My passport came yesterday! Eee!

When that thing reached its ten year mark in 2008, it set into play a series of nightmares in which I found myself in a foreign country, suddenly aware that my passport had expired and I couldn’t go home. How I got in that predicament, I was never sure, seeing as I am pretty sure they don’t let you get on a plane to even Canada these days without a passport and a DNA swab, but bad dreams don’t really deal much in fact. Just fear. And lordy, it turns out I’m really, really afraid of being being stuck somewhere horrible like, say, Italy where, per my experience, the worst thing that happened to me involved discovering a vendor didn’t offer hazelnut gelato.

Um, yeah. Like I said, light on reality.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but the fabric I ordered for my wedding dress still isn’t here. I know! Isn’t that damn skippy? Look, I’ll get married in one of the five white sundresses I’ve got stashed in my closet if I have to, but that a seamstress is waiting, we’re going on six weeks until the blessed event and I, it turns out, am not so good at having things up in the air – well, I’m saying, ‘It’s no big deal,” with less and less conviction all the time.

Seriously, did you catch that? Six. Weeks. I’ve had one fairly hefty freakout, wherein I sat on the ottoman and cried until snot ran down my face and the Boy sat there puzzled and silent while I tried to explain that the impending job switch, the mortgage and the DIY wedding were all just too much for one person to be in charge of. It was pretty ugly. But so justified. What’s funny, though, is that the house has taken over all of the space in my brain slotted for the wedding junk and I’m now only vaguely aware that there’s this gigantic To Do list that I’m not… well, doing.

I probably care much less now because I have a passport AND a plane ticket and come the twenty third of May, I won’t give a rat’s ass what I was wearing a couple days before because I will be in Italy. Caring about gelato flavors.

Suckers.

I’m here!

Holy mother of Bob, you guys, I’m so spun around I’ve been relying on the label of my birth control container to tell me what day it is. And even then I’m still never quite sure.

From Monday afternoon when we took possession of the house, I have spent every free moment (including some lunch hours) cleaning and fixing and prepping and painting. I must have been kidding myself to think that we’d be taking on a relatively tidy piece of real estate – after all, it was inhabited – because after my third hour of sanding food and grime off of baseboards (even the mighty magic eraser failed, so I resorted to sandpaper), I realized that I was in for more than a few nasty surprises. Like the petrified hairball I found in one of the bedrooms. No, I’m not joking. Gagging, yes. But not joking.

There was an actual charcoal hard tater tot in the oven. Hungry? Yeah, me neither.

One of the many happy little surprises came when we discovered that the dog smell we’d thought was contained in the utility room (we hadn’t been assaulted by it anywhere else) was actually everywhere – saturated in the wood floors. So those? Are getting refinished. We had already planned on gutting the bathroom (and thank goodness, because you’d have to attack that room with a powerwasher before I’d actually consider using it) but between the floors and the investment in cleaning supplies we are hemorrhaging money. And elbow grease.  If we didn’t operate on a cash only system in our house, it would be pretty tempting to yank out the credit cards and pay someone to make this all better.

Though, I have to admit, I’m enjoying the labor part. Especially the projects involving spray paint. I think I’ve decided that when I grow up, that’s what I want to do. Spray pain stuff. No, not because of the contact high. Okay, maybe a little because of the contact high, but mostly because it’s so satisfying to change things with a ten dollar can of magic. And at this point, my spray paint projects are the cleanest surfaces in the joint. Too bad you can’t eat off of vent covers and the mailbox.

T-minus one month til move in. Grab yer rubber gloves!

And then this morning, I quit my job.

Like that? I figured we’d start at the end of the story this time and work our way back. Or, maybe, hop around in time a bit until we’re all dizzy and uncertain of the plot like your standard Lifetime Original Movie starring a former 90210 cast member. In any event, we’re taking things out of order.

