House Pictures!

We had the new house inspected yesterday and I took the ole' camera along . . .


Front


Patio/Backyard


A Babbling Brook


Kitchen


Family Room


Sun Room


Master bedroom with P-Dawg


Basement "Wine Cellar"

Not pictured: living room/dining room with pink carpeting to be replaced ASAP, master bath with fugly floral wallpaper, and kidz bedrooms.

I won't believe it's really my home until all of our stuff is finally inside it and I'm chillin' in the sun room with my laptop and a glass of red.

Of course, all of our stuff will fill about one room. But no matter! Am looking forward to procurement of more stuff.

Next mission, if I choose to accept it, and I do: obsessive surfing of furniture and home decor websites.

I am a very happy girl.

Home Sweet Temporary Housing

If I could impart just one nugget of wisdom through the vehicle of enlightenment that is the Rimarama blog, it would be this:

Don't make jokes about Extended Stay America hotels, because that is where you'll end up.

I'm writing this post from the safety of my hut, but come the end of August, the family Rama will be homeless.

Our dream home dropped out of the sky and landed on our heads earlier this week with only one stipulation: we can't move in until October.

After losing all of last week's low-ball bids, last weekend the P-Dawg and I decided that we could, after all, live comfortably in what I had dubbed, "The Golden Girls Pad" (the house with the huge wet bar and retirement community vibe).

We made an appointment with our agent to put in a reasonable offer on it the very next day and stopped scouring the web daily for new listings.

But while surfing the web "for work" on Sunday night, the P-Dawg's finger slipped up and landed him on a brand new listing that met all of our requirements and more.

We went to see the house immediately and when we walked in, harps began to play and somewhere, a puppy crapped a rainbow.

The home, it spoke to us.

(Specifically, I was communing with the four season sun room off of the updated kitchen, and the P-Dawg could have sworn he heard the pool table the owners were leaving calling his name from the finished basement.)

Friends, the P-Dawg and I moved faster to bid on that house than the time when our return flight from London was cancelled and we raced a tour group full of senior citizens to be the first to arrive at the hotel and restaurant voucher table.

And we got it.

Now I'm trying to convince my parents to let us send them on a month-long vacation to the motherland so we could live in their house until October, or else it's Extended Stay America for us.

But I must say, if it weren't for the P-Dawg's cockamaney low-ball bidding scheme that yielded no results and stalled us for a week, we would have missed out on the opportunity to buy the house that made us want to look no further.

(Nice job, P-Dawg.)

Post It If You Got It

There are days when I say to myself, "Nay, I will not post the drivel today, for it is tedious."

Other days I'm happy to post like a broken record and suffer the consequences. (BRING IT, TROLLS!!!)

One thing I've learned about myself over the last month or so of home searching: I can switch fixations faster than democratic candidate allegiances.

(As you might imagine, my heart breaks for Hillary, but I'm Barackin' it now.)

On Tuesday night the P-Dawg came home and announced that he had chosen a morsel of real estate for us to call our permanent abode.

I attached myself to his pant leg while he went about the business of setting his briefcase down and loosening his tie, until such time as he saw fit to disclose our family's future.

It was a house we had seen before (He wouldn't pick one I hadn't even laid eyes on, would you, P-Dawg?), but we had deemed it a little too big, way overpriced, and in need of some TLC in the area of fugly 80s wallpaper and carpet removal.

However, if we could get it for a good price, the P-Dawg now announced, he felt that it would be the perfect choice.

We gave them an offer yesterday morning. Alas, our offer, in comparison to the asking price, was so low that it kicked up dust on the baseball diamond as it whizzed past the sellers, who swiftly rejected it and lobbed it back into my hopeful face.

Problem is, in the space of time it took for all of this to happen, I had already made out with this new house several times and was planning on bringing my toothbrush over that very night.

You see, once my greedy little brain had wrapped itself around the possibilities inherent in this latest home, it took mere moments to dump the spindle railing death trap house and jump into bed with ChateauRama.

The teal carpeting and peach orchid bonanza wallpaper in the master bath? Pffft! I would lovingly replace it with tranquil hues and cherry cabinetry from Restoration Hardware!

In no time flat, I was delightedly googling "fugly 80s glamour bath remodel" and fantasizing about which leather sectional I would buy for my new great room.

It's what I do, this fervent devotion to one fickle fantasy after another. I was going to fill in the backyard fountain with sand for the kids and host twinkling midsummer dinner parties on the patio, dammit.

