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.