Work anxiety reached its peak less than a week following the robbery. After working two weekends in a row to nail a proposal and presentation for a high profile job, I had the most humiliating experience of professional life. It felt like a tribunal, the way I was sat down in front of the firm’s leadership and grilled, item by item, on the contents of my job description. It was a series of, “You’re not doing this” followed by my, “Oh, yes I am” defense.  It’s shameful to say that I had grown accustomed to being talked to without much respect – due both for my experience and for just being another human, for pete’s sake -  but something happened toward the end of the meeting. I gave up. And when the meeting broke, three of us stayed behind, and I burst into tears. I was tired. Exhausted.

“I mean, he is putting food on our tables,” one coworker said, as though to offer an excuse.

“No,” I said, feeling a knot of hot rage form in my stomach. “You are. You do the work that brings in the money and in return, he lets you have a little bit of it. So unless you mean that he comes to your house at night and quite literally serves up dinner, he’s not putting jack on your table. He needs you and you need him – only, one of you doesn’t seem to be aware of that.”

Maybe we’d all been drinking the same, In This Economy flavored Kool Aid, but I realized I was done. I told them that I could have another job tomorrow, conceding straight away, though, that was the last thing I wanted to do. Admit defeat. Admit I’d been wrong to take the job even after people had warned me. “Just make sure you know what you’re getting into,” a complete stranger had told me.  The Dork Lord had been wanting me to get out for months. “No one should talk to you that way,” he’d said. He was right.

Obviously, it was a bit of an exaggeration to say I could land a new job in 24 hours. It took a couple weeks. By then, though, there was a home loan in progress and there was nothing I could do but accept the job offer and wait. It was torture.  So was resigning, though. I worried for weeks, in a punishing sort of way,  about how it would play out – doing what’s best for you doesn’t always make other folks exactly happy. My hands shook when I handed over my letter. And even once it was delivered, I didn’t exactly feel better.

That took a couple of hours.

Now I feel like a tremendous weight has been lifted. I’ve been feeling so heavy with this decision that I haven’t been able to celebrate. No more! I’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge, a key to the new house (we take possession today) and a new job to start on Thursday. I don’t even know where to begin! Ten bucks says I drink that shit straight from the bottle and fall asleep on our new kitchen floor.

We’re homeowners!

And, actually, landlords until Monday. But the owning thing is pretty much the most awesometastic feeling ever.

There was a lot of stress leading up to today – and that’s the biggest reason I’ve been 100% less bloggery the last couple of weeks – and on Monday when I get to tell you the whole sordid story you’re going shake your heads and say, “No WONDER.” It will be a sharing moment. We’ll all hug. In the meantime, you know what I’m going to do? Take a nap. And sleep the deep, deep sleep of someone who owes a financial institution a hundred thousand dollars or so more than she can possibly be worth.

Oh, wait.

Last night, I sat in the bathtub with a glass of wine and watched my heartbeat go thub thub under the skin around my bellybutton for over an hour. Literal navel gazing. Setting a new standard of Gen X* uselessness. And if I thought that at the conclusion of that epically newsworthy event I’d have emerged tranquil and enlightened, I fell a bit short, having only accomplished pruny and very, very clean. It was a good effort, though.

Waiting to close on the house has me in gen-u-ine fits of nerves this week. Once the loan is in underwriting, you can’t really do anything with your finances. I have wedding money to deposit (and deposits to pay), transactions with the insurance company (we have their offer, and soon their check and soon after that, laptops at home!) and other exciting adventures that involve deposits and transfers – none of which I can do until the loan is officially approved. Otherwise, it’s back to the documentation and proof stage and I want to go there about as much as I want to open my Twitter app before SXSW is over. Ugh.

I’m so excited by the idea of having a computer at home again! I won’t lie, though, I’m also really, really nervous about buying anything that’s not cemented into the floor, surrounded by laser beams and accessible only by retinal scan. This is what a successful home robbery will do – make you wish you lived in a bad Mike Meyers spy film. Yeah, baby.

I’ve been working on getting the last 50 thank you notes out – I’m simultaneously addressing wedding invitations so if you haven’t yet gotten your note, it’s because I’m moving a little bit slower, what with the epic hand cramp and all. By this weekend, I promise! My New Year’s resolution was to send more real mail. I think I can safely put a little black check mark next to that one.

*Actually, I don’t know if I’m Gen X or some other more generic classification of Kids These Days. Anyone? I’m 32 and change.