Well at Least the Problems Happend Today...
So hopefully they won't happen tomorrow!
First we went to get the flowers. No problem. We get home and my mother suddenly realizes, oh your father isn't going to be wearing his robe, he's going to wear a suit, so we need another boutonniere. So I had to call and see if the lady would be able to get another one together for us to pick up today. Then we went to get our rings cleaned. We left them there and went to get our nails done. The nail place was closed for remodeling. So we had to find another nail place. Get that done and head back to get our rings. Nice and shiny, yay. Take dad's home to him, and start toward Springfield.
So we're on the road to Springfield and I glance down at my ring where the sun's hitting it on the steering wheel. I don't know how much attention you have paid to my ring, or if you've even seen it, but it has 70 small diamonds on it and 1 large one. So I glance down at my ring, and there's two holes where diamonds used to be! I let out this horrified gasp and my heart stops in my chest. I do a U-turn right in the middle of Highway 76, a pretty busy 5 lane road I might add, and haul ass back to the jeweler. I march in and state how two of the diamonds fell out of my ring in their care. She said, oh I checked them all before we cleaned them, so they're probably in the cleaner. The jeweler says he'll fix it. I was like, um, how long, I need it back asap, I'm getting married tomorrow. So he says he'll have it down in 30 minutes.
Lordy.
Fortunately, that seemed to be the end of the misfortune. We headed on to Springfield, where my mother bought us dining room chairs to match our legless table. (Yes, I said legless. It came from the Ashley Outlet for like 25 dollars.) Then I ordered pub height legs to go with the chairs. Then we had some lunch and went and got my mother a new dress, because she decided she wanted one to go along with the color theme. Then we headed to Rivergate because when I picked my dress up Thursday night, one of the two removable straps was missing! So they gave me two straps to make up for it and we headed home.
I'm beat.
Now I'm working on compiling a CD to play during the food portion of our entertainment tomorrow. Packing for the trip to Gatlinburg. Running through last minute details in my mind.
I won't get a wink of sleep tonight.
posted by AllieKat 12/01/2007 08:03:00 PM .:. 0 comments
Wedding Date
Okay, let's get the part that if anyone cares about it will be this part out of the way...
December 2nd, 12 noon, my father's church. My father will be officiating.
There you have it. The ceaseless "When are you getting married?" questions can now... well, cease.
Okay now back to the semi-beginning. As most of you know from previous postings or word of mouth, we were looking at a place in Madison. That deal did not work out. It mostly comes back to the fact that the people we were dealing with did not listen to our concerns, and then came back a few days before we were supposed to be closing and tell us that we were right in our concerns from four months ago.
Anyway... long story short. They worked with us, found us another option, and today we went to sign a contract on a house in Antioch. Before anyone freaks out and says (as I've already heard), "But there's gangs in Antioch!" I'd like to point out that this is on the "good" side of Antioch. We'll be a hop, skip, and a jump away from Percy Priest Lake. We're real close to Jerry's parents in Nolensville, and not too far (think 10-15 minutes) from Mount Juliet. Yes, I meant to take pictures of it, but we were so preoccupied I didn't even think about it til well after we left.
Okay, now you're up to speed on this, you're probably wondering, why set a date barely two weeks from today. I can think of a few reasons.
In order to get the mortgage that we agreed on originally, with the good interest rate, blah blah, from the only place we could find to give us money (and trust me, we've looked!) we have to close within 90 days of their agreeing to give us the money. That was over two months ago. We have to close before December 10th I believe they said. On the contract we signed we agreed to close on or before December 7th. Due to certain circumstances that most of you can probably figure out on your own, we need to be married before we can live together. Let's just say it's a bad influence on the children and leave it at that.
So, since we need to get married around the 7th, we figured the weekend before or the weekend after. Well the weekend before is Jerry's weekend with the kids. So why the 2nd, and not the 1st you may wonder, if you've actually read this far and put any thought into it at all. Just so happens, my parents anniversary is on the 2nd, and it's just way too damn cutesy to get married on the same day my parents did at my parents church with my dad doing the service.
And, well, I figure maybe getting married is like pulling off a band-aid. Just pull it off in one quick stroke instead of dragging the whole process out. Hell, last time I got married in under a month. Let's do it in under two weeks!
