House hunting

This last weekend B and I went up north to see if we could find a house. We didn't have to come here to find a house when we were looking before we moved here. We were hoping that would be the case with moving there too. Alas, that was not to be. We went up there on Thursday after B got done at the hospital. We only had Friday to find a house. The problem is, there are not a whole lot of places to rent up 'round those parts. The realtor had sent a list of 12 homes to look at. We narrowed it down to eight that we wanted to see. She responded the next day,(this was all via e-mail earlier in the week last week) telling us that four of the houses we wanted to see already had applications in on them. So, we were going all the way up there to look at four houses. I'm not gonna lie, I was a little bugged that we were leaving our kids with friends, spending all this money to go look at four houses. Looking back, it was indeed a tender mercy!

Now, let me say that with a rental I understand that you go into it with a level of understanding that it's a rental. There are probably going to be things that you don't like, but since you're just renting, you can live with it. I will try to explain the houses the best that I can. I don't think that we asked for too much. It's not like we wanted our dream house. We wanted M and K to have their own rooms. Sleeping together, they play more than they sleep. We trust M enough that we thought that once B sleeps through the night, that he could sleep in with her and live to tell about it. That may not be the case if he slept in the same room with K. So, we wanted three rooms. Other than that, we were good with whatever.

Let's start with house number one. As we drove into the neighborhood, there were houses with more weeds than grass in their yards. There were old cars in these weed over run yards. Tires mixed in with the weeds. I was thinking that the house we were going to look at must be the best one in the area because the picture she sent us made it look pretty good. Oh how wrong I was! When we pulled in to the driveway, it was almost more weeds than driveway and the driveway was cement. I'm not sure how it was accomplished, but truly, there were a lot of weeds. We walked in to the house and it was fine except for how dirty it was. It was gross enough that I wouldn't take my shoes off to walk through the house. Now, I can clean like no one's business. But, I don't think there was anyway I could clean it enough to ever feel like we wouldn't get a fungus of some kind if we walked barefoot through the house. I think the carpet had been white when the house was built, but under the piles of dead ants, the carpet was gray-ish, black-ish. In the Kitchen there were more piles of dead bugs. I didn't get close enough to see what kind of bugs they were. All I know is that it was nasty! The door to the laundry room was broken and hanging from it's hinges. At least the back weeds had a fence, kind of. It was open to the road on both sides of the house and open to one of the neighbor's houses. At least there was a lovely pirate flag flying in the weeds! As long as there's one of those, what's there not to like?!

House number two was very similar to number one except the neighborhood was really nice. That house was the one that you look at and sang the song,"One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong." That would be the house. There were three bushes in front of the house that were well trimmed. Other than that, everything was over grown and gross. The door leading from the garage to the house didn't shut without slamming your whole body against it. That would be awesome to hear when B leaves for work at five o'clock in the morning. 

