Blame it on the dog

Because clearly it’s all her fault. She is going to grow up and be too big for the apartment and will need a yard of her own in which to run and dig and murder play with squirrels. Because of this, we need to move into a house. Shame on you, Belladonna.

We started looking at “used” homes because the thought of building a new one was enough to send me into convulsions in the corner. I am too big a control freak to let someone else build what I imagine. Moving into something already built would be fine and dandy, because since I was not the one to come up with the design or décor in the first place, there wouldn’t be as much judging and criticizing and shitdamnmotherf’ers this wall was supposed to be TAUPE not CREAM (wouldn’t you like to spend a day in my head sometime? It’ll jack you up, I swear).

However, I am finding out from my friends who have recently gone through the process of evolving from “renters” to “owners” that finding a home that suits you and your family’s tastes is just that…a process. I am not good with processes. I never have been. I am more of a I Want What I Want When I Want It type girl. I don’t do well with following a long flow chart of small events that will EVENTUALLY lead me to my long-awaited end result. I am the girl who tells you in July what I will be giving you for Christmas, just because I am so damn excited about it. Process and procedure, anywhere but having to do with my job, is not welcomed into my life.

So I am trying to deal with this PROCESS in little steps. We have made a list of what we want in a house: 3 bedrooms, 2-car garage (preferably attached), tub AND shower in master bath, double sinks in master bath, decent sized back yard, and a pool. We have kind of narrowed down where we’d like to live (closer to my work than his because traffic drives me nuts and causes my car to burst into flame). We have decided when we will be ready financially for all of this to happen. But now we (and by we I most definitely mean ME) have decided that the house we buy will be brand spankin’ new. Shiny and new, even. Somewhere no one else has ever lived but us. And with that decision made, I have officially gone crazy and have become:

"The Girl Who Used To Have A Life, But Is Now Dedicated Solely And Entirely To Finding THE PERFECT FLOOR PLAN AND ELEVATION"

I am a woman obsessed. I pick up the Free! new home magazines at the grocery store. I spend hours Googling “new home builders, Houston.” I play with the interactive floor plans and print them off when I get them to look the way I’d like. I am planning my weekends around going to neighborhoods and walking through model homes. I found 3 new plans this morning that I seriously thought about checking out on my lunch break. This urge to find THE HOUSE is like TRYING to contract chlamydia. I do nothing to stop myself from doing it, and now I can't make it go away!

Also, SK has decided that we will probably stay in our apartment for another few months after our lease is up, to save some money, since our rent is pretty low. This means that the hellish nightmare that has become MY LIFE is going to drag out another 3 or 4 months longer than anticipated. I can't handle it. I think I am going to just be drunk, VERY drunk, for the next year. Wake me up at the housewarming party.