Craziness

This week has been a busy one, but at the same time I don't feel like I accomplished anything!
Alisabeth and I spent two full days looking for houses/apartments. I hated them all. No backyard, and no washer dryer, both things that I can't live without. So we bumped up the price range, thanks to a generous monthly donation from my mom and looked again. . .
Finally on Friday my mom suggested that we "have some fun" and go look at apartments/houses.
At that point I had given up on life, but I scrounged up some potentials and made some phone calls and set up 5 places to go look. Jeeze I should have started by taking her.
Every place we went to had a yard or great amenities. The worst, at the top of our price range was a town-home, all utilities included with a wading pool and covered play area. The only thing lacking from them was an in-unit washer/dryer, but that was easily overcome by everything else they had to offer. The other three potentials included a secluded little red-brick place behind a 1st Chiropractor. My mom and I felt a little nervous about that because there were at least 10 "Private Property" signs and all the makings of an abandoned trash yard behind it, however the yard was amazing, they had naturally growing grass, shade from some huge trees and enough room that my little girl would get exercise.
The next was another small home set FAR back from the street and surrounded by a few quiet neighbors. This one sported an even larger yard which wrapped almost all the way around the house. It also had the largest kitchen/living area, but the rooms were a bit small.
Finally we came to a young woman's house. She appeared to be a graduate student who was going overseas for a research assignment and needed to rent out her place for a year. The best part besides a yard: she had chickens. I was in love, however there was a lot of cactus and the yard wasn't really well maintained so there would be a bit of work involved.
Mixed in with all the house hunting was taking a friend's dog to the pound for their free spaying/neutering clinic and falling in love with the little homeless kittens. I want one so bad! Jason's mean though and says we can't afford a kitten. . . but a puppy would be nice.
Finally on Saturday I took Jason out to see the top three choices and we narrowed it down to 2.
Monday night we went and took Alisabeth to one of the two and met the owner. Apparently the junk area we were nervous about used to be an old tile factory that they were slowly working on, but kind of gave up on. There is no one else on the property and only one entrance, so we don't need to worry about anyone coming from the back side of the property (about 3 acres in total). The other house that they are going to be renting was in need of a few more repairs and we worked out a deal which will get us into the bigger of the two units with the same rent cost overall. Plus he has some other projects he wanted to get done, but hasn't had time to do. He seemed quite willing to negotiate for rent or payment, whichever we preferred.
Yesterday I called the other place to schedule a showing and it was already rented, so it looks like our decision was made for us :)
The best part is that the rent for this place is within our lower bracket, so we don't have to kill ourselves to pay rent. It will be tight, but it's doable, especially if Jason keeps improving in speed and the company can get him enough work to keep him busy!
That was my week. Jason's was a bit different.
He's still getting the ropes down at his new job. He enjoys it a lot, but apparently they don't have a lot of work and he's been struggling to find projects to keep himself busy. Not only that, but because he's on flat-rate he only gets paid for what it SHOULD take regardless of how long it DOES take, so he's lost a little bit of time when things haven't gone smoothly. He also found out yesterday that they have some rules that don't work in his favor.
He inspected a used vehicle and made suggestions for work that needs to be done. The policy he was told is that if you do the inspection the work comes to you, however, there was one part that he couldn't do, so instead of splitting the jobs and letting him have what he could do they shipped the whole thing over to a main-line tech. Then on top of that they don't pay him for the inspection time, so he basically spent an hour of his time and got nothing for it. That frustrates me a little bit. I think it's better that he's the one working there instead of me, because I wouldn't put up with cr** like that.
As for Alisabeth, the world still revolves around her. We are going to be starting swim lessons the first week of June, so we had to get her a new bathing suit (I looked at the tag and hers was a 24month tag, but most of her clothes are already 4T.)
And, I had to get a new suit too, because I don't know where mine is packed and it was 12 years old anyway. So we went SHOPPING!!
Can I just say that I was highly disappointed with the selection? I swear there were 10 racks of two piece things that didn't look big enough to wrap around me much less cover the important parts, and only 2 of real bathing suits! Not only that but the real ones were questionable as well, as if they were trying to save of fabric and weren't sure of the best way, so they just cut as many gaping holes in the suit as possible. Finally I found a couple of cute ones and we headed to the toddler section where I was astonished to find the same predicament. My two year old already had the option of a two-piece bathing suit, or one that had holes everywhere. It really made me shudder.
Jason also grabbed a kiddie pool that has been the delight of our little girl from that day forward.

Last but not least I was able to attend a Pampered Chef party this last week. Let's just say if we cook in Heaven, I know what kind of pans I'm using.

We also set ourselves (my mom and I) up to be hosts for a "Death by Chocolate" party in a few weeks, it's going to be a blast. My mom wants to dip anything we can find in chocolate, and really, how can that go wrong?
That's our week in a nutshell. I'm glad I finally got all this up here, I felt bad that I hadn't done it yet!