meh

It's been a bit of a bumpy week.  The house search has been a challenge.  I've looked at 5 places.  All of them but one are on the high end of our budget (actually, they've claimed territory outside our budget, but what to do?).  The one that was more decently priced turned out to only have two bedrooms in the house but included two bedrooms and a distant bathroom on the ground-floor, connected by a common-use stairway.  Really, they were just separate rooms waiting to be rented out to students, it seemed.

It's ironic, seeing all these beautiful, beautiful houses and finding so few of them available. 

The one I've liked best was close to Devin and Merlin's school, had ample room for guests, a yard, a really nice landlord who is retrofitting it with new bathroom fixtures, lights, and a new kitchen, and was, unsurprisingly, too expensive.  The next option is the one I'm trying for now - but I've got to work out details about whether or not we can move into the downstairs while the upstairs floor is being replaced and bathroom repaired.

Do you see the trend?  It seems landlords wait until they have a renter before they make repairs - or they put it on the market while the previous tenant is still current and who knows when they'll be moving out... or they list the number of rooms and sometimes count the bathrooms in the total so that you have to see it to find out it really only has two bedrooms.

Adding to this was the large amount of bank paperwork that came bearing PINs, none of which seemed to work, colds caught by the kids, a tick bite on yours truly, residency paperwork hitting the glitch of my passport expiring next year... 

and I've concluded that the honeymoon is over and we're back to reality.

We're all looking forward to finding some normalcy so that we at least feel like we have a home base in which we can weather all storms, even when they're as small as a tick.

****

off topic and long shot:  Is anyone looking for new cell phone service?  I'm about to cancel my existing account and pay $600 for breaking our contract for 3 lines.  If you're interested in adopting a T-mobile line, please let me know...

oh, and I'm behind in answering email - in case you hadn't noticed...