Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh

So, one of my wonderful birthday gifts from my beloved was a gift certificate for a pedicure and facial at a day spa/salon on the north side of town.

Some of you may remember that we closed on the house on the day before my birthday....and then we moved a week ahead of schedule.

As a result of those things happening in that order, I lost the gift certificate, but fortunately, the spa keeps records....so I had my appointment today.

The pedicure was lovely....but there was some kind of internal mis-communication at the spa, and the facial was transformed into a full hour of therapeutic massage.

Most of you know that I have been a massage therapist for the past 20 some years....and that I have not had a massage since before I moved away from Chicago.

Needless to say, I am BLISSED OUT! A facial would have been perfect...lovely....much needed....but a massage?

Way beyond needed and appreciated!

Yay~!

In other news, we spent money again this weekend. Hah! I hope that stops, or at least slows down, soon....

We really needed a shade for the window seat window in the living room, because the lady who sold us the house took the custom made window treatment that was in there. The window has been naked all this time.

We also, or rather *I* also, really needed room darkening shades for the bedroom. So, we had two Blood Bath and Beyond coupons for 20% off, and we went down separate check out lanes, and saved a little on these items.

The one for the living room wasn't that expensive to begin with, so the 20% made it even more affordable...but the room darkening ones were pricey, and we need three altogether, but stuck with two, for the bigger windows, on this trip. At least we were able to get 20% off on one of those, too.

Then we put a few bucks down at Lowes. Again. Seems like we go to Lowes every weekend.

Then to the health store, and the pet store....

And then we spent some money getting the awesome poster for the dining room re- framed (it met with a mis hap in the move).

That's enough cash outlay for this weekend! Especially since we gots lots of new medical bills for Dave...sigh....

Anyway...'s all good! The house is coming together.

Maybe tomorrow we will start painting the office??

so, yeah.....

we went to the apartment on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, and did the final out loading of possessions.

While Dave delivered the last car load of stuff to the house, I stayed in the apartment, bravely risking being there alone with the upstairs neighbors at home, and cleaned the HELL out of that place (see the lovely vacuum tracks in the above photo?).

Since the upstairs neighbors seemed to be having one of their marathon "sleeping it off" days in bed, I also made as much noise as physically possible.

Dave will call one day soon here and make an appointment with the management office to go do the final inspection, and to hand over the keys. Hopefully, they will remit the security deposit refund post haste after that day.

The place has been vacant since 5/21, and completely empty since 5/29, but we had to pay rent on it, and keep it insured, until 6/15, so Dave will wait until 6/15.

My new friend Johnny from work was instrumental in our moving process. Dave's son was almost completely useless (he and his buddy with the trailer helped on 5/22, to move the big furniture, but they showed up about 2 hours late, and wanted to be fed before they did any work).

We really needed a lot more help than that, and Johnny and his little pick up truck came through. I have told him that I can never thank him enough, but one of these days, at the very least, I will have him over as our first "official" dinner guest.

With our cars, and Johnny's truck, the three of us probably made a combined total of about 15 trips. If my step son had been a little more willing to help out his dad, it would have been way less than that.

Oh well.

He's young and single, and doesn't really care about anything but having fun.

IN other news, the bills for Dave's cardiac stress test have now come in.

(the post office finally got our forwarding order figured out...first they said our apartment was vacant back on 5/15, before we even requested a forwarding order, then they screwed it up a second time, and started returning our mail instead of forwarding....morons!!)

Just over the last 6 weeks or so, we finally finished paying off his heart attack bills from Dec. 2009, and the 3 days in the hospital from April 2010 ----and now we have a spanking new $1000 in medical bills.

Apparently, our insurance has a $2500 deductible.

Fuck. It. Tee.

The lowest payment the heart hospital would accept is $100 a month. What the fuck? I work in medical billing, and 99% of the time, payment plan amounts are around $50.

Sigh.

So much for starting to try to save a little each month.

Also? Jack the cat LOVES his new house. He likes to sit atop the kitchen cabinets, and he has been, over all, very playful and happy. He seems to enjoy the sound of his feet running on the shiny wood floors!

Really?

101 ? On June 6th?