Chez Lukayna

Swap Meet

2010-04-19T20:04:00.004-05:00

OK, so the big move to Wordpress is going to take a while longer than I anticipated...mainly because I have too many other things going on to be able to take the time to set up all the formatting and customization I want to do.

In the meantime, I'll just keep talking to myself here.

I bring this up because hopefully I won't be talking to myself for forever. I signed up for my first quilt block swap that I finished up after the new year. I'm just waiting on my siggy blocks to come back to me from all over the place.

I signed up for my first-ever fabric swap and I got my first fat-quarter tonight. The fabric that I bought as my contribution to the swap was stuff that I would have been perfectly happy to turn into a funky quilt myself - I have to admit, I kind of hating dividing it up and sending on to 8 strangers that I will probably never meet. But, the first quarter I opened tonight made me really excited about the seriously funky quilt I hope to be able to make with these random fabrics that will be streaming in from around the country.

And maybe, just maybe, we'll visit each other's blogs and see what fun projects our fabrics are being included in.

So, fingers crossed. I don't have any truly profound thoughts to expound upon, and I don't have a special blogging niche where I can talk all about organic gardening, or organic baby-raising, or at-home schooling (though I do enjoy reading about it), or geek crafting (which I respect greatly). But, I hope to post pics of the various projects that come out of swaps and get ideas from this community of sewers and quilters that lives in the aether of the internet.

Can't wait to see what happens!

Moving...

2010-02-21T20:40:00.001-05:00

Just wanted to let everyone (who might happen to stumble across this through my Facebook profile) that I'm trying to pick up again on the whole blogging thing...and that I'm going to try it out on Wordpress. Have yet to find out if it is blocked at work like Blogspot is, but I don't think WP is blocked quite yet.

New blog address is going to be:

lukayna.wordpress.com

Hope to see you there!

Merry Christmas / Performance Anxiety

2008-12-25T00:37:00.007-05:00

The first joint Christmas between Huffman and Todd families is in full course today and tomorrow, and so far, things seem to be going pretty well. We had a nice spread for tonight's shenanigans and we opened all our gifts from family. Tomorrow morning is Lauren's turn to open some presents and play with the paper and see what Santa brought her - even though she won't remember a lick of it. It should make for some cute pictures.

It's crazy to think that she's almost 1 year old already. I feel like we just brought her home from the hospital and I've just started working again. Learning how to breastfeed, burp the baby, and change diapers - never mind how to give her a bath or deal with broccoli-induced gas...that seems like yesterday, yet at the same time a really really long time ago when we were so much younger and dumber.

That's not to say that we know everything there is to know about raising a baby into a good, intelligent human being. We are well aware that this just means that for everything we think we do know, there's at least 100 other things that we're completely clueless about.

Sitting in church tonight with my mom just made me really think back on the year and how truly blessed we are. Billy has a good job with people he enjoys working with. I have a good job with people I enjoy working with, even if I'm not convinced I'll be there for forever. We have a great kid who every day amazes us with how incredibly sweet-natured she is. Every night I check on her multiple times, just to look at her while she sleeps and know that whatever is going on in her head, I'll be there to make sure the can dream her dreams safely. The idea of not being able to protect her sends me into cold sweats of panic, yet I know that I can't be everywhere with her all hours, and even if I could do that, I still can't control all the people around us. So, I have to pray and hope that something greater than myself lends protection to us.

So, the run-down for 2008:

New baby
New baby grows and is now eating solids and trying to walk and talk
Mandy switches from imports to exports
Billy buys new car
Billy's new car gets wrecked while sitting in a parking lot
Global economy tanks
Billy gets not-so-nice review at work (the day before CHRISTMAS EVE, people) and spends our first Christmas with Lauren racking his brain trying to figure out what he's doing wrong

Anyway, all my personal worries for Billy aside, I certainly hold great hope for the people and parents we will be in the future. We're going to make a ton of mistakes, but hopefully, they won't be super-serious. I have to say our current situation is plenty to be thankful for and reason to be merry this Christmas!

I fully expect that I'll be one of -those- parents and post cutesie pictures of Christmas morning shenanigans on the blog (certainly on Facebook) in a couple of days.

Autumnal Reflections

2008-10-14T20:03:00.008-05:00

It's very strange to think about, but we're fast approaching our first Thanksgiving and Christmas with Lauren outside of me. Every day I look at her and I'm amazed at how rapidly time is passing and how fast she's growing. It feels like just a month ago, she was starting on solid foods and smearing rice cereal all over her face. Now she's getting downright picky about what brand of baby food she eats (only Earth's Best Organic, please!) and she refuses to eat anything I make and grind for her (not that I can really blame her).

