And the hunt begins...

Yesterday D and I met with his realtor for a couple of showings. She is the sweetest woman who's ever had a face lift that I know. I've only ever known two people with face-lifts and she's the sweetest one, not to mention fairly sweet on the non-face lift side of things as well. She's probably no more than five feet tall, impecably dressed and has a vanity license plate on her Mercedes (Mercedes? umm, yeah, I guess that explains where she got the money for the face lift) proclaiming to the world that she's pretty much the best realtor there is. Despite her sweet demeanor and wonderful personality, I couldn't help but stare blankly at the stretches of skin coming from her eyebrows to the bridge of her nose. And I'm usually one of the most discreet people you're ever going to meet. Let's think back to when I saw Vin Diesel in Paris and instead of rushing up to him for an autograph I hung back and pretended he wasn't famous. 'Sorry Vin, it's not you, it's me...'

She first took us to a very cute house, on a very cute street in a very cute neighborhood. The house was wonderful. The guy who lived there put a lot of work into it and it showed. However, things that are generally 'cute' are generally small. And I haven't got a clue where D would have put all his stuff.

On to the next house, which was interesting, but I would have needed a handheld GPS to get myself in and out of that neighborhood. What a freakin' disaster. It's like a toddler decided where all the houses would go because the streets were all swirly and pretty and would have made a good finger painting but were a total mind bend when you're actually in them. In fact, our realtor-with-the-freaky-eyebrow-skin got lost and needed D to get her unlost. However, the house was interesting, but there were things like painted over countertops in the kitchen that weren't exactly pretty, and major fix-er-upper issues.

Our next showing was in the same neighborhood (dear God, save me from the neighborhood where you have to use star charts if you ever want to go anywhere!) and let me just say, yikes. This was by far the worst house we saw. Oh it was big enough, but we would have had a hell of a time trying to get the old lady smell out of the house, not to mention the redecorating so that you didn't feel like you just stepped into the 70's. But the smell, holy lord, it was eye-watering. Needless to say that was our quickest showing of the night.

Lastly, there was the house that was our number one pick if everything panned out. It was gorgeous, the siding was redone, the inside were extensively remodeled, new carpets, new doors, new windows, new, new, new. Except the house was built in the 70's... You got the distinct feeling like they were trying to hide something. And when we got to the basement, we figured it out. There was water damage in the basement, so bad that the insulation was falling from the ceiling. Our eyebrow-skin-stretched-realtor wouldn't allow us to even think about that one, because that sort of work is major and she wants D to have the best house he can get for his money.

So back to the drawing board to look at what other houses he thinks would do... It's hard not to get discouraged, but that's what house-hunting is about right? A mix of discouragement and excitement with a dash of stretched-eyebrows?