In real-life land, we just paid a deposit on a lovely little duplex in a suburb of Pittsburgh. This place has everything we have been looking for…literally…and it’s officially ours. We sign the lease on Monday or Tuesday and can move in any time after that.

We are just so relieved that the search is over. We have made so many appointments and phone calls and emails and gone to see so many places over the past few months that have turned out to be complete, utter crapholes. It was getting so exhausting, seeing shanty after shanty and wondering, was this the standard we would have to lower to in order to find somewhere to live? Is this really what people in the city call “home”? It’s not like our standards are particularly high, either — we just wanted something clean, fairly new/updated on the inside, and not falling apart. We couldn’t find that anywhere in the city. We came home dejected so many times and spent countless hours searching Craigslist and many other websites to no avail. It was getting downright depressing, exhausting, to come by disappointment after disappointment. It became funny, even — because if we didn’t laugh about it, we would have cried.

And then this happened. We got our credit approved, went and saw other places just for argument’s sake, and went back today to pay the deposit. No hesitation whatsoever, no regrets. Just happiness, and excitement, and relief. We finally have a place to call home, it’s ours for the next year, it’s got lots of big rooms, it’s two stories, it’s in a fairly modern house, it has a place to put a garden, a living room big enough to fit a Christmas tree, a kitchen we can cook big dinners in, an extra bedroom to host guests, a dedicated office, and just everything, everything we have been looking for and thought we’d never find.

We learned our lesson with our current place to look at prospective apartments with both eyes wide open — and we did. We opened every cabinet. We turned on every faucet. We asked inane questions. We checked the washer and dryer, the dishwasher, the oven, the fridge. We were there yesterday in the pouring rain and there wasn’t a leak in sight. We talked to the landlord about the history of the place, how he came about owning it, what the neighborhood is like. We checked the baseboards and the ceiling corners for bug-escape holes — none.

And so this weekend, we pack. And spend a whole lot of money on moving expenses. Next Friday we will get the utilities started, and spend our first night in our new home. I could not be more excited!

We were at Giant Eagle earlier and the people in front of us in self-checkout left their receipt. I grabbed it when ours printed out to tear it off and this is what I saw:

How do people do this?!? I wish I had the patience to figure out the sale/coupon/Foodperks savings apex each week. Our 12 month savings is a pathetic $67 and some change. This is like magic to me.

Today we went and looked at a townhome. It was a two-bedroom, laminate-floored, eat in kitchen’d, patio-with-sliding-glass-doors type of townhome. Two floors with a cute little landing in the middle of the staircase. Quiet neighborhood. New construction and immaculately maintained. Lots of natural light. Lots of space. A place for our own washer and dryer. We looked at it without the rose-tinted glasses and looked in every nook and cranny, every sink, every cabinet, in the oven, checked all the closet doors, made note of the outlets, every possible thing you could think of, and it still met our standards.

It felt like the kind of place that an established adult couple would live. I am realizing now that that’s exactly what Jason and I are — an established adult couple. Sure, my employment is up in the air, but he has a secure job that can support both of us for now, we know we want to settle in Pittsburgh, we have somewhat of a “five-year plan” if you want to call it that…we deserve a better place to live than where we do now. This place doesn’t feel like “home”. It doesn’t feel like a place that an established adult couple would live; rather, it feels like a place a poor college student or a depressed bachelor who doesn’t do his laundry would live.

We are in the phase of “upgrading” our lives, out of the college phase and into the adult phase. It’s slow going, and it starts with a new place to call home. We applied for this place today and we will find out Monday if we got it. Wish us all the luck in the world…we haven’t had much of it ourselves lately.

And P.S. — We are headed out in a couple of hours to make a very exciting purchase, one that I can’t share yet. But oh I wish I could! I will be able to soon. I promise.

I’ve spent the past week on friends’ couches because our house is overrun with thousand-legger bugs. Really, really huge ones. I’ve seen one every single day for the past five weeks. And the fun thing? They’re pretty much resistant to all pesticides/extermination methods (which, actually, is okay with me because I’m not too comfortable with all those chemicals in my home).

Jason and I have spent the week stressing over what to do. Could we continue to live in a house overrun with bugs we’re both disgusted by? Could we afford to move immediately? Could we wait 60 days to give the appropriate notice to our landlord that we were moving? Could we find a new place that soon? If we did stay, how could we control these things?

Ultimately we decided that the best thing to do would be to stay. We researched how to control them and found a few 100% natural methods — namely diatomaceous earth, which is a powder made from crushed up sea matter. We’re also going to invest in a dehumidifier for the basement, pick up some mesh drain covers for every drain in the house, and have our landlord come out next weekend to caulk up every single little crack and crevice in our walls, ceilings, and baseboards. From what I understand, these bugs are “nesting” bugs, which means that they come into your home because it has something to offer them — moisture, small dark spaces, and food in the form of other bugs. Remove those variables and the bugs will skedaddle. At least we hope.

If after a couple weeks this doesn’t work, we’ve agreed that the best thing for us to do would be to move — we don’t know where, or how, or how to break it to our current landlord, but a house in which neither of us feel comfortable or safe or able to relax is not a healthy place to live.

Any one else have creepy-crawly problems in their homes? How do you deal?

Oh hey there. Remember when I used to post here? Yeah. Me too.

So far this month I have been cleaning and “nesting” like a champ in preparation for Jason to move in in three weeks(!). We will have been long distance for almost three years at that point. We are both so ready for it to be over. He’s started moving some of his things here already and it’s just so nice to see it around every day (even if it is weird stuff like his bowling pin lamp). I can’t believe I’ll be celebrating three years together with this man in July. I’m a lucky woman, let me tell you.

In gardening news, our daffodils and forsythia finally bloomed! Our yard is a yellow party right now. I love it. I cut some of each and brought them in on a vase for the kitchen table, and it cheers me up every time I see it.

So that’s what I’ve had of an April so far. I want to start taking more photos, cooking more food, baking more recipes, hanging more art, and appreciating more of the small things again. And I want to start sharing it here again. I’m going to try. Really I am. I have so much good in my life right now.