Archive for moving in

Movin’ On Up (Or Not)

{ April 28, 2009 @ 3:52 am } · { love, moving in, relationships }
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I feel sort of hopeless about the moving in together thing.  Like it may never happen.

I already knew there were obstacles.  Like I discussed in my last post.  He has a condo, he has to sell it, that could take a long time, blah blah blah.  You’ve heard it all before. 

But I was at his place over the weekend, and he was showing me some houses that he was looking at online.  And I said, “Babe, do you anticipate buying a house that is currently on the market[?]“, because it seems impossible to me that it could all happen quickly enough.  We started talking about the whole thing.

Then we came to money issues.  Namely, how the hell does one come up with 20% down?  I have quite a bit of money saved, but certainly not 20%.  He has equity in his condo, so when he sells it, he’ll have that money.  It might get us close to 20%.  But not quite.  So then he started talking about how I might be eligible for first time home-buyers programs.  Ok, fine.

But I had to break it to him that I don’t intend for us to jointly purchase property without any kind of commitment in our relationship.  I’ve been reluctant to bring it up, because I don’t want to seem like I’m pushing him into something or that I’m punishing him for not having asked me to marry him yet.  I just don’t think it is a smart idea.  Because if we break up?  We’ll basically have to go through a divorce without ever having been married.  We will have to sell the house, or one of us will have to buy the other one out of the property.  A huge mess. 

So then what are our options?  He could buy the house alone.  But then he will get approved for much less of a mortgage since I won’t be on it.  So our housing choices will be much more limited.  Ugh. 

Am I shooting myself in the foot here?  I don’t want to make it more difficult, but I also don’t want to jump the gun. Buying a house is a big deal for me.  Moving in together is a big deal for me.  I don’t take it lightly. 

So anyway, he basically said, well, I don’t think we should make more of a commitment until we live together.  And I understand that, I do.  I could go either way, myself.  I don’t mind living together before getting married, but I could do it the other way too. 

But the fact that he is so adamant about us living together before getting engaged or married sort of reinforces my point, I think.  What is basically boils down to is that he isn’t sure.  And why do I want to tie myself financially to someone who isn’t sure?

I don’t love it that he is still unsure, but I do understand it.  He’s just being careful and cautious, and that is not a bad thing.  I’m not one to rush into anything either, but it really is getting to be time.  I need to know that this is going where I want it to go, and that it isn’t going to take several more years to get there. 

We haven’t talked about marriage really at all because he brought it up and I didn’ t want bring it up because I didn’t want to be THAT girl.  Always talking (whining) about getting married.  I didn’t want to push him (or anyone) into marrying me.  It’s just so cliche – you know?   But as my friend recently reminded me, “you have to be some form of THAT girl.  THAT girl?  Is married.  You are not.  Do the math.”

I also didn’t want to be THAT girl who is desperately listening to her biological clock ticking.  Because we know how it ends for that girl (Mary and Bachelor Bob, anyone?).  In three and a half hears I will be 35, and I think we all know what that means (unless you happen to be male, dear reader).  I’ve never been concerned with things happening at a certain pace or in a certain time, but now I find myself concerned about it.  I want things to happen totally organically, but maybe that isn’t realistic.  I don’t know. 

I know it will all work out, I just want it to be sooner rather than later.  And I’m getting impatient.

At a snail’s pace…

{ April 16, 2009 @ 9:26 pm } · { dating, life, moving in }
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Hello people!

What’s new?  Is it just me, or is it easier to write blog posts when something is going wrong?  Seems I can only find material if I want to complain about something.  Hence my absence from the blog for the last couple of months.  I should be interesting enough to be able to write about my life, even in good times.  But, well folks, I’m just not. 

Let’s see, where were we?

B and I moving in together.  Will happen sometime.  But evidently no time in the foreseeable future.  You’d think it would be easier.  We are two grown adults, both wanting to live together.  But no.  I can pretty much pick up and move at any time.  I am not the problem. 

