24 July 2020

more integrations, it's real

Oh, guys. Today FG and I got a joint bank account. 

Let's back up. This morning at 5am I woke up with a terrible headache. I can't take pain meds without food in my stomach and it was too early to eat, so I heated up my rice pack and put it on my face and went back to sleep. 4 hours later, I woke up again, still with a headache. 
I got up, prepared to make myself a cup of coffee and breakfast so I could take some medicine, but FG had saved me some breakfast and had a hot cup of coffee waiting. He had also fed Pumpkin and made sure she had fresh water. 
It's so hard to do anything with one of these headaches, and I was SO grateful for his considerations. It wasn't how I wanted to spend my day off, but I spent most of the day in bed waiting for the pain to go away. It didn't go away until it rained at about 3pm, while we were at the bank. 

Oh yes, the bank. 

We got a joint checking and savings account so that we could easily pay shared bills. He pays his mortgage and taxes separately, so the savings account is for the tax payment each year. Since I'm a new customer at this particular bank, I was able to take advantage of a promotion that gives you $500 if you meet certain criteria. You bet I'm going to meet that criteria. 

So the plan is to pay bills from this joint account, and keep the rest of our money in our personal accounts and I'm pretty okay with that, but it did make me slightly uneasy to open up a joint account. It's just so... committed. I'm direct depositing a big chunk of my paycheck into a joint bank account that another person can access. I trust FG and I am onboard with the system, so I'm not sure why that gives me anxiety. Still processing that.

The other thing I need to figure out is what rights I have. My name is nowhere on the mortgage or any of the bills, and while I'm paying half of his mortgage he gets all the equity. Is there such a thing as a prenup for moving in together? I have to figure that out. I'm not just going to essentially be paying him rent. If I'm putting money into this house I'm getting something back, just in case this doesn't work out. Plus we are going to have to draw up wills just in case something happens to either of us.

So many things to consider. 

23 July 2020

adjustments and integrations and such



This is life right now. Everything is still messy and I'm trying not to let it make me crabby. Trying to focus on the fact that each room is slowly looking cleaner, brighter, and fresher. It really is slowly transforming into a new house. 
It doesn't quite feel like home yet, though.

It's hard to go through your physical objects and try to merge them. We are both splitting our things into categories: Keep for home, Keep for the lake house, and Donate. All of my stuff is in storage, so it's really all on FG right now. Most of his decor was picked out by his ex wife 10 years ago and has Got to Go. He's been pretty good about it but it's a struggle sometimes because I'm trying not to make him feel like I'm forcing him to get rid of stuff. It's a delicate process.

We went to the storage unit today and picked up a few of my things. I am eager to start putting my stuff in the house so it'll feel like my home. The problem is, there's not much I can bring back into the house until it's done being painted, because right now it will just be more stuff to shuffle around from room to room. 

I prioritized and got my craft table set up in my office, and that makes me so, so happy. I have a space that I can call mine and retreat to and sew or whatever and I love it. 

So there's another few weeks of feeling like I'm camping out at FG's house until I can really start to integrate. It's okay, I can deal- I have my craft table now. That was oddly important.

I'll still have to store things like my kitchen table and bed for the lake house, but it's nice to have a clear direction in the meantime. Even after purging so much prior to moving, it's easy to get rid of things that don't fit. If I'm indifferent and FG doesn't like it, it gets tossed into the donate pile. We both rarely fight for things and if we do, we know that it stays and we'll find a way to make it work. After all, it's just stuff.

One thing that made the cut for our home: this bookshelf, which I love.


Honestly, it's been a lot of work but it's been fun to integrate the things we love the most and get rid of the things that don't really matter.

Other important news. We started locking Pumpkin in the game room on the other side of the house at night, because her nighttime meowing was really starting to interrupt FG's sleep. I am pretty much used to it after 17 years, but I do have to admit that I don't miss the cat hair in bed and I do sleep better without the meows. 

But then there's the dog. He sleeps in the bedroom in his little bed and I am NOT used to his noises. Ugh, he makes so many little scratching, licking, whimpering noises and I'm about ready to kick him out, too. I'm giving it a couple of weeks to get used to. Like I said, the hardest part about moving in together has been tolerating each others' pets.

