In 6 short weeks I’ll be taking a blog hiatus and enjoying the forest settings at The Farm while I wait for Tater to join us. Can you believe that? 6 weeks! I am feeling pretty good about it all and am still totally ready and excited! If you missed the update on my latest OBGYN appointment from yesterday you can read about it here.

Some of you already know, we went thrift store rummaging for baby clothes as did Maiden53 (who is a doll for thinking of us) and we’ve also received some new clothes from N’s family and from my grandparents for Tater. This means we have about 30 outfits in varying sizes and styles ranging from 0-24 months!

I succeeded in getting them all laundered at the moldy rental while we were cleaning it over the weekend. I am so pleased to have some clean clothing packed away in the birth kit ready for Tater’s arrival, makes me feel all prepared and stuff!

As I am writing this it is 3pm and 82 degrees in the coolest part of our house. I am chugging water and eating a jonagold apple with the fan blasting me while I type this. I am a Phoenix, Arizona baby and am very used to NOT having AC (thanks to Flagstaff, AZ apartment living) so I refuse to use the AC unless it is totally unbearable. I know once the humidity comes I’ll need the AC but for now, while it is a dry heat I’ll make do. It saves money right?

On Saturday we called and were avoided by the slumloards but left more messages, we are still trying to set up a move out inspection time. We also spent several hours over at the old place cleaning and doing laundry. While we were there N got to chatting with the neighbors who were all very curious about our landlord drama.

One of them even asked us for the landlords current phone number. I guess they’ve got a friend who also used to live in that place as renters. The slumloards never returned the owed security deposit to them, it’s been 2 years and they are still trying to get their money back. Also we were told that 2 other old tenants have had to abandon the premises without a move out inspection since the landlords mysteriously become unreachable. N talked to 3 different sets of neighbors about our crappy rental situation, the slumloards seem to be on everyone’s bad side!

We did have a wonderful “date night” Sunday. We were given tickets to a show and we rewarded ourselves to a cheap “linner” out (late lunch/ early dinner= linner, lol) and then went to the show in Owensboro, KY. It was fun to get dressed up and to go out since the majority of our days are spent cleaning, running errands or unpacking right now.

We went to Firefly Southern Grill and had the most amazing food. It was by far the BEST food we’ve had since moving here. We loved the atmosphere and the service and the food was amazing. I had my first taste of fried green tomatoes and collard greens, yummo! I enjoyed steak and N had salmon wellington as our entree items. Everything was fantastic!

The show we saw was also great! We saw the Broadway show, the Spelling Bee and thought it was tons of fun. Tater was super active during the show, I wonder what she thought of the singing and music. Hopefully she’ll be a lover of the arts like we are.

All in all the date was super fun, we had a great weekend and are off an running for another productive/ busy week.

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Perhaps it is because he is apparently swallowing whole pieces of food as opposed to chewing them like every other animal in the world. Yep, those whole bits came right from his stomach!

Nothing like the sound of a cat preparing to vomit waking you from your afternoon pregnancy nap and when you try to quicky move him from the carpet to a vomit safe tiled area. BAM, explosive vomit stream shoots from his mouth and splatters the white carpet. AND, there is not carpet cleaner here for me to clean the mess up with. Double WTF!

Called N and told him to either pick me up so orange dye for the carpet or to bring home some damn carpet cleaner for the explosive vomit mess.

And now I present you with the view of our recently cleaned out basement at the old place.The stuff has been moved out, the carpets are vacuumed and we are just about done cleaning the place-

Wait! WTF is that in the corner? Is the wall leaking again and flooding the basement? I thought it was a dry day today…

Oh, wait. We shouldn’t be surprised. It is just mold, like I’ve been saying all along. Except now we can actually see evidence of it with our own eyes. Big shocker huh?

Notice how it is all pretty and furry it is growing on top of the carpet and up the wood siding? There are black, green and even some gray types all mixed together. Ooo, so enchanting – NOPE!

More like effing disgusting and super bad for the body! Sure mold isn’t a big deal if you can clean it up with some bleach or something. Too bad the mold is growing under and now right on top of totally finished areas that if bleached will look severely destroyed.

It is no wonder N has been draining some major crap from his sinuses since we’ve moved to our new, not toxic house! Now if the slumloards don’t set up a freaking move out inspection with us and take back possession of this shit-hole of a house I am going to get really nasty!

