Home Sweet Home

I know, I know. I sort of fell off the face of the earth, well, the bloggy earth anyway. I just haven't been in much of a bloggy place. I haven't been posting or reading. It's not like there hasn't been anything going on around here. A LOT has happened and I have so much to share and I really want to get back to regular posting. Maybe today can be the start?

Let's catch up! What have I been doing for the last month and a half?

We packed the house over a period of months. My sister was amazingly helpful, coming over weekly to help. She totally rocks! The Lizard King came home on leave on Thursday, June 24th and the whirlwind began. He got to see the house for the first time, which was so exciting! The next day, play structure construction began.

Here is the house, well, some of it anyway.

You will have to wait to see the rest of the house another time. There is still so much more to do! We moved on the 26th of June and spent every day LK was home working on the house. Before we knew it, it was time for him to head back to Afghanistan. That was an adventure as well! LK was on the KLM flight that turned around over the Atlantic. He did make it safely back to Afghanistan...eventually.

Now I need to rewind just a bit. Before LK came home, before we even closed on the house, we hired an attorney. We tried to handle things on our own with Needy Evie, the evil ex-wife. I told you about her here and here. I did all the work and gathered all the information, copied it and mailed it to the attorney. Needy Evie was served. She had until June 29th to respond. On June 28th she called the attorney's office and said that she wanted to come in and sign the papers stating that we were done paying her alimony. We were stunned. Could it really be that simple? After all these years and all the grief she has given us, would she really go down without a fight. We had a hard time believing it, but it was true. She signed!! The attorney overnighted the papers for LK to sign. This week the judge signed the papers, too. It is done. It is over. After 10 long years, Needy Evie is out of our lives for good.

Now I am working on unpacking and making a home for us. The Lizard King will be home on September 18th, Princess' birthday. We have so much to look forward to, but more than anything we are looking forward to being together as a family.

So, what's up with all of you?

A Baby!!!

Can you guess who this is?

You all know about Needy Evie, she was number 2. Have I mentioned number 1? The Lizard King was married twice before finding perfection me. The first time was at 20, the second at 22...so young. Now while Needy Evie has worked her magic, manipulating their two kids to have nothing to do with us, Number 1 did not.

Yes, LK has a son from his first marriage. Let's call him Tatt-Man. Tatt-Man is 27 years old and married. LK was the only one to attend the wedding, almost 2 1/2 years ago, because well...we just didn't have the money for all of us to go. Then there was the "falling out" after the wedding.

A few weeks ago, thanks to Facebook, Tatt-Man's wife "friended" me. We started talking and working on the men. LK was easy. Tatt-Man was a bit more of a challenge. It worked though. I have spoken to Tatt-Man and his wife twice on the phone. Things are looking good!

All this back story is leading up to the answer to the question above. Tatt-Man and his wife are having a baby!!! I am going to be a grandmother. Princess is just tickled that she is going to be an aunt at age 6. LK, well he is just over the moon that he is going to be a grandfather.

I just wish that Tatt-Man and family didn't live so far away. Sometimes distance isn't such a good thing. We'll have to do our best to be involved, long distance grandparents. Baby is due March 5th. We can hardly wait!

I want to go home!

Once upon a time I owned my own home. I bought it on my own before I even met my husband. We met, we fell in love, we married and then the company we worked for was taken over in a hostile takeover. It was ugly. We lost our jobs.

The job market in Portland wasn't good. We made the spontaneous decision to move to Georgia. Lizard King (LK) has family there, my family is in Florida and we both have some family in Pennsylvania. We thought it would be nice to be closer.

At the time LK was traveling for a living to manufacturing facilities, installing software, etc. He had contacts who wanted him to consult/contract for them and most of the facilities were in the southeast.

We put my little townhouse up for sale, moved to Georgia where houses were so affordable and had a 2500 sq. ft. house built on a half acre for the bargain price of $156,000. I had gotten a huge severance which covered our move and allowed us to put down 25% on the house and we took a 15 year mortgage. Everything was great!

But then, the consulting gig fell apart. Then we couldn't find jobs. Finally, LK found work. Unfortunately he was making 25% of what he made before. Yes, that's a 75% cut in pay. I was making nothing. Then with my 1% chance the "experts" gave me of getting pregnant, I was pregnant. We were shocked and ecstatic. I continued to look for work until it was obvious that I was pregnant, then I stopped.

Oh, here's a key piece of information. LK had hired "the best attorney in Jacksonville" (his ex-wife -Needy Evie - lives there) who was recommended by two different people, to represent him in his divorce. That turned out to be a BIG FAT LIE. He got totally screwed in the divorce agreement.

His attorney allowed him to sign a non-modifiable agreement. That means that when he went from making six figures down to thirty something thousand dollars, he was still responsible for paying thousands of dollars a month in ALIMONY to his ex-wife. The kids are all grown, in their twenties. It's NOT child support.

Okay, so where was I. Ah yes, living in Georgia making crap money and oh, by the way, we hated living there. There are a lot of people who love it, but it just wasn't for us. We realized how much we missed Portland. LK tried to find a job before we moved back, but people were hiring only within the Portland area. We decided to sell the house and move back without a job.