October is a big month for us - we're progressing to putting Lauren down earlier for bed (she is now ready to go down for the night at 7:00, if not earlier), feeding her chunkier foods and finger foods like fruity puffs, and I'm going to be making my first two big out of town business trips next week and the following week. Granted, going to Mobile is just one night, and traveling to Charleston will just give her a chance to get spoiled by Grandpa and Grandma Huffman, but it's a big development for me as I've been shielded from traveling since coming back to work and I don't know how in the world I'm going to find time to pump while traveling with my boss in Mobile. Talk about awkward!

But, we'll figure it out - we always have.

In September, before the weather turned truly autumnal, Billy, Lauren, my parents and I made the big trip to the beach at Kiawah for a week. The island has changed a lot (more hoity toity at The Sanctuary), but on our end, it still retains some of its original charm and isolation that I love so much. The weather was too cold for much of the trip for Lauren to hop in the pool for the first time or really play in the water and sand, but she did get to dip her toes in the water a bit and feel the sand slide out from beneath her feet and between her toes.

I just can't wait until she's really old enough to get out and do things! That's the one thing that Billy and I need to force ourselves to do - get outside with Lauren and experience lots of different things...even if it creeps into her afternoon nap schedule a little bit! We're had such tight control over her sleeping schedule in extreme deference to Weissbluth that I'm afraid we might be going a bit overboard with it and remaining prisoners at home more than we should.

Anyway, that's a thought for taking care of this weekend - perhaps a short hike around Sawnee Mountain will do the trick. One week the Pumpkin Patch - the next week, the world!

Summer Musings

2008-07-08T20:49:00.003-05:00

I'll have to add the cute 4th of July pic of Lauren later once we have the weekend's pictures uploaded onto the desktop. I keep thinking that things will slow down with Lauren, but every weekend there seems to be something going on. This summer, every day has something going on because we're playing Good Samaritan host to a recent UGA Law graduate that Billy knew from law school. She is currently working as a solicitor for the County which means that even though her husband and her house is in Athens, she has to work in Cumming - all while trying to study for the Bar Exam. We had plenty of space and knew she would not be a burden at all (she's more single-minded than me when it comes to studying and thinking she's going to fail a test) and that has been true so far. It has been great to have her husband visit on the weekends, because he is a awesome cook and has given me some new ideas for cooking meals which is always appreciated.

I think Richard had the right of it when he said that becoming a parent turns you into a cry baby. March of Dimes ads featuring pictures of preemie babies? Tears. Cute kids singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" while holding a nylon chain thingy linking them all together so they don't get lost while walking around the Georgia Pacific lobby? Tears and goofy smiles. Stories about other, older kids hurting little babies Lauren's age? Horror and tears. And now I think all kids are cute as can be, even when they look like Elmer Fudd. And then tonight, I noticed I walked into her room no fewer than five times in the two hours since she fell asleep, just to put my hand on her chest so I could make sure she was still breathing. I thought people who acted like that were silly and dumb, but I get it now. I know that she'll have absolutely no idea that her parents worried over her as an infant when she's mad at us for disciplining her at some point in the future, but I wish that she could know and understand it all her life. Instead, she'll have to wait until she's a mom herself to truly understand. Hopefully we'll be around still to see it and share a secret smile when we see her doing to her child what we did with her. Anyway, I figure all that means that Lauren has turned me into a better, more compassionate human being and that can't be bad at all.

We start serious sleep training this weekend. We've been wrapping her in a Miracle Blanket every night, but this week she has really perfected rolling over on to her stomach...but still can't get back onto her back. That becomes a problem when she routinely gets her arms unwrapped from the MB each morning and can end up on her stomach with the blanket ends getting wrapped around her in all manner of twists, so we're being forced to graduate her to the sleep sack. I'm sure that's going to result in quite a bit of crying, which I hateto have to listen to, but she's got to learn how to soothe herself and put herself to sleep...without a pacifier...sooner rather than later. The sleep training is going to be the first real parenting that we will have had to do so far. That's incredible considering that she's almost five months old, but she's been a ridiculoulsy easy kid so far.