I am talking having all neighbors come over to walk through the house and observe it’s current state, while we video tape the whole thing. Then we’ll call the sheriff and give them the keys to the house with a copy of our video or something. Heck I might even put the walk through video online for the world to see and perhaps I’ll share the address of the house, to warn any future tenants…

Seriously! All I can say is WTF? Okay, I am done now. Happy wordless Wednesday everyone.

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During the week N had a meeting with some higher ups about his future at the station. Remember how this job was supposed to be an anchoring/ reporting gig? Since moving here his anchor time has been minimal (it’s happen once) so he was eager to hear what they had planned for him and his future.

It looks like they are hoping to have him around and are grooming him to fill some big shoes in about 3-5 years. This means buying a home was absolutely the right decision to make and that we truly will be able to stay here for a good amount of time. Yay for following the gut instinct.

Knowing you can truly settle in and build a life for yourself is amazing. We’ve got our “bun in the oven”, a home of our own and his career going in the right direction so we are super fortunate and are so grateful to have arrived at this stage in life. It’s been a long and grueling journey and it will continue to have up’s and downs I am sure but what more could you ask for? We are pleased with everything, obviously.

I’ve been getting bursts of energy and then major spells of fatigue so I am gardening and unpacking when I’ve got the energy. The weather is warming up and the plants are springing to life, I am enjoying this very much.

Also, the animals are adjusting much better these days it seems. They still act up now and then and need to be reminded of the rules but the overly obnoxious stuff in the middle of the night has stopped. This is a relief.

Other random musings:

I just saw a commercial about birth defects and Paxil so I googled it for more info and am just floored. “Babies exposed to Paxil early in pregnancy may have a higher risk of major birth defects, according to a new study.”

I already don’t have much faith in our drug saftey testing process here in the USA. This is why I’ve refused the RhoGam shot during pregnancy and am doing my research on vaccinations right now.

This whole Paxil development is just added proof that we approve and distribute way too many drugs to people before we fully understand the effects and risks of the drug. It’s irresponsible and scary. We really can’t trust that all approved drugs and procedures are safe for us.

I need a washer bad!! We are doing laundry at the old place till the end of the month because our new place doesn’t have a washer in it already. Ideally we would love an energy star, front loading washer but there is no way we can afford one right now. Shoot we can barely scrap $100 together to go towards the purchase of a used one.

Not having a washer is stressing me out a bit and I don’t really know when and if we’ll get one. I’ve been looking at craigslist for them but am so worried that I’ll end up with one that is crap and our money will have been wasted.

Also, the external hard drive we used to back up all the PC files and financial stuff (a Seagate Free Agent External Drive) is now dead.. Or at least the USB portion of the drive is acting wonky.It worked at the old place but somehow in moving the computer it’s become damaged and is not longer recognized by the computer.

I am stressing because I need to balance the accounts and work the budget before this weekend so I know how much money we have for groceries but all the data is on that drive that I can’t access.

I am going to go work in the garden a bit now to counter all the things I currently have to stress about, LOL. Hopefully you have a pleasant weekend in your neck of the woods. We are so ready to chill and get some slow progress made on the new place.

The post So glad the weekend is almost here! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

– Yesterday we signed the paperwork and paid the down payment for our new home. We got the keys and have begun slowly but surely moving stuff in over there. The utilities aren’t on there yet but they will be soon and I planned on doing a live video tour of the new place on April 2nd to share it with you.

– The video home tour will take place at 3pm Indiana time and will be posted @ http://www.harvestofdailylife.com/webcasts-vlog-live-chat for your viewing and chatting pleasure. It will also be recorded and available for you to view at any time after the live broadcast, you just wont be able to participate in the live chat.

– Got a funny call from my OBGYN’s office today! After not calling back to schedule my 3 hour blood test like they wanted on Friday they placed a follow up call this morning that I missed. Then this afternoon I get another call from them and they’ve changed their tune!

I was told by the nurse practitioner that “when the doctor was filled in she decided, since I only failed by one point, and because I have such a hard time with blood draws… that they would LET me skip the follow up test” if I came in and had a chat with my doctor about all the particulars.

I told the nurse that we were going to decline the 2nd test anyway and that we would come in to talk with the doctor about it all since I want to be written a prescription for the blood glucose test strips so I can just test and mange it all on my own. Isn’t it funny and kind of odd that they have changed their tune all the sudden?

