Predicting the Past

Facebook Memories were fun yesterday...

Four years ago, I posted this:

Ahh... Nope.

(Incidentally, if you read that entry, "my friends" was one specific person in particular, and now I kind of want to go back and kick 2012 Laura's rear for giving a flying crud about it. Ahh well, hindsight.)

THEN, one year ago yesterday, I posted this:

Aaaand again... Nope.

When I pointed this out to James last night, he wondered if we could do this negatively and it would work. For instance, could I post, "We're definitely not winning Powerball this time! We aren't even buying a ticket!" Then two years from now when we read that, we would laugh so hard, our butler would have to bring us glasses of Diet Coke and beer (you guess who gets which).

Now, we're vaguely planning to buy a house in a year. We've already talked to a loan officer, and, man, was she about 1000 times awesomer than the stupid VA outfit we tried to use last year. That company didn't bother to tell us about a pretty substantial collection account that we were able to settle easy enough (since, you know, this new lady actually TOLD US ABOUT IT). And she's given us a lot of pointers about things to do between now and then to keep our credit squeaky clean.

But, really, who knows? Apparently, I can't even plan things for two days in advance (as you saw if you read about my failed lease-signing), so two years from this moment, I might not be blogging in my newish house. I might be on my way to Mars in a private space carrier. You don't know.

In other news, Mal is growing by leaps and bounds, developmentally. He's had a rough couple of weeks with teething/congestion, then a stomach bug that only lasted 24 hours but shied him away from eating food for nearly a week, and now teething/congestion again. BUT he's eaten more than ever the past two days, and he's insisting more and more upon feeding himself.

Also, he's finally putting his hand up to his mouth and smacking when he wants something to eat, so we have a really clear sign when he's hungry!

He is obsessed with his dad. He goes around every few hours, looking throughout the apartment and saying, "Daddy?" like maybe he got back home and sneaked in. Especially after Mal wakes up from his nap. Cute but a little sad because, man, James has some long days to get that every other Friday off. Thankfully, tomorrow is the actual Friday (which isn't his day off, but it is his payday, so it's still a good Friday), and Mal will get him for the whole weekend.

Our apartment is going to be "upgraded" next week. I thought they were doing it when our lease renews at the end of May, and I'm actually kind of glad they're doing it now and gave us short notice because that minimizes the time I have to feel anxiety about it. I did mention to the manager that we've worked really long and hard to come to a 1 o'clockish naptime and if they could get here early and be done by then, I'd love it. She thanked me for touching base and said she'd put us on the top of the list every day.

They're replacing our hard flooring with darker flooring I don't love, but it's supposed to be nicer; they're actually replacing all of the carpet on the bottom floors, too, with the same hard flooring, but they can't do that up here because they didn't do the proper sound insulation stuff when they built the building and it's too expensive to do now. I'm glad. I know lots of people hate carpet, but I love it. If I can afford nice rugs some day, maybe I'll get over my love for carpet. But for now, it's just more comfy to me.

They're also replacing our formica in the kitchen with granite. Fortunately, they're going dark-to-light with this switch-out, so the flooring won't bring down the brightness of the apartment too much. We're also getting a goose-neck sink, which Mal should love (eyeroll) and a new lighting fixture in the kitchen. That stupid thing now is the one thing I said I hated when we moved in. It is the one upgrade I'm really looking forward to.

Then they're putting in a white tile backsplash all the way from the countertop to the cabinets, so that'll be useful. And trimming out our mirrors in the bathroom, because... well, who cares? I guess someone does.

It will be interesting to see how much our rent goes up at renewal because of these things. They're upgrades, see? Our downstairs neighbor said that she's heard increases as much as $200 a month. That'll suck bigtime, but to more would be more than $2400, so we'll suck it up for a year.

It has nothing to do with anything, but if they try to raise it that much, it'll be tempting to ask how much we can deduct in past rent for the fact that our gated community has only been properly gated for about two months of the now 9 months we've lived here. Speaking of that, when I worked as a property manager in Las Vegas, it seemed like the gates were always causing problems. Does anyone live anywhere that the gates are actually functional the majority of the time? And by "functional," that includes the ability of people to call you from the gate and you to open the gate from your house. Because we've NEVER been able to do that. But we haven't made too big of a deal about it because I just tell everyone who's coming over what is supposed to be the super secret master gate code.

I have thoughts a lot, and I think I want to blog more. I have started about 5 blog posts and had to stop when Mal woke up and then never cared enough to finish them (most are about parenting, and you guys don't give a wet carp about that), but often when I can just sit, I mostly want to veg out, plan our mini-trips, or catch up on a sitcom. That's who I am now. Maybe I'll have more energy to blog in a year or so.

Oh, but I want to do something big for Easter for my daughter. Don't tell her. But if you know where to get the biggest, highest-quality chocolate bunny (read: not Palmer's), let me know!