#043 In which our hero reveals his home fears.

The house is now officially on the market. Coming home yesterday I was greeted by a new "home for sale" sign sticking in the front yard. It had one of those plastic sleeve things to hold flyers about the house attached. I thought "huh, wonder what they're saying about our house?" and took one. Number of bedrooms, baths, price, etc. I could have written something much more evocative. But I'll go with the wisdom of Joe, the real estate guy, and assume that this is what home buyers want to know.

The thing is, I've never bought a house before. Never even seriously looked. I once lived with a girl that was dying to buy a house... but I wasn't interested. I told her that if she bought a house, I wasn't having anything to do with it, but that I would live there and pay rent. You might think that was a red flag concerning the future of our relationship - and it was. Without me kicking in for the down payment, she could afford about a $60K house. Know what kind of house you can buy in Columbus for $60K? An abandoned crackhouse behind the mall, that's what. She never bought a house while we were together.

Frankly, my strategy up to this point has been to move in with a woman that already owns a house. And this has worked out magnificently for me so far.

But, the fact of the matter is that our cute little house isn't big enough for three of us. And, since we're thinking there might be four of us sometime in the future, it's definitely not big enough. So we need a new house.

This is something that we've been talking about for awhile, and I'm not sure what really pushed us into action. It could very well be the housing market or mortgage rates or something like that... but that's all The Scientist's deal, I'm blissfully ignorant of such things.

And to be honest, this entire thing frightens me. Now, I'm jazzed about owning a new house (Bigger kitchen! More bedrooms! Attached Garage! And did I mention bigger kitchen?!) but the process is scary. Here's me trying to understand:

ME: Let's start looking at houses!
The Scientist: We need to sell our house first.
ME: But how can we sell the house if we don't have a house to move in to?
TS: You don't want to pay two mortgages at once, do you?
ME: Well, no. But what if we sell the house and can't find a new house?
TS: We'll find one.
ME: But what if we don't?
TS: We will.
ME: But what if we don't?
TS: WE WILL!

Here's hoping I don' t have to post the next entry from our new home in the storage unit.