We used the proceeds from the sale of the house to pay for our move, to continue to pay the alimony and to live on until LK found work. It wasn't long before the money was gone. Since the move back we have been renting.

LK works two jobs. One job that requires more brain power and one that requires less brain power, but is very physical. He has been working two jobs for more than 5 years now. He is exhausted. Completely.

I work part time to supplement our income. We do live pretty well, everything considered. I wonder sometimes if I should just get a full time job, and we have discussed this. But we are agreed that isn't really an option. And after all, we are finally getting down to the wire.

We have only 17 more months of alimony left. Once it is done, we need to get our credit cards paid off. They have come in handy when things have gotten really tight. We also need to save a down payment in order to buy a house.

We really want a home of our own, not just a house to live in, but a home. I am ready to have a place that Princess can grow up. I'm tired of moving from rental to rental. I finally realized that no matter how many rentals we move to, it never feels like home.

Well, thanks for listening to my pity party. Who knows, maybe something will happen and we'll find a way to pay Needy Evie off sooner. As Princess says all the time...you never know!

A Little Whine?

I don't even know how to start this post. That's probably why I haven't posted in so long. I am feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Building a new house is really awesome and incredibly challenging when I am the one who has to stay on top of everything. There have been so many mistakes that I caught and at least one that I missed.

The one that I missed will cause LK a lot of work and I'm kicking myself for missing it. Of course he doesn't think it's a big deal, but I feel frustrated about it. He is so darn easy going. Thank goodness electrical work comes easy to him. The electrician who wired our house didn't seem to have much of a plan. A few light switches were placed in the strangest and most inconvenient of places. The Lizard King will be relocating three of them.

The house is so close. It looks like we should be closing on time and moving at the end of June. I've been packing for weeks and there is still a lot to do. We're getting down to the wire so I feel the need to step things up a bit. My sister is coming over tomorrow to help...again.

On top of all the house stuff we are dealing with Needy Evie...you remember her, the evil ex-wife. Well, after 8 long years of alimony it is coming to an end. Did you think she would go down quietly?! Absolutely not!! That's not her style. Now we have to prove that we have paid her everything. In my naive hope that she would be reasonable, I didn't save all the proof and have spent the last month on the phone with the bank (and other sources) gathering all the proof. After a little trip to Kinko's I have copies of everything which I will highlight and send off to our new attorney. Yes, we had to hire an attorney to handle all of this. Fun times.

On top of all this, I'm just missing LK. It's been nearly 13 weeks now and we've got another 3 weeks 3 days to go. Princess is missing her daddy so much. This time being so long has been so much harder on all of us.

Well, I think I've reached the end of my whine. If you made it this far, thanks for listening. I hope to be back again soon!

He's Not Perfect

Everyday I wonder how I got so lucky. I have the most amazing husband. He works his ass off to support us (and Needy Evie) and so I can stay home and homeschool Princess. He does so much for us.

He is the handiest guy I know. He can do practically anything. He supports me in whatever I want to do or be. He treats me like a queen.

I read other blogs with complaints about husbands shortcomings and think, well my husband would never do that.

Then every once in a while he reminds me that he isn't perfect. It doesn't happen often and before yesterday I can't remember the last time it happened. But yesterday it did happen and man was I pissed!

It really wasn't anything big. I had texted him in the morning and in response he called me, but he was on Skyline which is a road with spotty cell phone reception. He said he'd call when he got there. Three hours went by. I called but got no answer...again and again.

Finally he called me with great attitude and a threat that he was going to throw his cell phone into the Willamette (River) because it was a pain in the ass. He told me he had work to do and that I was interrupting him. I told him goodbye and that I would talk to him when he got home.

I then reacted in the most mature way possible, vowing to never call him again. I began making a list of all the things throughout the day that I wanted to tell him. The plan was to hand it to him and walk out because one of the things on the list was doing an errand alone. Yes, I was the epitome of the mature adult woman.

Later in the afternoon I texted him again and asked if he wanted to talk. He called me and we talked. He apologized. We're back to normal and I'm thinking...he's pretty perfect.

MIA but I had to share

Yeah, I know, I've been missing for a while. We are dealing with the psycho the evil one Needy Evie some personal issues and I just haven't been in a very bloggy place. Still, I had to stop in here and share the latest in Princess news. Most of you know that we are unschoolers (after taking a short detour last year). This time around I have truly embraced this life and I love when little things happen to remind me how beautifully this all works.
At Village Home, our amazing homeschool resource center, they are doing the Great American Spell Check fundraiser. When they first announced it, I asked Princess if she wanted to participate. She told me she would think about it. Yesterday the email reminder of the deadline arrived in my inbox. I asked Princess if she had made a decision and told her that she needed to make a decision now because the Spell Check event is next week. She decided that she wanted to give it a try!


I printed out the word list and read her each word so that she could write them on a piece of paper. We have never done a spelling lesson or anything like this before. Princess got 33 out of 50 words correct, including the words more, floor, coat and steep. We have 17 words that we will work on when she decides she wants to. We talked about what she missed and I think she will likely spell more words correctly on Tuesday. I just think it is so cool that she is doing this and that her spelling is so good!

I know I've said it before, but I just have to say it again...unschooling rocks!