot of change, but it’s some. I’d hate to give up on the market completely so quickly after going back for the first time in a year and a half. We do want to shop at the market. We just don’t want to lose what we buy so soon after bringing it home.

If you’re in the Cleveland area, do check out the West Side Market! We’ve gotten some great bread there and the produce is really nice when it lasts a reasonable amount of time.

Money makes the world go around
the world go around
the world go around
Money makes the world go around
It makes the world go ’round.

- Cabaret

Money seems to be on everyone’s minds lately, and I blame that entirely on the — what are we calling it? It’s a recession right? Economic downturn? I don’t know.  I know it’s been a major concern for Johnathan and me for the last year or so, because of my unemployment and then tight finances as we tried to catch up from five months of one income. We got caught up just before we got married, and now we’re on our way to becoming debt-free.

Compared to others our age, we’re not badly off in debt. Our combined debt is lower than the average for a single 24-year-old. Still, we view credit card and loan debt as unnecessary and want to start planning toward bigger things – like buying a home someday. We’re using the snowball method. Including our two cars, we should be totally debt-free by mid 2010. By the end of this year, we should be free of all harmful debt. It’s an exhilarating thought, that at ages 23 and 25, we could be free of $1,000 per month in debt payments.

On top of this, we’ve got an emergency fund hanging out and earning fairly good interest, some savings for unexpected things like car repairs, and a rolling balance (albeit not a great deal) in our joint checking account. We each get fun money twice a month, and we’re paying toward a Walt Disney World vacation (late September, whoo!). We’re not really struggling anymore financially.

I suppose it’s kind of a strange realization knowing that while other people are finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet due to rising prices and ballooning mortgages, we’re staying steady. We’re actually even improving. Our overall debt has decreased by over $2,000 already since we started this in earnest in early September.  I’m left thinking, “What recession?”

“What recession?” is certainly not fair to the rest of the country, though.  I understand that circumstances have changed; jobs lost, pay cuts, skyrocketing prices for everything… it makes it hard, especially if it was difficult to make ends meet before. I suppose my point is that while the economy is heading downhill and things are getting harder for some people, Johnathan and I are just fine, and Bob willing, things will continue to be fine for us, and in fact, they will improve.

Money, money, money… we’re not rolling in it, but I think we’re going to be okay.

By far, the biggest trip we’re planning out is our trip to Walt Disney World for our “honeymoon.” We were hoping to go this fall, but financially it isn’t going to work out, so instead we’re planning to put it off until next fall and go during the Food and Wine Festival. Since we’ll have that much longer to put money aside for it, we’ll be able to do the trip exactly the way we want to do it, at a moderate resort with the dining plan of our choosing. We’re both really excited about the trip, even when it’s well over a year away.

We’re planning to splurge a little bit by going to New York City sometime this month. We want to see Curtains before it closes on Broadway (it is due to close on June 29th) and we’ll probably head to Astroland and have a bit of fun there as well before Astroland closes its gates for the last time this year. Other than that, we haven’t planned anything specific as yet, but we probably will see a museum or some other touristy location before we head home again. We are going to plan things out more before we actually go, and I imagine this time will cost us less than last time did due to our planning. Hopefully we can get a lot of good pictures again and stray farther from Time Square so that we can find more of the interesting sites in the Big Apple.

We’re also planning something for sometime in October, during the time that we would have gone to WDW could we have afforded it. We don’t know what yet but we’ll be doing something to get away as a “honeymoon,” and hopefully we’ll be able to do it for relatively little money. That’s as yet unplanned, though, so I couldn’t say anything about it even if I wanted to.

I’m just really excited at the things that we’ll be able to do now that I’m employed. We’ve been fairly well reigned in for the last six months due to my unemployment, and now the monetary limits that bound us are lifting. We’re not rolling in it, but we’ll definitely be able to see more places than we otherwise might have been able.

The next thing we need to do is to get a really nice camera so that we can capture great pictures of all of these places. Ah well – one thing at a time.

What’s really fun about this is firstly that we’re doing it together and also that we’re not letting the possible cost prohibitiveness of the things we’re suggesting stop us. It means that the designs we come up with (and I know this won’t be the first) will be exactly what we want in a future home. I love the design we’ve already come up with. It has the practicality of a family home and features that suit our specific interests. We’re also planning to essentially wire it up like crazy. We want to build a kitchen database which will house all of our recipes and have included functionality to be able to keep track of our current kitchen inventory. That’s something we plan to start on fairly soon so that we can start testing it with our current kitchen and recipes.