Back to Work

2008-04-28T21:16:00.003-05:00

Wow - has it really been 10 weeks since Lauren was born already? Pretty much. It's crazy, but in the first couple of weeks, and even sometimes during the last few weeks, I've been eagerly awaiting the day that I would go back to work. Not for the sake of going back to work and getting back to selling space on Evergreen vessels. Just for the camaraderie of the office and being with adults again. I love Lauren to death and I know I'm going to miss her terribly while I'm at work - I'll be lucky if I can even concentrate on work I'll be thinking about her so much, but there's really only so much one person can do with an infant day in and day out. Stay at home moms are tremendous people - I don't know how they do it. Maybe you just have to be wired that way to effortlessly take care of a child all alone for hours on end.

I know that going to daycare is going to be better for Lauren than staying with me all day every day. She'll have other kids to interact with and adults who are trained in working with infants to give them developmentally appropriate activities throughout the day to stimulate them. I think I've done a pretty good job so far, but it is exhausting both physically and mentally and there is always the worry that I could be doing more. Really, it's like teaching my classes again, but on a much more personal level where my failures affect my own child, and that's terrifying to me.

What wasn't terrifying to me was this weekend. My parents came down early on Friday so that I could go out to participate in Hema's Mehndi prior to her and Anuj's wedding on Sunday. The last time I had henna applied to my hand was in Morocco when I paid to have it done, with no particular event to accompany it other than my presence in Morocco. This time I found it to be very special because I was helping a friend celebrate her upcoming wedding to a guy that I think is a great friend in his own right and will be a wonderful husband to her. High maintenance, perhaps, but they will be happy together. I was one of three non-Indians there, which made me appreciate the evening even more because all of Hema's friends and family really welcomed us into the event, when they could have just left us on our own. There's nothing quite like sitting in a small room on a blanket-covered floor with Indian music blaring while everyone trades tales and greetings in mixtures of English and Hindi.

The wedding day was a piece of work, that's for sure. It started at 7:45 in the morning for me as Billy and I had to go to Hema's house so that her aunt could help get me dressed in one of Hema's saris. Tuhina had lent me some of her wedding-appropriate clothing, but Hema was really eager for us to wear sarees and eagerly insisted that we see if any of her stuff would fit. I look like I should be going to a Tennessee football game...except that the saree would never fit in at a football game. We got dressed and drove to the venue where we met up with Anuj's brother and sister-in-law who were leading Anuj's baraat. Alcohol would have made it easier to let loose and really dance it out in the middle of the street, but Indian pop music once again makes dancing easier. I wish I could have seen the looks on people's faces when they drove by our group dancing and cheering in the middle of the street in downtown Atlanta on a rainy Sunday morning, but I was too busy trying to not tear off my saree that I didn't really see what was going on around us.

The rest of the wedding ceremony went much as Tuhina and Karl's did, which was nice because I actually had a clue about what was going on thanks to my previous experience. Pumping breastmilk in a public bathroom in a borrowed saree was something I would have never thought I would have to do, but I can now say that it can be done, if not easily.

The couple left the wedding venue at 2:00 (keep in mind everything started at 9:00 am), and Billy and I went home to change for the reception (well, I changed clothes - Billy stayed in the outfit Anuj lent him). At the reception (which started at 6:00), Billy gave the greeting to the guests in Gujarati (I will probably never forget those four lines for the rest of my life, I heard them practiced so much), and then we sat through three hours of introductions, speeches, roasts and skits - complete with Bollywood musical numbers. The skit was actually really amazing as were the dances. Unfortunately, at 9:00, the food just beginning to be served and Billy had to be at work early this morning, so we had to leave before eating (just like we did for Tuhina and Karl's wedding). One day, I'll actually get to eat great Indian food at an Indian wedding. I'll just have to find more Indian friends first.

7 Week Update

2008-04-09T20:07:00.004-05:00

Wow. I can't believe that we just hit the 7-week mark today. And to think that 7 weeks ago, I was crying because I couldn't possibly conceive of taking care of an infant. Today, I tote her around everywhere I go and for the past week or so, I've actually not been dreading full days with her. In the beginning, Lauren was so...asleep. When she was awake, she still couldn't really do anything because she was barely able to -see- anything. Her world awareness was eat, stay awake - sort of - and hurry up back to sleep for another hour or so before starting all over again.

Last week, all that changed and she continues to change through this week. Week 6 is supposed to be the most difficult in regards to fussiness, but she still didn't really fuss at all. In fact, she began to fuss less...she took better naps without crying beforehand and was more aware during the daytime hours. She has begun to interact more with her toys and with people around her, so I've been trying to get her out of the house and in public as much as possible - even a trip to the tire store to get tires on the Avalon replaced was great fun.

