Step Four: Several Dates In (or: You can still run back to the safety net of renting)

I'm not generally a restless person, but holy cow, I've been sick for the past couple days and been entirely energized. How does that work? I think the actual neck-pain I was feeling post-yoga was the beginning of this weird sickness, and amassed into all out sore/achey/flu-y neck discomfort. Does anyone out there know what I'm talking about? (I probably don't know, myself, as it's nearly 4 in the morning.)

Perhaps the pain in the neck isn't Charlie after all.

And for a brief time we both thought it might be the stress of house hunting. Though I'm generally pretty good at dealing with my stress by hiding it in the deepest parts of my soul. . .until it overflows. You know, the healthy and direct way of dealing with things. Thankfully, it's just the miserable flu that is going around this time of year. No stress-geysers, the normal stuff.

We've gone through the options: looking at all the neighborhoods and narrowing the search down to a fairly specific area, thinking maybe we'd like to design-build (which, we learned) the bank wants a deposit of 10% of land, construction materials and labor as a down payment for this type of mortgage (but perhaps this is for first time homebuyers?), and then getting back to the idea of a house. Then narrowing down the market.

We weren't interested in that new house smell. Not at all. Not even interested in getting to know anything younger than ourselves, really.

This is the part where I tell you we've been courting two houses, fantasizing about them, envisioning our stuff in their (uh. . .) rooms. Both of them, at the same time. One is a little country place, quiet and peaceful, but quirky. Not spastic and unpredictable, just quirky. The other is much more finished, groomed and sophisticated, but off a semi-busy rural highway, where I think we would be surrounded by strangers rather than neighbors. The MYOB sort (which also isn't the worst kind of neighbors considering some of the ones we have now.)
While you're house-hunting, you're supposed to maintain poker face.

You want to be sly and not too lusty, you don't want the date to know you're hoping for a Value Menu priced dinner at the new casual-chic diner in town. You want to quietly fall in love with the house, but not let on. Just maintain Poker Face, then lock yourself in the closet so you don't jinx anything and let the rest of the world see the love in your eyes, because they might want to get in on the good action and steal your date.

What am I getting at here? We found our place, the place we walked around and called our yard, our neighborhood, our porch. . .and we put an offer in. But learned someone else has been courting our place, too. So now we have to wait and see.

So here I am, sleepless and flu-ish, pacing like a school-girl, waiting to see if the boy I've been dating is going to ask me to the prom or the other girl.

Ick. Maybe renting isn't so bad after all.