I am so excited! I’m using the few skills that I remember from the architecture class that I took in seventh grade during my first trimester at school in Oregon and then essentially making up the rest. I think the next step for us will be to get some kind of program so that we can more easily create representations of it. An idea is to use The Sims 2 to represent it, though I know I can’t get an exact representation of it because of the limitations of creation there. All the same, I’m very excited about what we’re doing. At some point we’ll probably post some of our ideas, if only to keep them somewhere that they’re less likely to be destroyed randomly. (Fires seem to be shockingly common at this apartment complex…)

Whether we ever are able to make this home or not is debatable but in the meantime, at least we can dream. We can also use these ideas to customize any home we do purchase sometime in the future. Either way, designing this will be really fun, particularly as we’re doing it together.

This is very exciting! It took me almost five months of dogged job searching but I finally did it: I got a job. And not only that, I got a job which will be good for us.

I may not love this city but I’m sure I’ll dislike it a lot less now that spring is on the way and now that my bank account won’t be suffering so much anymore. Hurrah! Things are looking up again. I couldn’t be happier at this moment!

The long of it is so: I’ve been applying for jobs left, right and center and still have nothing, not even retail. I think after the holiday is over, I’ll contact a temp agency and get the ball rolling that way. I vaguely tried a few weeks ago but it came to nothing and I didn’t really follow up. That was my fault. It’s not a lot of fun, this job searching thing, and honestly it’s a bit frustrating for me overall. I will prevail, though. Somehow, I’ll prevail.

What I’ve been doing since Allison left is trying to keep up with the housework, and doing so poorly, fighting off several colds (Johnathan working in a hospital and all, and me not having any immunities to the exact cold strains that will have gone around over the years in Ohio, I’m very susceptible to basically anything that comes home), and reading books. I’ve gone through several over the last month or so. I’d say six or seven, at minimum. I don’t know.

Let’s see, Thanksgiving happened in the meantime. Johnathan’s mom came over the Saturday after and we had dinner and played Mario Party 8. Not a big to-do, but fun nevertheless. Christmas is next week, obviously, and we’re going over to her house for a couple of hours, but spending the majority of the evening on our own. We’re going to see his dad and step-mom on Friday, so that’ll get all the holiday stuff out of the way, and then we’ll be able to coast until the new year.

As far as Christmas, due to a constrained budget, we weren’t thinking we were going to have any decorations and certainly no splurging on gifts for one another. I bemoaned our lack of festive decor on my livejournal and some of my friends from there, particularly the people I knew in Hogwarts Elite stepped in and sent a large box filled with sweets, cookies, ornaments, lights and a few knickknacks like a reindeer with teeny bells on its antlers and some poppers which I put into the stockings that we put up. Allison sent a tree and a bunch of ornaments as well so we’re done up quite a lot with lights and our adorable three-foot tree. Incidentally, here are some photos of what we were sent:

So, we’ve got a fair amount up now. I haven’t taken pictures of the rest of it all done up yet, but I will before it comes down and I’ll share for sure. Unfortunately, we had to take the tinsel off of the tree because the cats decided it was incredibly tasty and I know that’s no good for kitties. So, we have a huge bag of tinsel that we’ll have to sort out something to do with for next year. Obviously we can’t use it because of the feline buttheads. Ah, well!

While we’re on the subject of Christmas, it’s been an interesting year what with our plans to get married in April. We want to get married this year, which means we’d like to go on our honeymoon this year, so all we’ve told anyone that we wanted for Christmas (with the exception of my drooling over a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer…) is money toward our ideal honeymoon trip. So far, my mom has pitched in, which I’m really grateful for, as has Allison. So as of right now, we’re at…

$210 / $4000

Super impressive, I know! But hey, a start is a start, right? I’m hoping we can afford it by April, but if not, we’ll have to put it off until September or so, or maybe as long as next year. I know his mom has something up her sleeve so we’ll see what happens. I’m really excited about all of that, too. (Of course, if anyone wants to contribute, you’re more than welcome. )

I guess I should mention that we’re officially getting married on April 25 of this year. It’s going to be very small – his parents and anyone important to me who can manage to get out here. I’ll be inviting my mom, step-dad and brother for certain – inviting my dad and step-mom is a bit more iffy because I haven’t heard anything from either of them since before I moved and really, I mostly don’t care – but I don’t know whether they’ll be able to get out here this April for a one-day, very small and unassuming situation. I’m planning to invite Allison as well, because I figure she’s close enough to come to it so long as school or work doesn’t interfere. It’s exciting to know that in about four months, we’ll be married. A Smith no more, hurrah! So, there’s that.

