In Betweener

I had no idea that our house would sell so quickly. But it did, and I'm grateful for it. The idea of keeping our house "viewing perfect" with three pets and two kids and real life and shit was not appealing to me. But of course selling so fast of course that meant that we had to jump on the whole looking-for-a-house thing in a serious way Which can be fun. But since we now had a closing date written in paper and happening sooner than either of us ever expected, we had to go in to warp speed. So many things we both wanted with our new house. We started looking, and saw some stuff we liked, some stuff we LOVED, and some utterly weird shit that just made you wonder about the homeowners.

The most important piece of the puzzle, however, was our meeting with the loan officer to understand what price range (and property tax rates) were do-able if we wanted to keep our monthly payment within a specific, comfortable range. Becoming "house poor" is not something either of us would ever be willing to do, so the monthly payment range was paramount We discovered, quickly, that houses within our price range, with the square footage and amenities we were looking for, in the school zones we were wanting were turning over very quickly--like within 24 hours. So one Thursday night, I saw a house that had just come on the MLS. It looked promising in all ways. We saw it the following afternoon, submitted an offer that night, and by Saturday afternoon, we learned our offer had been accepted. Bada boom, bada bing.

There she is! Our new baby!!

Since then, we've been in a whirlwind of earnest money, inspections, appraisals, paperwork, surveys, moving estimates, etc. It's been a wee bit crazy to say the very least. By early June, the kids will have finished school, we will have closed on our current house, gone on a family vacation to the beach, closed on and moved in to our new house.

Utter insanity, but the thought of being in this new place--OUR new place--with so much more space and a great neighborhood filled with kids for Geej and F to play with and wonderful schools and parks and pools and all of it, just makes me so very, very happy. (I'llh have to remind myself of this often when we start to pack. Man do I ever fucking hate to pack.)

Some other things of note recently:


San Antonio Riverwalk

Took a short, much-needed overnight trip to San Antonio to stay in a fancy hotel by my damn self and visit with a friend who was in town for work. We went to the spa (amazeballs) and had an unbelievably wonderful dinner at this place, and I got one of the best night's sleep I've had in ages.


So much fun!

Took The Geej and her friend Skye to the annual school carnival where they pretty much went nuts for a couple of hours. It was a cloudy, breezy day--so it wasn't as hot as it was last year, and the girls had a blast.

Participated in my first-ever 5k! It was actually fun, and miraculously, I didn't die! I did, however, end up with large blisters on each of my heels, which tells me I need some new running/walking shoes if I plan to get serious about my racing career. (Yeah, right.)

We have discovered the joy that is the CamWow app on the iPhone. OMG, the pictures that we've come up with of ourselves, the pets, etc. HiLARious.


Finally, if you haven't yet seen the movie "Bernie," go. Now. You talk about some good ol' Pine Curtain craziness, they NAILED it in this movie. Wow. I laughed out loud. A LOT. The town of Carthage (where the story takes place), is only about 25 miles from my hometown of Longview. The accents? The decor? The clothes and makeup? Holy CRAP, these people knew what they were doing. And Jack Black (who can be annoyingly over-the-top) was perfect and understaded in the title role