Sunday, April 5, 2009

Home, sweet home

So I found a house that I have to have. HAVE TO HAVE. The perfect house. It's a few blocks from my house, has always been one of my favorite houses in the neighborhood. It's valued at about $100k less than my house and is considerably smaller, but that's what downsize means, right? Bottom line is, if we could get just half of what we would like in equity for our house AND get a 5% interest rate, we would cut our $2k mortgage in half.

But here's the problem: my house is not even anywhere close to being ready to show or sell. And project declutter? It has kind of hit a stall today. I've done a shitload of laundry, and now? All I want to do is park my ass on the couch and watch Tivo'ed episodes of Supernatural. Yes-huh.

I had my first day of marathon training this morning. We did a three-mile pace run. I signed up to be in the "red" group, which is the slowest running group, meaning 10+ minutes per mile. I finished up right in the middle of the slow pack, which is fine by me. I'm so out of shape, I couldn't even run the entire three miles. I had to take a couple of "walk" breaks, but the walks were never longer than 60 seconds, so as far as I'm concerned, they don't count.

After running, I grabbed a quick shower and then went to mass. And then realized it is Palm Sunday, which means an hour and half long mass, and I got annoyed, and then was guilt-ridden about being annoyed about church. And then? This woman had NO CONTROL over her screaming children for AN HOUR AND A HALF, and didn't even TRY to have any control over them, just let them carry on like wild monkeys. SO ANNOYING. And then, again, with the guilt because, honestly, having wild monkey children in church probably is not any more fun for her than it is for me to be subjected to them. But still. My oldest two kids are 17 months apar and I would have been mortified had they carried on that way. And I'd have taken them to the "cry" room or bailed. Not just sat there pretending that we weren't disrupting mass for everyone else.

After growing up in New Orleans, I moved to Houston with my ex-husband for about seven years when my kids were little. The church that we went to in Houston had an old priest named Father Emile. He was cranky. All. The. Time. If your kids made noise during mass, he would call you out from the alter. I mean, seriously, call you out during mass. He'd stopped what he was doing, be it a reading or homily or what have you, and say PLEASE REMOVE THOSE CHILDREN TO THE CRY ROOM. RIGHT NOW. WE'LL WAIT. And just stare at you until you slunk out of the church.

I never caught his wrath and frankly I always thought he was kind of a dick for doing it, but after the freak show I sat through today of screaming, laughing, crying, NO NO NO NO NO MOMMY NO for an hour and a half... oy.

So that's my Sunday: went for a run, have been eating like a horse ever since, got pissed at church and now am camped out in front of the TV (even though my house is a sty) with my laptop, house shopping on Zillow. This is what weekends are for, no?

Oh... and Best Husband Ever just brought me a bag of peanut M&Ms and a Diet Coke.  Possibly to try to make up for being the Worst Husband Ever yesterday when he hauled all of my garage sale treasures to Goodwill after I finished sorting them for a garage sale. But M&Ms are a mighty fine peace offering.

8 comments:

Maggie May said...

Yum, chocolate. I'm decluttering and cleaning today too and I am now talking myself out of stopping. Here I am ...getting offthecomputer...

Anna Whiston-Donaldson said...

Oh! I would love for you to get that house!!!! I know what you mean about the decluttering. My house would be in NO shape to try to sell to anyone right now.

Cynthia said...

Good luck with the downsizing...I love getting rid of stuff. I need to start running again...if it would just stop snowing:P
Pass the M&M's...

Rogue Scholar said...

I too get annoyed in church for weird things like that.. and then feel guilty.

As an aside... and by no means am I a saint b/c I get annoyed with loud kids as well... I think we in America have too much of a problem with that. My friend lived in Africa for 4 years and they don't have cry rooms or anything like that there. If the babies are crying in church... they cry. That's just how it is. But of course there is a difference between a crying baby and out of control kids!!!

Lisa Wheeler Milton said...

I can't talk about selling houses because um, we failed mightily in that arena.

I'm blaming the damn economy.

But M&Ms as a peace offering? Genius.

stephanie said...

Oh there is so much headache in this post - beginning with the running of course [I'm still at a loss why you insist; but you do look good so...].

Hope your Monday has been better (that sounds wacky).

Fantastic Forrest said...

This is your lucky day, missy. I have been in your shoes and a friend helped me through it. Actually, two friends helped me through it.

So now I am an expert. You cannot do it yourself because you are too much like me - lazy and easily distracted. It appears overwhelming. Let us set a date. I will bring chocolate and ruthless culling techniques.

Seriously, I want to pay it forward.

Musings of the Mrs. said...

Good luck with the house. I hope you declutter and sell and then get to buy your new dream home!