House life

Other randomness about living in a house:

5) (or whatever number I'm on from last blog post) - Driving time! -- so this is maybe one of my top
      favorite changes.  We used to live 30 seconds from the school.  Literally.  Like, I should've been walking to school, but that never happened.  Take that environmentalist tomfoolery somewhere else for this one.  It is a rare day in MS that you get beautiful walking weather in the morning AND afternoon.  Plus I am "bag lady" going and leaving school.  Plus I got cute shoes.  ANYWAY,
When your "drive" is that short, you don't have time to take even one sip of coffee or listen to one second of radio.  The second your butt settles into the seat it is time to get out of the car.  I have thoroughly enjoyed my looooong and relaxing 10 minute drive to work.  I even eat my breakfast in the car as I sip my coffee MULTIPLE times to the sound of NPR/MPB - and I get to hear the complete news story!  It's truly fabulous.  And it's extra fabulous the mornings Joe and I ride together (does this make up for us not walking to school?... I think so)

6) Driving time part 2 = phone time.   I can make more phone calls now that I have some car time.  In Tallahassee this was always the time I caught up with Mom or some friends.  But since moving to Oxford I'm rarely in the car long enough to make a phone call as everything is only 3 or 5 minutes away.

7) Neighbors -- all you get from apartment neighbors is noise through the walls.  We barely ever saw them.  House neighbors you see occasionally and never have to hear them through the walls.  (we had a guitar player on the other side of the bedroom back at the apartment).  Also, (and this has made us feel super old) you might have an awesome neighbor that brings you tulips and cookies.  Sue from New York is proving to be quite the friendly neighbor with excellent taste in flowers and desserts.

8) Light switches -- there are a million of them.  We spent the first few days just figuring out what they do.  But no matter how many times I go to turn a light off/on I still manage to try all the wrong switches first.   It would be tacky to label them right?  

8.2) Motion lights... this light switch had to be turned off.  One night I thought we were getting robbed because I heard the screen door bang and then the motion light outside our bedroom kept blinking.  This light has been turned off until we can get the sensor fixed or something because it had me creeping around the house peering out every window looking for robbers at 3 am.  I don't know what my plan was if I'd actually seen robbers.  Joe slept soundly until I poked him and informed him the screen door kept banging.  He was unconcerned. 


9) Entertaining -  you don't invite people over for dinner in an apartment. . . at least not our weeee one.  Sure, we had people come stay for the weekend but we didn't have people over just because.  Especially since our other friends here have houses.  But now, we can entertain guests.  So far we've had 2 dinner nights with friends and 1 porch sitting afternoon with crawfish (and friends).  The first couple that came over was Amber and Duncan.  We set the table and then sat by the window waiting for them to get here... I felt like we were kids waiting for our birthday party to start.  So excited.

Mike and Murry 


Crawfish with Christine and Jarrot (sp?)













Spring breaking --not at our house.  Just trying to make him look cooler than those house slippers did.

We bought a house

I never want to buy another house as long as I live.  So it's a good thing I'm in love with this one.

We started really courting this house in January.  It was the most exhausting courtship.  Going to banks, discovering how important credit was (and how detrimental NO credit was), and learning a WHOLE new vocabulary related to house buying.  Some of our favorites:
esgro
origination fee
amorization
earnest money

I feel like I really learned to speak another language.  And like another language, I now find myself having conversations in this language.  Conversations I never used to have but can now have with people who know this language too.  Conversations that start up and about half way through I think "Oh wow we are really talking about this.  How boring / foreign this would've been to me a year ago or even a 4 months ago."

Once things started rolling with the bank and the headache of daily scanning documents came to an end (they even needed my FSU diploma) we really started to believe we might get this house.  I didn't let myself get excited until the day before closing.  Again, "are you excited??" -- NO, this is not exciting.  Nothing about buying the house was exciting to me.  Exhausting.  Tedious.  Time consuming.  Those are adjectives I'd use.  "Exciting" is saved until AFTER the closing.

We closed March 1.   We took a half day off of school.  It was lightly snowing as we ran around the house with the inspector who was inspecting the house literally 2 hours before we were supposed to close.  Then, we signed a gozillion documents in a nice little law office and just like that - the house was ours.

We moved in right before spring break.  I dislike moving almost as much as house buying.  But Joe got some big strong boys from the power lifting team to help.  You'd think the worst would be moving the big stuff, but for me it's all the random little crap that is a pain.  On the last day we were trying to get all the random little crap out of the apt. things happened like:  Joe dropping and shattering a glass jar on the kitchen floor or me tracking in a dollop of dog poo on my shoe.  Small things in the end but headaches at the time.

We LUCKED out and overheard a girl at church talking about this estate sale she was running.  We went to look at what she had and scored two bedroom sets of wooden furniture. 

 There's another wooden bed frame and dresser with mirror for the guest bedroom.  So come one come all .. you are invited to our house.

We have quickly entered the world of decorating (which comes with vocab of it's own).  This we learned is called a "great room."  And it is a great room.  Or it will be one day when we get it looking great. 

 Joe and our couch cushion as we traveled Oxford to find rugs.  We're gonna need lots of rugs.  Sound is bouncing all around our empty concrete floors. 

 He found this chair.  Major improvement from ugly orange one.  Look at that comfort. 

 We didn't buy this rug.  But we looked at lots like it.  I don't have a pic of the one we picked.  It'll be here soon.

 Things about living in a house (especially one with no rugs) :  1) You need house shoes.  House shoes also mean that the sound of shuffling feet on the floor is becoming very familiar. 

2) Infinite space (or seemingly infinite space compared to apartment).  The kitchen is suuuch a long walk from the bathroom in the morning.  Your cell phone can ring and you don't even have time to reach it... you may not even hear it.  This didn't happen in the apartment.  If Joe is out in the "great room" and I'm in the bathroom... I may as well be in Memphis. 

3) Unsolicited (yet much needed) advice -  big things in life tend to come with this.  Weddings, Kids, and Houses.  People got either advice or stories about their own and they like to share it with you.  Seeing as how most adults our age and older live in a house, there is plenty of advice going around.  But it's advice you really try and listen to cause it's your house...and you wanna get it right.
 
4) The answer to "What'd you do this week or over the break?" is and will probably forever be "We worked on the house." 

We are old.  
More on the exciting world of interior decorating later.