fuzzykitty

I got to go to one of my favorite stores yesterday called Archie McPhee.  I bought a skull cake pan, license plate frame that says “I’d rather be at Archie McPhee” and some tater tot pencil toppers for Darrell.  Then we went to Trophy Cupcakes in Wallingford.  Oh my gosh, their cupcakes blow the sprinkles off of Cupcake Royale!  The icing was not too sweet; it was more rich and creamy.  I suspect that their secret ingredient is a wee bit o’ cream cheese!  Anyway, their cupcakes were presented beautifully, each flavor was decorated differently and they had interesting kinds like lemon, sweet yam with toasted marshmallow meringue, green tea, PB and jelly, and several others.  They were also nicer than the people at Cupcake Royale, sometimes they are pretty short with their customers.

My friend Nick, who also lives in Seattle, made my holiday card picture extra special this year.   Today I am going to make him some Reese’s Cookie Bars to send as a thank you while I am here at my Mom’s house so I can send them from Seattle rather than Florida.  I am also going to try and shove all of my stuff back into my suit case and head out to Jacksonville early Monday morning.

I made it to Seattle yesterday after an uneventful frequent flyer miles paid first class flight.  I guess a couple of funny things happened when we were about to depart Jacksonville the pilot’s seat was stuck and he couldn’t reach the controls so we had to wait for someone to assist him before we could take off, then in Atlanta there was a problem disconnecting the plane from the power source on the ground, but once they were able to detach it we were off!

The weather here has been great, its still cold but at the same time it is sunny and beautiful.  Its funny that usually when Darrell comes to Seattle with me in the Fall the weather is gloomy and wet but I visit on my own more often than not the weather is nice.  Today we ate at our usual Thanksgiving haunt Ray’s Boathouse and then to Cupcake Royale for dessert.  Last year the cupcakes here were very tasty, this time our cupcake cake was moist and yummy but the frosting was way to sickly sweet.  I am not sure you could pay me to eat another

The mortgage guy was able to come up with a plan that looks like its going to work for us and Darrell said he wanted to proceed with this house thing.  It will be so nice to have him back so he can deal with all of this.  When I think of the building process I just cringe.  On my way to the airport my driver told me about how when he worked construction in Atlanta it was common practice for the builder to pay off the home owner’s hired home inspector to make him go away so they could carry on with their shoddy work   How do you make that not happen?  How do you know who to trust?  I don’t trust any of these people, I feel like they are all out to make as much money off of us as they possibly can and it completely sucks.

The mortgage guy called the other day to let us know that we don’t qualify for whatever product he just learned about at his seminar.  I asked him again if he was able to qualify us for a VA loan and he told me that he thought that I was no longer interested in that because I was rejected from our previous try with the builder loan officer.  I reminded him that I was told to call him to see if he was able to somehow qualify us for this VA loan since we were told that the previous builder lender was a bit stricter and that he ‘got things done’.   I am needlessly losing sleep over this whole deal and wonder how much longer I should play their game.  I am sick of dealing with these people and would rather just not proceed with them at all.  I think it would be best for us to try again in a year or so when we have both been at our jobs longer and have had more time to save for a down payment.  Plus I think it is going to be a buyers market for awhile longer and am in no hurry to be hassled into a house.

My awesome instructor had a  cupcake class last night so I went. We made fall cupcakes but mine didn’t turn out so well. On my way home I received a text message about an unfortunate accident where a truck had hit a transformer at work which caused a scramble for help. So when I got home I met up with my team online and helped as much as I could for a couple of hours. I hope the driver is alright!

I have been working with a different mortgage company since last week to see if they are able to approve us for a VA loan but I am not very hopeful because they told me that they would contact me after they completed a seminar for some other type of loan on Wednesday.  I think that they are going to try to get us to take this new product which they don’t know much about because they’d really like to sell the house.  I guess I’ll just see what they come up with this week and go from there.

Last Saturday I attended my fourth boot camp session at the gym.  When I first started this I was so exhausted I would have to hobble home and lay in bed, now I am ready to go shopping after class!  My running has improved tremendously too.  Doing cardio almost every day and weights two to three times a week has been a great distraction from chores and Darrell being gone and has successfully curbed my spending and increased my leaving the apartment.  After class this weekend I have an appointment for a physiologic test.  It will be good to have a baseline as to where I am physically.  Thankfully I also have a massage appointment coming up on Monday to recover from all of this

 

This morning I woke up early and baked some cupcakes for an upcoming cupcake class.  I had made these same cupcakes a few times before and know the recipe pretty well.  This morning as I was spooning the batter into the cupcake liners I noticed that the batter didn’t taste very good, then I remembered that I had forgotten to add the sugar.  I then divided the cup of sugar allotted for the recipe and stirred  it into each cupcake.  Above is my end result.  I guess during lunch I’ll need to make a trip to the store to buy more cupcake liners and then try again!

I am pretty upset.  The house we are supposed to start to build this month in Jacksonville doesn’t look like its going to happen.  The cruel people at DHI Mortgage, specifically Nate “Make it a Great day!” Newman (our terrible senior loan officer), decided to tell us that we do not qualify for the loan we needed for our house the day before our contingency expired… we are supposed to start building within ten days!  You’d think they would have said something four months ago when we started this whole process or during the monthly check in calls I would  make to them.  I guess the only good thing is that he did decide to tell us before we broke ground! UGH!

Update: I am now trying to work with a different loan officer to see if they are able to help us.