House number three, there almost aren't words. We went in to the house with really low expectations. We knew from the picture that we would feel like we were living in a circus house. We already knew that there was blue and white striped wall paper in the kitchen and it continued throughout the living room. But, to say we were unprepared for what we saw and smelled would be a gross understatement. The bushes growing over the sidewalk to get to the door, could be tamed. So, we were willing to look past them. The weeds that almost swallowed you as you got to the door could be cut and hopefully killed. As we walked through the front door, words to describe what we were seeing left me. The wall paper was more overwhelming then we thought. There was Dr office wall paper in the bathroom. It was navy blue with white, flowery paisleys. The boarder paper was pictures of tan pillars. Which was fine, it would add to the excitement of living there! We saw three bedrooms that all had flower wall paper in them, but we could live with. The only thing that I worried about was the ceiling fans that were on and looked like they were going to fall off and chop up whoever was unlucky enough to be standing under them when it fell. When the realtor told us there was a basement, I said,"A basement?! That's where the monsters live. I don't know if I can go down there." B told me to be brave, opened the door to the basement and started to go down. Now, when he opened the door, we were hit with the smell of cats. I don't know how many cats lived in this house. All I know is that it was a lot! The more stairs we went down, the stronger the cat smell got. There was a fourth bedroom down there. The carpet looked really plush. I thought that was nice, but then I stepped on it. It was damp! To make it worse, I was wearing my flip flops. So the carpet was thick enough that when I stepped in it, it went up on either side of my flip flop and got the sides of my feet wet. Sick! To have it smell like cats and then have plush, damp carpet, I'm pretty sure I threw up in my mouth. Not to mention the huge orange stains that were all over the damp plush carpet in the awful purple paint room. Then we went in to the laundry room. There was a door in the wall of the room. There was no door frame to this door. It was like the owner woke up one day and thought, I'd like to add a door in the laundry room. So, they took a saw, cut a square out of the dry wall, put little knobs in the square of dry wall that was now cut out, and called it a door. When I pulled on the door to see what was behind it, the entire thing fell towards my face. It was fairly traumatic as my life flashed before my eyes. I could just imagine one of our kids pulling on the knob and having the thing fall on them. Having smashed children in a house that smells of cats didn't sound great. I'll spare you the details of the dead bugs that were in the bathroom down there. Disgusting is a nice word for this house.

House number four really wasn't that bad, other than the smell. It smelled like some kind of food. It's a smell I have never smelled before. It wasn't like the food was cooking in a crock pot and that's why it smelled like that, the house just smelled that way. So, if we lived there, we would smell like that forever, even after we moved. So, that wouldn't be great. Not to mention there was a deck that if  a small child climbed it and fell over the side, they would die. The house was built on a hill, so the deck was really tall so the posts could make it all the way to the bottom of the hill. Needless to say, B and I were feeling really discouraged. The realtor said that she did find another home to show us. Neither of us were feeling like we wanted to go see another house. I am so glad that we went and looked. As we drove I thought that we just need to look for the most weeds, and if it had a couple broken windows or doors hanging on their hinges, it would be the house that she was taking us to see. The most frustrating part is that we weren't looking at super cheap houses to rent. All of these houses were well over a thousand dollars a month. If we had been looking in government houses, then I would expect the things that we were seeing and smelling. So, we were driving through the neighborhood to find the last house. We pulled up to a house that looked really nice. I thought that she must have missed a turn and we were turning around. When she turned her car off, I was so shocked that I asked in a very surprised voice, "This is it?!" When she said yes, I almost cried. When we walked in I said that we didn't need to see the rest of the house. We could just sign the contract. It was clean and didn't smell like weird food or cats! There was no basement where the monsters lived AND the realtor told us that it has four bedrooms! I almost kissed her! That means that each of our kids get there own room and since the formal dining room has carpet in it, there's no way we'll put our table in it. So, we can use it as a play room.

Isn't it lovely?! I know that the grass in this picture looks awful, but it was taken in the winter. The grass, although long, was green! It needed to be cut, but it was actually more grass than weeds. I am so glad that we went up there to look at the houses. If we hadn't, then we probably would have just gone with one of the other four without going in them. What if we had gotten the one that smelled like cats and had a scary, monster like basement with damp carpet, dead bugs and doors that weren't meant to be there? That would have been awful! Two weeks from this Saturday is graduation! We can hardly wait! B had heard that after he took his last set of tests, going to clinicals would be really hard. They told him he would just want to be done so bad that he REALLY wouldn't want to go. He thought that he would be fine. Well, he took his last set of tests about a week and a half ago. Ever since, he's had a really hard time going to clinicals. He is so ready to be done. When we found this house, he looked at me and said," I need to buy a lawn mower and a trimmer! And, I'll even have time to mow it and trim on a Saturday morning!"  We are so excited to have a house. We were worried that we were going to be homeless for awhile. We are so thankful for tender mercies and answered prayers.