Recently, I picked up the His Dark Materials trilogy because I read about all the controversy surrounding it from religious groups. I want to write about it, but I haven’t sat down and done so as yet. Honestly, I loved them and I really don’t see where the controversy is coming from. Of course, after I finished reading, the immediate thing I thought of was how awesome it would be to roleplay in the world that Philip Pullman presents. Go figure, huh? Geeky ’til I die! That said, I’ve jumped in – well, not jumped so much as eased in – at HisDarkMaterials.org which is honestly one of the most attractive websites I’ve seen. It’s set up nicely and the graphics are pretty without being overwhelming. It’s not often I find a black-themed website that suits my fancy, so it makes me happy. Oh, incidentally, they’re having a book giveaway for a book about the Golden Compass books and I put in for it on a whim, because who doesn’t like winning, right? Well, I got notice today that I actually won! So I’ll be getting a free copy of the book, autographed by both the author and illustrator as well as a pack of Golden Compass cards (which are movie-themed, I believe).

Another new interest of mine is the Young Frankenstein cast album, which I recently acquired. The cast is very talented, and the songs are very amusing. I’m glad I have the soundtrack, and I think if it were to tour, I’d probably make an effort to see it. Oh, speaking of musicals, awful news! The Drowsy Chaperone which is by far my favorite musical right now (I say ‘right now’ because it’s always subject to change, but it’s been ‘right now’ for almost two years now…) is closing on December 30th. When it closes, it will have played 32 previews and 674 performances. It’s so sad that it’s closing after only a year and a half on Broadway. I’m sad that I won’t have seen it on Broadway before it closes, but I did get to see it on tour and loved it. Can’t be too choosy, right? I’m just saddened that it’s ending. Who knows, though. Maybe it will pull a Les Mis and have a revival in three or four years.

I’ve also thrown myself into the groups and talk area over at LibraryThing. I’m really enjoying that as well. I finally got my whole library catalogued there, and it’s interesting to note that even after parting with a fair number of books to make the move, I have 160 books. I’d very likely have over 200 if I hadn’t parted with some before moving. There are others that I’ve made the decision to part with as well, since moving here. So, I’m impressed with my own numbers. Of course, there are people with upwards of 10,000 books, and many people have between 2,000 and 5,000 in their libraries, but I’m still fairly young and just moved across the country as frugally as I could manage. I know I’ll get more books together once I’m fully settled and employed. At any rate, if anyone wants to friend me, I welcome them to do so!

So, really, I’ve been keeping myself busy, I think that’s plain to see. I finally met some more of Johnathan’s friends, including his friend Nicole, who we wanted to see when she was performing in Forbidden Broadway here but unfortunately we didn’t manage to do it before it closed this month, and his coworker Dennis. I think we’re going to start doing more social things – meaning more things outside the apartment that don’t necessarily involve computers or gadgets of any kind. It will be good for me, even though it still gives me a fair amount of social anxiety.

I think I’ve made this entry long enough, don’t you? So, I leave you with my dæmon and go back to … whatever it was that I was doing before.

Johnathan did a little bit more unpacking the other night, which helped clear out our living room. Now all that’s left to unpack is in the corner of the dining room, and really, there isn’t much of it. We put up my corkboard (again) – this time with nails, got my wooden Lion King poster up as well as two of his small framed photos. We need to put up my Waterhouse print in the bedroom but keep forgetting. Otherwise, we’re well on our way to a fully organized apartment, at which point we can focus more on the decorative aspects of it. First priority, though, is to get a new bed, because this bed isn’t in bad shape, but it’s only a full, and we’re not small people, so it’s really quite a snug fit. That’s certainly first on our list of big expenditures.