And now? . . . back to square one. When we placed the bid yesterday, we also drew up offers for two other houses that the P-Dawg had selected to low-ball in quick succession until somebody is desperate enough to sell us their home.

This is the P-Dawg's clinical approach to real estate. He believes there to be a veritable glut of serviceable homes for us to buy, and only the unfortunate matter of price inflation standing between us.

Silly old sellers, overpricing their huts in a down market! We'll show them! We'll lo-ball every dang property that is up for sale this side of the Mississippi, and then we'll see who has the last laugh.

(Like, when we're living out of a suitcase at Extended Stay America, for instance.)

"You have to take the emotion out of it, Rimster," the P-Dawg tells me as I weep over the loft reading nook that could have been.

"My hopes are not high that any of these next two offers will be accepted," he continues, "But I have six more homes to bid on lined up right behind them, and I do believe that eventually, we will hit the jackpot."

I am to be fully prepared to accept rejection after rejection, to place all my emotional chips squarely on a series of wobbly tables that are destined to collapse up to seven more times.

I don't even know what to perseverate about anymore.

And so, I will not speak of this matter again until the ink is dry on the contract for Hut Beautiful, so help me God.

Waving the White Flag

No home bid yesterday due to decision paralysis and subsequent nervous breakdown.

Am relinquishing home search and subsequent decision making to the P-Dawg.

Am flaming ball of stress, cannot order off of restaurant menu. How to make big home purchase decision?

Not possible.

The P-Dawg is out with our real estate lady as I write, looking at homes and making purchase decisions, cool as a flippin' cucumber.

He is going to pick out a house for us and I have agreed to trust him with whatever decision he makes.

In fact, it was my dingbat idea.

AM I MOTHER EFFIN' CRAZY????

Yes, yes I am.

My Head Is Screwed On Backwards and My Heart Has Catholic Guilt

What's more embarrassing than having to call the cops from the parking lot of Trader Joe's to help retrieve the set of keys locked inside the Ramamobile?

Why, finding those self-same keys in your diaper bag at the very moment the car door is wrenched open, of course.

Gah.

Gah, gah, gah.

Also,

Things not to say to a cop:

(As he's prying your window open) "You know what? I'm like, almost 95% sure that my keys are not actually in there."

(Once the lost keys have been found in aforementioned diaper bag) "Can I buy you a donut?"

*************************************************************************************

Frazzled is the word today. Our buyers were scheduled to come over first thing this morning with a legion of home inspectors, so the P-Dawg and I were up late last night, duct taping the house together in preparation.

Although I hear that a good home inspector can totally see through stuff like that. (Saint Joseph, don't abandon me now.)

The poor little J-Dog has a cold and is ornery today. Both he and the V-Meister were up at various intervals last night, and I couldn't sleep much as it was because the P-Dawg and I decided that we are most likely going to put an offer in on a house we really like this evening.

As much as we relish the idea of sitting around in Hugh Hefner style monogrammed robes and drinking nightly hi-balls procured from a built-in wet bar, we ultimately decided that the shagadelic, yet strangely alluring home we flirted with last week is not the one for us. We now have our sights on something a bit more traditional, but I'm still nervous.

This new house we're interested has pretty much everything we're looking for, but for some reason I'm fixated on the railing around the second floor loft area.

Because both times we went to look at that house, the J-dog tried to squeeze his jumbo toddler noggin through the slats and I think there is a 50% chance that he would consider it priority number one to scale that railing the very minute we move in.

P-Dawg says this is not a good enough reason to forgo the house, stating that safety netting could be used in the short term until the J-Dog loses interest in this particular danger pit and/or grows up. And I do realize that many people peacefully coexist with toddlers and two story foyers every day, so this is more, I think, just my fretting focus of the day.

Meh. The day I run out of things to worry about, I'll probably be dead.

I know. I am lucky to have a house, a family, friends, my health. I know I have more than enough.

And I think that's why I'm freaking out a little bit. I didn't realize that I've been viewing our hut, the last vestige of "the lean years" - when I would take my calculator to the grocery store to keep the bill in check and shopped for the V-meister's clothing at secondhand stores - as my talisman against tragedy.

As long as we lived in the hut, we were safe because we weren't asking for more than we needed. And though far from extravagant, this new house is more than our family really needs.

This feeling is probably due in part to my Eastern European immigrant roots and Catholic guilt.

Also the fact that my mother has warned me against the perils of excess, and I'm essentially an emotionally stunted sapling still tangled in the branches of the mother tree. (Read: my mama's opinion can still get me to second guess every one of my informed adult decisions. I probably need therapy for this.)

