I got the call from Bill the Realtor about 4 yesterday afternoon.  Hubbell (the house builder) countered our counter by agreeing to our request for the 7 deciduous trees and then met us halfway between our counter offer price and theirs.  Bill…who’s a cool character for sure…sounded pretty amazed that they had agreed to everything we’d asked for and still come down on the price. 

I’m happy with the deal, but I gotta tell you, I’m still not sleeping.  Didn’t fall asleep until 1:30; then my eyes flew open at 5, thinking about sideboards and dinette sets and bar stools and craigslist and flat screens and going back to work. 

I did manage to remember to say Thanks, God! somewhere in there, so there may still be a shred of hope that buying a new house isn’t going to turn me totally into a materialistic pagan pig. 

Maybe. 

You know what this whole thing feels like?  It feels exactly like that buzz you get in those first minutes after giving birth.   Like you’ve done this great and wonderful and amazing thing…climbed Mt. Everest!…and after that comes this huge endorphin rush.  Suddenly, you feel skinny and smart and rich all at the same time. 

Then…right after that comes this tiny niggle of a thought that maybe, just maybe, this is going to be harder than you thought.  And you might be in a little over your head.  Spending time and money on stuff not even imagined yet.  Not to mention all that cleaning up of inordinate amounts of baby poop and barf for the next hundred years. 

Or maybe it’s like finding a gorgeous pair of outrageously expensive shoes… on clearance for 90% off.  You snatch them up and pay for them and it’s like you’re having this out of body experience, until you get home and put them on and they pinch the crap out of your baby toe.  You wanna live in those shoes, but first you gotta figure out what to do about that toe. 

Hey…nobody said shakin’ it up in the second half was gonna be easy. 

Life as we know it, in the teeny-tiny hobbit hole village of Tom-and-Cherie-ville, IA, is coming to a close.  

Which is a good thing AND  a crap load of work.  Seems like those things just gotta go hand in hand.

Dat what dis new momma say…