I met Johnathan’s dad last night. He seems like a really nice guy. He was a bit high energy last night, but he raved about my cookies, my candy, the pumpkin seeds… that can’t hurt, right? I swear, sometimes I think that if you just show up with a full plate of sweets, people are more disposed to liking you. Maybe that’s why I keep baking all of these things. That, or I just like baking, go figure.

While his dad was over, Johnathan mentioned culinary school in passing. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered it, but definitely the first time it struck me to consider it in all seriousness. If I didn’t think I’d make a lousy chef, I’d go for it. At least then I’d learn more skills for my own interests. However, culinary school is expensive and I don’t think it’s an expense that I can justify at this point, given I’m completely broke at the moment. I need a job first.

I had an interview on Friday, and the lady who interviewed me said I’d know by midweek about whether I got it or not. It is now past midweek, in my opinion, so I’m going to assume that I did not get that job. It’s a real shame, too, because it was one that I believe I would have excelled at and thoroughly enjoyed. I’m still at it, though, throwing my resume at any job posting that even vaguely looks like I could do it.

Something that Johnathan and I are considering right now is setting up a home phone situation via Skype. I can’t get any cell phone reception in the apartment at all, and his is sketchy except on his work phone, so we need a place where people can contact us. Obviously, a home phone is in order. Johnathan already subscribed to SkypeOut so we got a SkypeIn number that I could put on my resume and in the job applications so that nobody had to go straight to my voicemail anymore.  We’re going to try to figure out a situation where we can plug in an actual phone and have it ring anytime someone calls on Skype, that way we’ve got a phone that we can hear. His dad has called both of us several times in the last week and gotten voicemail every time because of our reception issues, and I just don’t want anyone to think that we’re avoiding them.

On Saturday, we’re going with Johnathan’s dad and stepmom out to the Westside Market, which apparently is a ‘neato place’ according to Johnathan’s dad. It should be an interesting day, given they want to meet at about 8AM and I can’t usually get Johnathan out of bed at 8AM for work as it is. We will see, though. We both got up at 4AM to head out for my move so obviously it isn’t impossible.

I can’t believe it’s Thursday already! My how the weeks do seem to fly.The rest of my week will be comprised of more job hunting, even though it’s been slim pickings so far this week, and I believe I’m going to bake some pumpkin gingerbread with the pureed pumpkin we have. We baked up a pumpkin and now have thirteen + cups of pumpkin puree to work with over the next several months. I kind of would like to do a second one, just so we can have fresh pumpkin pie next may if we so choose. It would be silly to do that with our limited space, though.  Otherwise, Saturday we’re going to the Westside Market and then on Sunday night, it’s The Drowsy Chaperone tour cast in Cleveland! We’ll get to see Jonathan Crombie, who I have idolised as Gilbert Blythe since I was a kid, and Georgia Engel, who was in the original cast of the Drowsy Chaperone. Our Janet van de Graaff will be played by one of the girls who was in the (very, very small) ensemble in the original cast. I believe she was the understudy for Janet, so hopefully she’ll be a treat as well. I’m very excited to see that.

All in all, we’re keeping busy, eating well, and just generally trying to make ends meet while I endeavor to secure employment. It’s not a bad life right now except for the money stresses, which I’m hoping will wane soon. All in all, I feel pretty good about how we’re doing and how things are coming together at home, even if they aren’t so much employment-wise. We are happy!

The realization has hit me that I’m leaving in just twenty-seven days. Twenty-seven! I have sixteen days of work left before my last day, and then it will be four days after that when I leave with Johnathan for Ohio. This is all becoming real. I’m very excited, but also a little scared. I haven’t got a job yet, and that’s really nerve-wracking, especially given that Comcast is screwing me over a little bit. I took my vacation in good faith that the vacation they showed was what I had earned to use right away. Well, apparently I dipped into a bank of time off that I did not actually have, so they will be docking me for the pay for the time I got vacation pay on my trip to Ohio out of my last paycheck. Well, that would have been good to know when I put in my vacation time! I wouldn’t have taken it if I had known I hadn’t earned it yet. It’s all water under the bridge now, though, because there’s nothing that I can do about it. I’ve been applying to jobs like crazy in Ohio, receptionist positions, office work… anything that will pay me enough to sustain myself in our current residence, pay my car payment and insurance, my phone, and for groceries and utilities. Any savings and things above that can be cut mostly out of the budget that Johnathan and I set up, but I need something that will cover at least those things. That requires making at least about $10 an hour. I’m doing my best to find something that will work for me, and I’m hoping someone will at least give me a phone interview before I get there; it would be very stressful to move and just have to jump into more hardcore job searching once I get there.

