'i'm kind of a big deal'

the past week has been kinda nuts. school's winding down so my schedule during the days has gone haywire. it's been cool though as i find myself getting asked to spend afternoons at the park on field trips, find myself perched high atop the platform of a dunk tank as 4th graders hurl basketballs in attempts to soak the reading teacher.

i've had to grow the fuck up over the past week. a day before signing the contract on "our" house and after a serious number-crunching session with our mortgage lender, todd and i realized that with the loan we'd be taking out after all other expenses were taken care of, we'd have a few hundred dollars a month. my nervous breakdown ensued, including hours of tears and a literally sleepless night. we called off the deal -or potential deal, as it were- and started house-hunting again.

it was a huge blow to me, initially. i was sure we'd never find anything comparable in a lower price range, and i felt stupid that we hadn't figured out the financial ramifications of a loan that size earlier in the game. but the situation is apparently more common than you'd think, which is strangely reassuring.

zane is will be with us full-time starting in august. i am at times, thrilled, and at more times, petrified. which may be silly as he is one of the most low-maintenance, laid back kids i have ever spent time with. but having a child in our home will be the biggest growing-up thing that will ever happen to me, and everything so much will change. i'd like to say that i am trying to get ready, but i don't know if i could ever truly be ready. it's interesting to see people my age preparing for the birth of a first child and hearing them echo these same thoughts, but knowing that instead of infant, i'm talking about an almost 9-year old.

happily, the new house hunt is going really well and on friday we saw a terrifically quirky house that is more "us" than the previous house could have ever been. my use of "quirky", i feel it significant to point out, is not a euphemism for small or weird or a fixer-upper. the house just has an incredible amount of personality and makes every other home we've seen feel sterile and steppfordy in comparison. i'm trying to hold back on too much enthusiasm as we are at early stages and still looking at some other properties, but i secretly have my fingers crossed and think this might be the one.