the siren song of costco...

so today . . . i went to costco. it was time. we were out of almonds.

going to the grocery store is not my favorite thing to do. it ranks right up there with cleaning the shower or going to the dentist. but sometimes i have to go. we need food that i can only get at costco--like two pound bags of almonds or five dozen eggs or a giant bag of kettle corn (which, btw, is only 150 calories per serving. and guess what? a serving is 2 1/2 cups!!! this is new knowledge that i gained while shopping at costco today! now the big bag of kettle corn is on my 'must have it' list.)

i had put off going to costco as long as i could. but this morning we were totally out of almonds, which is 1/3 of rollie's breakfast. thankfully, i had a small bag of trail mix (no almonds, but it did have peanuts and raisins, and bonus m&ms,) so i left that out for him--you know, because it's sort of my responsibility to make sure we have cheese and eggs and nuts at all times, and i didn't make it to the store yesterday. so i knew i had to go today.

when i left school and headed for costco, i realized that i was going to drive right past the house we are hoping to buy--well, not right past, but really close to it--so i decided to make a short detour and just drive by again...

i didn't have the address, but i've been there twice. how hard could it be to find it? it is in a housing development, surrounded by a cement block wall, with only one entrance. i figured if i got in, i would eventually find it.

eventually turned out to be right! i made it to the street that the house is on with no problems. and then i turned the wrong way. i went left when i should have gone right. this was not good, not good at all. i had no idea there could be so many dead ends and cul-de-sacs in such a small area! it seemed like no matter where i went, i had to turn around and go back! i kept thinking that if i just went a little further, i could get out. i was wrong.

i finally got turned around the right way and found the house... and a whole street lined with giant pine trees!

how could i have missed that before?!? our possible new house is on a street lined with pine trees! i am not a fan of pine trees, unless i am in oregon. that is where pine trees belong! they look normal up there! in southern california, they look like they are lost, like somehow they were on their way north when they just got too tired to continue, and so they put their roots down here. i don't like it. it isn't a deal breaker, but i don't like it.

eventually i found my way out of the housing development, and continued on to costco. i was just there to get the staples of our diet--lettuce, broccoli, cheese, bananas, dried mangoes, almonds and pecans, eggs, and wheat thins. (ok, we eat other stuff too, but this is what i get at costco.) i walked in, flipped my card at the entrance guard, and stopped.

i was in big trouble.

let's just say that if you are in the process of buying a new home, you should probably stay out of costco unless you have a credit card with a zero balance.

before i even got to the first aisle, i saw a commercial grade garden hose, water resistant throw pillows (for that outdoor furniture i will one day have,) and refrigerators (because we might have to buy one.) and then it occurred to me that costco might be a good place to get a whole bunch of stuff we will need when we move into a new house.

but not today. today i did not have an empty credit card with me. today i do not yet have a new house. today the house i am living in does not have room for anything else! so today was not the day to stock up on new house stuff.

i turned my cart toward the lettuce, moving quickly past all the shiny kitchen gadgets. because even though i don't like to cook, i looooove shiny kitchen gadgets. if it plugs in and whirrs, i want it. i might never, ever use it, but i like having shiny kitchen gadgets in my kitchen. because you just never know when i might be inspired to prepare something... i got the lettuce and turned toward the cheese. but to get to the cheese, i had to go through the bakery...

ah, the bakery... the bakery at costco is like the fourth level of hell. it lures and entices you with the delicious smells that are created when white sugar and flour are baked together. if they sold any of those baked good individually, i would be in deep and serious trouble! but since you have to buy them in great quantities, i can usually resist.

i got the cheese and then braved the cold of the giant cooler to add some eggs to my cart. while i was on my way to get wheat thins, i spied the outdoor furniture...

ok, we are going to need outdoor furniture. one of the things we like about the new house is the back yard. it isn't great yet, but we have plans for it. big plans. and i am pretty sure that at some point outdoor furniture is going to be a part of those plans. so it is good to know what the options are...

i sat in chairs. i sat on loveseats. i sat at tables and pretended i was having 'breakfast out on the terrace.'

i moved on to the nuts. i finished my shopping and headed home. i did not go past the new house again.

i don't know if we are going to get this house. they've asked for another day to think about it. they may reject our offer, and i don't want to get too attached until i see if it is going to be ours. but if it is, i see more than one trip to costco in our future. because costco pretty much seems to have everything a new house needs...

