Wednesday, June 20, 2007

On How To Be a Grown-Up

By this time next week, we may be well on our way to owning our first home.

Excuse me for a moment, will you?

*Lies down and elevates feet to stave off panic attack. Tries really hard not to throw up. Fails miserably.*

Ok, feeling much better now. Sorry about that.

I'm in my (very) late twenties. You'd think that graduating college, getting married, having a baby, raising said baby and then getting pregnant again would be enough to remind me that I'm a grown person, but sometimes I just plain forget. Like when I'm sitting on the floor and I spy a fruity cheerio and pop it into my mouth without even giving it a second thought.

In my defense, those things are like crack. I tell myself that I buy them for Sam, but he's lucky if he gets a measly handful. Those are mama's, now keep your grubby mitts off boy!

Where was I? Oh, right. I'm an adult. An adult who buys expensive things. Like houses.

It's not that we've never made a major purchase before. We're on our third car and nine-hundred and fourteenth TV. But some of the houses we're looking at are twenty times more expensive than my car. The cheapest house on our list is more than twice as much as SOB's education debt. Which is an astronomical figure in it's own right! Our mortgage broker man keeps telling us that we could afford even more, but I've already decided that we are not going above X number of dollars. Doing so might make my brain turn to butterscotch pudding. SOB agrees with me, which is awesome since he loves butterscotch pudding and might be tempted to try and eat my head if we went over my arbitrary spending limit.

Adding to the excitement/terror of this whole situation is the fact that this is all going down in a matter of days. We're leaving for Philly on Saturday and have our first appointment on Sunday at 10:30. We started peeking at houses back in January, when the entire concept of buying one was totally abstract. Even listings the realtor sent to us in early June were only casually viewed. We didn't want to get too excited about any particular house, only to find out that it sold the day before we were coming to see it.

But now? We're moving money into our checking account for deposits and what not. We're filling out Important Financial Papers. We're finalizing lists and plans.

This shit is going down.

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5 comments:

susan said...

Just breath. You're gonna need all the energy you can conserve to figure out how the you accumulated THIS MUCH STUFF IN JUST ONE YEAR and WHERE THE F*** ARE THE BOXES THE SIZE OF A SMALL ELEPHANT IN WHICH TO LOAD IT ALL?!!! Not to mention keeping the small boy out of said boxes. Buying the place will be the easy part... :)

P.S. We're at the ready to help with the unpacking!

Amy said...

Oh, looking at houses can be so fun! Good luck, I'll be thinking of you guys.

Becky said...

woo hoo!! good news!! see the fun part is looking for the house and filling out the paper work.
the hard stuff is the packing up and keeping it all packed up with your son around.
the good news? when you are unpacking let him play with the empty boxes!! they will keep him happy for days and days!!
good luck!

Jessica said...

Nice deep calming breaths. Remember your Lamaze breathing. Works wonders in these kind of situations.

Her Bad Mother said...

Keep telling yourself: EXCITING. Not scary. EXCITING.