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Oops, it's been too long
Mar. 9th, 2012 10:43 amI hope I don't forget all the little things I've been meaning to post about.
The last post was in December, and I still can haz lovely delicious comfortable bed. I almost hate to spend my night somewhere else. Almost.
Well, clearly the holidays happened and stuff. ::waves hand:: In more exciting news, I had a mediation meeting in January and another one in February. Both of these have been more productive than I would have hoped. The first meeting got us agreeing to work with a mortgage specialist on determining how much either of us can afford; this led to the Ex realizing that she could, after all, afford a decent house or townhouse, in a decent location. Surprise! I mean, I could have told her this, but I knew she wouldn't hear it from me. The second meeting allowed her to identify how much she could afford on her own, and accept the concept that I didn't have to provide 100% of her down payment.
It still means a refinancing of my mortgage, even just to get her off, and a bit of extra cash from that to give to her, but one hopes the rates will remain low enough that my payments can remain around the same. This will make it -- if I recall correctly -- the fifth refinance since I bought the house. Ugh. On the other hand, she's not stressed out about GETTING MONEY and now she's house-hunting. If it means she also takes the youngest cat, my son's favorite little ninja kitty, then I'm all for it. Poor guy doesn't get along with the older cats and even though he loves the dogs, he can't be left out. He purrs a lot, so he's still a happy youngster.
The FG is still just as F and G as ever. Her daughter and son-in-law have begun to hear some of my stories, like the ones about the sheep, and seem to think they're funny. They met the Sonny at one of our dinners back in December, before his knee surgery, so he knows what they look like and vice-versa. His toxic girlfriend, BTW, is now history. He apparently dumped her -- or they mutually agreed to cool it -- before Christmas. He has a new one now, whom I shall refer to as "Nevermore". Let's hope she's not nearly as toxic, which would not be difficult. Toxic Girl was Toxic. Ugh.
Dogs are happy dogs. We play with the tennis ball before meals, run around the yard, eat, play, and get chewy treats like pig ears (I'm avoiding rawhide as anything beef seems to trigger allergic reactions, in the skin).
Cats are happy cats. Cleo and Brady get along very well, much better than he did with Kedgie, who was a Princess of the First People and A Higher Power. Cinder is now 19 and still setting daily records for the Oldest Cat I've Ever Had. She haz a cranky and a hungry, then a sleepy. Apparently she can hear the wind when it's howling, and it bothered her, so she yowled in Sonny's ear at 3 am. Either it was the wind or else she was hungry again, we don't know.
The FG took me skiing one weekend about a month ago; she's been dying for lack of snow this winter and we managed to eke out a cross-country session on some snow, surrounded by brownish green fields. I fell only once this time (!!) and did a better job skiing. She zoomed around and I had fun watching her ski. The following weekend we made a trip to NY to surprise my mother for her birthday (which was actually the weekend after, but they'd managed to schedule themselves out of town on that date, drat them). My brother came down with his two sons; we all met at our cousin's house and surprised her. She had already suspected something was up, particularly after she found out Dad had canceled their concert tickets, but she didn't know exactly what. We all had a wonderful time; there were her grandchildren and the cousins' kids all running around -- Sonny babysat them and my cousin made it "worth his while" with a $20, which is a family tradition and a joke related to her mom's habit of slipping twenties to the kids.
Last weekend we took the Sonny for a bike ride out at Harper's Ferry. We started off ok, then he got sulky and wasn't paying attention, so he ran into me because he didn't realize I'd stopped to look at the river. The bruise is fading nicely, thanks. He failed to apologize, instead choosing to argue, so I gave him heck and rode off; she gave him heck and then he came up to apologize very nicely. We all had a much better afternoon then.
Somewhere in the past two weeks I saw "My Neighbor Totoro"; a lovely movie that I highly recommend. It's one of those where at the end, you turn to your loved one and say "I ought to buy it". It shows aspects of Japanese culture that I'd never seen before, which was nice as well as educational; it is about love and family; it contains magic and the adults treat the children with great respect. Definitely worth seeing!