Today we went to the Alpharetta Greenway (which is quite nice) and had a nice lunch al fresco - she from a bottle, me from Chik-fil-A. When we got home, she had a nice nap and spent pretty much the rest of the day laughing and smiling and having a good time as we took a walk around the block. She is definitely fussier at night - I changed her schedule a little tonight (instead of a snack at 7, I fed her at 8 and changed her into PJs - not her Miracle Blanket). She's been sleeping through till 4:00 if she eats at 9, so I'm trying to see if she'll do the same if she eats at 8ish. Normally, she doesn't cry at all going to bed at 9:00 or 9:30, but tonight, she has been wailing since 8:40. I never thought I would be able to let a child of mine "cry it out" but I've been trying Dr. Weissbluth's sleep training methods (already at 6 weeks) and she's actually cried very little overall and sleeps pretty much through the night already.

Granted, she is drooling like a fiend which means that we might be expecting teeth in the next couple of months. That is also evident in the fact that in the past couple of days, Lauren's been treating my breasts like a chew toy which is far from pleasant...and all that right after she and I finally had the nursing thing down to a painfree experience. Oh well - the sacrifices we make for our kids. She'll know what I went through one day, but she'll still tell me she hates me one day in the future.

In the meantime, I'll take all the smiles and new lessons (like rolling over from her stomach to her back) and store them up as tight as possible. Perhaps it's time to write her a 7-week update as well...

Hurry up and wait

2008-03-10T12:43:00.003-05:00

It seems only appropriate that the first couple of weeks with Lauren would be a game of "hurry up and wait." That's exactly how Dr. Pohl described how labor and delivery would be with her if we chose to induce and it looks like she's deciding to continue that tradition on her own. As soon as she wakes up for whatever reason, she screams bloody murder, so you have to hurry over to her to see what's wrong. Once you determine that and fix the problem (dirty diaper, feeding, just wanting to be held, etc), you can either play with her if she's alert or watch her go right back to sleep (which seems to be the case more often than not). If she's going back to sleep, you have to immediately figure out what you're going to do with the free moments afforded you - and you know you should sleep while she's sleeping, but geez, there's so much other stuff that needs to be done!

Today is the first day in a long time when I've been completely alone with Lauren since she was born. Actually, I think today is the first day I've had with her all to myself, and I'm happy for it. Granted, I would be happier if Billy could be here too and share in this experience with us, but boy am I glad to have grandparents back where they live. Both sets of grandparents were incredibly helpful, but at the same time, they couldn't help but get in the way somewhat...and kind of screw up any kind of rhythm we might have been able to establish with her. I think this week is going to be tough because she's gotten so used to falling asleep in a grandparent's arms or on someone's chest, so getting her acclimated to the crib isn't going to be fun.

Oh well - we have a screaming baby - time to hurry up and find out what's wrong!

Lauren Elizabeth - Feb 20, 2008

2008-03-02T18:21:00.003-05:00

Wow. I thought I would be good and update my blog with news from Italy and track the course of the past 9-10 months of pregnancy through my blog. Instead, I neglected to update anything for 10 months at least - the last pictures of me on here were pre-pregnancy. Now, there's just going to be pictures of a really cute kid (or rather, of me, without being pregnant).

I thought that buying a house and Billy embarking on his legal career would be the biggest life changes that we would have for the imminent future. Then, law school graduation happened, followed by a missed period and then 39 weeks later, we welcomed Lauren Elizabeth to the family at 1:39 pm on Feb 20, 2008.

Being pregnant was super-easy. Really. I know that very few women have such an easy time of it - none of my friends really escaped morning sickness or were miserable in the last month. For me, it was simply a matter of waking up each day, trying to eat healthy food, and just doing (or not doing) whatever Dr. Pohl said I should or shouldn't do. If you live in Atlanta, and need a good OB-GYN for any reason (he specializes in infertility as well), Dr. Joseph Pohl is worth the drive to Lawrenceville. The folks at Gwinnett Medical Center took really good care of me, Billy and Lauren too, even though we did have a bit of an NICU scare with her the first hour she was born. In week 39, I was still not dilating a single bit, and Dr. Pohl said that it was possible I could go 2 weeks past my due date. I'd already had 3 weeks or so of just wanting to be finished with being pregnant (an 8 pound baby gets cumbersome and unwieldy rather quickly in month 9). So, we elected to induce a few days early.