Everything money-wise seems to be falling at the same time right now. My first car payment is due in about a week – it’s already in the mail – as well as having had to take the cats to the vet yesterday, and then I have an appointment for an exam next week – though that should be fine as it will be the day before my paycheck posts, so I won’t have to stress quite as much over paying for that. More and more has been going on my credit card, and it’s starting to worry me. I dipped into my savings to make a sizable payment on the card – I cannot bear to see it getting up high – and to put enough into my checking account to cover the car payment when it comes out. I’ll have to use the next paycheck to chip away some more at the credit card and to replenish my savings, because as it is, I only have just enough for the first month’s rent and the cat deposit, which I’ll probably pay all at once. After that, I won’t have much left at all, and it is bothersome. So, a good chunk of this paycheck has to go toward making sure I have more than that in my savings account. I’m worried that I may need to take out a personal loan to make this move, which would increase my financial responsibilities, and then if I don’t manage to get a job that pays enough, I’ll be in over my head. I would rather not have to do that, but it may end up being my only option. My ends are starting to get tied off, though, so there’s honestly no turning back now.

It’s less than a month now until I leave Oregon. I’ll have been here exactly twenty days short of ten years when we leave, and while it’s a bit sad to be leaving a place that I love so much, all I can see is the opportunity and the possibilities that I have ahead of me. I’m moving to Ohio, and I’ll be with Johnathan, who I love very, very much, and while the lack of job is currently lamentable, I’m sure I’ll be able to find something. Things still have the possibility of going wrong, and they probably will, but I’m just going to take it in stride. Life is too short to lose my mind over something like this, big as it is.

Oh my god, I’m moving to Ohio in less than a month! Excuse me while I actually lose my mind. (In a good way, of course!)

In order to make sure that I’m as organized as I can manage, I’ve taken to listing out everything that I’ve packed in my boxes. I did not go so far as listing each piece of sheet music, nor writing out a detailed list of each school project that I stacked into the box. All of my books are listed out, but that’s mostly because a lot of those books are precious to me, and if I need to find them, it’s definitely beneficial for me to have them listed onto a specific box. Johnathan’s shock at how many books I fit into one box was amusing – I don’t think he fully grasps the number of books that I have. I certainly don’t have the most books of anyone I’ve ever known, but I’m certainly above the median in number.

In terms of everything else, I did manage to get some things done yesterday. I did a load of laundry, got two cat carriers, two small litterboxes (which will be taped down for the trip – no messes please!), feliway spray, and a prescription that I needed refilled. I was going to look into purchasing a roof bag, but unfortunately with the amount of money that I spent yesterday, I simply couldn’t justify doing that. So, the roof bag will be purchased with my next paycheck, so that I can use this one (what’s left of it) to pay for shipments. I am trying very hard to be positive about this trip, because with the stresses of work (and the looming need to work more overtime than we’re even required to do), the stresses that my family (however accidentally) put on me, and the stresses of wanting to make sure I’ve accomplished everything in time for the move, I need to maintain my sanity somehow. I keep saying that if I make it to Ohio with my health and my sanity both in tact, it will be by sheer miracle.

Come down to it, though, Johnathan is being very helpful and supportive. He’s always willing to lend an ear when I’m feeling stressed, frustrated or just plain pissed off. He wants to help right now, and even though that’s not possible, the sentiment helps my frame of mind greatly, especially where I’m receiving little to no help from my family. His plans for our drive from Oregon to Ohio are also helpful, as he’s helping my efforts in research to make sure that I’m mentally and emotionally prepared for this journey. I just feel so loved and cared for, even from such a distance that I can’t imagine how I’ll feel when we’re in the same state, living together. I look forward to it. There are no words to express how in love with Johnathan I am. I just can’t get them out. I usually count myself a moderately articulate person, but in this instance, language has failed me.