Hey, it's less time to worry about the whole thing. (And believe me, I am!) Granted, it IS going to be a small service with family and close personal friends. We're not even sending out invitations. But I still need a dress or skirt and a flower bouquet, and I'd like to get my hair done if I can find somewhere that will come in on a Sunday morning to do it and only one, count em one, weekend to get everything together. On top of that, I have this new house payment and other bills neither one of us has had to pay (think electric, water, internet) to worry about, how the hell we're going to get furniture to worry about, and how the hell we're going to buy a washer and dryer to worry about...
What, me, worry?
Of course neither one of us even have the time to take off work to stay home together for one day, let alone DO anything, so we're not even going to have a honeymoon. Sad panda...
Then, the next weekend we'll be moving. And that's always a fun, stress-free thing to do! :-P
Anyway...
While I don't honestly expect to get a lot of gifts, being as it's not the first wedding for either one of us, we did register at Target. And yes, we scanned everything we thought we needed, and a few things we didn't. We scanned things we don't expect to get because hey, maybe some one's feeling generous. You never know. But most of the stuff on there is really things we need. We're both starting fresh. We have nothing but what's in our bedrooms, really. Our respective ex-spouses kept practically everything of use. And that's fine, I like a fresh start as much as the next guy, but that leaves us with nothing for our brand new shiny never-lived-in house. That being said, our registry is here. There's plenty of kitchen stuff (which we have next to nothing of), bedroom stuff (ditto), and some electronic stuff (if you're feeling giving... hey, Christmas is coming up too!). And of course, there's the always welcome Target gift card/cash.
As for post-wedding celebrations... at this point, there is none planned. However, it would not shock either of us should Jerry's mother take it upon herself to plan a small cake and punch type reception at her house, his grandmother's house, or something. As of right now, it's up in the air.
So there you have it. It's late. I've probably put way more information that I needed to, but oh well.
posted by AllieKat 11/18/2007 09:05:00 PM .:. 0 comments
New Casr
That's my new car!
It's a 2007 Kia Optima, and I'm liking it quite a bit at the moment. The main things I'm really liking is that it doesn't require me to hold down the emergency blinker button to get the turn signal to work, I don't have to smack the dome light several times to get it to come on, the lights in the panel don't flicker, the check engine light doesn't come on every so often just to keep my wondering, it doesn't have over 100,000 miles on it, it isn't five years old, and the left tail-light doesn't fill with water, causing all the connections to the light bulbs to rust away every time there's a big rain.
Okay well, I'm also liking that's it's new. Who doesn't love new car smell? I'm also quite liking the 10 year/100,000 mile warranty. I like that I was able to pay off my little piece of shit I traded to them, and still have 350 dollars left for a down payment. They gave me well over Kelly Blue Book value for my car, by about 2400 dollars. And they took a couple thousand off the sticker price because it was a 2007 and they have 2008s in now.
Labels: car
posted by AllieKat 11/12/2007 09:58:00 PM .:. 0 comments
Vidalia
Yesterday, Jerry and I went to Oktoberfest. It wasn't really what I was expecting... since I was expecting more like, German stuff. Mostly it was just local booths.
Anyway, one of the booths that was there was for the Nashville Cat Rescue. While I was looking at their booth, looking at the needy kitties that have been rescued from cruel situations I saw one that just broke my heart. Her name is Vidalia. She only had a row of stitches where one eye should have been. Her owner had abused her, burned her ears, and poked out her eye. It's one thing knowing that stuff like this happens, but seeing it up front made me start crying.
Where I work, they're a big proponent of United Way and March of Dimes. We're aways being hassled about donating money for this, coming up with a drawing, booth, bake sale for that. According to Charity Navigator, if I'm reading it accurately, and correct me if I'm not... it looks like 76 percent of proceeds go toward overhead and expenses. Their CEO, Jennifer Howse, makes over half a million dollars a year. United Way of Metro Nashville is even worse, with 86 percent of their proceeds going to expenses. The CEO of just the Nashville branch makes over 175 thousand dollars a year.
I would much rather give my money to an Organization like Nashville Cat Rescue, where I can see where the money is actually going, like Vidalia's 700 dollar vet bills for the surgeries on her eye. I know when I get a cat, it will most likely be from Nashville Cat Rescue. They have their animals for adoption in Hermitage, 100 Oaks, and Cool Springs PetSmarts.Labels: cats, charity, Nashville
posted by AllieKat 10/14/2007 01:32:00 PM .:. 0 comments
Perfect Creature
Last night I watched the movie "Perfect Creature". I had read the synopsis on Netflix and thought it sounded interesting, but really, the synopsis doesn't exactly capture the essence of the movie. I thought of it as a sort of sci-fi alternate history pseudo-religious vampire movie. It is a foreign movie, all in English, that is supposed to take place in the alternate reality equivalent of post World War II New Zealand.