Many people that I had talked to swore up and down that elective induction was a terrible thing to do because the drugs made labor extremely painful and gave the laboring women a miserable experience. When we were talking about the procedure with Dr. Pohl, he calmed us both by saying that he preferred to keep things as close to nature as possible and for us to be prepared to wait 24 hours for the initial drugs to even begin to dilate me, much less start true labor. He said that many doctors get impatient when women haven't dilated enough after a short amount of time and push things too fast, which results in C-sections or extreme pain. I can speak from experience that taking it slowly per Dr. Pohl's philosophy was actually quite good. There were a few hours of intense pain in the middle of the night before I was dilated enough to have an epidural and Stadol only worked for one round. But, once the epidural was in and labor began, things went pretty smoothly.

I remember Dr. Pohl coming in just after lunchtime (I came down with a fever around 11 or noon, so we had to wait for the antibiotics to run through my system and for my fever to go away before we could start pushing). He was looking for he paper waders, but evidentally the nurse who stocked the room had gotten the wrong ones. His first words: "What the hell?!" Billy and I nearly died at the bed, because normally Dr. Pohl is extremely mild-mannered and tranquil, so seeing him slightly peeved was hilarious. My nurse Lynne (God bless her, she was fantastic) responded with, "Dr. Pohl! You can't say that!" Once they covered the floor and bed with tons of paper (and the tool table was laid out (I don't even remember all the instruments that were there, but there was a long row of silver), we got down to the business of pushing. My contractions were about 5 minutes apart, so between each series of pushes, we'd all sit back (Dr. Pohl included) and basically chill until the next contraction started. Billy says the pushign took about 45 minutes - as soon as Lauren's head was out, Dr. Pohl evidentally reached right on in and physically pulled her out by her head so that I didn't even have to push her shoulders through. My only moment of panic was when he made the comment, "I hope we don't have to cut through to the sphincter - I'm going to try to save it." Good news is, the episiotomy was actually much milder than he and I were afraid it would be and everything seems to be healing up nicely.

Once we got home with Lauren, I had several days of absolute terror and panic. I recall being in tears on the way home even. I vacillated between trying to come to grips with the fact that my stomach no longer held the faceless entity that I had been carrying and feeling for 39 weeks. I felt terrible because I didn't feel like I had a bond with her at all (they had taken her from me for the first 24 hours because of my fever during labor) and I felt completely unprepared to be a mom. When I would think about having to spend the next 7-8 weeks at home alone with her, I would get sick to my stomach (mainly because I thought I would be so dreadfully lonely with no interactions with people) -and then I would feel guilty that I had those kinds of feelings. Billy, on the other hand, took to her right away and had been filling in the role of dad splendidly, which further compounded my guilt that I didn't feel especially maternal.

Thankfully, I think the hormonal rollercoaster ride is coming to an end. The past couple of days have been wonderful - granted, Lauren is a super pleasant baby - she only cries if she needs a diaper change or is hungry (which is roughly every 3 hours on the dot). She usually only eats about 3 oz of milk during that period and then goes right back to sleep. We've had to make some feeding adjustments (I have basically given up on direct breastfeeding in favor of pumping so that I know exactly how much she is eating and how much I need to prepare for when she goes to day care), and we had to change to a different bottle so that she wouldn't get gas so badly. Now that those changes are in place, we just sit and wait for her to wake up. In the meantime, we stand over her crib or bassinet and watch her face contort and smile, laugh at her sneezes, smile at her tremendous yawns, and marvel over the fact that somehow we were blessed with such a cute and wonderful baby. What in the world did we do to warrant her? And then I have a mild panic attack during which I hope and pray that maybe, just maybe, I can be a mom worthy of her.

Ciao, bella!

2007-07-28T14:50:00.000-05:00

This week has been anything but easy. My poor parents spent all week in the kitchen cleaning up the mess I made of the spacklig job and painting the walls in their entirety, and cleaning up the trimwork since the previous owners evidentally had never seen a roll of painter's tape before. By the time Billy and I were leaving the house on Friday morning, pretty much everything was finished and the kitchen looks completely different, all thanks to a couple of coats of paint.

Not only is the house in a continual state of repair and remodel, this week, Billy took the Bar exam on Tuesday and Wednesday. He feels pretty confident that he passed and I'm just happy that law school is finally OVER and we can be full adults...again. Sort of. I mean, we are going to Dragoncon over Labor Day weekend, so I don't know how adult that actually makes us...