Just because no post lately would be complete without mention of marriage or weddings, wow, weddings are expensive and complicated! It’s enough to make a person want to elope! I guess maybe that’s the point: Make the wedding a stressful and crazy event, and then go away for a week or two just to recover (and enjoy each other as husband and wife, of course). I don’t know if it’s really worth it to me to follow that path, but we’ll see. I love Johnathan, and whatever we end up deciding, I’m sure it will make for good stories when we’re old and the young folks are asking us about how we met and how our younger days were. (Will people even do that, or is it just me who is interested in the lives of old people?) I love being in love with Johnathan, and I love how safe and accepted he makes me feel, even when I’m being completely irrational and stupid (like when the fact that I don’t have any sauce for my onion rings makes me start crying).

Ain’t love grand?

Holy wow, weddings are expensive.

By the way… There’s no sound. Fill in the blanks with whatever you think I should have been saying.

Everyone keeps telling me how I don’t have much to pack and send, but believe me, when you’re looking at trying to move things about in such a small space, it feels like a lot more than what it apparently looks like. First things first, though, I’ll do laundry and that will help me get organized, because I can separate the clothes I wear from the clothes I don’t wear as I fold it all and put it into baskets. Then I’ll drag one box out of my closet at a time, and start packing things as evenly into the boxes as I can manage. Then it’s just a matter of closing them up and addressing them, and they can go on their way to Ohio.

I can’t express how excited I am about this move. It’s scary, because of all the things that could potentially go badly wrong, but mostly I remain excited. We’re going to be in our own place, which we can make into a home for ourselves. I look forward to experimenting with the massive list of recipes that I have saved and bookmarked, and just generally being able to call a place home, and have a large say in what goes where and how it’s organized. It’s going to be a Very Good Thing.

Other things that I still need to take care of are… buying a dog carrier, getting checkups for my cats, calling the PP for a refill on my scrip, and actually getting things packed and cleaned. It’s going to be a busy (less than) five weeks.

It’s still sinking in that all this planning would be for us, and that I’m preparing to join myself with someone for life. I’m very excited over the whole prospect, though it does scare me a little bit. I’ve got time for it to sink in, though, and I’m not sure if it truly will until after I’ve moved.

Speaking of moving, it’s now only five weeks to go until I’m on my way to Ohio with Johnathan. I’ve got approximately 25 days of work left, which is a bit exciting, and then I’m on my way to Ohio. At the same time, it’s nerve-wracking since I haven’t got a job yet, but I’m hoping I can get one somewhere; it’s merely a matter of getting the applications out there. I’ve forgotten for several days now to apply for a position at the place where Johnathan’s mom works, and I need to remember to do that so that I don’t have to resort to a retail position that I know I’ll hate. It’s something, at least, if I do have to do that.

The move itself is at a standstill right now, since I haven’t gone to get boxes as yet. I meant to go to Uhaul this morning to pick up boxes, but I was having a decidedly lazy morning. Bad, Laura, bad. As soon as I get the boxes, I can start packing some to send to Johnathan, and therefore start clearing out my room. It’s a necessity toward moving – there’s no way I could manage to fit everything into my car, no matter how hard we try.

I’m planning to get a roof bag of some kind so that we can travel with more things, and take some of the pressure off of having it mailed to Ohio. I imagine it might be a bit cheaper, though that’s difficult to say because there’s really no way I could take gas mileage into consideration. Getting the appliances that my mom plans to give me to Ohio will be interesting, to say the least. I guess we’ll find out how that would go.

I’m still ridiculously excited about everything, and I’m hoping that it’s only a matter of time before I’m able to get the ball rolling again, this time at a quicker and more permanent pace.

It’s only five weeks until I move! I’m hoping I don’t lose my sanity in the process.

At any rate, the reason for all the laundry is that it is now five days until I fly out to Ohio! I’ll be leaving with one or another of my parents at about 3:30AM for the airport, which is quite exciting, honestly. I’ve been looking forward to this trip pretty much since the day Johnathan left here on June 25th. I’m getting even more excited because of all the things we’re planning to do while I’m there. I’ll get to see Cleveland properly, and possibly Columbus also, if we decide to go down to see Order of the Phoenix in IMAX. We’re going to spend at least one whole day looking at apartments, and hopefully I’ll be able to put in an application and get an answer back before I even leave Ohio. We’re going to a bed and breakfast, although the only thing I know about that is that we aren’t going to it on Saturday or on Monday, and that’s all Johnathan will tell me. It really messes with my need to mentally plan how the trip is going to go. I’m sure it will be fun, though, so I’m not going to worry about it.

