What kind of crazy rental schmoop is this?...

There is a giant tree in my front yard and I love it from all the very secret places in me that I let be free to do ridiculous things like love trees.

It grows out of the middle of our forever-patchy yard surrounded by approximately 8000 robins (ok more like 8, but still, there are many) looking for worms. I love to sit on the front porch and look up at it - our tree.

Thing is, it isn't really our tree. It's our landlord's tree, and we're moving soon. When we do the tree and the porch and the robins will all be someone else's.

Now there are plenty of things that I will be ecstatic to be rid of too. Every sink in the house doesn't drain properly, the kitchen has approximately 2 square feet of usable counter space, and the bathroom window has been broken for two and a half years but we won't call our landlord to fix it since we aren't supposed to have a pet. I won't miss any of that for a second.

But it's hard not to be a little melancholy about leaving. Our rental is where we became a "we". Where our 2 became a furry 3. Where our "we" became Mr. & Mrs. This is the only house where Indie Jake's mom will have visited us. It has been good to us.

I'm sure we will love our new house just as much, if not more. It will truly be OURS. It really is all we could have ever asked for, but for now, I feel like I need to tip my hat to the silly pink house on the corner that has been good to me for the last 3 years.

...and hope the new house has an equally pudgy neighborcat.

I think I found something that is more frustrating to buy than a swimsuit...

Just like most stories don’t start at Chapter 1, when Indie Jake and I decided we wanted to look into buying a house it was not without a Preface. I have been staunch in my claim that I only came to the Carolinas temporarily and as soon as the opportunity presented itself, I planned to hightail it back to New Jersey. Buying a house is sort of the opposite of that and there was much wringing of hands and rending of garments involved on my part once we realized that it just made more sense to buy. Turns out, financial sense and the idea of making our own home was just too darn tempting and so, 6 month lease secured, the house hunt finally started in earnest.

We made our lists of things out new house would have to have (like more than 2 square feet of usable counterspace and a second bathroom) and things that would be nice but weren’t deal breakers (like a suitable place to put a cat tree). Listings were scoured. Neighborhoods were narrowed down. A realtor was contacted. We did all the things we thought we were supposed to do and then we set out. 

Thing is, we forgot to do one thing…gird our loins. Apparently houses in Charlotte are selling like delicious, delicious hotcakes right now. So houses that we saw on Saturday had multiple offers come Monday morning. In one particularly ridiculous instance we saw a house which had been on the market for 4 months at 6pm Monday night. When our realtor went to submit our offer at 8am the next morning it was under contract. “Seriously?!”, says I. Seriously.

After a succession of near, or not so near, misses we were starting to get a touch bummed out. Which is where we were this past Tuesday when we were easing our bummedness with an afterwork brew at our local brewery. While flipping through the realtor.com app like the gluttons for punishment we are, IJ noticed a new property that had gone up not an hour earlier. A little out of our target neighborhood but it ticked all of our boxes and then some. He immediately called our realtor and set up at tour for the next day. I would only be able to make the tail end of it after work, but we knew we had to move fast.

Wednesday afternoon I met them as they finished up their tour and did a 3 minute run through. It was as good as it seemed, but 4 other folks had seen in that day. We would put in our best offer but it didn’t feel like this time would be any different. Multiple offers were bound to come in  and what were the chances we would be the best?

12:59 today: (Text from IJ) “Offers are being presented at 2pm.”

5:22: “Still no news.”

When I walked in the door at 6, the realtor had called and asked how flexible we were on some of the terms of the offer. Very, dude. We are contortionist flexible. We were still in the game.

We had resigned ourselves to a nervous night when the phone rang at 9:10 pm. Never have the words,”They chose to work with us.” sounded so sweet, or so merciful. We are getting to buy this house. This perfect house. 

...We aren't there yet, but by June we will be. And it will be amazing!

Photos and lessons from the land of sour cream & sweet chili fries...

In February, on the only day of snow Charlotte got all winter, Indie Jake and I got on a plane and ended up on the other side of the world. We decided that since we got married the weekend before Thanksgiving and at the end of a year where vacation time had been needed earlier that we would wait to take our honeymoon until early this year. We would go somewhere warm since it would be what passes for winter here. Somewhere fabulous that we could hold in our memories as the most wonderful vacation ever.

Cue Australia.

Home of the Great Barrier Reef, world-renowned wineries, and the ever-fuzzy koala bear. Three things which we absolutely didn't see. IJ can't swim, we don't drink wine much, and don't bring up k-bears in our house...there is much frothing at the mouth and sailor words.

What we did see was this:

Sydney Harbor Bridge

this

Sydney Opera House

 this

St. Kilda Beach

 this

Melbourne Luna Park

 and this

Footy, glorious footy!

In addition, a friend of IJ's who lives in Melbourne and the inimitable John Pham clued us in enough great cafes, coffee shops, markets, pubs, and awesome, dorktatic science museums to keep us more than busy for the week we were there.

I would be committing a lie of omission though if I didn't tell you one of my favorite moments on our trip. Being the beer geeks professionals that we are, we planned visits to a handful of local breweries into our itinerary. One of these breweries was an operation called Moon Dog Brewing which I had gotten off a list of Melbourne breweries but could find very little about. They didn't have any open hours that we could see but Jake shot them a facebook message and they told us to come on in anytime.

When we walked up to their warehouse based brewery it was at least 90 degrees out and we soon found that the 3 man operation had spent the morning battling a drainage issue that sometimes comes up in brewing but that is, pardon my French, a bitch and a half to deal with. Never the less they invited us right in, showed us their set up and tossed a few of their brews in the freezer for us to taste. While most other breweries we found were brewing pales and wheat beers, these guys were Shiraz barrel aging a 15% barleywine and making a milk stout who's label had no less than 8 cartoon robot nurse boobs on it. They had heart AND talent, and were really just so awesome.

We left them with a bottle of our local brewery's tripel but they left us with a feeling of community that stretched half way around the world. One that I would venture we will remember just as long as the Opera House tour or the Queen Victoria Market.