I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but I do say some things that are not revealed at the very beginning of the movie, so if you want to see it all fresh and new, don't read any more.
The premise is an alternate reality where "vampires", instead of being hunted to extinction and becoming myths and legends, live in peace with human beings and are referred to as Brothers. They came to be as the result of a genetic engineering experiment accident. They are only born to human women, and they are only born male. They do have fangs and live on blood, but they do not kill for it; they also have superhuman strength and senses, and extreme longevity. Since the first was born 300 years ago, none have died, or taken a human life.
The Brothers are looked at as being gifts from God; when a Brother is born he is taken from his mother by the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is the religion of the people, and the devout go to the Brotherhood to give their Blood. In return, the Brothers are raised to protect and serve humanity. They also give their blood to humans as it has healing powers when ingested and can give visions. Because of their longevity thy are renowned scholars and scientists. It was a Brother that created the influenza vaccine, saving the lives of many people during the plague that was the result of another genetic engineering accident.
Because of the influenza plague and other "bad things", genetic engineering was banned. However, after 70 years of no Brothers being born, the Brotherhood started genetic engineering in secret, hoping to find a way to have more Brothers born to join their ranks and also hoping to find a way to give birth to a female Brother for breeding. As is the way of movies, things go horribly wrong. The experimentation results in a virus that infects the Brother responsible; the same Brother that created the flu vaccine. He goes mad, hating humans and the way he's been forced to "serve" them. He starts slaughtering some and infecting others with his blood, causing them to get sick, then turn violently insane before they die.
Of course, as churches tend to do, the Brotherhood tries to cover it up on their own, but the law gets involved and the authorities try to hunt down the insane Brother with the help of a senior ranking Brother.
All in all, I really enjoyed this movie, and with Halloween coming up, it's appropriate.Labels: movies
posted by AllieKat 10/12/2007 12:35:00 PM .:. 0 comments
The Ring
posted by AllieKat 8/20/2007 06:29:00 PM .:. 0 comments
We're Adults. When Did That Happen and How Do We Make It Stop?
I got to visit my shiny today. And by "shiny" I mean my wedding ring. We dropped in to talk to the jeweler about getting it sized, and picking a stone for the setting and such. It made me all happy and giddy just looking at it. It's so beautiful and unique. I've never seen one like it. It should be paid for and ready to wear by the 31st.
We've also been spending a lot of time looking at places to live.
I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't know it was going to be this difficult. We started out looking at one of those places that says "homes from the 120s, $500 moves you in". Well that may be true... if you're a single couple and don't need any extra rooms for kids and such, but we're not. We're going to have two teenage boys that preferably need to be separated into two rooms and we need an office. And I do mean need. We have like seven computers between the four of us. So that's at least 3 bedrooms and an office/study, or 4 bedrooms. Which isn't cheap.
Then we ran into problems with the mortgage. One place told us we couldn't get a loan together because of his credit, but with my salary we could maybe afford a box under a bridge in a decent neighbourhood.
So we started looking at homes that weren't new. Still couldn't find anything in our price range that wasn't a total dump. And I do mean dump.
Now we started thinking about "multi section homes". Hey, it may not sound impressive. It may make you think "trailer", but if you've never seen the inside of the ones we've been looking at, you'd be shocked. They're HUGE, and they're so nice. The master bathrooms are gigantic. They all have garden tubs and separate showers. Walk-in closets. Big, big kitchens and living rooms. Way more space than we could afford in a "real" house. Just most of them don't really have an appealing exterior. My father said "they'll spoil you for a real house". Some of them are really very impressive.
And I can't emphasize enough how much space they have. They're basically perfect for us. It's in our price range. We can get the number of rooms we need in a square footage that's amazing. It's actually kind of exciting.
So then the problem we run into there is property. We don't have any. So we have to find property we can put it on. But that's not easy either because it has to be zoned a certain way to be able to put a manufactured house on it.
We were wanting Rutherford county so Jerry could be closer to his kids when they're with their mother. That's basically out of the equation now. We can't afford the price of land in Rutherford county, and it's basically impossible to get land in the right zoning. We think we may have found some land that we really like in Madison, which isn't too bad distance-wise from the kids, and definitely better for me for driving to work, but we haven't found out if it's zoned right yet. Driving through the neighbourhood we think it's possible it may be. Some of the houses around it looked like they might be manufactured housing. There was definitely one brand new manufactured house a couple of blocks up from the land we looked at.
