What I wouldn’t give to have my own washing machine and dryer right about now. I would throw my King sized comforter (both of them) to get washed. I hate the sulfur dog smell Keegan leaves behind (her medicine is REALLY stinky!) Because a roll of quarters might (if I’m lucky) get me 3 washes and 2 dries, and I’m sorry but my work clothes, my towels and then the whites are more important than my comforter. I can live with the sulfur-ness until we get one.

After getting my allergy shots yesterday, we went to the Mortgage broker and are in the process of getting pre-approved for a loan on our first house. It turns out that our county has a down payment assistance program for first time buyers under a certain tax bracket, which we are! We may qualify for up to $20,000 for a down payment, which would then be repaid if we refinanced or sold the home. Which would be awesome. Then, when we got out of the office, I looked at my arm and I have a huge welt that I’ve never had before! Argh! It’s about 4 inches wide and goes from the top of my arm all the way under to my arm pit. And my Immunologist isn’t open right at the moment. I’ve already done all the necessary things (put ice, cortisone cream, took an oatmeal bath, witch hazel, more ice, two ibuprofen.) This morning it’s still raised and a little itchy, but it’s mostly a big red blotch on my arm and it hurts!

But anyway, back onto yesterday. I studied for a bit and looked at some houses online. I know what I want in a house: Fenced backyard, Florida room where I could keep my sewing projects/computer, counter space in the kitchen! And I want a house that the owner is willing to part with the washer/dryer, fridge and range. Most houses in Florida, people leave their fridge and range, only some leave the washer/dryer. If I had a dishwasher, that’d be a plus too but isn’t necessary. Fencing is very important to me! The first improvement I’d make would be to have a locked doggy door that only opens with the collar on Keegan to go in or out (so my cats can’t get out and raccoons can’t come in!) Then, if Keegan has to potty, she can go when she wants. And if there’s no fan in the Florida room, guess what there will be when I’m done with it! Sewing projects will be done out there, computer time will be out there. Man, that’d be great.

Speaking of, this week I might buy some fabric to make something - but I haven’t decided what yet. And my legs are killing me. Remind me next time to wait about 45 minutes after eating to exercise!

So, tomorrow we go to our Mortgage broker and try to find a loan for a house. Yes, it’s official, we’ve started our house hunt! There’s actually a house on my street I’d like to see. It’s a small starter with two bedrooms, one bath on a half acre - completley fenced. It’s been on the market for months because nothing is moving. I bet I could lowball them and offer some crazy number and they’d take it. I’d show the listing on here, but I don’t really want anyone to see how much money I’m going to spend on a house, sorry folks!

But, moneywise, right now I hate how much I get paid. It’s ridiculous. How can anyone that makes that amount of money afford to pay rent off of it? Or a Mortgage, or food? I’m going to Joann’s tomorrow to see if I can apply for a part time (evenings) job to suppliment what I’m getting at my other job. That way I hope I can pay off some stuff and have a little extra to help Sidney with some of the things that we’ll need. It’s very frustrating living paycheck to paycheck. I don’t want to live like that forever. So, if I have to work a little harder right now, I can do that. And when Sidney graduates - he’ll be making more money, then we can be more secure. I’ll try to put some in savings so that way after we get married and start a family, I can take some time off to be a stay at home Mom.

But on the plus side of not having two jobs at the moment, I’ve dived into my exercising and studying. I’ve lost 3 pounds already (which is NOT good if I want to keep it off, apparently.) My pants are fitting a little looser which makes me think I’ve lost some inches. What a girl does to fit into a wedding dress, I tell you! My studying is going good - next Wednesday is the test. I better pass! I’ve worked hard for this and if I screw it up, I’ll be really pissed! I don’t know how much I can devulge online about my test, because, hey - I don’t want anyone to say that I’ve posted the stuff on here. But I have to figure out a way to remember the math portions and when to convert things (I’ll screw myself up otherwise!).

