The Truth about my Break

Three years ago I decided to write a blog because 1) I love writing, 2) I wanted a place where I could share my adventures and opinions, and 3) I read so many awesome blogs and wanted to be a part of the community. One and two are still reasons why I enjoy blogging.  Number three has changed.

I remember when blogging was simple and people shared whatever the hell they managed to get themselves into that day.

Now, I stopped following the majority of those bloggers I used to read daily because they became oh so popular and now just have posts that start with “Thanks for XXX for sponsoring this post!”

I get it. You want to make money. But do you really think I need to read a “10 reasons why XXX will make your life way more amazing!!” post? No. I don’t.

I started following your blog because I liked your writing style and your jokes and you stories and reading about your [probably] mundane, everyday life.

Blogging isn’t fun anymore when the community you once joined is now just a bunch of people trying to shove products in your face that you just have to buy.

Blogging became more pressure than fun. There are more people writing “how to be a badass blogger” than ever before, and the majority of those posts include, “stage all your Instagram photos and twist your arms in weird ways to get the perfect shot and make sure your background is white and that your fingernails are painted and your hair is just absolutely perfect!”

Maybe I’m just a lazy blogger.

But, from now on, I’m blogging however the hell I want to blog, whenever the hell I want to blog. I’m not following any rules. I’m not putting time and effort into twitter.

Blogging is supposed to just be fun. I don’t want to make money from it. I don’t want to devote my life to it.

It’s just another hobby of mine. One that I hope to enjoy again one day.

Stress? What Stress?

“Buying a house isn’t as stressful as I thought it’d be,” said Blake before the karma gods came down and showed her just how stressful it actually is.

I honestly think it would not have been stressful if we were purchasing an ordinary house. We were 99% done with the process before we found out that court did not go as we hoped.

We’re purchasing a house that is in the middle of a “custody” war. The owners died and the daughter took over the will – but then her siblings or family or whoever decided “NO! She can’t have the power to execute the will!”

And hell broke loose. They’ve been in court arguing about this for over a year. Except the only person who shows up to the court is the person who is trying to sell us the house, so it just ends up getting postponed… and postponed… and postponed.

I just want the house.

We are putting a lot on the line and waiting until the next court date, which is in February.  After talking with the lawyer and the assistant judge, it looks like it’ll go in our favor. Hopefully we can purchase the house then, have a little less than a month to make it livable, and then move in before our lease is over on March 14.

If not, then sorry parentals, but we’re moving in with you until we find another house or rental. Won’t that be f-u-n?

Our Old House

Buying a house hasn’t been as stressful as I imagined it’d be, but I am preparing myself for disappointment. There have been a few hiccups, including the one that is dragging on right now. The sellers accepted our offer for the fixer upper near my parents’ house. Yay! The inspection report came back like we thought (lots of issues and repairs), so no shocker there. We managed to find an insurance company with a decent price.

Then, we had the appraisal. I was shocked to see that it came in lower than the purchase price because we’re getting a great deal on the house! I think it’s because it needs a lot of repairs and there aren’t any appliances or updates (the appraiser said it looks like the house hasn’t had many updates since it was built – 63 years ago!). We’re actually purchasing the house for land value only.

We went back to the seller and asked them to lower the price to meet the appraised value. The bank won’t loan any more money than what the appraisal says the house is worth. With the required down payment, in order to buy the house at the current price, we’d have to save thousands of more dollars – all within 20 days. I don’t think that’s possible.

We haven’t heard back from the seller about their decision to meet the appraisal price, but I’m crossing my fingers that they say yes. If they don’t, it’s a really big chance we may be saying goodbye to the house and our dreams of living in that area.

As upset as I would be, there’s really not much we could do about the situation. We’d have to just move on and find another house.

Keep your fingers crossed for us! We really want this house!

What I've Been Up To

It’s been about a month since I stopped blogging, and to be frank, I haven’t really missed it. I’ve cut down a lot on social media, going from someone who posted multiple photos a day on Instagram to someone who hasn’t posed something in about a week! It’s refreshing.

If you’re wondering what I’ve been up to this past month, I can say nothing too crazy.

Except putting an offer on a house!

We struggled picking a house and actually put an offer on two.

One, I call the Staircase House because, well, it has a staircase, is big and beautiful with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and so much space to grow into. It is farther out of town though.

The second house, which I’ll call the Potential House, is the investment property. It is 1,050 square feet, built in the 1950s, and has 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. The yard is huge, so the dogs will love that! But, there is not a lot of space and the house needs so.much.work.

We had to pick between space or location, and we ultimately chose location. (Bonus that it’s less than 5 minutes from my parents!) Now we just have to worry about the price tags that come along with renovating the house and making it livable.

We should hear back sometime today if the seller accepts our offer.  Even though it’s not ours until closing, I’ve already started thinking about paint colors and floors. We also decided to knock down the third bedroom to make one big living room and dining room area. It’s not the best decision for resale, but when we sell this house in 5+ years, the next person who buys it will 100% tear it down.

I keep checking my email every 5 minutes, waiting and waiting and waiting for a signed contract so we can start the next stressful step of homebuying!

Typical Saturday Mornings

On some days, I’m a go-go-go type of person who doesn’t like to sit still for too long. On other days, I’m a lets-stay-home-and-watch-netflix type of person and can stay on my couch all day. Regardless of what mood I’m in, I love waking up early and taking advantage of the entire day.

