Hausfrau's Week in Review

Hausfrau Haus has experienced a flurry of activity of late. Much of my week was spent keeping the house clean and participating in playdates with the girls. Another huge block of time was spent occupying Peaches. The girl LOVES to climb. She is using every possible piece of furniture or large toy as a climbing device. Where does she think she's going? She climbs the book shelf in the kitchen.
She climbs up the entertainment armoire. She climbs on the ottoman and onto the window sills in the living room. She climbed onto the toilet and ALMOST made it into the sink. The worst was when she climbed on the handle of the warming drawer on the oven and started running her hands all over the glass top of our stove WHILE I WAS COOKING. For some reason, I had done my cooking that night on the back burners, which I never do. Thank God I did. We have since removed the handle. We are so out of our league with her, it isn't even funny. We never had to watch Baby Girl like we do Peaches. All of the other moms I know keep telling me that she is really our little boy. Maybe I'll change her name to Vinnie.

On Friday, my best friend, June came to visit with her 3 1/2 year old son. This is probably the last time we will get to see each other before our respective moves, so we took full advantage of the visit by eating, drinking, playing with the kids, laying on the couch and watching television. That's what we do. And we like it.

We did take the kids to see this castle. While it was certainly, um, interesting, it would have been better had it not been raining. The grounds were neat and we were hoping the kids could run around them. Instead, we walked into the castle and was greeted with a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, courtesy of the money taker. The castle was quite impressive in that it had been hand built by a man over the span of 52 years. But I wouldn't live there. Nor would I have a medieval wedding there.

We didn't do as much girl-talk as we usually do, but we did discuss our worst dates ever. I am confident that I was victorious. June merely had a date in which she had a pimple on her neck and she hid it with a flesh colored Band-aid and a mock turtleneck. Pah! Mine was worse--much worse. I was a sophomore in college and got asked out by one of THE most popular guys from my high school during summer break. I guess after a year away at college, dork girls from high school change from being dorks to being mysterious, or perhaps just interesting. At any rate, I was quite excited about my date. We went to the restaurant where all teenagers went in 1988 for a fun night out, "The Hacienda." We both remembered seeing a guy peering into the large front window of the restaurant, but thought nothing of it. We also thought nothing of it when we were seated in front of said window. But then out of nowhere, we looked over to see him staring at us. And he was doing something that should only be done in the private of one's bedroom And then someone called the cops and they hauled him away. With his pants around his ankles. After that, the date just died. I mean, really. What can someone do or say to improve a date after that?! It's pretty much impossible to recover from something as traumatic as that and expect to actually form a relationship. That is why I did not marry this now-successful doctor and have beautiful Irish-Korean babies. The End.

Other than that, we have spent the past 18 hours "negotiating" an offer we received on our house. Neither Herr nor I get a thrill from negotiating. We are very much "give us your best price" kind of people. We go directly to a business manager when we buy a car because we want no part of the "dance" that car sales people do to nickel and dime someone. We are the same way when we buy a house. We don't believe in giving multiple counter offers. One is enough for us. The people presently considering buying our house keep making stupid offers that are more offensive by the minute AND they keep throwing things in like they want our refrigerator (but don't want to pay for it) when it was clear that we were taking it with us. We gave our bottom line, but our Realtor keeps coming back with little stuff. We told him 30 minutes ago that we are done. They can shit or get off the pot. We are perfectly willing to walk away. We have the luxury of having a buyout clause if it doesn't sell by the end of August. While the buyout clause is pretty low, we're glad to have it. And we'll take our refrigerator with us.
So there.