...except the kitchen sink. thankfully, we won't need a kitchen sink!

did we just make a decision?!?

so today . . . we made an offer on a house. i feel a little sick.

i don't know whether to be excited that we might get the house or scared that we might get the house. so i seem to have compromised by feeling a little nauseated...

after my first big day of house hunting by myself, i dragged rollie out to dinner and told him every little detail of every house i had seen--even the ones i didn't like! and i showed him the photos i had taken. and then i made him drive by the teeny tiny house, because it happened to be really, really close to rubio's (which you would think would be a selling point.) i'm sure he was exhausted, and he hadn't even looked at any actual houses!

and then last wednesday afternoon, our realtor called and said she had found the PERFECT HOUSE, but it had just come on the market and we needed to see it IMMEDIATELY or it might be gone!! well. the perfect house. ok, then. rollie was available, so we piled into jill's car (jill is our exceptional realtor,) and headed out...

as we drove, i read the listing sheet--out loud, for everyone's benefit! it sounded nearly perfect. we walked in, and i immediately fell in love. it was beautiful! it had been totally remodeled--tile and wood flooring, crown molding, new kitchen cabinets and appliances, new windows, and NEW BATHROOM FIXTURES (i cannot tell you how many icky showers i have looked at!) the closets were small, but it was all one level--there is only so much room in a one story home!

and then we went into the back yard...

a nice back yard is important to us. we have beautiful weather here most of the year, so we want to be able to hang out in our back yard. BUT i don't want to be surrounded by two story homes overlooking our space, and i don't want the house behind me to be right next to my fence! this is not so easy to find. i keep saying to jill, "we need a back yard that is quiet, relaxing, private..." yeah, in l.a. fortunately, in addition to all the other wonderfulness in this house, the back yard was private, because there was no one living behind it. unfortunately, there was a school behind it.

ok, maybe for most people that wouldn't be such a big deal. but we have these two dogs... and they like to bark... sometimes i even think they just pretend they hear something outside so that they can race out the doggie door and bark their little furry heads off! so living right next to a school yard was probably not going to work for us, because there would be kids there. and our dogs would bark at the kids. and the neighbors would call animal control. and then there would be a big neighborhood controversy--people would choose up sides. it might get ugly.

yeah, as beautiful as it was, this was probably not the house for us.

but all was not lost. jill said there was another house with the same floor plan, in a different neighborhood that was also available. we went to look at it, and it wasn't bad--at least there was no school behind it--but after looking at the completely remodeled house, it was just not very appealing to see dated kitchen cabinets and wall to wall carpeting and icky bathrooms...

i was starting to feel like we might never find anything.

and then i talked to a friend of mine who said they had looked at 32 houses before they bought one! ok, so maybe it was unrealistic to expect to find a house so quickly. maybe this was like house hunter's initiation. "don't get discouraged," she said, "keep looking. you will find the house that is right for you. just keep looking." and so, we did.

we arranged to meet jill on saturday to see another batch of houses. this time, rollie was able to come.

seeing houses with rollie was a different experience. it was kind of like when we went house hunting on his ipad. i tended to move quickly, get a feel for the house, and move on. rollie was much, much slower. he looked at details. he asked questions. he talked to the people who were currently living in the houses! let's just say, it took us about an hour longer to see fewer houses than when jill and i went alone.

BUT the first house we took him to see was the first house i had seen on my first day of house hunting. and he loved it! i had been talking about it, because as we looked at other houses, i just kept coming back to that one. it isn't perfect--it only has a two car garage, the laundry facilities are in the two car garage, and there is no pool. (ok, the pool was kind of a long shot anyway, but this is california! i feel as though i should have a pool!!) and so we continued on to look at more houses. but at the end of the day, we both thought maybe the first house we saw was the house we should get. so today we made an offer.and now all we can do is wait. and then wait some more. i can't get excited, because if we don't get the house, i don't want to be disappointed. i'm not even absolutely 100% sure that this is the house we should get, because you never know... there might be a better house out there somewhere. but i am 100% sure that if we don't get this house, i will be disappointed--at least until we find a better house. but what if we don't find a better house? what if we end up paying just as much money for a smaller house? or a house with loud neighbors? or what if we get this house and it has loud neighbors? or dogs that engage in barking contests with our dogs?

WHAT THE HECK ARE WE DOING?!?!?!?!?!

...sigh. it's ok. really it is. i am not stressed. i am not worried. either we will get this house or we won't. it will be fine. really. it will be fine.

but just in case, i have located our tent...

house hunters...

so today . . . i was a house hunter. on steroids.

today all the planets were aligned properly, i guess, because i finally found myself in a car, with a realtor, and a list of houses to see. eight houses. three hours. and ninety degree weather.

it was quite a day...

if you have ever watched house hunters, there are three things that you know.

1-they will look at three houses.

2--they will not like everything about any of them.

