I haven’t been here much lately, for no other reason other than that I’ve been everywhere else during the day, & then flaking out on the couch after dinner & waking up somewhere around midnight’ish in a pile of my own third trimester drool because you see … I have this knack for being able to bring that kind of glamour to pregnancy.
Dave has stopped waking me up & bringing me to bed, for no other reason other than that I’m just getting too big to fit into the queen sized bed that we share with Max, & so the few times that I’ve tried, this big pregnant body has inadvertently been pushed to that last centimetre of my mattress. Y’know, the part where the piping is, & then, the air?! Yea … there.
We’ve gone & bought a home, the kind of home that I can remember dreaming of having way back when I was five years old, & now I have it, & now my children will get to live out their happy childhoods in it & I guess I can’t help but think … ‘good on you, Chez!’. And Dave, of course.
We searched & searched for homes within the four or five areas we’d tagged as being places we wanted to live, but they were all more than 100k of the kind of mortgage we could ever service, & nor would we want to service! We then began to consider the ‘renovator delights’, but the reality is that Dave & I are well known for cursing our way through an IKEA flat pack. One of the worst (& in hindsight, most hilarious) arguments we’ve had was Mother’s Day 2012, & the constructing, & then deconstructing, & swearing, & arguing, & then constructing again of an IKEA flat pack chest of drawers. And it’s these drawers & the subsequent Mother’s day card that I tore up in the heat of our flat pack induced argument (which by the way, is now sticky taped back together, & a pretty hilarious reminder of just how passionate our marriage is) that will always be how I remember Mother’s Day 2012. And so it was for reasons like Mother’s Day 2012 that we decided not to renovate. Because the fact of the matter is … we’re flipping useless.
We continued to go to auctions, & continued to be disappointed by their outcomes, & we at times wondered if we should stretch our mortgage to be able to afford a home that was closer to Dave’s work. But what’s the point of being closer to your husband’s work if you’re living beyond your means, week by week, & swapping arguing over late returns home from work for arguing over money (& what would have been our profound lack of it had we attempted to service a mortgage in one of those areas we’d wanted).
I changed our search to include suburbs on the other side of this this one stupid bridge that seemed to make everything 100k more than we could afford, & I found her. As soon as I saw her online, I knew. And as soon as I saw the price range, I knew. And then as soon as I realised she wasn’t even going to auction, & that this price range really just was the price range, I knew. She was the most beautiful looking home, & just around the corner from a big housing commission complex, but all that really meant to me was, ‘we can afford her’.
Some would argue that being anywhere near a housing commission complex isn’t such a great idea, but I guess I would just call that snobbery. I mean, I grew up in South Australia’s housing commission heartland & came out of it all with a university degree (& a good heart), as opposed to the stereotypical drug addiction. So who am I to judge?! And if you saw our home’s white picket fence, & the quaint & leafy street she just so happens to live on, you’d never even know you were smack bang in a housing commission hub.
We’re happy.
Before the ink on the official contract of the purchasing of our home had even dried, I was touring kindergartens & primary schools for Max’s 2014 (& 2016) enrolments. When I say touring, I mean … waddling my big, fat third trimester self around their classrooms & playgrounds, & then stopping to catch my breath whilst holding on to a slippery slide. I’m pretty sure Max’s future school principal probably thinks I am insane, but I just reassured him that some pregnant women nest over a clean home while others nest over a good education for their children. He told me he liked my style, & as it turns out … his school is the one we’ve inevitably chosen for Max’s 2016 enrolment.
And now we’ve gone & sold our own home, & when our real estate agent told us, I wanted to cry. The truth is, I don’t think I have another ‘open for inspection’ in me. We had to open our home one last time on the weekend just gone in the event that the people who put an offer on our home were unable to come up with finance, & I honestly just laid in bed until the very last minute that I had to get out of it in order to make it. I didn’t bother with fresh flowers, & I didn’t bother with furniture polish, I just … tidied. Poor old Dave did the rest without so much as a single complaint, & I’ll absolutely repay the favour the very moment I’m not weighing in at a ga-zillion kilos.
He’s a good man.
I start maternity leave next week. We will have a lady baby in 4’ish weeks. And we will have a brand new (when I say new, I mean … more than 100 years old) home to bring her home to.
Life’s good.
~
If you have e-mailed, facebook’d, twitter’d, or instagram’d me in the last month’ish & I haven’t replied, I apologise. I used to be able to do the large majority of my work on weekends. That was until, the large majority of my weekends was spent cleaning for open for inspections & then attending auctions on houses that we couldn’t afford. As a result, I’ve been pulling some pretty late nights & it goes without saying that I am bloody exhausted.
I imagine I’ll be able to reply to you all as soon as I go on maternity leave.
Thanks for being so understanding.
{ 24 comments }
































TWITTER
EMAIL
PINTEREST
INSTAGRAM