After becca's inspiring happy post...

Hi girls, it's me, Amber, writing from our new home! Joe is off working on the bathroom at the train house. I am sitting here eating green beans and potato chips...not together, but I need to use both of them up. And when you're sick nothing sounds good anyway, so why not eat stuff that needs to be used up?

Yes, I'm sick. It started two days ago with a sore throat; now it's a cough that inspires the gag reflex - lovely. Plus a constant headache, body aches, and a chill. But! At least I can breathe through my nose most of the time! I'm not as sick as I was last month, but it's still pretty miserable when there's a TON of stuff to do!

When we first got married, we bought a really nice mattress set with our wedding money. We moved our old bed to the spare room. When we moved the other day, we found a giant - I mean, giant, it takes up about 1/3 of the mattress - MOLD spot between the mattress and box spring! We think it's the manufacturer's fault because we didn't have mold elsewhere, and we didn't put any moisture on the bed. But we have to wait until May 17 before we can get an inspector to come and even LOOK at the mattress and tell us if it's covered under warranty! Which means it'll probably be even longer than that before we get our mattress to sleep on! Joe doesn't want to move a moldy mattress into the new house - I agree with him. Because my allergies are really bad and a moldy mattress is just gross.

Of course we could just move our old mattress to our new house, but we already volunteered it for the lady who is temporarily staying in our house with her three kids (she's a single mom of three with a well-paying job, and she is in unfortunate circumstances; she has an offer on a house to buy and she's just living at our place for a few weeks till she hears back about the house). So we are sleeping on Joe's parents' air mattress. I haven't complained at all because what good will it do and it's better than sleeping on the floor - but it really sucks to be sick and have to sleep on an air mattress. Joe doesn't mind because it's so firm. I, of course, feel like I may as well be sleeping on the floor. And it doesn't really feel like a bedroom without a bed.

We also left our couches at our old house. We spent all day (well, until I died from sickness and whininess and "I want to take a nap"-ness) sofa shopping. Another half-day ought to do it; we now know what we want and what we want to pay and what we have left to do before we decide what to buy. Exciting thing is that we are buying NEW ones! And Angela...we sat on the couch you guys bought at Ashley and Joe actually liked it!

We watched Minority Report last night. It was actually kind of cozy, laying on the floor by the TV with blankets and pillows. It was nice relaxing together, and I'm grateful we have a TV.

I'm also grateful for my amazing soaking tub!!!! I took a bath the day I got sick...wow, it fills up so fast and I used the bubble bath that becca got me (well, actually I think I used it up and bought some more, but you introduced me to it. Moonlit Path or something.) I was super annoyed at the shower nozzle in the shower, which was all hard-water-caked and it sprayed everywhere and I couldn't manipulate it. Joe replaced it and now I love it! Except it has a setting and the water doesn't get very hot so Joe is going to fix that too.

One of the sinks in the master bath has a leak so we are just not using it for now. And that is okay.

Let's see...I love the central heating, but when you're sick you're still cold all the time. So I'm still dragging a space heater around all the time.

At first I was excited about the fridge, but it turns out the fridge space is actually much smaller than our previous fridge, even if the freezer is bigger. We need a new microwave too (the one we have stays on even when you press "Stop/Clear") and range/oven (it is SO caked with black grease that it lights on a fire that comes up out of the range when we use the self-cleaning oven feature!). Oh, and a new dishwasher because this one is even sucker than our old one. How can dishes come out dirtier than they were put in?

All this is quite annoying to me, who was looking forward to the perfect kitchen. I can't use the oven at all and I'm going to have to hand-wash dishes. I've spent the last two hours researching kitchen appliances though so maybe we'll get new appliances soon. I'm so glad we budgeted for all this! Well, for most of it.

The washer and dryer, you may recall, are brand-new. I still love them but now I'm slightly annoyed. At the old house we had them stacked on top of each other, but here we have them side-by-side. Worse, the doors to the washer and dryer open up against each other. So when I'm moving clothes from the washer, I have to grab a handful, lift it out and over two doors, spilling stuff on the floor on both sides. Joe said eventually we may stack them. Which would be nice because right now all the dirty laundry is going in the bathroom, and all the stuff from the garage ends up on top of the washer/dryer, and dirt gets tracked in which is gross when I'm dropping clothes on the floor. But I do love the fact that I can wash huge loads of laundry!

Oh! The cats! It was so funny how they reacted to the new house. Gordo immediately left his cage and started wandering around, eyes wide, exploring upstairs and down. Jasmine meowed loudly and constantly; she hasn't been in a carrier since she was a kitten 2 years ago. She ran around, half-exploring and half looking for an escape. Wiggle shocked me; she wouldn't even leave her cage for half an hour, even though the door was open! She just huddled there and meowed, terrified. She's usually the gutsy one of the group. It took a while to convince Wiggle and Jasmine to come downstairs. When they did, they found a way behind the washer and dryer, curled up together and fell asleep back there! Joe found them when he went back to fix the dryer vent (another thing I'm grateful for - the ability to do laundry now!!!).

I start school on Monday. Just two classes; I'm so glad Joe convinced me not to take the 4!

Sorry for all the venting and complaining. I really am so grateful to be here; I'm just tired of crap!