Hello again

Confession: After months (well, years) of being gone from Brunette on a Budget, I've decided that this site is exactly where I belong in my off-time. Now that I'm finished with The Worst Job in the World (officially quit February 2011), I dabbled off and on in my other anonymous blog and it never felt quite right. Partially because I've never liked doing anything anonymously, especially writing. Why should I feel bad about telling it like it is? Why do I need to hide how I really feel? I don't, and it's only taken me about 16 months to figure that out. I'm sorry, sometimes certain people or certain situations just suck. That's reality, no matter how much it hurts to read. Now I'm back, to the inevitable chagrin of some and the (hopefully) happiness of others (hey, if you don't like reading here, you're more than welcome to move on).

SO, with out of the way, the last year or so of my life has been packed with changes. Like the kind of drama in Jennifer Aniston movies where years of changes have been condensed nicely down into two-hour bits. For starters:

We bought a house!:

The house around Christmastime (still hadn't unpacked yet).

The house was a steal, mostly because it needed major remodeling to be "cute," but we spent all November remodeling. And by remodeling, I don't just mean throwing up a coat of paint on the walls, though we did that as well. I'm talking on-our-hands-and-knees-scraping-old-tile-adhesive-off-the-concrete-bathroom-floor-for-six-hours (okay, that was more J than me), ripping out all the older Pergo flooring throughout the house, laying down new, dark hardwood flooring, completely gutting the bathroom and rebuilding the shower, painting the dirty fireplace white, etc. etc. After our remodel, we refinanced the place and it appraised for $50,000 more than we paid for it. Apparently, all that work in November paid off. Now our mortgage on our 3-bedroom home is much less than rent on a 1-bedroom apartment. J calls it one of the best investments of our lives so far; I have to agree.

Now that most of the interior remodeling is done, we're going to start fixing up the outside when it gets warmer. On the docket: Painting the house dark gray with white trim and a dark red front door, and landscaping everything.

We got a second car!:


A few days ago we picked up this beaut, since we really only have one reliable car between the two of us (J's been driving his old '67 Volvo to work, and it hasn't been too happy about that.) Now we both have reliable cars. Movin' on up.

We adopted a new dog!:


This is Gidget, a six-year-old Chihuahua we found at the pound. She's a quiet, shy little four-pound thing that barely ever makes a sound. Since it seems she's cold all the time, I had to buy her this bathrobe to pad around the house in.

Last but not least: We're having a baby!


World: say hello to Peanut (above). We don't know Peanut's sex yet, but I think we find out in March and we're both very, very excited. Well, I'm sure Peanut is excited about this revelation as well, whenever it happens. I still can't believe I'm going to be a mother (Jesus Christ, just the word makes me feel old), but I'm looking forward to the whole thing as I'm sure it will provide reams of good blog fodder, starting with the odd encounter I had recently with my doctor. But that story's for another time.

Those are the big things in my life as of late. I'm sure there were many other things but probably not as important. Ah, it feels good to be back. :)