Building Our House

The big time-draining show is done (and successfully, at that).  Time has taken much of the sting from the wound of the title-problem purchase attempt, though not healed it.

So Jeff has been looking at ads again, and on Sunday, we drove out to look at a new small subdivision.  Not only was it almost 25 miles from my work (remember I have a walking commute now), it was hideous.  Perhaps aliens landed and took all of the trees away, leaving newly planted grass to try to stop the erosion.  Perhaps they also put in the four-wheeler track clearly visible in an empty lot on the next street over.  Anyway, they can have that street, we don’t want it.

Other errands were done, and a tired Anne was taken home.  Jeff realizes there was a second subdivision he wanted to look at, near the first.  Jeff is a smart man and lets Anne stay home while he goes out again.  He comes back excited, having talked to a sales rep and seen several available lots, including a 10 acre one that’s quite out of our budget range, and not as nice as the lost opportunity, but still nice.  Trees.  Hills.  A stream.  Ten acres!  Well, and a third of it in a flood plain around that stream.  And, as previously mentioned, out of our price range.

But wait, there is also a three acre parcel which is nice.  And in our price range.  On Tuesday, Jeff picked me up at work and we drove over there.  Forty minutes in traffic.  But it was quite attractive.  All of the trees are still there, and seem likely to stay.  (The folks who want clear-cut can buy that without going to the trouble themselves, clearly.)  There would be neighbors, hypothetical neighbor kids to play with our hypothetical offspring.  It was the last lot in its size range left and the salesman expected it would sell soon.

Did I mention that we had just made plans to be out of town Wednesday through Saturday?

We left after dark with a copy of the contract we could sign and fax in, quite excited.  However, the commute time was an issue, and became a bigger and bigger one as I calmed down a bit and tried to think rationally about it.  45 minutes of solitude sounds fine to me actually - but that becomes an hour and a half daily, in traffic.  Getting up earlier and losing sleep.  Less time with those hypothetical children, waiting at home for their working mama.

So we didn’t do it.  Jeff was sad, but I think it was the right thing to (not) do.  Twenty minutes is plenty for a commute.  Thirty tops, if we have to.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Moving Forward. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.