3--they will choose one anyway...

that's what i thought house hunting would be like today, but it is a lot harder in real life, when you are spending your own money (well, technically the bank's money, i guess,) and trying to decide how important granite counter tops are, and wondering if anyone ever cleans their bathroom anymore, and calculating the cost of adding air conditioning or ripping concrete out of the back yard so the dogs can have a patch of grass. a lot harder.

i looked at eight houses today. some were pretty nice. one was pretty awful. some had potential, but needed some work. i think one might have had a dead body in the garage, because the people renting the house REALLY did not want us to look in there... there were two houses on corner lots, two in cul-de-sacs, and one on a dead end. there were lovely wood floors, nice tile floors, and 40 year old carpeted floors. there were doors in strange places, under the sink cabinets with 45 degree angled floors, and a couch blocking a sliding glass door. there was one garage that actually had cars in it! there were empty houses, party houses, and two houses with people sleeping in the beds! there were big dogs, little dogs, and cats...

(oooo, cats. i forgot to ask about the cats. rollie is highly allergic, and probably won't be able to breathe in a house that has had cats.)

of the eight houses we looked at today, i liked most of the features of two--the most expensive house on the list (of course,) and the smallest house on the list (1300 square feet!) neither is perfect, but both have some nice features and i think i could live in either and be pretty happy with my choice.

rollie is still holding out for a pool...

so here it is, 11:00, and i have visions of wood floors, walk-in closets, and gas fireplaces dancing in my head. (notice i did not say granite counter tops. i like granite counter tops, but the truth is, i don't really spend much time in the kitchen...) i have not done any laundry. i have not finished diandra's taxes (thank goodness for the extra three days this year!) i did not pass go or collect $200 (shoot!) and tomorrow i am scheduled to go look at a couple more houses after church. which means those things may not get done again.

i have a feeling i am going to be very, very tired before this week is over... maybe before this weekend is over...

get ready! the search is about to begin...

so today . . . a bank decided they could trust us with some of their money.

this is a good thing, because soon we are going to have to move out of the house we have lived in for the last ten years. since rollie has a new job, he isn't the pastor of our church anymore. and since our church owns the house we live in, they are probably going to need it for their new pastor. eventually.

i'm going to have to live in a tent in the park...

we have known since the beginning of the year that we were going to have to move, but it just seems like circumstances have been conspiring against us. rollie had to move to a new office, diandra got married--in las vegas. rollie has been out of town 4 or 5 times. i had lesson plans to write and report cards to do and pre-k evaluations and parent conferences... and the list goes on.

whenever i had a little extra time, i would look at houses for sale online, but i was pretty sure i didn't have enough money in my bank account to buy one. we finally managed to find an afternoon to go talk to a realtor, but that was as far as we got in our search for a house. because she said we really needed to know how much we could spend before we did any looking (duh! well, she didn't say 'duh,' but i sort of think she was thinking 'duh'...) which meant filling out paperwork. which took time... time we couldn't seem to find.

i'm sure there are some nice parks where we could put a tent...

our realtor had planned to be gone for a month on vacation in march and april. she was worried that we might have to move before she got back. but we have a little time to work with here, and besides, we hadn't done the whole bank thing yet. so we told her it was ok--we would just wait for her. a month should be plenty of time to get a loan pre-approved...

and then it was time to do the taxes. and you know how that went... and then suddenly it was time for our realtor to come home--could she have possibly already been gone for a month?!?!? and we still hadn't connected with the bank yet.

i'm starting to really think i might have to live in a tent in the park...

i was worried about the whole bank thing. housing is not what you would call reasonable here in southern california. and we have two dogs that need a yard, and two convertibles that need a garage, and some storage space for all the stuff i can't seem to get rid of (although rollie assures me i will be able to get rid of some of it when we move. he says he will help me. i can hardly wait...) and i am worried we won't possibly be able to afford all of that. so this whole loan pre-approval thing has been torturing me. but our realtor is coming back tomorrow. and really, how can we tell her that in all the time she was gone we hadn't been able to find a few hours to do our paperwork?!?

i was afraid that is exactly what we were going to have to do. and then, miracle of miracles, rollie did it--he got the paperwork filled out yesterday. he faxed it to the bank, and today they said YES! they would love to loan us some money!

of course they would. for a fee. a pretty hefty fee, actually, if you figure out how much interest we will ultimately pay...

rollie is excited. i am a little sick. because now that we have the money, we have to find a house. can you imagine how many decisions are going to have to be made??? that we are going to have to agree on?!?!?!? and the pressure of choosing a house to live in until we die (which is our plan--we never want to have to move again!) and what if, after spending enough money to feed a small country, and moving all our worldly possessions (well, the ones that escape rollie and the dumpster,) we find out that the neighbors hate dogs? or that the back yard floods when it rains?? (that could be 4 or 5 miserable days every year!!!) or that "the last people who lived in that house let all the neighborhood kids swim in the pool whenever they wanted to!" (hey, we could have a pool! the realtor says houses with pools in cerritos are actually cheaper...)

