The Mighty Hunters

House hunting is by far the most fun part of relocating--okay, it's the only fun part. It's like an elephant-sized shopping trip. You get to explore all these houses and imagine yourself living in each one. And even though you have a very definite price range in mind, you blithely ignore it until it comes time to make some decisions.

(Can you see me reflected in the mirror? When you look at about 10 houses in one morning, you need pictures and copious notes to keep them from all blending together--at least, I do.)

You also see some wierd things along the way. For instance, this house looked very promising online--new, pretty, and reasonably priced:

But see that odd shadow falling across it? What could that be? This is what we saw as we drove up:

We said, "Ahhh! Beware the giant mushroom!" I guess it looks more like a very plain hot air balloon about to take off. The closer we got, the huger it seemed to grow. Really, what builder thought it'd be a good idea to put a house directly across the street from something like that? We didn't bother to go inside.

We also drove right past any house next to a big drainage ditch. We have a couple of friends who lived next to a similar ditch here in town, and they had to constantly--like monthly--get their place sprayed for bugs. Ewww!

Then there was one house, cute on the outside, nicely priced, and built in 2000. But when we went in we had our doubts. It had that sculptured carpet from the 80's, wallpaper, one of those kitchen box lights. We kept saying, "THAT'S not from 2000." We decided it had to be from the late 80's, maybe early 90's at a stretch. Then our realtor said she knew a trick. She took off the top of a toilet tank, and the date of manufacture was imprinted underneath. 1990. Ah hah! We knew it. Mystery solved. We couldn't have seriously considered that house, anyway, since it smelled strongly of smoke.

(Could this be the one? Actually, it was the runner-up. I like the porch.)

We narrowed our search down to two houses, but the one that lost out wouldn't have worked anyway. It had a great, huge garage that even opened into the backyard. Perfect for a boat or RV, right? Well, we don't have one of those, nor do we plan to get one anytime soon. Plus, it really was out of our price range. At some point fantasy has to give way to real life.

(If one had a boat or camper, one could make good use of this garage's back door. Unfortunately, we are not that one.)

Anyway, I like the one we finally came up with. I think I'll miss our lovely mature trees (as they say in the real estate ad), but I'll find new things to love. Now we just have to get all the money and paperwork lined up for our closing on the 25th.

(Ooh, ahh. I think we have a winner.)