All of this led up to Friday (which feels a million years ago now). I cleaned up the loose ends from work and we were on our way to the airport with just our backpacks for luggage. The flight was the way most overseas flights are...long, cold, and uncomfortable, but I actually managed to contort myself into a pretzel and get some broken sleep. Poor Billy, I don't think he got any at all.

We landed in Rome, breezed through passport control and Customs and headed to the train station. No lie, we spent probably a total of 10 hours trying to book train tickets ahead of time on the Trenitalia website. We went to the ticket window and instantly got all of our trains booked in less than 10 minutes. Crazy.

We arrived at our hostel to discover than it sucks to not have AC in 94 degree weather. We were so exhausted from the flight that we wanted to just take a hour nap, but it was so hot in our room, that I thought Billy was going to have a heat stroke on me and we were going to have to go home early or something. We pumped him full of Powerade and he recovered well enough for us to strike out on the town a bit.

We started near the Vatican (which comes up on Monday for us) and toured some churches, which were fine, but nothing like Notre Dame or Chartres. Of course, we haven't really gotten to the true Italian masterpieces as we wanted to take today easy, but Rome certainly has a lot to prove. We went by the Pantheon, which would have been much cooler had it remained a pagan temple, but we can say we have seen it, which counts for something. We made a Coke stop in a BK (there is no way I'm eating American food here, which makes Italy better than Britain in that particular respect) for a while to enjoy the AC and then we headed to the Trevi Fountain.

Billy was already prepared to be completely unimpressed by it, and I was expecting a large round marble fountain with animals and people spouting water like you normally see fountains doing. When we got to the Trevi Fountain, we were both a bit stunned by what was before us. It feels like a raging whitewater river just pouring out of a building in the middle of the city...and the sculptures were pretty incredible too. Check one for the Trevi fountain.

Since we were well ahead of schedule today, we decided to go ahead and see what the big deal was about the Spanish Steps. They originally weren't even on our itinerary, but we were close to them and figured, "What the hell?" Indeed, "What the hell?!" is pretty accurate. I don't get it. It's a bunch of steps leading up to a building that isn't all that impressive architecturally. Yet, they were swarming with huge crowds of people like they couldn't get enough of them. Billy likened it to Trafalgar Square (which isn't impressive itself) where people all have to go when they go to London...but it's just really a place for people to meet and be seen. I'll say this, Montmartre serves the same purpose in Paris, but it is 100,000 times cooler and more beautiful than the frickin' Spanish Steps. Come on, Rome, you ruled the world for how long, and the Spanish Steps is the best you can do?!

If the Spanish Steps were disappointing, the street leading up to them were probably the coolest. I'll be the first to admit: I am not a fashionista, nor do I mistake myself for one. I know of designers, but I've never worn/bought designer clothes. If my jeans cost more than $25 I feel like I've been robbed. But we walked down the street that houses all the major designers in Rome: Dolce and Gabana, Feragamo, Gucci, Versace, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Max Mara, Valentino, Yves Saint-Laurent, etc, etc, etc. Window shopping has never been more fun. I told Billy that as ridiculous as the prices are, I would be sorely tempted to buy something, though. Good thing we both know that it wouldn't do me one bit of good to buy clothes or shoes right now, because who knows what my life will be like in the Spring?

But, we're back in the hostel and it has thankfully cooled down into the 60's so we should be able to get sleep tonight, even though the entire hostel is going out on the town tonight and will probably come back in late, juiced up. I don't think Billy and I will notice a single thing.

Tommorow, we're off to see lots of Roman ruins so that should be good day tomorrow!

Closing...closing...CLOSED! (I think)

2007-06-18T09:20:00.001-05:00

I don't know how often closings are conducted in restaurants - let's be honest, Summit's is a bar with tables and food as decoration only - when the wall behind your bar is filled with at least 100 taps, people aren't coming to your establishment for the food. Anyway, Billy and I are conviced that we need to make up a T-shirt saying "I bought my house at Summit's" or something like that. We sat for two hours signing our lives and firstborn children (as well as Constutional rights) away. Some of the documents required witnesses, so I think we ended up having five different members of the waitstaff and management sign for us as well. Eventually, all we needed to do was raise a hand and ask "Can I get a witness?!" and waitresses were clamoring to sign.

