Hands up all those who have not bought a house recently

Househunting is a hard gig. As most of you know, we thought we had found our new home this past week. It had everything we wanted, was on a lovely quiet street not far from our current home, and had many wonderful(-looking) updates inside.

There was a great flurry of activity as we offered and counter-offered, agreed on a price, spoke with lawyers and banks, and jumped into major high gear in an effort to get our current place totally ready for marketing before leaving on our vacation in three weeks.

And then there was the big let-down when the house inspection revealed a number of major flaws in the place, certainly more than we were willing to accept for the agreed-on price, but in fact even more than we were prepared to deal with rectifying at any price. The entire basement suite in the house, brand new and beautiful, turned out to have been installed by unskilled amateurs. A lot of it would have had to be redone. We were offput and the deal was kaput.

And so we keep looking. But in the meantime -- we leave on our big holiday three weeks today!! So much still to be done, so really, thank goodness we haven’t just bought a house! There’s a trip to Bellis Fair to be made for a last hunt for sparkly outfits. There are beauty appointments to be booked (sigh. One tries). Dry cleaning to be taken in. Your entire wardrobe has to be laid out on the bed and combinations and permutations considered. Practice packing then ensues. More dry cleaning may be necessary. And then, of course, it must all be laid out on the bed again. If you are a man reading this and think I’m making this up, locate the nearest female person of pretty much any age and ask her. Seriously. We have to do this.

Then there are notes to be composed for idiot offspring who couldn’t possibly be expected to perform such complex tasks as putting out the garbage, bringing in the mail, locking the door, feeding the cats and flushing the toilet if not left detailed instructions pertaining to these activities. (Not to mention genuinely complex instructions about taping my TV shows!)

In our basement-clearing frenzy of late, we advised The Lad that the drum set he inherited from his grandpa had to be dealt with. He dusted it off and polished it up and did some repairs, then began checking online and with experts he knows through work, and discovered to all of our astonishments that it is worth several THOUSAND dollars! Apparently its particular make and model is considered a Cadillac of vintage drum sets. We had no idea! He does not intend to sell it at this time, however, but instead, after having it properly refurbished, will install it in his studio at work to attract high-caliber session musicians. The Lad is admirably devoted to the task of expanding his career, and has indeed been doing so quite successfully in the past few months in particular.

And on a final note, VCCGirl is enjoying school thus far. Her Accommodations instructor is hot, her Tourism instructor is a stand-up comic, her Math instructor is a dead ringer for Albert Einstein (and a bit of a potty-mouth), they’ve been playing fun icebreaker games in Communications, and they’re learning to pour shots in Food and Beverage Operations. What’s not to like?

These are two of VCCGirl's actual instructors. The one on the left is the Tourism teacher. I don't think you need me to tell you who the one on the right is.