I think I'm afraid that a two car attached garage, extra space, and a master suite will be the triggers that make my luck run out.

Real Estate Dos and Don'ts

Or, "How to sell your hut in two months or less and negotiate a thoroughly mediocre real estate deal":

• Do . . . price your hut dirt cheap to move.

• Do . . . photoshop the bejeebus out of the photos that are posted online.
  
  
• Do . . . appeal to at least three out of five of your potential buyers' senses by decorating your hut tastefully, keeping it neat as a pin, flooding it with light, strategically placing fresh flowers, and brewing a pot of coffee or baking some Otis Spunkmeier cookies before every showing. Also, bust out the Febrize and spray the sh1t out of everything in sight.
  
  
• Don't . . . chuck wayward toys into your vegetable crisper when frantically picking up the house for a last minute showing. People could totally look in there.
  
  
• Don't . . . decline any showings. If, for example, a potential buyer wants to come back for a second look the day after their first showing, don't turn them away because it's your kid's nap time! You and everyone else involved will get a taunting email from the centralized showing service saying, "Second showing DECLINED BY SELLER." And you will have a lot of 'splaining to do to your real estate lady.
  
  
• Do . . . ask for your long-awaited offer in writing before moving forward with negotiations. Especially if you happen to be on vacation in Canuckland with a crappy cell phone connection. It's possible you could mistake the amount of money the buyer wants us you to pay in closing costs for the amount of their down payment! Ha ha ha ha! Having inaccurate information in this regard could adversely affect the ensuing negotiations.
  
  
• Do . . . bury a statue of Saint Joseph in your yard.

Was it a coinkydink or divine intervention that sold my hut? You be the judge.

(I must add that I think our real estate agent redeemed herself in the end. I almost choked on my Eggbeaters omelet when I noticed that she had our hut listed as a "showcase property" on the local real estate site. When I told our potential buyers to take a hike because it was the J-dog's nap time, she immediately got on the horn with their broker to make amends. And when it came down to the wire in our negotiations, she took a hit with her commission and got the other agent to reduce hers, as well, in order to push the deal through.)

Ah, but real estate bidness is not my only excuse for abandoning the old blog and chain during the past few weeks - I also went on vacation, had a stomach bug, and lost precious hours of my life towards the scrubbing of one hundred thousand laminated flashcards, wooden beads, and brass bells for end-of-year Montessori school clean up.

Also, since we didn't get the house we bid on earlier this month, we are now in the exciting and also frightening position of trying to find a new house to move into before we need to vacate this one. And it's kind of slim pickings.

Let me ask you this: would you buy a house that is overpriced, super Hi-Kwality on the inside, but kind of looks like it should be in a Florida retirement community instead of the sludgy midwest?

And how tacky is it to have a ginormous wet bar in your family room or a wall mounted TV above the jacuzzi in the master bath?

Just wondering.

Rimarama Recommends: Melatonin

First of all, no deal on the house.

I'm more angry than depressed over it, actually. They strung us along way past the time that our offer expired and their agent kept stalling and not returning our agent's phone calls before finally giving us some bull$hit explanation and ultimately saying "no."

I have added their agent to my official Enemies List, which also includes all of the engineers from my old tech writing job, our wedding DJ, and Carmine the landscaper, who I once chased down with the Ramamobile to get him to cough up the eighty bucks he owed me.

Whatever. I don't even want their stupid house anymore.

My guess is that it will still be festering on the market two or three months from now, when the sellers find their dream home, and then, if I'm still available, I'll offer them five bucks for it. But I will attach that five spot to an invisible string and jerk it away at the last possible minute, just like my mom did to me on April Fool's Day back in '82.

Oh yes, my revenge will be sweet. (Dear Saint Joseph, don't pay no nevermind, I'm just talkin.')

Anyway, onward, ho!

Today's subject is melatonin.

You might be wondering how a person as high strung as I tend to be is getting even a wink of sleep, what with all the real estate and other, non blog approved craziness going on right now. And I'll tell you: I drink a fifth of Jack Daniels with my Amb1en tablet every single night while watching Poker TV.

I kid! Don't ever do that.

Actually, I have a new friend, and his name is Melatonin. I first met Melatonin about ten years ago. Our relationship ended badly when I failed to read the dosing information on his jacket.