Keep your fingers crossed for us please. I've been getting kind of discouraged. It has seemed so far that nothing we have tried is working for us. The obstacles we're going to run into here is the land being zoned right, and the price of buying the land, getting the house set up and put down, and the price of the house combined and getting the financing for all of it with a reasonable monthly payment.
Even though it's seemed a bit discouraging however, I feel like we've gone about it the right way. We've explored all the options we can think of. We even looked at rent to owns/lease purchased, and if we can't get this land and such that we want, that'll probably be our last resort. We've gone through all the talk about financing, budgeting, spending. We know where our money goes, what we have to spend, what we don't have to spend but aren't unreasonable spending (like cell phones, netflix, video games, stuff like that), what we'll be able to put in a savings account. We've really talked it up one side and down the other.
Well, thanks for reading my 3 AM ramblings.
posted by AllieKat 8/05/2007 02:58:00 AM .:. 0 comments
Life, the Universe, and Everything
Well now that my parents, Robbie, and Jerry's kids know the news, I figure it's time to let you, my friends, know what is going on in our lives right now.
Jerry and I have talked about it for some time now, and he has asked me to marry him. With everything going on (ie: his divorce and my grandmother dying) we waited to make this general knowledge, but last weekend we told my parents, and this weekend he talked about it with his kids. Also, last week, after much haranguing of the lawyer and after 10 months of waiting, the dork lawyer finally filed the divorce papers. We've been looking for a house to buy and applying for mortgage approvals and such also.
We have a ring picked out for me and mostly paid for, but it's being held hostage until it's all paid off.
There's no set plans, no date, no idea where or anything. It's totally vague right now. We need to make sure the divorce is finalized, we need to find out what kind of mortgage we can get, find a house we want, go through that process. There's a lot of variables.
We're both happy. We get along so well. We want the same sort of things for the future (which I know from experience is so very important). We like the same things, the same books, movies, music. We can talk to each other, good and bad. Every relationship is going to have their problems, but I think that the more the good things matter and grow and add up, the smaller those problems are going to seem, and the less they matter in the grand scheme of things. We may have some unusual problems to deal with, but I think that it doesn't really affect our lives as much as I may have thought at first.
He's always been there for me. He was there for me as a friend during his marriage and my divorce, and I think I was there for him during his marriage's ending. He's been there for me during our growing personal relationship afterward, and that was especially evident during my grandmother's hospitalization and funeral.
And he must be good for me, since according to my doctor, I lost 20 pounds in the last three months.Labels: engagement, Jerry, marriage, wedding
posted by AllieKat 7/22/2007 07:57:00 PM .:. 0 comments
Grandmother
My grandmother died at 6 AM this morning of complications from double pneumonia, a urinary tract infect, gall stones, and a bowel blockage. She fought very hard and refused to quit. She had been suffering for two weeks.
It will be hard getting used to her not being here. My parents and I have lived with my grandmother for fifteen years (minus the years I was married and not living with them). For the last year and a half I have helped my parents take care of her, watching her while they got some time out, things like that. It's weird to realize that all three of us can actually go out at the same time.
She was a school teacher for 50 years and was always favourably remembered by all her students that came across her after leaving school. She's the only one left of her 7 brothers and 3 sisters. She was 98 years old, and would have been 99 in five months.
The viewing will be Wednesday night from four to eight, and the funeral will be Wednesday at two. I'll be back at work on Monday.
Thanks to everyone that has expressed concern and sympathy.Labels: family, grandmother
posted by AllieKat 7/02/2007 07:46:00 PM .:. 0 comments
When It Rains It Storms
My father had his gallbladder removed today.
I didn't take the day off work because my mother said it wasn't necessary. It's just a simple procedure. He would be in and out and home by afternoon.
Yesterday, my mother was fall over exhausted. My grandmother was being extremely difficult. She kept waking my mother up all through the night before. She kept shouting for her all that night and all during the day. My mother thought she might have to have me call out from work so I could drive my father to the hospital and she could rest.
So after both of us having a vague feeling of something going to happen, this morning while I was at work my mother called me to tell me my grandmother was going to the emergency room.
Long story short(ish), both my father and grandmother were in the hospital at the same time. Dad's home; he's fine. Granny's still there, and we're not really sure what is wrong with her yet. They thought it was an obstruction in her stomach but after X-rays they don't think that's the case.
Anyway, we're all exhausted and we have to be up early in the morning to go back.
posted by AllieKat 6/20/2007 09:42:00 PM .:. 0 comments
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