Freedom!

Thak got out of the Army today. OK, so not really since his Active Duty contract is actually up in another month and a half, and knowing that there are still two years left of Reserve time before he'll REALLY be out kind of puts a damper on the fun of this, but he did sign out on terminal leave, and this is a rather large step in moving on to where we want to be.

I'm sick like death and Orren's just getting over whatever this thing is that I've got, so while we'd love to go and celebrate, we probably aren't up to anything more elaborate than take-out. I'm continuing to pack and get ready for our move to our new house in a week and a half. We picked out our appliances yesterday (they're all included! That means the fridge we bought when we moved in here can either go to the garage and be Thak's beer fridge, or go on Craigslist and make us a little money). It made it pretty real! We have a decision made on rocks for the yard, too, pending finding out how much they cost. We've also decided to do the rock moving ourselves to save money. That's going to be hard, but at least it's only March. Temperatures aren't in the triple digits yet, so if there's one time of year to move rocks, this is it.

Today, I'm just packing more stuff, doing laundry, just leaving each person out a few sets of clothes to wear. Pretty much our entire house is in boxes now. We have ten days until we move, which means we have 15 days until we have to clear this place. I found that the tile grout comes nice and clean with the carpet cleaner's scrubby hand tool, and Bissel's pet stain and odor formula, so I'm probably going to go ahead and just do it that way. Yes, I'm going to scrub about 1600 square feet of tile on my hands and knees.... 30 weeks pregnant.... Is this crazy? Yes. I want my damned security deposit back, so we have to give the people what they want. That makes it not crazy. $1600 is a LOT of freaking money, and I really would like to see at least $1000 of it back. On our last place, we got back $700 out of $1000, so I think it's realistic to expect $1000 back out of $1600 if we do a really good job on this place. The fact that we have 5 days to do it, and another house to live in while we do it, gives us an edge.

So yeah, we've moving on. Thak was going to try to start work at BMW today, but with the ownership changeover, it isn't going to happen. He has to wait for his internship to start, which is another couple weeks. In a way, that's good. He'll be able to help me with this getting the house ready to give back, and with the move itself.

Honestly, I can't wait to get to the new house. It has real air conditioning. I'm freaking hot, and we're NOT about to turn on the world's leakiest swamp cooler and let this house bless us with one more $300 water bill before we go. Ten more days and we get our new house.

No more renting, no more Army.