The result of this foray into the nefarious underworld of non-FDA regulated herbal remedies was that I stayed up all night peeing day-glo yellow every ten minutes, became convinced that my kidneys were failing, and had a full blown panic attack which necessitated calling my at-the-time med student boyfriend, the P-Dawg, at three in the morning screaming, OMG, P-DAWG, I'M DYING, SHOULD I CALL 9-1-1 ???

But don't let this scare you away from the Melatonin.

For the past few nights, I've cranked up the old noise machine an extra decibel or two, curled up with my 500 hundred page hardback, The Secret History of the World, and taken a sub-lingual melatonin tablet that tastes just like an Altoid mint. And, even though my thoughts race faster than a hamster on a wheel, I've fallen peacefully asleep, dreamed super vivid, wacky dreams, and woken up feeling fresh as a daisy every morning.

And so I heartily recommend melatonin as the homeopathic remedy of the day.

P.S. Just an FYI: It's possible there may be some shark cartilage in those tablets. In case you were interested in trying it, you know, I thought I should tell you.

A Little Bit of Voodoo Never Hurt Anyone

Last week, my heart settled on a house that I had looked at way back in the beginning of our search. At that time, I hadn't realized what a gem this place was because I was blissfully unaware of just what, exactly, my $40* dollars could buy in the area where we are searching.

I was under the delusional impression that I could order up a gourmet dinner at a French bistro, complete with appetizer, dessert, and an award winning bottle of perfectly aged wine, but it turns out that my forty bucks* can stretch only so far as a comfortably satisfying meal with a half carafe at the Cheesecake Factory.

(Nothing wrong with the Cheesecake Factory, mind, you, but when you think you have reservations at French Laundry, it takes awhile to step off of your cloud.)

After the P-Dawg and I had looked at every house in the neighborhoods to which we had narrowed our search, I came back to the house on W street, and when I walked through the front, door, I heard harps playing and angels singing.

I took note of the gleaming hardwood floors in the dining and living rooms (you can't find floors like these at the Cheesecake Factory), at the French doors leading to the living room, and at the bay window in the kitchen that leads out to the low maintenance Timbertech deck with retractable awning.

I assessed the home's pristine condition and mentally replaced the decor with something a little more current.

I mentally mapped the distance from the house to the community park and swimming pool, noting that it could easily be accessed by bike using side streets alone by a slightly older J-dog and V-meister.

I observed the sidewalks and bounty of older, shade giving trees that were hard to come by in the other neighborhoods where we had looked, and I realized that I had, in fact, hit pay dirt with the house on W street.

The only drawbacks were that the house was slightly smaller than what we had hoped to find, and the owners were asking $50* for what was clearly a $35* home.

That, and the fact that we hadn't sold our hut yet.

But we decided to put in a bid at about seven percent below the list price and asked for a 90 day close.

The seller, who is in no hurry to move, gave us a counter-offer that was only about 25 cents* off of their asking price.

(Insert knife through heart here.)

Disappointed, we came back with our final offer, which was a substantial increase from our initial one, but nowhere close to what the seller had asked for. (Blah, blah, blah, boring, boring, boring.)

We left our "firm" offer open through the end of this weekend, hoping that they would mull it over, find a place they love, realize that they have been presented with a mighty fine deal, and accept.

(Yeah, I almost just fell asleep, too, typing out that last paragraph.)

While all of this was happening, my mother was doing a fair amount of silent and secretive hand-wringing. Feeling that as a parent, it is her duty to intervene in the major life decisions of her approaching middle-age children, she could bite her tongue no longer and called me up at dinnertime with her two twenty five cents.

Do you know what a phone call of the, "I know you hate it when I give you advice, but I need to tell you how I really feel are you sure you aren't making a mistake can't you find a nice $20 house somewhere around here you don't need to try to keep up with the Jones' what happens if P-Dawg suddenly kicks the bucket I can't help but feel a sense of foreboding and doom over this choice you have made" variety does to the psyche of a devoted daughter whose emotional state is already akin to that of a frayed rubber band that has been stretched to it's maximum length?

Yeah.

Also, not to give Catholics a worse rep than we already have, but I sent the P-Dawg outside yesterday with a Saint Joseph statuette and a shovel.

My MIL and the Internet told me that burying a Saint Joseph (patron Saint of families and, er, carpentry) statue upside down in your yard, like, totally helps sell your house. She also told me to throw a rosary over my shoulder into a bush to prevent rain on my wedding day (I didn't do this), but what can I say, I am getting desperate, Internets.

