Good news - we got the house! After a lot of frustration dealing with the landlady and her daughter who is actually handling the legal stuff we now have a signed lease and keys. Yippee! I need someone to slap me next time I stress out like this! The house is so much bigger than I remembered. In addition to the three bedrooms there is an office that will be perfect for the computers. I didn't even remember there being an office! We ran through the house so quickly because we got to the appointment late and the owner was really sick so we didn't want to keep her too long. The office has an open doorway to the front hall (we'll have to gate that I guess) and a door to the sunroom.
There are some things that make me nervous though. The lease stated that the yard was our responsibility, but we were told there was a gardener. I don't mind taking care of the lawn, but I don't want to be held responsible if the gardener does a poor job. He actually is doing a horrible job. The lawn is crunchy underfoot and covered with weeds instead of grass. The bushes, roses and trees look well cared for though. The landlady agreed that the gardener should be listed on the lease as her responsibility so she had me write in the change and initialed it. I need to send a signed copy now to her daughter (we have a faxed version that the daughter had signed her part on. It turns out the garage is not part of the rental. We were told this a little earlier, but the daughter put in the lease that we could store some boxes in it. The mother when we picked up the keys didn't bring a key to the garage so we couldn't see how much room there was in there. She said it was packed and was convinced that there would be enough closet space for us to store what we need to store. I know there won't be enough room for some of the huge computer boxes that can't be broken down because of the packing foam, but there is a lot more closet space than I had realized. She said she'd do her best to pack some more stuff into the garage if we really needed it, but I'll believe that when I see it! At least we do have that condition in the lease so I guess we can fight it if we have to. After she left I broke out the measuring tape and measured a few rooms as Tom complained and tried to get me out of there! I at least had to measure the washer/dryer space and the fridge space to see if my friend's dryer and her fridge will fit. She has an electric dryer because the place she rented only has a hook-up for a gas dryer. I believe we have an electric hook-up, but the water heater is gas so I could be wrong. I don't see a gas line near where the dryer will be, but I see a double outlet. Her fridge is too large to fit in the rental she is in now and her rental actually came with a fridge so she is just paying money to store them now. I have offered to rent them from her, but she says if she can get rid of the storage unit it will save her even more money than what we could pay her to rent them! Hopefully the fridge will fit. She still hasn't had a chance to measure it for us.
The house is really big. The master bedroom is 15.5 feet x ? (I forgot to measure that wall but I'd guess it's around 10-12 ft). There is a three-door closet at the foot of the bed. That's a full 12 feet of closet! The other two bedrooms are 11'4" x 12'3" and 11'4" x 10'2". The larger of these will be Tommy's room because the window in the other is at the front of the house. The window in the larger room is behind the fence so I feel better about leaving it open at night in the hot summers because it would be harder for someone to climb in that way. It has vertical blinds that go floor to ceiling and I'm sure he'll rip those down so we'll have to remove them and buy a shade of some sort. Each room has half of the 11'4" wall as closet space. There is a large linen closet with shelves outside the bathroom and a hall closet as well. The parlor is 13'4" x ? (again I forgot to measure the slightly longer wall). It has a fireplace that has a 9ft mantle that is diagonal in one corner. The sunroom is gigantic! This room is 28'10" x 14'. Plus there is a tiny "porch" leading to it with doors from the office, laundry room and kitchen. That entire back room was an add on so there are three outside doors from those rooms and casement windows in the office that open into the sunroom. It's a little odd, but not bad.
All the windows in the house are casement windows except the aluminum sliding windows in the back sunroom. Casement windows are higher quality, but that probably means a window AC unit isn't possible and even a window fan might not work. I'll have to have dad figure out what will work because we'll need some kind of air circulation. It was only in the mid 80s today and that place was a sauna! It had been all closed up though. The sunroom cooled down to an almost comfortable temperature quickly once Tom opened all the windows. The office and smallest bedroom have ceiling fans and my parents have an extra ceiling fan that they can bring so we might replace the dinette chandelier/light thing with it. The landlady said that is fine, just let her know what we are going to do and she'll store the light fixture if we take it down. She said she would find room in the garage.
The kitchen is decent size and has a really deep window ledge that I can put plants on, but unfortunately it seems to be full shade. The bad part is the house is really filthy. There is newish rose/pink carpet in the parlor and master bedroom which is going to severely clash with our forest green couch and forest green and navy bedroom, but old carpet and linoleum in the rest of the house and really old flat carpet in the sunroom that has stains everywhere. I don't really mind that, but the ant hills all along the sunroom walls inside are going to be hard to get rid of! There are spider webs in all corners and a healthy layer of dust over everything so it will take a LOT of elbow grease to clean the place up! She is leaving a comfortable recliner chair that swivels around for us to use if we wish, or she can try to shove it into the garage. Tom said it was a very comfortable chair and he'll put it in his office if I don't want it in the sunroom where it is now.