– Oh, rent is due on the 1st right… Well, the slumlady never dropped that mutual release letter back off to us like she said she would. We met with her back on March 13th and she assured us she would retun the letter signed, she also said she would swing by to pick up our April 1st rent (as opposed to her just using our security deposit to cover it like we suggested).

Since she is still NOT following through with what she says she’ll do we’ve decided we are also going to quit following through with our own obligations. She can keep our security deposit for April’s rent, we’ll give her a check for any supposid “damages to the property” upon move out inspection and we are done.

Heck she can sue us if she really wants to, we would be happier if she did that way we could lay our case out to a judge (without having to pay crazy fees to begin the legal process) and get this all delt with officially. I bet she wont sue though, she seems to be avoiding paper trails and official stuff like the plague. We probably wont even be able to get her to do a move out inspection.

Oh, on Saturday we hid in the basement waiting out our Tornado warning and the basement flooded again. It was flowing like a river down there, I even took a video of it for fun. Luckily there wan’t ever a tornado, just another flood in the basement. We were kind of hoping that a tree would cave in the roof here or something, that would end our lease early I bet! LOL…

If you didn’t get email notification of the online shower Maiden53 put up for me you can check it out here. Be sure to stop by to sign the guest book and play a game or two. Oh and you’ll be able to see some cute photos of the baby bump (and her heartbeat) there too!

The post Just passing through to leave a quick update or On the move again! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

After months of certified letters, emails, phone calls and face to face meetings that accomplish nothing we’ve finally decided to ask the landlords to release us from the lease come May 1st.

We decided that asking to be released from the lease was the better way to go. If we needed to get a lawyer and present all our documentation supporting their breach of the lease we could. It is just that starting the legal battle takes much time and lots of money we didn’t really want to have to fork out if not necessary.

So, N made the phone call to the landlords this morning. He is the professional one who can present things in a non emotional way. I just tend to be blunt and rude about things like this and say stuff like F-you, you are an idiot. LOL…

Anyway, N got a call back about 10 min. before we had to leave for my chiropractor appointment be we figured that would happen and were ready.

During the call he outlined our frustrations with the rental situation. Talked about how paying them rent has been an ongoing challenge as a result of them changing banks and addresses monthly.

He brought up our health concerns over the mold and the fact that we asked them to take action back in November to help remedy the mold issue but they ignored our requests.

He talked about how we’ve sent multiple certified letters that they’ve refused to pick up and he basically said that we would like  to be let out of our lease, penalty free so we find a more stable home before baby Tater comes.

Her response was “Okay, we just need to get the owed rent from February and March first”… She didn’t even care about us wanting to be let out of the lease!

We recorded the phone conversation for our records and we’ll be typing up a letter stating that we’re being let out of our lease by the landlords that she will sign.

We’ve also placed a stop payment on the previously issued checks from February and March per her request and have turned those in to one big cashiers check to give her when she signs the “early release from lease letter”. Thank goodness we are out of here!

Basically we get the keys to our new place on April 1st and will have a month to get out of our current place and to tidy it up before the move out inspection here on May 1st.

We are super stoked and feel like a huge burden has been lifted from our shoulders. We are still trying to be sure we keep good documentation of all of it just to cover our butts but essentially it should be all done and over with now.

We found our new place, got released from our current one and are pretty much on track for getting all this madness taken care of before Tater comes. Yay!

For those of you in similar situations with unresponsive landlords you may find the following posts and references helpful. Read all about our moldy, indiana rental and what we did about it in these posts (arranged from newest to oldest):

• The Filter Queen, a cute country home and more landlord drama…
• Checketty, check, check those things off that list! The landlord comes a knocking
• Slumloards, credit scores and a prenatal chiropractor [in a pear tree]…
• Bubbling with anticipation and watching the world blow by…
• Getting the holiday ducks in a row and not looking like a hobo anymore! Mold test photos.
  
• In Indiana breathing mold is okay but home birth is not, just an FYI.
• I am just a tad angry right now! The saga of the first certified letter.
• Good morning all, got a flood? We do!

You may also find the following external links helpful:

• How to write an early termination letter to your landlord.
• Sample Letter: Breaking fixed term co-tenancy: all co-tenants vacating
• SAMPLE ONLY – Letter Breaking a Lease
• Mutual release from contract/ lease form

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