I'm excited! I'm excited! I'm excited!

We have been working with a real estate agent ever since we contacted him to view the first townhouse last week. Tomorrow he is going to take us around to see a bunch of other townhouses in the area. I'm really excited to see some other townhouses after that first dingy repo we saw. I'm excited, but I'm worried that my fiance and I might not be on the same page regarding these townhouses. Now that I found out my fiance can qualify for those initial townhouses in that gated community, I hope he doesn't find a townhouse he prefers that's located further south. Our job locations are out of whack. I'm very far north of town and he is smack dab in the middle, but in a more southern area of town. Unfortunately, there are very few townhouses located in a nice central area between our jobs. It's either going to be close to my work, or a place closer to his and further from mine. The four-bedroom townhouses in a gated community is close to my work, and anything closer to his work is only 2 or 3 bedrooms and not located in a gated community. He is very resistant to the townhouses close to my work because he wants to be able to get home sooner in the evenings to spend time with me and future kids. That's very sweet of him, but still, I want a place we can grow into, that is in a safe neighborhood, and likely to retain its value or go up in value. I've already looked at the comps for the gated community, and four townhouses were sold in the last year close to the listing price. This is a very desirable area. Nevertheless, I'm still excited to see the other townhouses tomorrow, and get our feet whet on the whole house-hunting experience.

Can't focus! Must concentrate!

I'm at work and I should be writing articles and wrapping up submissions to conferences. But, for the life of me, I can't concentrate on these endeavors. For the last week, my fiance and I have been in a whirlwind of activity and I'm still caught up in it. It all started innocently enough when a couple weekends ago I came to the conclusion that I was willing to relinquish my desire to live in a house and actually purchase a townhouse instead. You see, we were working on the lawn. And that did it for me. I am so tired of lawn care, and when I found out a whole stretch of dirt and weeds beside the house I'm renting was also technically under my care, I just about blew it. I'm actually quite distressed and more than one person has suggested the added lawn care should be handled by the homeowner. But, I still can't help but feel that I should do the minimum work required to keep the weeds down.

And so my fiance sent me a link for a townhouse the following Monday while I was at work. It was a HUD repo that qualified for a $100 down payment. I instantly jumped at the opportunity and called the real estate agent for a viewing. He suggested a lender and I got the ball rolling to see what loan amount my fiance could pre-qualify for. But, when we saw the townhouse, it needed so much renovation that I wasn't sure the townhouse was worth it. The real estate agent put together an MLS search on an interactive website where we could flag our favorites and receive notifications of new listings. I was jazzed. When we found out my fiance could pre-qualify for around $200K, I studied up on the government tax cut to find out whether we could go in together, since I'm not a first-time home buyer. I did so much researching and found out about all these new options to get the tax cut before next year. Then I wanted to find out how much we could qualify for if we added my income into the mix because I wanted to have better buying power to purchase a really nice townhouse in a gated community. But, it turns out my whole mortgage on my other home would be counted against me even though the place is rented at a loss of only a couple hundred dollars. And now the lender wants all these documents proving income, etc and says it would really stretch us to get pre-qualified in that range.

So now I'm thinking I might have gone a little overboard. Perhaps I should rein myself in a little bit. I really want the day to be over so I can talk to my fiance tonight about all this. I think I should scale back my expectations, and be happier with something smaller that we can qualify for based solely my fiance's income. It's just so much excitement that I can't focus on my work! Must relax, focus, and get back to work.

Right Now I'm Exhausted

Oh my goodness! I'm so exhausted! For some reason, I've been waking up the past three nights at 3am, and haven't been able to get back to sleep easily. I'm wondering if I'm waking up because of the new sheets I recently bought. My old sheets were so worn in places that they actually ripped and a huge gaping hole was left. My new sheets appear to hold heat better, and I'm usually feeling overheated when I wake up. But, it still feels odd that it should be almost the exact same time that I wake up each night. Perhaps the body's temperature cycle is like clockwork, but still...I don't know what else could explain it other than stress. I did have a brief stress fest on Sunday night because I had spent the last couple weeks running research in my old town and only coming back down here for the weekends to check on my cat. I just didn't want to start back up at work again this week. Up until now, I've had so much freedom during the summers in grad school. Now I'm required to be working on campus even though I'm not teaching (yes, I am working at a university, it's just that this one has different rules). And I had much more freedom when I was working on research up at my previous town. Now, not so much. But, I also think I needed a confidence booster. I was stressed not only because of the demanding, stringent work schedule but also because I haven't attempted to publish articles before now and that's exactly what I had planned for my return. I felt a little more confident yesterday when I made some progress on the writing projects.

But now my brain is kinda on the fritz...

I'm on my second cup of coffee and it seems to be kicking in finally. I can look at the screen now without my eyes blearing up. Sigh, gotta do this!