I have a list of cleaning supplies to bring down tomorrow. I figure I'll clean the parlor first so we can just drop all the boxes in there. Then I guess I'll hit the kitchen and then who knows what else! I am going to have to do at least two runs with the steam cleaner over most of the carpet, but the newer carpet in the parlor and bedroom I think I'll just vinegar rinse and see how dirty the water is. The house is so filthy even though she says that is new I'd feel better cleaning it! My mom is the mini-blind cleaning expert (used to handle all the window coverings part of my parents windows and doors business) so she said I should leave the cleaning of those to her! My friend won't be able to come down to help me clean until Thursday or Friday so I'm going to do what I can and try to take it easy. I think Tommy will love wandering around the empty house. He made himself right at home today! We brought down one box of toys and he dug in it and grabbed a pull toy and went wild running all around the sunroom! There is so much space there! I'll actually have room to spare after I set up his ride on train (my parents completely spoiled him for Christmas). In the time we were there we saw two girls around 6 years old riding bikes, met one neighbor and saw a man jogging with a baby and young toddler in a double stroller. It seems there are lots of families in the neighborhood. It only took us 30 minutes to get down there in the carpool lane from Tom's work leaving at 6:10 pm - his commute should be about 45 minutes in the slower lane I would guess.
We drove around the neighborhood and saw three parks. Two are possibly walking distance (but a long walk) and the third looks the best for toddlers, but it's a definite have to drive to location. The other two are mostly lots of open area and really old play equipment that looks a little challenging for Tommy at this age. There are two grocery stores nearby (Safeway and Albertson's) every fast food you can imagine (important to Tom - but no drive thrus so not tempting to me!). Papa John's Pizza and Domino's Pizza very close by for those times I'm too lazy to cook! A dry cleaners, fish and chips place, Subway and Togo's, a few Chinese restaurants, one Indian restaurant, Blockbuster and Hollywood video, etc all fairly close.
Oh, the backyard has a "sweet" grapefruit tree. The landlady said you don't need to add sugar because it's an orange/grapefruit cross. There is an orange tree, a tangerine tree (she doesn't know if this has fruit or not), there used to be a plum, but she doesn't know if it is still fruit bearing, and a lime tree and she wants to add a lemon tree. There is a rose bush under the master bedroom window that scents the entire yard - front and back! The back fence (wood) is half covered with geranium bushes. There are some spots for me to plant seeds and if there is enough light I'll plant some veggies outside the laundry room door in the side yard.
I guess that is all I can think of right now - I feel much better about everything though. I wish I wasn't such a worry-wart, but I also think I had reason to worry with as flaky as this lady can be! She said she had over 70 people come to see the house and most people gave her applications and she hand picked us because she liked that we were young and seemed together and were building a family. She is all for kids! She also had two-dozen realtors dropping their cards through her mail slot begging her to sell. The house could go for anywhere from 800k - 1 million! Yikes! It is nice, but I used to think a million dollar home was a huge mansion! :) The rent will be raised next year about $200 because what we are paying now is way under market for a house this size.
The last good news is my dad went to visit a friend in Albuquerque. He removed the new part that he has on backorder from this guy's RV and brought it into a machine shop along with his old part. The shop was able to jimmy up his old part to make it work like the newer model so tomorrow he starts the 1-2 days of work installing that and getting all the electrical stuff hooked up. He needs one more part which they should have at his local NAPA store, but if they don't they will have to order it. If they have it they should be on the road by the end of the week! Late Sunday or early next week is a lot better than May 15 on their arrival. I can't wait to see them, both for my mommy who will calm me down some and all the extra help. Plus I just plain miss them! I'm not sure if I'm more excited to see Tommy's face or my dad's! He is so excited to see his little boy. He's been on cloud nine ever since Tommy very clearly said "Grand-PA" on the phone this past weekend! He will call me up just to see if Tommy can talk. My dad and I fight a lot since we both have very volatile tempers (only with family though), so his obvious love for Tommy lets me feel the love he has for me that he so often doesn't express. Wow I am really babbling today, aren't I! I better quit before this turns into more of a novel than it is!
On to pregnancy news! I took the three-hour glucose tolerance test today. I couldn't wait for the lab to get me the results so I took my handy dandy glucose meter along (a loaner from my dad along with free supplies) and I took my blood sugar right after they drew my blood each time. I don't know why they don't just do finger pricks instead of take all those vials!
Anyway I think I'm ok. My fasting sugar was only 89. That is lower than I've ever been. I found a website that lists two standards they use for the 3 hour GTT.
fasting 105 or 95 (mine 89)
1 hour 190 or 180 (mine 171)
2 hour 165 or 155 (mine 139
3 hour 145 or 140 (mine 117)
So if my glucose meter is accurate it looks like I passed with flying colors! I have no idea when my doctor will call me with the "official" results though. I feel like a pin cushion now! I have the 4 finger pricks I gave myself and then 4 pokes in my arm with two of them bruised and two pricks with bruises in the back of my hand thanks to veins in my arm that moved! I never have problems giving blood so it's weird that I did today. The one lab tech said that if you don't drink enough it makes harder to hit veins, but since they don't let you drink for 4 hours with this test what do you do?
At least it's over! And aside from the nausea that drink caused me I'm feeling a little bit better today. I went to bed early and Tom was able to get Tommy down alone. He slept through the night and cuddled up against daddy for a change so I had plenty of room and got a great night's sleep!
That's pretty much it for this week!
