Cheating

Busy day today, running around and getting ready for my weekend trip to Philadelphia (for work...) and my mid-week trip to upstate New York next week (for work...).  Kanha will be getting some extended "dad time," which isn't all bad, I suspect -- more Ben 10 cartoons and boxes of Annie's mac and cheese.  

I cheated the other night and went onto newenglandmoves.com -- just couldn't resist a little peek at real estate doings.  And I found a little to ponder:  one of the gorgeously renovated condos (at least from the outside) very close to the house with a view has gone on the market -- it's the end unit so clearly has great views, almost exactly the same as my favorite house, from its two decks.   But it's priced at almost $500K, out of my price range without a rental unit in it, and the interior pictures make it look too shiny and perfectly new.  Just too boring -- nowhere to let my imagination run wild.  

On the other end of the scale, I also noticed a house that just came up for sale that looks like it might be about to fall down.  The location is great -- a couple of blocks from Kanha's new school, on Spring Street, a pretty good West End Street - but from the outside it looks like no one has left the house in at least a decade.  The mustard colored siding is peeling off and so is the outer wood on the front door, as if a local squirrel has made a full time job of gnawing it away.  The pictures on the website of its interior are only mildly better, showing some (beat up) built-in cabinets and an, admittedly, pretty dark wood staircase.  But we know for every attractive picture, there are four more scary ones that could have been taken.  While this house would not be boring, it also would take a long time to make it livable, which seems unrealistic for a single mom and her kid who need a place to live.  

After that one foray into the real estate world, I've returned to my hiatus.  Fortunately the weather has helped by warming up a little -- I am not yet in a complete panic about finding our winter coats and hats somewhere in the overstuffed, truly inaccessible storage unit.  Soon enough I'll have to decide, something -- a bigger apartment, a bigger storage unit (so we can find those hats and things), a plunge into some type of house.  But not today.