Reflections on house-hunting at or relatively near my price level:

• It smells like Nana... mothballs, anyone?
• Two words: brown shag
• Is this the basement from "Silence of the Lambs?"
• You hope that's "not too hot a green?" My eyes are burning!
• You mean this was rehabbed?
• I'm not sure I want to know why that wall in the basement is mirrored.
• Sure, we could finish the basement. As a bowling lane.
• Hot pink tile? Really?
• I'm not sure if backing up to the public works facility is a good thing, or a bad thing.
• Does the broken glass come with it? 
• Yes, we could walk to the train from here.... in about an hour.
• I think that one bedroom is locked for a reason. Let's just let it stay locked.
• It's all about location, right? We can get our burgers and our drugs just steps from the front porch!
• I'm creative, but this is beyond me.
• Oh. My. God. It's 1972! Where are the Brady kids?
• Oh, yeah. This could be doable. All I need is a can of lighter fluid and a match.

I know it's ridiculous to attribute an attitude upswing to a bracelet, but allow me to be superstitious. Last year, DH wanted to buy me something nice for my birthday, and got me a necklace I'd coveted at Red Envelope. Sadly the necklace looked adorable but it was sort of poorly engineered; a lariat style, it had a tendency to strangle me. Not cool. So I sent it back for merch credit, and eventually selected a bracelet. The pendant is engraved with the words "To be rich in love is to be rich in life," and it just sort of gave me the warm fuzzies when I saw it. I guess I thought it would help me keep things in perspective, especially when the daily struggles got to me.

I got the bracelet rather quickly, and discovered that it was a little tight. I have insanely large bones and big giant manhands, so the unusual non-clasp took up too much length. Lucky for me, my mom has been busily adding to her jewelry-creating repetoire, and can now do silversmithy. She replaced the chain with a longer one for me, and after several adjustments with the clasp and o-rings and such, she came up with a better clasp method and gave it back to me about a week ago.

So I've been wearing my Rich In Love bracelet daily, and it continues to give me the warm fuzzies. But wait.... it gets less boring. (I think.)

Some pounds of shit have hit the fan at work over the past few weeks. I've had a laundry list of technical difficulties that have kept me hopping and even more tired than usual, but I'm getting through. I joked one Friday that I just had to leave work, because FIVE major things had broken or exploded (seriously) and I thought maybe it was my spirit or something. There were several plaintive cries of "I thought bad things only happened in threes!"

But I had my bracelet (and my anti-depressants), so I kept going. And then last week, I came home to a letter from the landlord. It was time to renew the lease. Except this year, they're raising the rent by $170 a month, and they're going to take away our only big closet (MINE!!!) to put in a half bath.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I have had really inappropriate fantasies of having more than one bathroom. But there's not even enough water in this apartment for the one we have. To add insult to injury, the landlord wanted us to sign the renewal or agree to vacate at the end of our lease in June -- in about two weeks. What?

I called DH at work to tell him about the letter. "Well, I guess we have to buy a house," he joked. We started chewing on the concept. Could we afford it? Did we dare? If we tried to get a mortgage, would people just laugh at us? It's not like we have a down payment or anything.

We both started scanning ads online. DH made a special Google Map with our preferred school district boundaries on it and pinmarks where ads with reasonably-priced houses were. Then I spoke with Ian, our friend who is also a rock star realtor, and he sent me 69 listings. Yes, 69. Assume at least half of them are either too expensive and/or in a neighborhood that's not safe or accessible to transportation. I still ended up with four houses that are definite possibilities, and another dozen or so that could possibly work out IF we were willing to move to a different elementary school. (Last resort.) 

All still conjecture.... the money was the really big question. That, and whether DH would panic and change his mind about leaping into this. The last time we bought a house, we built a townhome and it took three times as long as the estimate, and quickly became a burden because we both got laid off within a year of moving in. So he's definitely gun-shy.

Then, today, I finally talked with another friend of ours, who is VP of a mortgage firm. She got our financing last time, so I didn't have to be embarrassed to discuss our finances (or lack thereof) with a stranger who would just point and laugh. We did the small talk, the catch-up, the lists of jobs and accounts and apartments..... and shockingly, our credit scores came up as.... far better than we'd have thought. DH's is higher than mine by about 16 points, and it's enough that our mortgage friend basically said to me, "JT, go out and get yourselves a house." 

Nothing is a done deal; we still may not find anything priced at a level we can realistically afford; we may not find anything suitable, or in the right location. But I'm pretty pumped about this.... we may not be done recovering from our darker years, yet I feel like we're taking baby steps in a direction I've been praying to go. 

We can't afford to be picky, but I think I have a reasonable wish list:
- Good school, ideally the one Jake already attends
- At least two bedrooms, one big enough for a king-sized bed, and the other big enough for the boys to share
- Structurally sound -- nothing where we'd have to replace a roof or HVAC anytime soon. 
- A basement. It doesn't have to be finished; it just has to be dry. Throwing up some drywall, paint, and linoleum isn't expensive or difficult (I have very handy parents, thank goodness), and having a basement we can turn into a playroom for the kids is just a dreamy thought.
- More than one bathroom. The second one can be a powder room; I just want to know that two people can go to the bathroom at the same time!
- A yard. It doesn't have to be professionally landscaped or whatever; just a nice enough size that the boys can run around a bit and I can plant some flowers.

Other than that, give me your ugly, your awkward, and your old -- I can work with that. My parents are so excited that we're even considering getting a house that they're making all these promises -- giving us their kitchen appliances, offering to paint all the rooms and do the hoped-for basement, building shelves and built-in cabinets everywhere.

Tomorrow morning after Jake's soccer practice, I'm running off with my mom and the rock-star realtor to go see some houses. If anything is within the realm of reasonable and I really like it, I'll grab DH so he can go through it. (He said since he took over selling our last house, I get to shop for this one.) And who knows? Maybe someday I'll be writing you from a house!

The weeks have been flying by, and I can't believe it's already spring... especially since we had a wet snowstorm yesterday. The boys would have had three different practices this week, but they've all been called off, so I don't have to figure out how to get two boys to three different places at once. Which is good.

Work has been a crazy black hole of technical problems and issues, which I'm trying to deflect like Wonder Woman using her wristlets. Firewire port died? Flick my wrist and a Dell guy shows up to replace it! Film recorder crashed? Flick my wrist and arrange for its replacement! Need the 400 GB of classes that are buried in the dead recorder? Flick my wrist and beg the company replacing it to unearth the data and send it to me. I haven't yet completely deflected a massive PR crisis which may or not happen, but give it time...