In other news.....
Who's fucking idea was it to buy a house? Oh. Yeah. Mine.
I love my house. It's cute, and old and a little charming. It has 5 excellent acres, and the view from the back yard is pretty damn picturesque.
But most of all....it's mine.
I haven't even lived in it for 3 months, and already it feels more like home than the house I rented for 7 years.
That being said.....it was a fixer upper. That's the only reason we could afford it. We had an inspection done. We had a friend who is a contractor come out and look at it and tell us what needed fixing and how much that would cost. We had a pretty good idea of what we were getting ourselves into.
Or so we thought. Every day something else is wrong. We worked on the house every day after work and every weekend for 2 months solid. It was to the point where I was paying the babysitter more than going to work was worth. I would leave for work around 8am and wouldn't get home again until 8pm. My son was visibly upset by the lack of time he was spending with us. My daughter's schedule was a constant juggling act. We were so tired and so burned out.....we just couldn't do it anymore.
So....I pulled the pin and we just moved in. It wasn't ready....but if we were waiting for the house to be done it would be years before we could move in.
So we moved in and set up a make shift bedroom in our dining room.
First night there, we found out just what "no insulation in the walls" means. We froze. The dining room is on the opposite end of the house from the new pellet stove we installed. It couldn't have been more than 45 degrees in there.
My daughter's room is right above the dining room. She also froze, but she sucked it up like a big kid and didn't say anything. The one time in her life, ever, that she just sucked it up and didn't complain and it was over something totally reasonable to complain about.
The next night she slept on the couch....next to the toasty pellet stove.
My son spent most of that first week sleeping in our bed with us.
The first night, my husband brought him in bed with us at the wee hours of the morning, and the poor boy's legs and feet were icy. The very next day I was at Walmart picking out fleece to make him a baby sleep sack (like a blanket they can't take off).
The 2nd day we were there, my husband messed around with the heating duct and cleaned it all out, replaced it in some places, and POOF it's warm in there now. In the duct work was enough cat hair to make two cats. Hmmm...Maybe that's why the heat circulation sucks.
I spent the rest of that first week trying like hell to unpack. It turns out that trying to fit a 3500 sq. ft. house into an 1800 sq. ft. house is like trying to get a fat girl into a wetsuit.
I have NO CLOSET SPACE. I have maybe 8 less kitchen cabinets than I had in my previous house.
There isn't so much as one shelf, cabinet or closet in the bathroom. I have an entire box of bathroom stuff that is still sitting in a box in my living room because I have nowhere to put it.
After 3 weeks of sleeping in the dining room, during one of the coldest winters in history, our bedroom was finally sheet rocked, taped and painted. We moved our bed upstairs.
The next day we put up pet gates and brought the dogs home. Our poor dogs had spent the previous 3 weeks in a kennel at my parents' house because I didn't want my un-neutered stud dog hiking his leg on my bed (Because I'm an unreasonable bitch like that). I pulled into the driveway with five dogs in the back of my car, barking and drooling like....well like dogs. My husband stood in the doorway and called the mongrels. They all lost their minds. Being stuck in a kennel for that extended period of time made them a little hyper, but they're home now and starting to settle down.
In general, my attitude about the house is different than my husband's attitude. I see it as an investment, as a milestone, as the place my kids will grow up and where we will spend our life.
He sees bills and work. To his credit.....there are plenty of both.
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