On the weekends, unless I went to bed late the night before, I like to wake up around 7 AM and head to the dog park. Living in an apartment is hard on Zoey and Bear because they don’t have the freedom to run around and exert all their puppy energy, so the dog park (or my parents’ house) is a must!  After swimming and running and sniffing around for an hour, the dogs reluctantly let us bathe them before we head home.

Gym time is around 8:30 AM on Saturday. I like to get it over with on the weekend since we usually don’t know what the day is going to bring.  I’d hate to see something awesome happening, but then realize I can’t go because I haven’t gone to the gym yet. So if you get your workout done in the morning, it frees up your day for other things.

I’m not a big breakfast person, so I usually just eat a bowl of fruit on the patio if the weather is right. Sometimes I have a book. Sometimes I just sit there with the dogs and soak in the morning sun.

After getting ready for the day, Kevin and I usually bicker for 500 hours about what to do with ourselves. We are both pretty indecisive unless there is something going on. Since we started our new challenge, we aren’t allowed to go somewhere that has any cover charge or that requires eating food/drinking out. Fortunately there are a lot of free events around our city.

This Saturday is actually planned pretty well for us. We’re waking up bright & early to either take the dogs to the dog park or take them to a huge park downtown for a few hours (that also has a dog park). Poor Bear has a vet appointment at 10 AM, so we have to work around that. I also have to cook some snacks and desserts for our party.

We are hosting a Beer Tasting Party on Saturday night. I asked each person to bring 1-2 bottles of beer for the group. We’re going to put the beer out on the table and we can just pour ourselves samples of whatever ones we choose.

Other than that, I want to go to the mall to find a Roaring 20’s dress for my company holiday party. It’s difficult for me to find a formal dress that covers my upper arms (hides my tattoo). It’s going to be even more difficult since it has to be formal and the theme is Roaring 20’s.

I may also babysit my nephew on Saturday before the party, so that’ll keep me pretty busy for a few hours.  

Can it be Saturday yet?

No Touching!

I don’t know when, why, or how it started, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve hated when something or someone touches around or inside my belly button. I can barely get myself to touch my belly button to be honest. Simply put: I just hate the feeling.

Sometime last year I noticed a freckle in my belly button. I get new freckles all the time so I didn’t think too much about it, except that I hated it was in my belly button because I thought it made it ugly. (Random fact: I always loved how my belly button looked)

Over the year, though, that freckle started to change colors. It kept getting darker and darker until one day it was black. I knew I had to go to the dermatologist, so I scheduled an appointment the day I got my insurance cards.

I didn’t think anything of the appointment when I went in yesterday. I figured she’d look at my skin and say everything was perfect!

But when I showed her my belly button, she immediately said, “Oh this has to go!”

Ummm.. what?!

She promised it wouldn’t hurt to remove it, and I believed her. But I didn’t want her near my belly button and the thought of getting shots in my belly button is still giving me goosebumps.

She picked up a small ruler to measure it, and I instinctly but lightly pushed her arms away.

Then the nightmare started.

She first cleaned all inside it with alcohol and a cotton pad thing.

Then she gave me two freakin’ shots INSIDE my belly button!

And then she took a razor thing and scraped the mole off to send it to the lab.

The entire time she made me lay with my hands under my butt so I wouldn’t try to push her away.

I’m pretty sure she thought I was the biggest baby in the world because it only lasted 1 minute (if even that long!). 

What a Bust

Source

Prepare to read a debbie downer post…

I was overly excited for the State Fair in Dallas last weekend. Even though I knew it would be the busiest weekend of the fair, I was not prepared for how packed it was. We arrived 30 minutes before the game (UT vs OU) ended, so for a while it was OK. But when the game let out, thousands upon thousands of mostly drunk college kids poured out onto the fair grounds and the walkways were so tight I could barely move. It was hot. I was sweaty. I was surrounded by drunk kids smoking cigars in my face. And I was jammed into the worst human traffic jam I’ve ever been in.

All I really wanted was a corndog and a fried s’more. I left without getting either. The lines were too long, and I just gave up. So basically we wasted $36 to just walk around a fair – that was pretty pointless because it’s pretty much like the Houston Rodeo that I’ve been to hundreds of times. Kevin & I realized we just aren’t fair people. I like to look at the animals and I LOVE concerts, but I don’t care about going on rides or eating all the food.

After the fair, we went to dinner at a pretty cool restaurant called The Social House. The manager and our waiter were really awesome. They recognized that our drinks came out pretty late, so the manager gave us free drinks. Then our waiter gave us free shots to apologize too.  

We also bar hopped and saw some cool bars… until we went to one called the Windmill Lounge that was voted one of the best bars in the country by Esquire. I don’t know how many drinks those voters had, but let me save you a trip – it was boring and they couldn’t make our cocktails right even though they were on the menu.

We of course stopped by Deep Ellum brewery. I tried 4 beers and hated each of them. One of their IPAs tasted like Oregano. #sorryyoucantcompetewithhouston

What else went wrong? Oh! We went to Angry Dog to get the “best hotdog in Dallas!!” and were completely disappointed. It was basically soggy bread covered in mustard and chili with a hot dog thrown in the mix somewhere.

Our AirBnB house smelled like a PetSmart and had flies all over the place.

Kevin’s credit card information was stolen after we pumped gas at Buccees yesterday. Within an hour of leaving, someone charged $150 there.

And that, folks, was my weekend trip to Dallas.

I do have to say, though, the weather was perfect (besides burning up at the fair).