We had to cancel our trip to Vegas this weekend because we have so much to do and the city is half shut down anyway so it won't be much of a trip. I'm still sad. I was looking forward to seeing Luke. I kept my PTO for tomorrow so I get a 3-day weekend. I'm ok with that. It will be nice to relax a little and complete a few pending projects around here. 

18 July 2020

new plan

We have a plan! 
A new plan. 

We talked and I decided to stay with FG... which means we are starting to build a life together. A little scary, but also it kinda feels right. Surprisingly, it hasn't been hard to adjust to living together. He has been very chill about me coming in and changing everything. The hardest part is getting used to each other's pets.

Part of the old plan was for me to buy a house nearby to rent out, and in the future we wanted to add in a lake house, but I decided that life is short so we should scrap the rent house idea and get the lake house now.

So now we're looking at lake houses. The plan is to rent it out when we're not using it. I'm so damn excited about that. I'm going to be one of those people who has a lake house. So fancy. Plus we both work remotely so it's very reasonable that we can spend more time there than just the weekends.

The next issue to consider is all the stuff in the storage unit. We are going to go through everything, and decide if it's staying here or staying in storage to go to the lake house. Still a lot of work, but at least there is a plan for the duplicate stuff and I get to keep some of the things that I really like but there's no room for in this house.

In the meantime, the house is still being painted so everything is a mess. I keep reminding myself that eventually it will all be fresh and organized and nice. 

Even though it's chaos, I kind of like how everything is being painted and purged, because working on a house helps it feel like mine. Also I found my sewing machine and will bring back my craft table on the next trip to the storage unit, and for some reason that really makes me happy.

08 July 2020

SOLD

Today was a happy day. 
Literally, I did a happy dance as my realtor took a picture of me by the sign for her scrapbook.


There were a few tense hours where I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but the deal went through and the keys are in someone else's hands. Woo!

There is a chunk of money in my bank account, and that big house with the fish pond is no longer my responsibility. 

Oh, my goodness. I'm so glad that's over with.

06 July 2020

drowning in stuff

Ughhh.
I stopped by the storage unit today to drop off a box and maybe try to find the box which contained the lamp for my vanity.

HA.

Looking into that storage unit made me want to sit down and cry. It is completely packed full and even though I think I identified the box I wanted, it was stacked under 6 other boxes and the second one down was also the anchor for another pile of boxes. It would take me a sweaty hour to get to that box directly in front of me.

Some of the boxes are starting to collapse. I really need to not forget about those storage units, I need to be fairly on top of it. 

The problem is, I haven't officially decided what to do and until I do, the crap sits there. 

I'm probably going to stay with FG, but it's not like there is room to put anything in his house. There is stuff everywhere and it's overwhelming!

The process of combining all of our crap will be ongoing and I'll have to start selling stuff, which will take a long time regardless, so there's really no quick end in sight.

It's so frustrating because if I want an item, for instance a thumbtack, a few weeks ago I would have known exactly where it was, and I would have retrieved it and completed the task in 30 seconds. Now, it takes me 10 minutes of digging through several boxes to maybe find what I'm looking for. 
All. Day. Long.

The other thing is, I need a dab of epoxy to fix something. I know I have 2 tubes of it, but they're somewhere in storage so I'll need to either wait until it's eventually unboxed or buy a new tube. That's been happening over and over with the most random stuff.

I keep trying to be very "go with the flow" with all of the chaos that's going on, but for some reason today it got to me.

On the plus side, FG agreed to take down ALL of the vertical blinds in his house. The first set that came down was in the master bedroom and I cheered. 
Today I put up the curtains and they look so good. Small victories.

05 July 2020

small luxuries

Lately I've gotten into espresso. On weekdays I still fire up the trusty 5-cup Mr. Coffee that brews automatically at 6:30 am, but on weekends I bust out this little guy.


He takes a while to heat up (especially on FG's electric stove, I miss the gas stovetop already), but after a while he percolates smooth, dark, strong heaven that's worth the wait. 

The clacking of toenails on the floor will announce that the dog (and FG) have woken up, but for now it's me, this glorious cup of coffee, and the purring kitty.