Monday, Monday

This cold is really annoying (okay, what cold isn't?) but I'm hoping that I cracked it. I slept until 1:00pm today and the fever largely went away. I think I'll need to do this again tomorrow, but I hope to get it beaten back to a dull roar quickly.

There are a lot of things going on in my life right now, which is absolutely the norm, of course, but the big New thing is that we are building a house. I've never done that before, although M's been through this twice. I'm sure it'll be vastly stressful at times.

We backed into this idea. We decided that this house, though wonderful in its own right and having the nicest backyard of any we've owned, is Not For Us. There's not enough room for a good office for me, M doesn't have a good room for sewing, the master suite's on the 2nd floor, and so on and so forth. It'll be the perfect house for someone else but not for us. Well, having realized this, we went house shopping. The 2nd weekend we did this, we stopped at a realtor's open house and saw a newly built house. And lo! it was perfect!!!

The house was lovely. It has vaulted ceilings of up to 16', there's a downstairs master suite that's very nice, a huge bonus room that'll make a perfect office, a room for the piano, instruments, and music, a sewing room, and a good bedroom for Susan. M & I kept going through the house saying "Okay, well, what about this? What about that?" And try as we might, we simply could not poke holes in how nice the house was. We really like it!

(Here's a picture of the house that we saw.)

The only problem was that the house--actually, there are two of them across from each other that are identical--is located on a little keyhole lot in a neighborhood that's not too attractive. We loved the house but didn't like the lot. Well, gosh, the realtor said, we could always build it ourselves--the plans are available online from Mascord so all we have to do is find a lot to build on. In Eugene, though, that's easier said than done. There are very few lots available within the city and there are some serious restrictions on new construction that are making lots sell at a premium. Hmmm....

We looked at several places that have lots available, most of which didn't look like what we want. Some of the developments were really flat (and reminded me of Indiana, which I will pay money to not be reminded of) and some were badly located (building a house near a pulp plant seemed inauspicious), but there was one that looked really nice off in the hills. To make a long story just a leetle shorter, we found a builder we liked and a lot and are going to break ground in about a month. Huzzah, huzzah!

Monday, Monday