All work and no play...

A recent stay with my 94 years young Grandmother in Iowa; and viewing the nice sized homes, large lawns and green acreages; has me re-thinking what we're doing renting a house in California! I think we are both getting burnt out from too much work and not enough play. Almost anywhere else in the country, people have houses with a yard large enough for a horse (OK two), and time to spend at home with their friends and family. Here it seems everything is expensive! (Like the fact the 1,009 sq ft 1940’s house we rent would sell for over 1/2 a million dollars here! Even with the faulty wiring, old sewer lines, and cracking walls!) My working at a place that designs lovely grand estates with 12,000 plus square feet probably hasn’t helped my desire for a larger place! The other day Tim asked what size of house I thought was normal, and I said, “oh, about 6,000 sq feet, right?” And he said something about being doomed. Whatever that means. All I know is that ours is definitely TOO small, and if we had a two story with a basement, that sounded about right. Plus we need a 6-car garage/pole barn (or both) for Tim, so you have to figure that in, right?

Quite a few of our friends with the same visions and have moved out of the area, now that the market has dried up. The only thing that seems to be making money is the housing market! Some of our friends have even moved overseas to work for their US companies in Europe! They make it sound QUITE romantic and adventurous!

Being days away from my 36th birthday, also has me thinking... as according to most doctors, biological clocks, and fertility books, I am getting OLD! (Although, I just got carded the other day, so at least I don’t look that old to everyone!) For some reason Mother Nature does not seem to be doing her job in my case, I may look young, but my body thinks it’s ancient. Over the past few years we have gone through about every test you can think of, so the next step will involve fertility shots, if we decide to go that route. (SCARY!) I keep putting this step off thinking something will change, and I think it is because I worry too much about things and if I just stopped worrying... But then I start worrying about not worrying, and Tim says that doesn’t do any good at all! At least living in California puts us near one of the best fertility clinics in the nation, so that’s definitely a plus, since it looks like that will end up being our next step. One of our friends said that we should start a pay pal account to fund this expensive endeavor. Since we’re not getting rid of our toys! :-)

We did make a few improvements to the 40's storage and 70's design issues of our kitchen this year, and invested in a new refrigerator with icemaker around Labor Day, which instigated the painting of our Kitchen a Martha Stewart color of "yellow rose"-it looks GREAT! It is so much brighter than our previous tan wood paneled kitchen. After watching tons of programs on HGTV, I figured it would be a day project MAX, but it took MUCH longer than I thought it would! We barley had it done by Tim’s birthday on the 11th! Needless to say, the bathroom did NOT get painted “a drop of green” that day as I had planned. Maybe we should just buy one of Martha’s new homes in Cary, North Carolina, and save us the trouble of trying to paint our rental, HA! If they let you have horses, I might consider it. But Tim says the only way that would happen is if the area had lightening and a pasture with a large tree. I wonder what he meant by that!!!

Well, until next time…