(Disclaimer: Catholics don't pray to or worship statues, but they do ask saints, whom they believe to be in really good standing with God, to intercede on their behalf in prayer. Kind of like if you really needed to use the car on Saturday night but you haven't exactly done all of your chores that week and your grades for the semester are a bit low, so you ask your goody two shoes sister who has done no wrong, ever, to ask your dad about borrowing the car for you.)

Now, I'm not sure if this means that your sister has to come along with you on your hot date, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

Incidentally, I know that the whole burying of the statue is just freaky-deeky superstition and, if anything, it's the prayer that does the trick, but, well, it can't hurt, right? Right? And I'm not praying specifically that we sell our house or get the one that we bid on, but rather that things turn out best for the well-being of our family. (Dear Saint Joseph, tell God I totally want that house and please to let somebody buy my hut soon Amen.)

(And this is neither here nor there, but I've had about 95% success with the old, "Tony, Tony, come around, what is lost must be found" prayer for lost items.)

So, anyone have any experience with Saint Joe and real estate?

P.S. No one is getting off the island today. That was a total gimmick mwa haha.

*Actual monetary values have been changed.

Annette Bening, Will You Sell My House Today?

Today we had an open house for which NO ONE showed up because, among other things:

1. There were no signs in the neighborhood pointing to our open house.
2. The open house did not appear to be advertised in the newspaper.
3. The open house was not advertised online.

WTF, my peeps? Is my real estate lady smokin' dope, or does she really not want to sell this house?

I can handle no one showing up if a valiant attempt has been made to attract visitors. But I do not want to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, turning the hut right-side up in preparation for a showing while two little childrenz follow me around undoing my every effort as I complete it for an imaginary open house which has been advertised exactly nowhere.

Yesterday, we had a showing scheduled during the J-dog's naptime, so we packed the kids up in the Ramamobile and drove around our dream 'hood scouting out new listings while the V-meister hummed merrily along to her favorite song on the Grease soundtrack (Why, this car is automatic, it's systematic, it's hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidromatic, why, it's grease lightning!) and the J-dog caught up with his beauty sleep.

But forty five minutes into our jaunt around the winding and hilly roads where we hope to find the home of our future nestled, the little J-dog woke up and puked a pint of partially digested strawberries into his lap.

"Crap! I told you somebody was going to yorp if you didn't take it easy around those curves, P-Dawg!!!!"

Sadly, it was a situation in which having been right didn't yield quite the feeling of satisfaction one would hope for.

We pulled into the nearest parking lot, where a howling J-dog was wiped down to the best of the P-Dawg's ability and changed into a set of clean clothes (which the ever prepared mutha keeps in the diaper bag at all times in case of just such an emergency).

Then we killed the remaining half hour before we could get back into our house by driving very slowly with the windows down and making as few turns as possible. Once home, we deposited the J-dog straight into the bathtub, and that is when the agent who had scheduled the showing arrived with her clients, half an hour late.

I completely understand how easy it can be to run late for a showing, but I almost burst a blood vessel upon being told that they couldn't get in earlier due to the storm door being locked, BECAUSE I KNOW THIS TO BE A BUNCH OF BULL SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS.

Freakin' storm door was not locked. NOT LOCKED!

Do you know how hard it was for me not to call her on her bluff about that stupid storm door? It took every ounce of self-restraint in me to bite my tongue and place the blame squarely on the V-meister, saying, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! My daughter must have turned the lock on our way out!", even though it is impossible to lock our storm door from the inside, Pinocchio!

So either this agent has a serious iron deficiency, or the line is something agents universally say when they are running late and don't want to admit it. Still, I would have appreciated a little honesty after driving my kid to puke all over himself in vain.

Bah. She showed the house while the entire family Rama huddled awkwardly in the bathroom, the V-meister occasionally shooting out into the hallway like a bat out of hell to let us know whether the coast was clear.

You know how they say that moving is one of life's biggest stresses? I hope that they are factoring the house showing part of the process heavily into the equation, because if it gets much harder, I could have a total nervous breakdown.

MamaGeek recently reminded me of that scene in American Beauty where Annette Bening stands, arms akimbo, in front of the patio doors of a house she is trying to sell, affirming, "I will sell this house today! I will sell this house today!" before stripping down to her bra and panties and going on a cleaning spree.

Dude. I need that realtor.

Seller's Remorse

So our little hut is officially for sale as of today, and when I first pulled up the listing, I got a little choked up.

This does not bode well, I think, for the day in the hopefully not so distant future when we will actually be moving out. I have this mental picture of being torn away from the stoop railing, kicking and screaming "My babies were born here!"

