settling down. or something.

Months ago, I talked about buying the cow, which could reference a number of things, but in this case is referring to purchasing the house we're living in.

See, the MOG and I are semi-nomads, although in recent years I have become significantly less nomadic. This is due primarily to the tendency of my mini-nomads to go up on the stage and moon the audience or scream and bludgeon their sister with a Bible during a particularly quiet moment of corporate prayer.

I've always been an apartment kinda gal. New carpet every year, gated front entrance, and most importantly, maintenance. I once called a maintenance man for a malfunctioning dryer, only to find I hadn't pushed the dryer door all the way closed. And there he was, resplendent in his paint-stained khaki uniform, closing my dryer door for me. For free.

It gets trickier, though, living in apartments with little people. If you're upstairs, they can't jump or flap their arms wildly on the floor all day long while watching Toy Story (see: R2). And there's no yard, and parking lot all over the place, and it's just not ideal.

So anyways. We've been living in this house for almost 2 years, and when our landlord offered us a) first dibs on purchasing or b) the curb, (kidding, Mark, y'all are awesome), we decided to try to buy it, rather than clean it and move again. Plus, this house is awesome. I mean, it's old, and it needs this and that, but it's really ideal for us.

Here's the thing, though. When you're 32 and 33 years old and you've never bought a house, this is scary stuff. I mean, lots of money, and responsibility and paperwork and maintenance and holy moly... I'm breaking out in hives as I'm typing all this.

So we're settling in a little bit, for the first time ever. I'm painting over all the wood paneling, which BTW is super time-intensive and tedious, and we're making plans for how to get new tile and change lighting and stuff like that, once our Miracle Covenant Love Gift Miracle comes and pays for it all. I imagine as soon as we close on it and get good and committed, something will happen and Richy will end up in California for 6 months or something. Ah, well. I'll finally get to paint that wall with chalkboard paint.