The Hunt

House hunting.  They make it look so easy on TV.  You find a realtor, she shows you a handful of houses, and you fall in love (with at least one of them).  Instantly.  Easy, right?  The hubs and I recently went through this process, and after house number 73, reality in realty showed its ugly face.  No, this process is NOT easy.  And it shouldn't be.  It isn't just a house you are hunting.  If that were the case, maybe it would have been easier.  There are plenty of houses to be hunted.  The process should really be called roam for a home.  A home, you know, like mom and dad's.  A place to grow. A place for holidays.  A place for family.  A place where life, well, takes place.  And on house 73, we realized, roam for a home is not easy. But, we dared the challenge.  It's probably a good time to mention we were sharing the hub's bachelor pad.  All 900 square feet, one bedroom and one bath of it.  You see, we'd already dared one challenge, now on to the next.   We could do it; we had to!

And so, dare it we did.  Weekend after weekend of walking through floral wallpapers, braving our shoes to worn out carpets, meeting inquiries of musky smells (and those "I guess they have indoor dogs" head nods) (side note* you see enough houses, and amazingly you become chief expert on pet smell, mold smell, and dirt smell), traversing cramped (and often proving impractical) layouts, and surveying less-than-curb-appeal yards, roam for a home started to take its toll.  We began to wonder if Houston House would ever be.  We began to wonder how much Advil is enough.  We began to wonder if there were support groups for this type thing.  We began to wonder why TV shows painted such a pretty picture.  We began to draft hate mail to HGTV for such.  We then threw hate mail away. 

We began to wonder why, and more importantly, when.

What do you do when your goals seem unattainable? Or when you can't seem to answer those questions of why! and when!?  Well, in our family, we talk to the man upstairs.  And turn to friends.  Some of our good friends let us know a house right next to them was for sale when we first started the roam for a home ordeal.  And boy, are we forever thankful.  After viewing the house 3 times, and a whole week of back and forth negotiations, we finally had what we thought could be our home. 

And guess what, IT IS!