After I pulled myself together and clicked through the photos, I was stunned by the photographer's mad photoshopping skillz.

Our house looks so purdy. The rooms! So bright and cheerful! Either the photographer stood across the street to get the panoramic shot of the living room, or she has one mother of a zoom lens.

Gazing upon the blazing little log that had been photoshopped into our fireplace, I found myself thinking, "We should build a fire in there sometime." Then I saw the picture of our basement "rec room"and mused, "What an awesome rec room! You could totally hang out down there and play games or watch movies!"

In short, I momentarily forgot that, "I hate this effing house" has been my mantra all winter.

It's sad. Now that we've finally fixed the place up, we're ready to get the H-E double hockey sticks out.

Really, I'm the ultimate pessimist when it comes to our prospects of actually finding a buyer in this housing market. Yesterday's headline in the local paper was something to the effect of "Housing Prices Tanking; Some Morons Still Trying to Sell."

Some days I think that our house is a comparatively nice little starter home, well decorated, in good repair, yadda yadda yadda. Then I start looking at the hundred plus listings of houses just like it in the same neighborhood with updated kitchens, more space, and lower asking prices, and I despair. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've said to the P-Dawg "We are never, ever going to sell this house."

"Who the hell would ever fall for this little hovel?" I say to my friend V, and she counters, "You did."

If you've bought a house or looked at real estate recently, tell me this: could you fall for a house that may not necessarily have every update or feature you are looking for, but is clean, neutrally decorated with no garish 70s wallpaper or fugly shag carpeting, and contains strategically placed smoke and mirrors?

The Astroturf Is Always Greener

We officially kicked off the Great House Quest of 2008 this weekend. Is there anything more thrilling than legally snooping around in other people's homes?

I thought it would be nothing short of hilarious if I asked the realtor to swing by an ATM before we got started so I could take out some cash. You know, for the house?

But I was able to restrain myself, if only because I want to be viewed as a matoor and responsible adult who can take a mortgage and the accompanying responsibility seriously.

But how funny would that have been? How funny, I ask you?

We didn't see anything that struck us as being "The One." In fact, I was a tad disillusioned with the kind of house we could buy for the amount we are willing to spend, even in this "buyer's" market.

Then on Sunday, I attended a wedding shower inside of a what looked to be a castle and, well, it put a bit of a damper on the whole house hunting business, if you know what I mean.

This house was like the Hope Diamond of new home construction for the twenty-first century, my peeps. I felt imposterish just standing inside, like I might be asked to don a loaner dinner jacket at any moment.

I am talking about a home theater, complete with rows of leather chairs! I'm talking about a study with a view to the fully stocked wine cellar via a window built into the floor! I'm talking about a spiral staircase and a master bathroom larger than my entire house!

And I wanted it. Oh, I wanted it baaaaaaaaaaaaad.

What made me want it even more was the knowledge that its owner was someone who I grew up with and in whose parents' bungalow basement I attended countless birthday parties. Where I was perfectly content to eat hot dogs, drink Kool-Aid, and play Twister.

We both came from the same humble roots, yet one of us lives in a castle and the other one, a hut.

(Why must I be the one with the hut?)

I was covetous, but I also felt not good enough inside of this house. Self-conscious about my outfit, my unmanicured hands, and my springy gray flyaway hairs. Too short, too pudgy, blah, blah, blah.

Does being surrounded by beauty elicit a desire to be beautiful, too? It felt that way to me yesterday afternoon.

(But if that's the case, then why don't I feel like Frumpy McFrumpypants in front of, say, a blazing sunset?)

As much as I coveted the house (and would by no means turn it down if it was offered to me), I realize that I might very well feel spectacularly ill at ease in such an environment.

I'm sure I would quickly tire of working out in my own personal gym, where the face towels are rolled up like little burritos just waiting to drink up my golden sweat. (right?)

I would be wracked with guilt at my undeserved bounty, unable to enjoy or reach any of the top cupboards in my chef's kitchen. (right?)

I would lie awake at night, wondering what kind of disaster was about to befall me, because surely such largesse cannot be had without a price? (A few million dollarz, is what I'm guessing.)

Or, who am I kidding, I might feel right at home.

Ah, but money doesn't buy happiness, right?

Right?

Still, after living in the cramped quarters we've lovingly called home for the past seven years, I'm thinking that an attached garage, an eat-in kitchen (oh, the decadence!), four bedrooms and a glamour bath could buy mine.

(Ish.)