Waiting for the Calm

Things have been crazy again these past few weeks.  I successfully defended my dissertation, so I'm officially Dr. Melissa P., PhD!  It was really really stressful, but I got through it and everything seems to be in order with my paperwork for graduation.  I won't be walking in the ceremony, honestly I just don't want to sit through a 3-5 hour graduation ceremony and plus it costs like $250 to borrow a "robe" for the ceremony, not something I'm really willing to spend money on right now.  I know it's only going to happen once, but there's so many more important things to deal with right now, I'm just letting it go.

Selling a home in this economy is pure HELL!!  Add on being PG during this process and it's a total nightmare.  We've had the house on the market for exactly one month and we've had two couples look at the house 2 times each and then one other couple from out of town come and look at it.  This past Saturday we got our first offer.  I was hoping it would be reasonable, but for some reason the couple who decided to put the offer in thought we were total idiots and gave us an offer of $40,000 LESS than our asking price (which mind you is the price we bought the house for 4 years ago).  We are fully aware that we are not going to make any money off the sale of the house.  At this point all we are trying to do is break even and get enough to cover our mortgage and be able to walk away.  However, we have a limit that if we don't receive an offer for a certain amount the house will go into Short-Sale because we just don't have the extra money lying around to cover the leftover mortgage and the closing costs.  Our realtor evidently didn't understand all of this even though we explained it to her countless times, that we have a certain amount we need to get for the home or it will go into short sale.  We told her what was left on the mortgage so she knew what to expect.  Somehow she wasn't "aware" of how dire the situation was and basically argued with me yesterday that we didn't tell her everything, which is completely absurd.  She also said that we weren't going to get anywhere near asking, which is news to us, since she never told us this either.  At some point if things don't turn around and she realizes she's working for us, not against us, she's going to be fired.  She's the realtor who sold us the house, and we probably should have gotten someone different, but we liked her.  We put in a counter offer last night for under our asking price, but I'm not expecting them to agree to it, especially after their first offer.  Rob is trying to look into getting money out of his retirement, so that we could at least have some "extra" money to put towards the closing, so we can prevent a short-sale.  Honestly the penalties for taking money out early seem to be less than the damage a short-sale will do to our credit.  Basically we wouldn't be able to buy a home or car for at least 5 years, maybe longer if we have to resort to a short-sale. So for now we are just waiting to see what happens.

Everything is still going really well with the pregnancy.  I have had a few episodes of major swelling, but it's mostly I think due to the heat.  One time last weekend we went and saw a movie and during the movie my hands and feet got really swollen.  It scared me bad enough that I went to a pharmacy near by to get my BP checked out.  It was a little higher than normal for me, but still within the normal range.  I'm still getting good movements, mostly in the morning when I'm waking up, when I'm hungry (or he's hungry) and late at night before bed.  He moves here and there during the day too, but not as much as those times.  There have been a few times where he was more active one day and then the next day he wasn't and I got really scared, but I'm just trying to take it day by day at this point.  I go in for my 34-week check tomorrow.  Anxious to see if I'm still measuring ahead like I have been, I'm pretty sure I am just don't know by how much.  Can't believe that in two more weeks I'll get to start going weekly.  I think once that happens I'll be getting more anxious and excited for the delivery.

I have my family baby shower on Saturday and both my parents and MIL and a family friend are coming to spend the night on Saturday.  My parent's and his still don't get along at all, so it will be interesting to see if they can act civil towards one another.  I'm sure I'll have an interesting post about all of that!