B has a condo.  It is far too tiny for me to move in there with him.  So he needs to sell his place.  But before he sells the place he needs to fix the crack in the ceiling and get a new tub/shower.  Both of which he has been talking about since I’ve known him.  I’ve been riding him about this stuff lately.  His friend (always nice to befriend a contractor) can do it for him, and don’t worry because, “it won’t take Mark long to fix this at all.”  Ok, so DO IT!!!  But first he needs to get an estimate, and then approved by the condo board and blah blah blah.  Ok, dude, but please, just do something!

Now, mind you, even once he does this stuff, we are still not in the clear.  He still has to sell the place.  Which is not looking too great since there are several units for sale in his building.  One of which has been up for 1.5 year and another that has been for sale for 2.5 years. 

Awesome.  So basically by the time he gets the stuff done, gets the place on the market, and gets it sold, all of my good child-bearing years will be gone. 

I know this all begs the question (which my mother already asked):  does he really want to move in with me?  But he does.  I’m confident about that.  It was all his idea to begin with.  And he never really worries about how long it will take to sell his condo because he had always planned to borrow money from his parents to buy a bigger place and just pay them back when his place sold.

Um, no.  Maybe that was a fine idea before I was in the picture.  But I’m not comfortable borrowing money from his mother so that we can live together, even temporarily.

So we wait. 

And I’m pretty sure that every time I tell my landlord I need another extension/lease for 3 more months or 6 more months, or whatever, he laughs behind my back.  Because any way I slice it, I am not getting out of that apartment any time soon.

NEXT UP:  The only man on earth who doesn’t want to vacation (for free) in Hawaii.  Otherwise known as my boyfriend.

What’s new?

{ January 30, 2009 @ 3:21 am } · { dating, life, moving in, relationships }
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I had such good intentions for several posts I was going to write in January, discussing my goals for the new year and whatnot.  That didn’t happen.  But suffice it to say that none of it was terribly original anyway.  I mostly have the same goals as everyone else.  Blah blah blah, you know?

Anyway, I’ve been gone for a while.  Not from my life, just from this blog.  When everything is going along normally, I don’t have much to write about, I guess.  I guess I need more angst.  Not that I want it.  I would rather have writer’s block than genuine angst, I guess.

So what have I been up to lately?  More of the same, mostly.  I saw Wicked over the weekend.  It was the last weekend in Chicago, and I hadn’t realized it was leaving until the last minute, so I got totally nailed on the ticket prices, but I did manage to get tickets so B and I had a nice night out in the city.  Wicked was great, by the way.  Go see it if you can when it tours. 

Also, I got a new car!  Yay!  I am 30 years old (for another month) and this is my first new car ever!  Actually it is the first car that I’ve ever really bought.  The last one I bought from my mom, so I don’t think that counts.  I am extremely lucky that I had gotten a rather large settlement (on one of my cases I was working on) right before my tangle with the plow truck, so I was able to buy the car.  Had I gotten in the accident about 3 weeks earlier, I would have cried a lot of tears worrying about how I was going to get a new car.  Sadly, I cleaned out the savings account I had just opened, but I had enough to buy the new car (Honda CR-V) and don’t have to worry about a car payment.   So I was happy.  Now I’m back to poor.  It was so nice to have a nice savings account for once.  It was fun while it lasted. 

Speaking of financials, I had one beast of a year last year.  I just got my W-2 today, and it was not pretty.  But this year has already started off extremely well for me and I have another big settlement coming.  So I finally feel better about my financial security (something that has always been an issue for me, especially because of my very very large student loans).  I hope those kind of worries are behind me.  But I guess those kind of worries never go away, right?

As for B and I – well, we’ve been dating for two years now.  Things are moving along.  For the last month or two I have really been starting to feel anxious about us moving in together.  Not anxious nervous, but anxious ready.  We’ve talked about it for a while, as you guys know, but I never felt like I was in a big rush.  Always there have been hurdles for both of us to get over before it could happen.  For me, I need to find a job closer to where he lives.  For him, he needs to fix a few things in his house and sell it before he could buy a new (and bigger) one.  I’ve basically decided that I would move up there, even with the job I have now.  And perhaps the commute would motivate me to finally hit the job trail harder than I have in the past (and present). 