I got a couple emails asking if I’d stopped Crafting - the short answer is no. The long answer is that 1) Money 2) Time 3) Studying. Like I mentioned before, it’s a hobby and due to my crappy pay checks, I realized just HOW much I’d been spending on fabric lately. And Christmas is coming. I need to start getting presents for people (while it’s cheap). Studying and time sort of go together. Studying is really important at the moment, and time is very short. It’s either shave time off studying to work on my hobby, or shave off time sewing to study. I picked the latter of the two. No worries folks, I haven’t forgotten!

We went house hunting this morning, just to get an idea of what’s on the market. We want to save up some money so we can send a lump payment to my credit cards to pay them off, or at least get them up to date (which would be like, never). But, we want a house and are both tired of living in this apartment. I think that my Dad showing Sidney the places today really made him think. We stopped at a few open houses (together, minus the folks - which was a first). We saw this beautifully redone 1970s house. Totally up to date. New roof, a/c, tiled floor, new carpet, fenced. Perfect. If credit wasn’t such a big issue (for me) we could have been pre-approved and made a crazy offer on it. It was that beautiful. Starter house, but still. I think there was 1218sqft. New sod, everything. I’ll put that on my “list.” Then we stopped at another open house and man - it needed a lot of work. The grass was nice out front, but when you walked in the door there was no carpet. Just concrete. We would have had to put all new flooring down. As we walked through the house, I would have had to fix the cabinets in the kitchen, the door knobs on most of the doors - the toilet was off the floor, so we would have had to fix that. Crazy people! And they wanted a LOT of money for that house too. No thank you.

We stopped by later last night (as I have been writing this since yesterday with stops in between) and we drove around. We found that the styles of houses that we both like are completely different. I like the old Florida style. With the porch, stocky square house. He likes the sprawling ranch style houses that dot our landscape. Garages (which would be nice), Florida rooms (Lanai, sun room etc.). Some had too many palm trees and not enough “real trees.” Some had too many “real trees” for him and not enough sun light. We decided to keep looking in the area that we’re in now, for at least the time being. What’s settled on is, we want a fenced in backyard, at least 2 bedrooms, and a house where the old owners don’t mind getting rid of their refrigerator, range, and washer/dryer. I wouldn’t mind a nice lawn too out front - or even stone. I could live with stone, though it might hurt the dog if we only had stone.

I worked out on my Gazelle last night. I felt really gross after working on it, like I didn’t achieve anything - but as the night went by and this morning, I realized just how much better I felt! I wanted to have my Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches last night, but I only had one left. Then I remembered that Walmart didn’t have them in (only Sugar Free). I guess next time I’ll just have to go to Publix to get them. I totally thought that since I washed my pants (which were 100% cotton, stupid me) that they would have super shrunk. But they didn’t and my butt still fits in them (albeit tight). Oh well, that’s why God invented exercise.

But tonight, I have banished myself into a night of studying. I’m hoping to be done with dinner at 6 (after cooking and eating). I plan on studying from 6 to 7:25 (give or take) and then it’s off to watch house hunters on my Gazelle for a little bit. I love that show. I don’t go by minutes on my Gazelle - I go by calories burned. Tonight the counter will start off at 920cal, I want to get to 230 before I stop (the counter stops at 999.9 before rolling back to 0). That will be 310 calories for me to burn. Why is it that when I get home I never allow myself to relax?!!! I just realized this!

My Fiance is the greatest. I don’t know what it is sometimes - but he gets in these weird moods. Like he’ll make a face at me during dinner or something kind of moods. I can’t tell you how hard I laughed at this last night. He was just so funny, so my Sidney that it was amazing. He still makes me giggle.

