The Dark Side

Well, despite that ominous heading, things are much, much better.  We spoke to W--- again at Citibank who assured us that all the information had been updated on Citibank's end last Friday.  Dave also contacted the president of Citibank Student Loans (so not kidding!) and has been working with someone in their office to resolve this problem.  As of this afternoon, the president's office had resent all of our corrected POSITIVE information to the credit bureaus and by this Friday, everything should be fixed.  Note: they resent our information specifically this afternoon to the bureaus.  Wow!!  Thanks, honey!! We also called Equifax and the information there is finally correct there and after yesterday's very frustrating call to Transunion, we're just going to wait until Friday to see if everything is ok.  

Hoo-dang-ray.

What a pain in our collective asses and what a relief that it's finally going to be resolved.

And not a moment too soon.  Here is where we're giving in to the dark side.  As a graduate student, as a new faculty member (PAYING OFF ENORMOUS STUDENT LOANS, ahem), and then as a newlywed in a modest house in the city of Charlotte, I am used to living small.  I love our house, the one we are remodeling.  It is cute and old and very, very small.  But we figure that we're used to city living, so it's not that big a deal.

Well, this new house is not that much bigger.  However, our friends gutted it several years ago and remodeled the attic into the master suite.  The downstairs bedrooms are still small, typical of our 'hood.  But the living room and dining room are enormous.  And the kitchen was designed with a cook in mind.  And the upstairs master bedroom.  Oh. My. Lord.  

Space!  We have space!!! In our bedroom!!!!  Our bed is finally proportionate to the room. And all of our bedroom furniture is in our bedroom.  And there are Two. Walk. In. Closets.  

I feel so guilty.  After years of convincing ourselves and others that small is absolutely fine, I am finding that I like to be able to twirl around the bedroom and avoid the furniture and the walls and the husband and the cat and the dog. 

And this street!  When we moved to the neighborhood, our street was a good street.  It wasn't as good as a few other streets, but it was certainly fine.  Then about 3 or 4 years ago, the developers started remodeling this street.  The houses are so cute now.  And they are close together.  And while some folks might think that's a bad thing, we notice that everyone is walking up and down the sidewalks.  We've already met 4 different neighbors,  all of whom are really nice and similar in many ways to us.  Even our neighbor from our old street stopped by and we marveled together about how friendly and nice this street is.  

Our old street has big lots and so there is a lot of spaces between houses, at least, "big lots" and "a lot of space" for the city. 

The other funny part about living here is how well we can see our back yard.  We need to work on our back yard a wee bit more.  Ok, not a wee bit more, a helluva lot more.  This house has a better view of our back yard than we do.  (Which makes me think the evil renters probably *did* see me flip a double bird at them on more than one occassion)  In any case, we can even see our old neighbor (and good friend's) backyard better now than we ever did at the old house.  Yikes!! 

So there.  This is what we have learned about our old and our new houses in one week.  We are still madly in love with our old house.  But we are really looking forward to the remodel and a much expanded bedroom.  I also think we'll have some better ideas about how to use the space downstairs that isn't being expanded to make it more user friendly.  

In any case, the outcome of today is that we are actually going to be able to get the mortgage for the remodel.  And what the heckity heck, we've got the organizational strength of Citibank student loans behind us to help.  Who woudda thunk?