She has a name.

The crazy uncle and great aunt in-laws that we rented our old house from went by there today for the first time since we moved out. They are upset about the following:

- We left the keys and garage door opener on the dining room table. They have a house key, mind you. These were all extras.

- Some of the junk that was there when we moved in was, in fact, still there. They believe that a box containing childrens' shoes and toys belongs to me. Before we moved in, they were convinced that I would want the stuff in said box.

- The water was turned off. Cuz, you know, I moved all of the utilities over to our new house. THE AUDACITY OF ME. I can't wait until trash day when they find out that's gone too.

There are other things but if I type up the entire list of crazy I am likely to put my fist through a wall in my nice new office.

Speaking of new things, I now have an attempt at an herb garden in the bay window in the kitchen, handmade curtains on every curtain-requiring window save for one that's going to need a custom curtain rod, and a work room that's double the size of my old one. And my parents totally bought us a washer and dryer as a housewarming gift so in like a week I can do laundry like a responsible, hygenic adult.

I tried to be nice to my husband for the first time in like 6 months and he didn't notice because he was too busy playing Diablo 3.

"Nice" isn't code for a creepy sex act or anything. I just mean I wasn't yelling at him or sending him to the store to get brown party liquor. Also known as the antithesis of my very nature. Diablo 4 will be a thing before this happens again.

We closed escrow last week and are now real live fancy pants homeowners.

We also own this:


I'm more than a little tempted to leave assorted food out on the patio to lure out whatever is surely living up there. There could be raccoons! Like 8,000-ish square feet worth of raccoons!

When I was younger I put my mom on all of my bank accounts so that if anything freakish were to happen to me, my parents would be able to get my money without any hassle. I've been meaning to take her off and put Geoff on my accounts since that whole wedding thing last year, but I haven't quite gotten around to it.

The check I wrote to pay the VA funding fee for our house came out of one of the accounts I share with my mom. So now the mortgage company needs my mom to write them a letter confirming that I am in fact allowed to spend the money in my account.

I TOTALLY NEED A PERMISSION SLIP FROM MY MOMMY TO BUY A HOUSE.

On the day that Geoff and I spent 6 hours dealing with the flooding in the garage, we were outside when the mailman came. He handed us our mail and Geoff stuck it in his pocket. When we were done he looked through it and at the top of the stack was a flier for a house in our neighborhood that was for sale -- the exact same model as ours, but with a room addition, central heat, electrical that was up to code, and a brand new kitchen (with a dishwasher! OMG!)

We took it as a sign that things could be better. We didn't end up getting that first one; we quickly discovered that south of us there is a magical land where all of the houses have giant bonus rooms underneath and are far enough inland that I will never have to visit the Tsunami Warning Center website again.

The first house we made an offer on rejected us because of our VA loan. It would appear that veterans are the lepers of the real estate world.

A week and a half ago we made an offer on another house, and their flaky moron realtor screwed with us up until this morning. She made us submit three new offers rather than do counter-offers because it's "cleaner" (wtf?). Our house is also still listed as being for sale online, but the papers were signed this morning so pending some minor repairs required by the VA, it's ours.

And I will never have to go swimming in the garage again.

The garage flooded again yesterday and it would appear that it was making up for the last few months that our sad caulk-repair kept the water out because god damn, that was one flooded garage.

I'm desperately hoping we'll have a few days of dry weather before the next time I go out of town, because the enclosed swamp situation that will happen without the hourly changing of towels and rags gives me flashbacks of that summer in Tempe where an old chair in my yard was full of mosquitoes' nests or colonies or whatever they live in. Twenty seven bites on my legs. TWENTY SEVEN. And that's not counting feet, hands, or various other body parts.

Have you ever had a mosquito bite on the bottom of your foot? I'd sooner chew on glass while watching Fat Chef and King of Queens marathons before a repeat of that horror.

Fingertips are bad too, but they're more accessible for scratchin' so I'd compare them more to Everybody Loves Raymond or anything involving Sandra Lee.

It took like four hours to type that because I'm wearing both of my wrist braces. Frantically clearing out everything in the garage without them has angered the carpal tunnel gods, and now they require sacrifices of ibuprofen or vodka (not simultaneously, and dependent on availability and my mood). Carpal tunnel gods, you are harsh mistresses indeed.

Looks like the warehouse thing isn't gonna happen any time soon.

I owed more in taxes than the amount my profits increased from 2010 to 2011 because my inventory grew so much.

And the minimum piece order for the new hair I'm getting made went up by 800%, so the relatively small and modest order I placed a couple weeks ago is now suddenly much larger and more expensive. The factory spent the last 2 weeks trying to get the materials and 800% more than I wanted was the smallest quantity they could track down.

So like a week ago I had the down payment on a warehouse and only had to worry about saving up enough to take care of closing costs and keeping the business running. Now I'm nowhere near the down payment and I gotta figure out where I'm going to put an extra few thousand bags of hair that I wasn't expecting to buy.

BUMMER.

My very expensive freight that's been missing for two weeks has finally resurfaced! It's still in Hong Kong but hey, at least it's somewhere. I'll take what I can get. It's supposed to be delivered on Monday.

Now I can go back to worrying about whether the colors came out right.

About a year ago I ordered a bunch of pre-made extension sets with the intention of dying them a bunch of cool rainbow and tipped colors. this was the first one and up until today it was the last. I've got this huge box of extension sets that's been sitting in a corner in my office all this time.

Today I got done packing orders a little early so I decided to stop being lazy and work on another set. They're not rinsed yet or anything but here they are:



I used 14 colors total -- there's 2 shades each for red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, purple, and pink. I can't wait until they're done and I can stick them on a mannequin head to see how they look together. They're going to be awesome :D

Oh also, remember last year when I was sick for two god forsaken months? Probably not, but I do. I get scared every time I get a cold. I'm actually traumatized from being temporarily sick. How ridiculous is that?

ANYWAY. It turns out that the reason it was so bad might be because it was Legionnaires’ disease. They found it in the water at the Luxor in Vegas, which is where my wedding was. I got sick 2 days after we arrived and had all of the symptoms. You can get it from breathing in water vapors that contain the bacteria; our hotel room had a jacuzzi in it. My doctor didn't do any tests, though. She said I probably just had a strain of the flu that wasn't covered by my flu shot.

So I feel a little better and less paranoid now, because Legionnaires’ disease is kind of hard to catch, and I likely won't ever get it again. Yay on that!

My nightmare hasn't come true so far, but the tracking for my packages just updated today after a week of nothing with "The package never arrived at the destination."

Um, yeah, I know.

UPS customer service hasn't been any help. They change their explanations of what that means depending on what question I have. The last rep I spoke to started by telling me my packages weren't lost, then ended our conversation by saying I should contact the shipper and have them report the packages lost. Right.