The neighbor girl came over last night. This is so frustrating - I’ve been hiding our vacuum from her because she likes to borrow it and return it all scuffed up. I’ve been telling her “No our phone doesn’t work” and “no, I don’t have any (lunch bags, saran wrap, tin foil etc.)” Last night she knocks on the door and says “Did you get your computer fixed?” How amazingly rude. She came over here so Sidney could burn her a CD. Did she pay him for his monthly acess or for the songs she downloaded that were “Gold”? No. When Sidney finds out how much it is, I told him I’m going to send her a note with the bill and she’s responsible for hers that she got.
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Cheerios Crunch has grown on me, so I am officially enjoying my breakfast. First time in my life I’ve ever eaten real breakfast food for breakfast. Growing up, my sister and I would either have a) leftovers b) Elios Pizza c) Peanut butter “openface” or d) Cheese on English muffins. We’d try cereal sometimes, but it never stuck long enough. Oh, and when my Mother made a huge pot of soup, we’d eat it for breakfast - and as an after school snack, every day until it was finished. We were so weird. I still can’t eat cereal every day, or else I’ll get sick of it. Since I don’t have a toaster oven, I can’t make my Cheese on English Muffins (it’s really stupid to do it in a traditional toaster). I’m sure I could put it in the oven for a few minutes, but that would be a moot point.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Sidney is home with me. Though I must admit that it’s so nice to have the king size bed to myself when he leaves for work at 3:30 in the morning. But it’s also nice to wake up at 7 in the morning with his arms around me. As I’m pouring my cereal, he comes up behind me and says “Where’s my bowl of cereal?” like I’ve done him this huge injustice. I tell him his bowl is in the cabinet, his spoon is in the drawer, the milk is in the fridge along with his raisin bran and extra raisins. There are extra bananas on the banana hammock, I say as I come back to sit down to eat my own cereal. He looks at me, empty handed, like a crushed puppy. Argh. This is the time I so hate being a woman. So, I get up, get his bowl, spoon, cereal, milk, extra raisins, raisin bran and banana and put it down in front of him. He smiles. “Thank you.” I then got to sit down to my soggy cheerios.

My bank has finally processed all of my purchases/payments. Now, I’m up to date. Thank God. Seriously, last week, I had 32 transactions that said “Processing” or “Check Card Hold.” It was a pain. I had to keep subtracting that total number from my balance on hand to figure out what I had left. It usually only takes a day if that for my stuff to clear. If my car payment hadn’t been taken out, I was seriously going to have a fit. I send my payments in half, because seriously, who on earth has that much money to send it all in one lump sum? I send that out, and then the next pay date, I send out the other half. Seriously, I send out my e-payments 9 days ahead of time. In that 9 days, it’s never done. So I was shocked when I saw that it was actually taken out ON TIME.

My Airwick scent oils have finally kicked in. Man, they smell good. I’ve got a Country Berry one in the bedroom. Two Apple Cinnamon ones out in the living/dining room. I’m going to get another for the Kitchen tonight, maybe another Country Berry. Tonight, I’ve got to vacuum (even though I just did it on Sunday) and I seriously have to exercise tonight. The pants I’ve got on are my “If you get to fat to wear these, you’re over the limit” pants. Seriously, they’re already tight and I refuse to hit that next mark on my scale. I screamed this morning when I saw (with my glasses on), how much I truly weighed. My scale couldn’t be right…could it? I tried it twice. Same number. Oi. No more Burger King Wednesdays for me.

First time I’ve been tagged with my blog. Thanks Melissa!

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Ever After
2. The Prince and Me
3. Annie (1981 version)
4. Shrek 2

Four countries I have been to:
1. United States
2. -
3. -
4. -

Four places I’d rather be right now : (all four of mine go together!)
1. In a cabin
2. In the mountains
3. by a lake
4. in the Autumn

Four foods I like to eat:
1. Cheesecake
2. Split Pea Soup
3. Stuffed Cabbage
4. Chinese

Four places I have lived:
1. Pt. Pleasant, NJ
2. Deltona, FL
3. New Smyrna Beach, FL
4. Holiday, FL

Four bloggers I’m tagging:
1. Claudia - sewkaya.wordpress.com
2. Bobbi - lifeofbobbi.com
3. Anne - horse-corner.com
4. Kalen - scribblehoney.com