So, we get our keys and check out the house that night before going home and we're glad to see it hasn't been firebombed or anything. We do another walkthrough getting an idea of what improvements we want to make first and then go back home (since it's 11:00 on a work night).

The next day, I get a call from Billy saying "Um, we've don't own the house yet." Turns out the bank never signed the certified check we turned in for the down payment. So, he had to leave Bar review early, drive 2.5 hours to Atlanta from Athens, just to resolve the check issue. Once he got to Atlanta, he leared the check issue was already resolved, but that lo and hehold, there were issues with the documents we signed the previous night. The mortgage holder wasn't satisfied with our signing without our middle names on the bank documents, even though we had signed name affidavits attesting to our names without middle names. The entire firm called BS on the issue, but I ended up leaving work early to add my middle name in to some of the documents and resigning others all together.

All that being said, we haven't heard of any other problems with the closing and no one has come to take back the keys or change the locks on the doors, so I think we're in the clear finally. Last night, I packed about 15 boxes of books, craft supplies, framed pictures and vases. All stuff that we can live without for the next couple of months. Billy and I moved over the first load last night and dumped it in the office, and I packed up the second load last night and packed them into my car.

It's amazing how bleak apartments look when you're in the process of moving out of them. When you move in the first day, you see the white walls as a blank slate for all your stuff. When you're moving out, you just feel like you're getting closer to living in a hospital or something. Normally I hate packing things up to move, but since we're moving to our own house, I'm pretty excited and had trouble stopping last night.

Now that the house drama is over for the most part, I can at least stop talking about it in every post and maybe make this look like there's something else going on my life other than this house. That might be kind of hard to do, now that I think about it though.

Contracts, Contracts, Contracts

2007-05-21T18:32:00.001-05:00

In case there is any interest in the house that Billy and I just got an offer accepted for over the weekend, here are some more detailed shots of the house from the interior that couldn't be seen on the FMLS listing. Excuse me while I run in the bathroom and collapse in front of the toilet in the throes of a panic attack...

Exterior of house in Habersham on Lanier (which is not actually on the shores of Lake Lanier)

Great Room/Family Room

Sunroom

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedrooms on Main

Formal Dining Room

Kitchen
Upstairs deck off of the great room and kitchen, along with views into the backyard.

And finally, the pimp finished basement.

Additional pictures will have to wait until we actually move in and start having parties. And no, Richard can't have red wine indoors. You see how much white is all over the floors?!

UGA Law School Graduation

2007-05-21T18:06:00.000-05:00

Finally back to a computer where I can upload pictures from Billy's law school graduation. Might as well tell the story behind the pics as I go along...

Pam Brannon spent almost more time playing "Sweet Child of Mine" and "Ziggy Stardust" on Guitar Hero during outlining sessions at our apartment than I did playing those songs, and that's pretty tough to do. Not to mention, I can give credit for helping keep Billy on task when he'd rather be doing anything rather than outlining Georgia Practice.

(From L-R):David Dix, Billy Todd, Anuj Desai, Granville Powers

Credit goes to these guys (and David Gussio who is missing from the photo shoot) for getting Billy out of the library or the apartment and out on a football field every once in a while for a stress-relieving football game. Granted, Billy returned the favor by letting them borrow the Wii for a few days when we first got it...

ZOMG! It's Billy getting his diploma!!1!

When Billy first started Law School, my first thought was, "Oh God, what have we gotten into?" Moving to a new town with nothing but maxed out student loans to pay the rent and bills (only until September, thank God), starting down a path where it is said that 50% of couples split up by the time the end comes around, trying to start new friendships where none exist...it was terrifying to be honest. But, I can honestly say that I count all of these people (Anna and Amy in the front; Anuj, Sean, Granville in the back...and Goose, Dix, Pam, and all the other folks that are attached to them) friends three years later.

And, hey, I think my family have been pretty darn supportive during this crazy endeavor, so Billy's in-laws deserve a spot immortalized in their daughter's unremarkable blog!

Sixteen Candles

2007-05-20T21:38:00.001-05:00

Finally, Billy and I have some peace and quiet this weekend. I'm typing out this blog post from the comfort of my pillowy chair wrapped up in an incredibly fuzzy blanket while Billy is on the couch to the left of me reading something other than a law casebook for the first time in months, if not years (almost since the last Harry Potter book came out, I'm pretty sure - which is before law school started).

