LIKE DANGLING A CARROT IN FRONT OF YA

How was your week-end?

Mine... was a great lesson in "why you should never look at things you can't possibly afford". You know I'm going to start where I left off on my last post dontcha? Houses... or more correctly said... a new house.

Ah yes, so last time we spoke I told you a tale of how much my husband was interested in looking at a new house. He shows me one in particular, and we decide to take a drive out to check it out. Now most people would think to make an appointment with the realtor of this property. My husband? No... he thinks we should just check out the area. This line of thinking never works. Why? Because once you get there, you actually want to SEE the house. Not do what we did... which was skulk around the perimeter and peer into windows like a bunch of yuppie burglars. I mean seriously - I'm sure the locals were looking at us and wondering who the dude in the Docker's and the chick swearing about her new leather boots getting dirty were. That'd be us - complete nerds. Not to mention the van full of kids watching "Toy story" on DVD in the driveway. We locked them in there - no worries. Don't report our asses to CFS. You just don't drag out three children into a yard that hasn't even been landscaped just so you can spy into what seemingly was a pretty nice house.

Since we were there, we did decide to hit a few open houses. To get a feel of the builder's out there. There is really only five major ones, and they each have their own flavor. So we go to one, which was really nice but entirely too small (one bedroom on main floor, and two in the basement? no thanks). After we go to this house that I SWEAR TO GOD, has ruined me forever. Why? Because it was perfect, and awesome, and beautiful, and wonderful and delightful... and it was also $1.5 million dollars. The worst part was absorbing every feature in that house, and saying "OMG a hundred and fifty times". Seriously... walk in the entry and I'm OMG! Go into the master suite OMG..... master bathroom a MAJOR OMG!!! I mean seriously, this house was so nice, it makes mine now look like a freakin' hovel. We talk casually to the realtor there and when she says the price, me and Jarrett start to laugh. She looks confused (she should think so; we are not in the right house obviously). I gaze adoringly at the sub-zero, brushed stainless steel double fridge, and OH the beautiful stove and gorgeous granite countertops... and the Bosch dishwasher (wait I have one of those) - and sigh. Jarrett explains we are looking $900,000.00 to 1.1 and nothing more than that. Realtor says, "What's an extra $400,000.00?" Um the difference between my family eating, and being featured in the local paper as family of five resorts to cannibalism after going house poor.

OK and before people go all crazy and think "holy shit seriously - did they rob a bank" NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Don't forget where I live and the property values. This same house in say.... Houston, TX would probably only be $500,000.00 and my house now would be around $250,000.00. It's all relative. Here, you don't get the Playboy Mansion for a couple million. You get yourself a five bedroom house, that is around 4,600 sq feet. With lovely, lovely, lovely kitchens. And no fake hooter chicks.

In any case, the experience marred me. Why? Because anything else I look at now will be compared to the can't have house. I know it's horrible but how can you not? Unless we win the lottery (which we didn't - we checked our numbers), it's just not happening any time soon. But we haven't given up on the idea of moving out to this area. Because in spite of it all, it was extremely peaceful, the yards were large, and it was just relaxing!! Plus the view of the mountains were just wonderful. It renewed my interest in why I was trying to build a house out in that surrounding area last year... that is until Peter the Prick Contractor skewed my interest (jerk). In fact, I happened to notice that they poured the foundation on the lot we were going to build on, and I'm pretty sure it's the same foundation for the same house I actually designed myself (jerk).... that jerk. Still bitter? Just a tad.

And of course, once we got home we decided to make a list of all the things we had to do to this house before we could even put it on the market. My list contains 36 items. This sounds like a lot. Some of the chores are more cumbersome than others... but most of them are those little nit-picky things you just don't get around to because you just don't feel like being bothered. Like in the gym "fill in the nail holes on baseboards". Seriously not a big task but eh... I don't feel like it. "Fix the small hole in the entryway in the hardwood that your kid's therapist made"... yeah haven't done that either. I will say since she did that, she went on Jenny Craig and lost about 90 lbs.... plus the 5 wooden vent covers she stepped on and broke. Gotta replace those too (I just tried to re-glue them best I could). But our game plan is simple... go back to the house we didn't have access to today (the one we stalked), and if we like it, we get our house ready to list and go from there. Plus I told Jarrett he'd better make sure his company isn't planning on transferring him to freakin' Oklahoma this year or something. The fact that he had to re-order business cards for the same position is a dead giveaway this is possible (he's never been in the same position long enough to ever have to do this). That and the fact that we finished out our house. Every time we do that - BAM we get re-located.

Hopefully next week-end I'll shed some light onto this on-going pursuit of housing.