In Which I Discuss All The Things, Part I

Not pictured: Anxiety, Stress, Bad Decision Making,
Reverting to Your College Eating Habits Because
That's All You Can Afford Right Now

HOLY CRAP, let's talk real life for a hot minute.

First, the Epic Roadtrip Of Awesome was freak-out-no-holds-barred-let's-force-all-our-friends-to-view-a-slideshow level of EPIC.

Lucky for you, I have too much stuff going on right now to edit those pictures (and yes, since learning to use Photoshop, I basically can't post pictures without pulling them through an editing process. I just cant. I have a problem).

Instead of that . . .

When we got back from said alluded-to Epic-Roadtrip-Of-Awesomesauce, I had this really bright (not really) idea about getting back to house shopping. We'd looked around a bit before our trip and there hadn't been anything that great, so I figured more casual browsing wouldn't hurt.

Except then casual browsing turned into casual viewing turned into casual finding a great house turned into casual putting in an offer -- except oh wait, there's nothing casual about that, and then wouldn't you know but all my brilliant plans of not becoming overly involved went straight to hell.

There's probably an old saying about, "when you drive by the house you just put an offer in on and notice that the fridge is sitting in the front yard for some mysterious reason, you might want to reconsider your decision," but I'd personally never had such an experience until, um, the fridge was sitting out in the front yard for some mysterious reason.

Turns out, some motha effers were in the process of clearing the place out, and had been interrupted by our drive by. Don't worry, they got right back to work after we left, and the fridge was gone by the next day (I know that's what you were worried about). I have never felt so personally responsible to people I've never met - I'm still replaying how we should have handled things differently. Adding insult to injury (for them), upon further inspection, we decided we didn't want that house after all -- which then meant, for those of you who are house-shopping uninitiated, that we had to wait for our thousand dollars of "I swear I'm super serious about this" earnest money to be mailed back to us in check form, and apologize profusely to our realtor for wasting his time on paperwork, yadda yadda.

But wait, there's more! Within a day or so of cancelling on the one house, we decided we wanted to buy another one of the houses we'd seen. And guess what that offer required?

If your answer is "One Thousand Dollars Earnest Money" -- good job, you've been paying attention. On the bright side, apparently it's possible to squeeze extra money from your monthly income, so long as you give up luxuries like fresh produce and making sure you're not going to run out of gas. With our penny-pinching budget in hand, we managed to wring not one, but TWO earnest money checks from our rather anemic-looking bank accounts (not the first nor the last time I'm going to wonder why exactly I thought freelancing was such a good idea . . .), and hop on board for the second time.

Which brings me to the loan approval process . . .

Will Chad and Kate get a house? Will Kate finally let go of her overly optimistic expectations that anything will ever be easy? The adventures continue next time!