So now I feel like I’m waiting on him and I want it to happen soon. 

And before I always figured that he would buy a new house (and that’s how he talks about it too), and then I would move in with him.  But now that I have more cases paying out and will have substantial amounts of capital to contribute, he has said a few things about us buying it together.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  It seems like too big of a commitment given that we are not married (or at least engaged).  Even when I had roommates I never wanted to jointly buy anything, because at some point you move on, and then who takes the item that you bought together?  And obviously a house is a much bigger deal.  Of course I wouldn’t even move in with him if I thought we were going to break up, but one never knows.  What do you think?  I guess when it gets closer to becoming a reality we will have to talk about it. 

Anyway.  Anyone watch Lost last night?  I love you, Lost, but the time travel thing is super annoying.  Seriously.  Stop it.  Same goes for Izzy’s ghost on Grey’s Anatomy.  He’s gotta go.

We are family

{ September 9, 2008 @ 3:37 am } · { family, moving in }
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Over the weekend B and I went to visit my dad and stepmom.  They live about 5 hours away from me, and B had never been with me to visit them.  In fact, the only time B has met my dad at all was at my birthday party.  So I was looking forward to us going.

It went really well.  We had a really good time.  It was nice and easy.  My dad is really easy-going, as is B, so they got along well.  And they kept us pretty busy all weekend.  We lost some money at the horse races.  We went golfing, which was a first for me.  My dad bought me a set of clubs last summer, and I’ve been to the driving range a few times, with fairly limited success.  But it was pretty fun actually playing.  Except for about 4 holes in the middle where I got all 9s.  I was pretty aggravated at that point. 

On Saturday night, my step-brother, who is 24, took us all out to their city’s downtown area and we went bar-hopping.  First he took us to an upscale mexican restaurant/bar for mojitos.  I had strawberry.  Yum!  Then we went to a belgian-themed bar, for beer.  I can’t stand beer, but B has this fantasy of turning me into a beer-drinking, football-watching kind of girl (not going to happen), so he and my step-brother found a peach beer for me to drink.  Truthfully, it wasn’t bad.  I actually kind of liked it, but don’t tell B.  After that we went to a blues bar with a live band.  A great way to cap off the evening. 

My dad tried to talk to B a lot about his dad.   I appreciated that, because I think a lot of people would have skirted the subject, given that it hasn’t been even a month since his dad passed away.  And I think B was happy to talk about him.

I was just happy to have my two favorite men in the same place for a few days.  And of course, my stepmom and brother. 

Kara asked me if B and I have discussed moving in together any more.  We haven’t.  We sort of tabled that discussion, because it just isn’t very practical right now.  My job is down here, his is up there.  Also, his place isn’t big enough for the both of us, so he would need to sell his place and find a bigger one.  So we have a few details to work out before that can happen.  I don’t know, maybe we are doing it backwards.  Maybe we need to make the moving in together the top priority and work everything else out from there, I don’t know.  I’m not sure if we are supposed to wait for the time to be right or make the time right. 

It’s just weird because I’ve been so independent for so long.  And B too.  In some sense, I think it is easier to move in/get married when you are younger.  None of my girlfriends ever lived on their own.  Not that I think that is better, necessarily, just maybe an easier transition, when you are just getting out of college and are used to moving every year and having roommates.  Not that I wouldn’t love to live with B, its just that I’m so used to being selfish and doing what is easiest/best for me.  So when I think about moving up there while I have my current job and signing myself up for an hour long (at least) commute twice a day,  just think, “meh”.  Is that bad?

So, anyway, we’ll definitely get there, I’m just not sure how soon it is going to be.  Probably once B is able to sell his place and get a larger one, then we’ll really give it more serious consideration.