Pablo completed the NYC Half-Marathon yesterday (with an injury). Matilda and I went down to Battery Park to cheer him along! Go Pablo!
Stats:
Distance: 13.1 Miles, 21.1 Kilometers
Date/Time: July 27, 2008, 7:00 am
Location: Central Park to Battery Park, NYC
Weather: 70 deg., 90% humidity, overcast.
Overall Place: 4511
Gender Place: 2989
Age Place: 1200
Net Time: 2:00:36
Pace/Mile: 9:12
We spoke to our attorney and she recommended that we wait to see if it looks like they will finish our condo by the November. So now, I am hoping for delays because I really don’t want to have to close on that condo!
As for my audit. It was supposed to be tomorrow, but the auditor called and asked that we reschedule it for some future date.
So now… we just wait to find our our fate. I can’t wait to go on vacation.
What a difference a year makes. Last July, Pablo and I were interviewed for the New York Times Real Estate Section in a cover story about people who bought real estate in the city. The article was title Every Penny Counts and was all about how we scrimped and saved and scrimped some more so we could buy an apartment to live in with our newborn daughter Matilda.
In the article, we say that we hope to move in soon to our place which was under construction. Ah the optimism.
Here we are a year later and the condo is still not complete. The developer keeps saying that it will be just a few more months. The current estimate is October of this year. Yeah right.
We visited the building where we contracted to buy our 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment yesterday. The walls and ceilings are bare sheetrock, the floors are wood subfloor. One bathroom is complete and the other is just some sheetrock and a tub. There are pipes and wiring for the kitchen, but no cabinets, counters or appliances. And the apartment is TINY. The told us when we bought that the square footage was an estimate, but now that the walls are up I can see that we might have to consider replacing our queen sized bed for a full size in the master bedroom. I have lived in larger dorm rooms that the master bedroom. And those were single rooms designed for one person! The second bedroom is not large enough to be a legal jail cell.
Check out what they did in the closet in the master bedroom.
I have no idea what that big boxy thing is, but it takes up most of the space in the closet! There are only 2 closets in the whole place and this is one of them! Ug!
In addition to the above woes, my business is being audited. Just kill me now.
Pablo and I are planning a 3 week vacation in Spain in August. We are going to spend the entire time with Pablo’s family at the summer house. It should be great. We will be staying with Pablo’s parents and brother’s family — Jaime, Maria Jose, Ivan (almost 10 years old) and Elena (4). Pablo’s cousin Francisco from Granada is also coming to town with his wife and 4 daughters, Maria (i think she is 12), Anna (I think she is 10), and the twins Julia and Lucia (3). And of course, Pablo’s cousin Carmen also has a house nearby and will be there with her husband and kids Marina (11), Nico (9), and Patricia (5). So I am steeling myself for an all out kid fest and a month of shrieking and screaming. Matilda will either love it, or be totally traumatized.
I am hoping to take advantage of the change of scenery to get Matilda to make some changes. We have been unable to get her to give up her beloved bottle. And of course, there is the pacifier. And I also want to get her on some sort of schedule that involves one afternoon nap. I am also planning on using the extra time that we have together to begin potty training her. She is showing some signs of readiness, like letting me know when she is peeing and having dry diapers for a couple of hours at a time. Perhaps it wont be much of a fun vacation with all the crying and whining that I am expecting, but hopefully being around the big kids will inspire Matilda to make the leap to toddlerhood.
PS The cherry at the top? When we get BACK from vacation, she will find that we have replaced her crib with a toddler bed! Hopefully, she will have forgotten her crib after 3 weeks of traveling.