We did it!

We bought a house!

Yes, we are now the proud owners of an 1800 square foot shotgun double in Holy Cross. Two afternoons ago, we met the sellers at the attorney's office and signed the next thirty years of our lives away. I signed and signed and signed until I got to the closing costs. Then, I signed and clenched my teeth. We could pay our rent for a year for what we paid in closing costs. And silly me, I thought those costs actually went toward the loan. Nooooooo. Gawd, that part was sickening.

In fact, I'm just really going to have to find ways of staying positive about money. The bid seems high, the loan seems high, the closing costs seem high, and until we are able to actually move into the house, our living expenses will be ridiculously high. As in 400% higher than they are now. So we need the contractor to work fast... and we've been told by everyone to go ahead and forget that idea.

But I want to stop thinking about all that negative stuff. I want to pick paint colors and furniture and fixtures. I want to landscape our backyard in my head. I want to swing on the imaginary swing I have hanging from the branch of our backyard's live oak tree. And most of all, I want to settled on a damn floor plan!

Simon's been making fun of me for pulling out the drawings I've made wherever I go. It is a little silly to ask so many people for opinions on floorplans, I guess. And the historic consultant we've hired to help manage the home-restoration thinks we need to hurry up and settle. But isn't the floorplan, like The Most Important Thing? I mean, we plan to live in this house forever, so we don't want to regret kitchen-placement, of all things.

I think I've already posted about this, which goes to show just how obsessed with floorplans I've become. But really, we need help deciding!

I know everyone wants to have these open floorplans these days, but I don't see why I'd want my kitchen to be in my living room. Kitchens are loud and messy, and living rooms are for reading and TV-watching. (My dad did point out, though, that we'd need to think about the arrival of kids, and in that sense, I guess having a kitchen-living combo would be good.)

Anyways, I'm going to shut up about that. But if anyone has a floorplan-issue related to your own house that you either love or hate, let me know. The consultant may push use to decide, but we can't afford to get this wrong.

I really just wanted to write to let folks know that we've bought the house and are now in the beginning stages of what promises to be an agonizingly long wait for the home's completion. (And I'm scared about money, too. But only parenthetically and only because I want to be able to furnish our home inexpensively and in an environmentally-sound way... that looks good.)

Back to meeting with my panicky students. Oh, the semester's end...