h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

America is the land of consumerism and the home of the impulse purchase.

I know this because of what happened on Sunday.

It's been a bad week.
Mrs G and I have been trying to get our act together and get the HECK out of the hellhole trailer park we live in (one comment about trailer trash and you're off the Christmas Card list, get me?)

We rebuilt Mrs G's credit score.
We found a motivated broker who was interested in getting us a mortgage (or possibly just interested in Mrs G's unique financial abilities).
We got ourselves a realtor who thinks we are a 'cute' couple.

...you know...I'm a Brit. I'm over six feet tall and weigh about the same as the average family car and I have a face that only a mother could truely love. One thing I am not is cute. And yet American women seem determined to call me that. Never mind.

But then we discovered that there was no way we can buy any kind of a house and continue to make the payments on the cruddy awful trailer and shell out the Lot Rent for the park. Well .
So, having discovered this we went off in a deep depression and bought the kids clothes to cheer ourselves up. I got a 'Diamondbacks' t-shirt. I have no idea who they are.

So that was Friday. On Saturday we went scooting off house-hunting because we had an appointment with said Realtor on Sunday. We blazed off to scout out where in the heck we were going the next day. Whilst we were in the area we noticed a couple of things.

First, a lot of houses for sale. And a Deer Farm. Now I would think that you'd find it unusual for a smallholding in an otherwise residential area to be farming anything. Not so. There's a goat farm half a mile away. But this farm is Deer. And not just any deer. Reindeer. Traditionally associated with snow and ice and Santa. Reindeer. The strangeness of this event should have been a warning that, somewhere up there, someone...or something...had his/her/its hand on the irony overdrive.

We got up early Sunday.
Let me clarify. I got up at 5am to sort out the puppy. Then he and I stayed awake some, and then I went to sleep and he woke everyone else up.
Then they woke me. Being awake and in dire need of coffee, I insisted we leave early to get to the location and have a nose around. I wanted to make sure the Deer were still there. Reindeer. In a desert. Surely not?

There they were. Yep.

And there, nestled away in a cul-de-sac (posh for 'Dead End') we stumbled over a for sale sign and nabbed some information.

To cut a long story short, we bought a house.

Quite the impulse purchase.

It's smaller than we wanted, but twice the size of where we are now. It's one floor - not uncommon out here - but it has a pool.
It's in the right neighbourhood, and handy for the Reindeer farm.

And it was cheap. So cheap that with the mortgage we can carry the monthly payments AND still keep the lot rent going on this tin box while we fix it up, pay down the hideous equity trap we're in and sell the damn thing.

So it looks like we're moving in June.

To a real house. With real walls. And a pool.
And air conditioning.

I'll keep you all posted - we have a long way to go yet.

you know... I'm half-disappointed to find that you didn't buy the deer farm, which is what I thought you were working up to


Buying a house sounds like such a pain, I'm almost glad I can't afford one.

I look forward to hearing more...

I've never had the bottle to put down any roots as secure as that. Signing a 12 month lease on an apartment is the furthest I've ever gone. Hell, I lived in a delivery van for two years - different place almost every night

Props to ya mate

Also figured you were going for the farm

maybe we should vote on it, Gosho. If enough of us mosey along here and go for the farm, Mr & Mrs Gradient & the Gradientlings should try to buy it...

We shall see.

We're off to see the house tonight - I'm in the process of rounding up the Gradientlings at the moment (the last one just ran shrieking and giggling down the length of the house, so it's lasso time) to load them into the car and then we'll see if the Deer Farm is for sale. It would give the Australian Shepherd puppy something to herd I suppose.

Side point: When told that Bear is an Ozzie Shepherd people immediately adopt the worst possible Australian accent and say "G'Day Mate!" to him. But he was born in Arizona, so he just stares at them.