House News
Well, it's official ... I will be buying and moving into a new house. Why do I declare it official? Not because we've already bought one, alas - but because I realized something in the last week. One of the reasons - only one of several, but a major one - that our past house-hunting forays always ended in us just staying here is that I wasn't 100% fully committed yet to actually moving out of my house. Yes, the tinyness of it drives me nuts, and the work it was starting to want was more than I wanted to invest in it, and I knew I desperately needed more room ... but another part of me was still too tied to this house to be as serious as I needed to be about selling it and moving out. So though we looked at houses, I was never really, truly committed to actually buying one.
It's not a big surprise, though - I have quite a history with this house. It was the first house I ever bought solely by myself, fourteen years ago. Fourteen years is a long time! And my dad's fingerprints are all over this place - he did so much here after I bought it, helping me fix it up. That especially has been hard for me to think about giving up. Yeah, I know in a way it's kind of silly - but I'm not apologizing. I am sometimes a sentimental person, and after my dad passed away I was very sentimental about all the work he put into my little house to help me make it nice. I think, even, for awhile part of what held me back was this idea in the back of my mind that moving out of this house would somehow be kind disrespectful to all the work he put into it for me, as if it hadn't mattered.
But things have finally shifted. While I will be sad about leaving some of the things my dad did for me here, I've moved beyond some of that now. What he did, he did for that time and place, when I was living here alone and had no need of a bigger house - just one that wasn't so crappy, and all he wanted was for me to have a nice place to live.
Things in my life have changed. And he would still want me to have a nice place to live. And face it - this ain't it. Even he knew that. That's why he wanted me to keep his house - he said many times he wanted me to keep his house because it was nicer than mine. But I chose not to keep his house because it wasn't a good fit for me (a decision I do not regret), so finding my own nicer house now would be something he'd be happy about for me.
And, I plan to take at least a few of the things he did for me with me. He planted several rose bushes for me, and I have every intention of digging them up and taking them with me. Likewise with some other stuff as well.
Now that I've wholeheartedly committed, the process is rolling right along. I've already been pre-approved for more mortgage than I'm comfortable getting, so we're looking in ranges far lower than that - meaning there will be no problem with the loan. I've figured out a scheme to get my current mortgage out of the equation - paying my house off now, before we even try to buy a new place, which solves several problems at once. I've scoured the listings and picked about 10 houses we're really psyched about going to see, and we've picked an agent and are in the process of setting up appointments for them all.
And one reason I know this time it's going through: I'm ecstatic beyond the telling of it to think of moving out of this house, into a "real" house with actual room, with closets for God's sake, with a second bathroom so I don't have to hop around the house every morning waiting for Greg to get out of the shower ... (I know, TMI) ... a house with enough space for all our stuff for a change, so that it won't be cluttering up every surface I look at. I'm so ecstatic about that, I can't even tell you, and it can't happen soon enough. My favorite plan is to be in the new house by Christmas - for which I'll celebrate by getting a real Christmas tree for the first time since ... umm, I believe 1972.
Oh, the dream house I posted about - yeah, we've been back to see it again, and it's still the perfect house. But unfortunately it's just a little out of our comfort range, mortgage-wise. We talked it over and know what we're comfortable realistically paying each month, and I don't believe these people are going to drop the price by $50,000. But - we haven't entirely given up ... once all our ducks are in their little row, we do plan to make a low offer on the house - nothing ventured, nothing gained. And probably (assuming they'll reject it) I'll keep my eye on that place and renew my offer every month or so until either (a) they sell it to someone else, or (b) we find some place else we can accept as a substitute, and buy it instead.
But in my scouring of the internet house listings, I've turned up some others that, while not the dream house, are quite acceptable substitutes, so I'm still psyched about going and looking at them in the coming days.
Knitting
I've been working on the sweater. I buggered it up pretty good the other night. I forgot to move my marker on my pattern, and knitted the same row twice. I tried to unknit it, but for some reason couldn't seem to manage it (probably based on a combination of it being late, my being tired, and rum). So I decided to just go on from there as if it hadn't happened.
The next day I kind of regretted that decision, thinking I shouldn't have been so lazy, and I might ruin the whole project by this wonky line of mismatched knitting right across the back of the sweater. But I still didn't feel like trying to unknit it, and was considering ripping it out - either completely, and starting over (I'm only on row 13), or at least back to the plain knitting in the hem, and just starting the patterned part again.
But I got over it. It'll be fine. It's way down by the hem, and hey - it's a hobby.
In fact, I think I'll go work on that some more now.
Rum
I just threw that in there for cadence.
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