This past week has been a rollercoaster of a week, mostly postitive. I spent the two days prior to my birthday sick and watched my birthday float on by without much ado. Which is fine because we all had a much bigger event on our minds - Billy's graduation from law school. As Billy put it, "This is like Sixteen Candles for you, isn't it?" I hate to admit it, but there were certainly times this weekend where I felt a little bitter, just like Molly Ringwald's character in that movie, but I also realized that it was unfair to Billy on such a big day that will only happen once for him. I mean, I get a bunch more birthdays to celebrate right? So, anyway, three years later, I finally got confirmation that the hard work and late nights and lonely exam weeks actually resulted in all of that ending...well, at least ending after his Bar review classes in July. The ceremony was lovely - the weather was perfect and the setup in the law school quad was quite honestly picture perfect. I'll have to post some pics once I get them transferrred over to my laptop.

So, Billy graduates, and when we get home from lunch, we get a call from our real estate agent. The sellers agreed to our counter-offer (in which they pay pretty much all of the closing costs) and they signed the agreement. We get official copies signed tomorrow and then I guess we begin the "due diligence" section of the home buyers' exam. Every time I think about the fact that we're about to become full-fledged homeowners, I nearly collapse in a panic attack. The house is going to be fantastic, I'm not worried about that...but we're dealing with so much money! Eeek!

Anyway, just had to get all of this weekend's stress out of the way so that I can possibly sit down and enjoy the last few hours of this weekend before I hit the work grind again.

House Hunters

2007-05-15T10:10:00.000-05:00

While Billy and I certainly aren't about to join any episode of House Hunters any time soon, we certainly feel like we've been living that life criss-crossing the countryside of Forsyth County trying to find a house that has all of the features that we're looking for:

Four bedrooms (Master, Guest, 2 kids should the unthinkable happen!)
At least 2 baths
Great open kitchen
Great living area
Office space
Finished Basement
Decent lot/yard landscaping
Good neighborhood (preferably with swim/tennis access)
Minimal remodeling needed for livability

We feel pretty confident that we've found the place we've been looking for, believe it or not, just after a couple of weekends of scouring the countryside. The house is in an older, sprawling neighborhood called Habersham. It's just off Hwy 20, less than a mile from GA400, which is perfect for my commute to work. The only downside is that the neighborhood isn't as young as we'd like, but it definitely helps us in our offer price versus asking price. The house is pretty much everything we've been looking for: a ranch style house (without looking like a ranch), with a great airy great room and kitchen with a sunroom off the master bedroom. The basement is the real kicker though. It is fully finished with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, fireplace/extra sitting area, office (with builtin bookcases/cabinet around every wall, extra room (perfect for my crafting), and a wood deck along the length of the basement underneath the most excellent deck outside the great room and kitchen upstairs on the main level. I'm serious, this place is really swank. We've actually taken the plunge and submitted an offer - we're hoping the the couple will accept the offer as is (but we figure they will at least entertain it and submit a counter-offer). This house costs a fair amount less than the other house we were wanting to buy, so that's just an additional plus. Now we're playing the waiting game before serious negotiations come into play either tomorrow or the following day. Eek!

Bienvenue

2007-05-11T15:47:00.000-05:00

So, this is Blog number what for me now? I started out at Diaryland, moved over to MSN Spaces and have now migrated over to Blogspot. Clearly I have too much free time on my hands to be setting up and writing a new blog during work hours, but I am completely filled with apathy for work right now.

What I am excited about is going house hunting for the second weekend in a row this weekend. My goal: find a house to make an offer on this weekend. We almost had luck with that on Monday until we found out that the house we liked had already had a full-price, cash offer made for it. There was another house that we liked a lot that we may still go with: we call it the Egyptian Palace because it is filled with all sorts of paintings and artifacts relating to ancient Egypt. The basement is not really very good at all, except that it has a fantastic area for an artist studio and the basement area can easily hold a gym and games area. It's just not a good place for a home theater, which is a bit of a bummer. But, the living room is nice (but requires addition of hardwood floors), and the house is made for entertaining out in the boonies, which I like too.

Hmm...maybe that house is what I'm looking for - it would require some work (removing carpet from the master bath?!) and doing the hardwoods (eventually) in the kitchen and family room, but other than that, it's good to go. We'll see.

In the meantime, I need to check in with Erin and see how my godson Luke is doing these days. He's getting through his first week of daycare and both Luke and mom are experiencing some separation anxiety, which I am sure is something that every new mom and child go through and Erin shouldn't feel guilty for feeling anxious nor for being happy to be back at work amongts colleagues and adults again after her maternity leave.