maybe a tent in the park isn't such a bad idea. we already own a tent...

if only i had some self-control...

so today . . . i am forced to write a quick blog. you know how that goes. i say something like, "it is late. i don't have time to blog. i have to go to bed now." and then i blog for an hour...

but not tonight, no siree, not tonight.

i had big plans for my evening. big plans. we went to dinner, and then i sat down with my computer, ready for an evening of blogging, facebook, and lesson planning. (yes, i am a party girl!!) i sat down on the couch, and rollie came into the family room with his new ipad. "i think i will just sit in here with you and work on my ipad while you watch tv," he said.

you may be saying, "awwww, how sweet," but that is not what i am saying. i am saying, "oh no! now i won't get anything done!!" because there is just something about sharing the same air with my husband that keeps me from doing anything! i can't explain it, but that is just the way it is. "it's ok," i told myself. "i sit here and surf the web all the time while we are watching tv. i can do this. i can blog while he is in the room with me. really, i can!"

and maybe i could have, if he and his evil ipad hadn't come over to where i was sitting to show me something. "look," he said. and then he proceeded to show me this very cool site that showed houses for sale in our area.

we have to buy a house. since rollie is beginning a new job next month, we can't stay in our current house. it belongs to our church, and they are going to need it for their new pastor. thankfully, they won't need it for a few months, so we have a little bit of time, but WE HAVE TO BUY A HOUSE!!

really, this is a wonderful thing. it is. and i am so thankful that we have this great opportunity. at least, i am thankful with the rational part of my brain. but the other part of my brain is screaming at me, "how will you ever find a house you can afford that you want to live in?!?! and what if you make the wrong decision?!?! what if there are hidden problems?!?!? what if the neighbors are drug-dealers in disguise?!?! what if they aren't in disguise?!?!? what if they don't like our dogs barking?!?!? how will i ever get packed and moved and unpacked while still working?!?!?" what if the taxes are more than we budgeted for?!?!? what if the utility bills are more than we budgeted for?!?!? what if i hate every house we look at?!?!? what if we choose a house, but a cat lived there and no one tells us and rollie's allergies threaten to kill him after we have already signed that mountain of papers?!?!?"

it's too bad the rational part of my brain is not the part that is the boss of me...

rollie and his evil ipad proceeded to show me houses that were for sale, in our area, in our price range. and i started looking... we looked together for a while, but he was soooo slow! he had to read every word in the description. he had to look at how the asking price compared with other homes in it's neighborhood. he studied each picture that was posted.

all i wanted to do was zip through the pictures. if i didn't like how the outside looked, i skipped it. if there were no pictures, i was not interested. if the backyard was concrete, or the carpeting was green, or the garage was detached, i was ready to move on. (why would anyone choose bright green carpeting anyway?!?!? maybe they should have put it in the back yard instead of all that concrete--it sure looked like grass!!) i admit i was somewhat impatient with rollie's methodical perusal of the facts. after about 40 minutes, he left the evil ipad with me (i know, i was shocked too!) and went to bed. "wake me up when you are done," he said, "so i can plug the ipad in and charge it." "oh, i won't have to wake you up," i said. "i won't be that long."

uh huh. famous last words.

it was addicting. it was worse than playing bejeweled! i looked at those house listings for two more hours! i looked at every house that was even remotely interesting. i compared square footage and lot size. i counted bathrooms and looked for wood floors. i checked out laundry rooms and counter tops. and i marked some as "favorites," even though i am pretty sure none of them are the house for us.

really, i don't know why i am even looking. the last time we bought a house, rollie moved months before i did, so he picked a house and was able to rent it. he could have just bought it, but i wasn't sure. i needed to look at every house that was for sale before we made a decision. thankfully it was a small town! and so we looked at every house that was for sale, and then decided to buy the house we were already renting--the one rollie had chosen without me--because then i knew that it was the best!

he could probably do it again. but he won't. because he knows that i have to shop and compare and shop some more and check everything out, before i can make a decision. he knows if i am going to be happy in whatever house we finally decide on, i have to know that i have exhausted all the possibilities--i have to know that there isn't a better house out there that we missed.

can you say ocd? it is going to be a nightmare to go house hunting with me!

so tonight, i spent my evening virtually shopping for a house. i didn't virtually buy one, but at least by looking online i am figuring out what i am looking for. hopefully this will make the actual house hunting a bit easier...

and now, i really have no time to blog, because it is late, and i am tired! house hunting is exhausting--even when it is done from the comfort of my couch!