Imaginary House Hunting

Please tell me I'm not the only one imaginary house hunting right now! We have more than outgrown our house. Yes, we've got enough rooms for us and the bug currently, but we have zero storage and our stuff is starting to need a house of its own. We don't have a basement, and between all of the baby stuff we're no longer using and and entire classroom's worth of teaching stuff (materials, books, crates, supplies, rugs, shelves), our garage looks like it's thrown up a dump truck! Bug and I have to squeeze our way through mountains upon mountains of STUFF just to get her in the car. One time, I even knocked over a gas can that was against the wall of the garage far from where I was because Bug's carseat knocked into something, which tipped over something else...and so on until a gas can fell over and leaked all over the floor. What makes it worse is that I didn't even realize it until I came home from our errands and the stench (even though I'm typically one of those weirdos who love weird smells like gas...creepy, I know) was overwhelming. We were high off gas fumes for days, even after clean up.

Aside from our hideous mess of a garage, all of our closets are overflowing with CRAP too. It doesn't help that I'm a HUGE slight pack rat and don't want to get rid of my textbooks and binders from my graduate (and some undergraduate) courses...plus, my husband's stuff. We're a mess and are in need of more space  plus someone to throw away our stuff in the middle of the night so we don't put up a fight.  There is no way we can be in this house when we have another baby. We just don't have the room.

The problem is, you can't sell a house that looks like a tornado whipped by and threw all of the neighborhood's junk strategically in your garage and closets. "Hey, come buy this house...plenty of room for all of your needs. Great storage. Perfect for your family!! Make this mess your home!" For whatever reason, that argument doesn't seem to work.

So we've found ourselves looking for imaginary homes. Why are they imaginary?? Well, we have a house that's about as far away from selling/renting condition as possible (ok, this might be a slight exaggeration since I'm Queen of that. My mom totally has it worse, right ma? We just need to de-clutter). We haven't even considered putting it up for sale right now. Oh, and did I mention we don't have money to front two mortgages??? SO why are we torturing ourselves by looking at the imaginary houses in glass boxes?? I don't know, but darnit...there's so many good deals on houses right now. So do we take less for our house to get a house for less than it's worth? Do we do all the work to get our house on the market only to be lucky to break even? We're in a slight predicament, and don't know what would be the wisest decision...so we've got a lot of research and educating to do. But you know me...I'm a totally nerd, so I eat this stuff up! My husband thinks I should've been in business instead of teaching. But hey...we teachers are smart! :-)

Until then, I am living in my imaginary world where we move into a house complete with areas for storage, rooms for our family (and future family members), and even room for our extended family to visit us.  Darling Dearest is also on this fantasy ride with me...so who will snap me out of it?? What makes it worse is that my college friend, N (I'll have to think of a cute nickname that fits her later. Hmmm...another project!), has embarked on this imaginary house journey with us....and we're imaginary neighbors in this beautiful, older neighborhood with majestic trees and big yards (real place, but "imaginary" for us in that neither of us have houses on the market). Oh, and did I mention the imaginary house she found on realtor.com has a pool and is beautiful??? Unfortunately, she's staked her claim into this house, so Dean and I can't pursue it on our imaginary househunting journey. Hmmm, maybe we could have an imaginary bidding war against our college friends!

N asked me what I wanted for my b-day coming up on Friday and Darling Dearest told me to tell her that she didn't need to get me anything since she already found a house with a pool for a sickeningly cheap price for us (I mean...the kind of house that you'd totally deal with a sink hole just to have --or at least, I would..hehe). To which she replied, "and coincidentally there will be a fire set to that house immediately after you move in." YEP...full on fighting words in our imaginary war over imaginary houses. Are you getting sick of me saying IMAGINARY yet?? I'm sure sick of writing it. :-) 

What makes things worse is that realtor.com is not super up-to-date with their properties and several of the ones I loved (You know, the kind that make you pee your pants a little bit in the excitement of just thinking about them??) already were under contract. Crazy things start happening in my head at that point. I think....hmm, maybe we could put a hit on the buyers or develop some sort ridiculous scandel so the contract would fall through and we'd come trotting in on our white horse (yep, myself, Darling Dearest, Bug, and the two pups on a white horse...awesome mental picture, huh?) to save the day and sweep up the damsel in distress (in this case...our coveted imaginary house). But, instead of resorting to plan A (crazy plan detailed above), I glumly agree to plan B (moping at the loss of our imaginary home that we can't buy anyway).

Why am I so emotionally involved with some of these houses?? I mean, how can I have enough love in my heart to share between Darling Dearest, Bug, my pups, my new boyfriend (DELL), and now my new rotating crushes---imaginary houses?!? At least with the others, I know they're always there for me....but as with all crushes, they'll soon break your heart!! And so far, they've done it 3 times (Truth: Yes, we've even driven around to look at these imaginary houses and 3 of them are out of commission due to silly little detours like UNDER CONTRACT signs..boo!). How much more rejection can a girl take?? Why am I putting myself in this misery of this fantasy to begin with?? Maybe it's DELL's fault for seducing me into the world of realtor.com! Well, boo on DELL then too. Maybe he isn't always there for me like I said before.

Please tell me some of you have made the same stupid decision as I have. Why must we want what we can't have?? Oh, I will be accepting donations. You can write your checks to the "Helping First Time Mommy Turn an Imaginary Home into a Real Home" fund. OR, you can buy my house...complete with overflowing junk!! Either way, it's a steal! Any takers???