Tonight, I need to fold about two baskets of laundry and then get my luggage out of the garage so that I can figure out what I’m packing and what I’m going to wear this week. I’ve also got to decide what I’m wearing on the plane so that I can make sure not to pack that. I’m sure I’ll have to do laundry one more time before I actually leave, so that I’ll have all of the clothes that I actually want to wear. Once I’ve got that all packed, I just need to get all of my toiletries together, and I’m basically set for the trip. I’m taking two bags, one of which will be staying with Johnathan once I’m gone. I’ve got to line it with blankets and soft things so that the transport won’t actually damage anything – it’s full of books and DVDS; mostly DVDs – and then that one’s ready to go.

In terms of employment, I’ve applied for six or seven positions in the last few days online in Cleveland. I applied for a position at Time Warner, one at University Hospitals, where Johnathan works in IT, one at Cuyahoga Community College which I don’t expect to get at all, and a few others that looked like they were worth trying for at least. My phone hasn’t rung yet, but we’ll see if anything happens next week. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to find something soon. I would like to set an official move date soon! Johnathan will need to get time off from work, and I’ll need to put in my notice with Comcast (the sooner, the better so that they can hire someone to replace me, hopefully before I’m even gone),  and get everything settled for the move itself. I’m hoping to set an official move date for early October.

As soon as I get home from Ohio, after August 23, I’m going to need to get some boxes from the UPS store and find out what it’s going to cost me to start sending boxes out to Johnathan, one every few days. It shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to do, since I haven’t really got that much to send. And then whatever is left, I can put into my car, as well as my cats, and make the trip out there. I need to find out what I’ll need to do in terms of insurance for the drive out, and take my cats to the vet for a checkup before we go. I need to buy a bigger carrier so that I can put them both into the same one and not have to worry about taking my mom’s with me. And then, past that… everything else is on the Cleveland side of my trip.

Have I mentioned today that I am super excited about this trip?

I had a crisis at work yesterday as a result. I spent my entire hour lunch break on the phone with Bank of America, trying to sort something out. I got as far as getting approved for a personal loan for an interest rate of about 21.9%. That’s more than double what my auto loan was approved for. It was a load of bull, if you ask me. I just wanted to buy my car, but it isn’t worth that much to me! So, I broke down and started crying about five minutes before I was supposed to get back to work. I tried to pull it together, but the realization that business hours ended in one hour and that I would then have to wait until Monday to figure it out anyway at that point had me freaking out and just completely unhinged. I talked to one of the supervisors here, and did my best not to sob, but basically said, “I have to leave; I have to get this sorted.” He made one of my occurrences go away so that basically I stay at only two occurrences overall, which I really appreciated, even though I know, in my head, that this should be number three for me. I left, acquiring many concerned looks along the way. I called Johnathan on my way home to vent and just to generally try to get myself to calm down, which worked, and then I called Rick to get his advice. I then started calling around. The first suggestion was to call the dealership, which I did. I talked to the guy who sold me my car, who suggested I see about FirstTech Credit Union, and then if I wasn’t able to figure anything out, I could come in at 8:30 today to sort it out at the dealership.

So, after I got off the phone with Tim at the dealership, I put in an application online at FirstTech’s website. Immediately afterward, I called them, essentially to get it pushed through faster if at all possible. I talked to a really nice girl named Whitney, who helped me get it all sorted out, and got me approved. All I had to do at that point was take my purchase order into the bank branch, which I immediately did. We got it all sorted out, and by about 6:30, I was walking out of the bank with a cashier’s check in my hand for the car. I took that down to the dealership this morning. I also spent a little while this morning, getting my oil changed on the car and all the fluids checked, and then went down to FirstTech to get my ban accounts set up.

Needless to say, I am not going back to Bank of America. As soon as my direct deposit gets changed over to the other credit union, I’ll be closing out all of my accounts with Bank of America. I’ve already applied for a credit card with FirstTech so that I can close out the card with Bank of America as soon as possible without feeling like I’m going to put myself without a safety backup. This whole situation just had me so freaked out, so frustrated that I would absolutely not trust my money with them anymore. Obviously I’m not worth it to them, anyway. Credit Unions have nicer employees, anyway.