Time to vent

Oh.my.gosh. You will not believe this. My husband and I have been going round and round with our mortgage company to modify our loan to get a lower payment because my husband is unemployed. We have been trying since April or May and today they denied us. Why? Because our hardship is not severe enough. Hello? What more do they want? We used to be a two-income family but now we are not and that is not a hardship? My husband has spent his retirement on paying the mortgage and bills. Hello? What part of unemployment do they not understand??? It is completely unacceptable. We are probably going to change mortgage companies by refinancing ... or if hubby gets the job he wants, we'll move. We may have to move anyway because we can't afford to live here!!! Ugh...

Here we are now

We are still in our house. We are trying for a loan modification with the mortgage because hubby still is looking for work. He did, however, hear from a company one state away who is interested in his resume. Hallelujah! If he did end up working for them, we would have to move. This both scares me and excites me at the same time.

Scared--having to pack up all the stuff in our house. Get real! That would take a month of Sundays! I may have to just start selling/getting rid of stuff now... even thought it might be too soon for any of that. I know we have too much stuff. Hence, I have sold stuff on Craigslist and given stuff away on Freecycle. Having to sell this house. Ugh. Not looking forward to that. Hubby has talked about renting the place out. Um... no. I am not into that at all. However, we live in a desirable area. If something didn't work out where we move to, then we could come back to our house. That makes sense but does it actually work???

Excited--a new area! A new life! That is exciting. Starting over in a new area. Yeah, that does sound kind of freaky, but haven't you ever wanted to just up and move and begin again? I've had those thoughts.

Right now we are just barely getting by, but I don't let it get to me. I work full time, I sell beauty products on the side, I have a million hobbies/interests that keep me busy and hey, I have a family! My time is limited and believe it or not, as I write this and am sitting down, this is the only time I have spent on ME since I got off work at 4:30. It's been go, go, go all day. It seems things are just too busy. If moving to another area will help change things, so be it. Maybe I just need an attitude adjustment!

I did it!

I cleaned my craft room yesterday! Woweee!! I can see the tabletop now! YAY!!! What a relief that is! I am so proud of myself. I should have taken a before/after picture. You would not believe it. I threw out a bunch of stuff and rearranged things. I was even able to mend three items that had broken - I used my hot-glue gun and was so happy to have the room to make the fix. My sewing machine was unearthed and I found some do-dads I forgot I had. Battenburg lace, anyone? No clue why I had a section of that lying around. I bought it for some project long forgotten. I am so happy to have my tabletop again! Now there is room for scrapbooking and sewing and whatever else I choose to do.

Moving sooner than later?

Please say it ain't so!!

Yesterday afternoon the weather was absolutely gorgeous, so husband and I went for a walk. I work from home (YAY!), so taking an hour-long walk on my lunch break is fabulous. We talked about job possibilities for him and we talked about buying bricks for the retaining wall. He wondered who, of the people he knew, had a dump truck he could borrow so he could go get some gravel. We talked about where we would like to live. The southern part of the state? The northern part? A different state altogether? I told him that he needed a job first before we even began to think about relocating. Can't exactly buy a house on my income alone. He said something like buying anyway seeing as how we'd want to move anyhow. Eh... what?

Here is the plan:

Well, this is the plan that came up yesterday so it could very well change tomorrow! We continue to live in this house for another year and complete the projects that sit unfinished (retaining wall being one of them). If he gets the job he is thinking of, he will get a nice income and we'll be able to either save or pay off debt and he's thinking that in a year we should be better off financially and will be able to put $10K down on a property. Gee, I hope so!

This idea kind of stresses me out when I look at all the stuff in the house that needs to go. Hence that giant list I made yesterday, well, the giant part of it was the stuff I want to do versus the need to do. Makes me think my free time will be spent doing a lot of cleaning out. That will be good for the house, though. I cleaned out a lot of stuff from my craft room by posting it on Freecycle and I sold furniture on Craigslist. A lot of stuff went to Goodwill. You know how it is, people accumulate stuff and then realize things haven't been used in a while, so why hang on to them? So... yeahhh... I had a lot of fun clearing off shelves and making little piles of things to post on Freecycle. I can do that again!

Anyway, I don't know if we are on the one-year plan or what, but this is a step in the right direction. Who wants to move all that stuff? Gotta get rid of it!

Side note: Husband and I took a walk yesterday afternoon and saw our neighbor's chickens all hanging out under a pine tree. Silly little things! I want chickens! A house down the hill has chickens and a turkey! That thing gobbles and makes me laugh. Love it!

So many things to do, so little time

Today is April 14, 2010. For some reason, I decided to start a blog about my day-to-day activities...most of which stress me out because there are so many things I do on any given day. I have a million things going through my head at any given moment. Maybe I am ADD or ADHD like my kids.

Today I want to:
Research chickens to buy
Build a chicken coop (but I have no materials)
Be the best AVON lady possible (but I have a full-time job that takes a lot of my time)
Read a book
Bake
Cook
Sew
Find rebates on products I buy
Write letters to my faraway friends
Get outside and do something!
Visit message boards that I like
Play online games
Volunteer at the animal shelter or food bank
Scrapbook
Talk to hubby about entering a walk/run for adoption awareness
Set up my digital photo frame
Upload pictures from my camera to my computer
List purses on Craigslist for sale
Find a class on knitting and register for it

Today I have to do these things:
Work eight hours (I work from home, so that is a bonus)
Finish laundry (should have been all completed over the weekend but was unable to)
Go to church in the evening (this is not a bad thing at all)

Other things that need to get done somehow/sometime:
Declutter and get rid of extra things that aren't being used
Clean out mother-in-law bedroom which is supposed to be husband's office, but has stuff from the mother-in-law living room in it - this will be a HUGE chore
Clean my desk off
Vacuum my office
Clean my sewing table & craft room
Organize AVON inventory/paperwork (I had done this, but I have a few campaigns worth of stuff in boxes again)
Clean out linen closet and reorganize


We've been in this house for over ten years and my husband and I feel it is time to move on, but there are so many things that need to be dealt with. First of all, he needs employment in order for us to buy another property. We want a farm with chickens and goats and room to grow veggies. We want more land and hopefully a rambler (one-story house). Our property has half-finished projects all around:

Ditch dug for retaining wall, but no wall has been built
Path for quad, but it isn't finished
Machete needs to be used to beat back the sticker bushes all around
Relandscape - remove overgrown bushes and replace
Get rid of moss in lawn

The deck also will need to be replaced as there are some rotten boards. Probably the best thing to do for now is to just replace those, but whoever built the deck in the first place chose to place the boards too close together. Living in the woods causes fir needles to get in between the boards and stay there. They get wet and rot out the boards. Luckily I have a handy husband who can rebuild the deck, but that's just another thing that needs to be done.

Oh for a new place! That is what we really want! And I want to be a farmer and I want chickens and I love goats and I want to spend my time outside with them. I would love a cow, a calf...to raise and love. I think I was always meant to be a farmgirl. I love animals and being outside and growing veggies. The property we have now is too shady and there is a hill that gets sun but would be hard to grow anything on.

I suppose I started this blog because maybe I'm not the only one who has too many things running around in her head and so many things that I feel need to get done in any given day. Maybe this blog will help me pace myself and help me accomplish more. This could be the start of getting things in order and the big huge goal would be the farm! That is what we want so badly and that is always on my mind. We'll see.