I think that's good for now.
The last post was in December, and I still can haz lovely delicious comfortable bed. I almost hate to spend my night somewhere else. Almost.
Well, clearly the holidays happened and stuff. ::waves hand:: In more exciting news, I had a mediation meeting in January and another one in February. Both of these have been more productive than I would have hoped. The first meeting got us agreeing to work with a mortgage specialist on determining how much either of us can afford; this led to the Ex realizing that she could, after all, afford a decent house or townhouse, in a decent location. Surprise! I mean, I could have told her this, but I knew she wouldn't hear it from me. The second meeting allowed her to identify how much she could afford on her own, and accept the concept that I didn't have to provide 100% of her down payment.
It still means a refinancing of my mortgage, even just to get her off, and a bit of extra cash from that to give to her, but one hopes the rates will remain low enough that my payments can remain around the same. This will make it -- if I recall correctly -- the fifth refinance since I bought the house. Ugh. On the other hand, she's not stressed out about GETTING MONEY and now she's house-hunting. If it means she also takes the youngest cat, my son's favorite little ninja kitty, then I'm all for it. Poor guy doesn't get along with the older cats and even though he loves the dogs, he can't be left out. He purrs a lot, so he's still a happy youngster.
The FG is still just as F and G as ever. Her daughter and son-in-law have begun to hear some of my stories, like the ones about the sheep, and seem to think they're funny. They met the Sonny at one of our dinners back in December, before his knee surgery, so he knows what they look like and vice-versa. His toxic girlfriend, BTW, is now history. He apparently dumped her -- or they mutually agreed to cool it -- before Christmas. He has a new one now, whom I shall refer to as "Nevermore". Let's hope she's not nearly as toxic, which would not be difficult. Toxic Girl was Toxic. Ugh.
Dogs are happy dogs. We play with the tennis ball before meals, run around the yard, eat, play, and get chewy treats like pig ears (I'm avoiding rawhide as anything beef seems to trigger allergic reactions, in the skin).
Cats are happy cats. Cleo and Brady get along very well, much better than he did with Kedgie, who was a Princess of the First People and A Higher Power. Cinder is now 19 and still setting daily records for the Oldest Cat I've Ever Had. She haz a cranky and a hungry, then a sleepy. Apparently she can hear the wind when it's howling, and it bothered her, so she yowled in Sonny's ear at 3 am. Either it was the wind or else she was hungry again, we don't know.
The FG took me skiing one weekend about a month ago; she's been dying for lack of snow this winter and we managed to eke out a cross-country session on some snow, surrounded by brownish green fields. I fell only once this time (!!) and did a better job skiing. She zoomed around and I had fun watching her ski. The following weekend we made a trip to NY to surprise my mother for her birthday (which was actually the weekend after, but they'd managed to schedule themselves out of town on that date, drat them). My brother came down with his two sons; we all met at our cousin's house and surprised her. She had already suspected something was up, particularly after she found out Dad had canceled their concert tickets, but she didn't know exactly what. We all had a wonderful time; there were her grandchildren and the cousins' kids all running around -- Sonny babysat them and my cousin made it "worth his while" with a $20, which is a family tradition and a joke related to her mom's habit of slipping twenties to the kids.
Last weekend we took the Sonny for a bike ride out at Harper's Ferry. We started off ok, then he got sulky and wasn't paying attention, so he ran into me because he didn't realize I'd stopped to look at the river. The bruise is fading nicely, thanks. He failed to apologize, instead choosing to argue, so I gave him heck and rode off; she gave him heck and then he came up to apologize very nicely. We all had a much better afternoon then.
Somewhere in the past two weeks I saw "My Neighbor Totoro"; a lovely movie that I highly recommend. It's one of those where at the end, you turn to your loved one and say "I ought to buy it". It shows aspects of Japanese culture that I'd never seen before, which was nice as well as educational; it is about love and family; it contains magic and the adults treat the children with great respect. Definitely worth seeing!
I think that's good for now.
