On Living Within Our Means

So MathMan and I did a little grown up decision making. We could have chosen the fabulous house with the hardwood floors, outside storage barn and inground swimming pool for $1,450 per month. Nice subdivision, even closer to the nearest biggish town than the house we selected. Garbo would have had to change schools next year, though.

Instead we chose a good enough house with carpet (not my favorite), an okay subdivision, close enough for The Actor to walk to school, Garbo can remain in her school and take the bus. There is no pool, but the rent is $995 per month.

Big difference. We weighed the difference in rent. We considered the associated costs that would come with the pool. We chose prudent. Dare I say it - conservative.

I called the realtor who is handling the more expensive house and told her we thought that the rent would be too much of a stretch, but thank you anyway. Then we finished up the lease signing for the other place and started to handle all the moving things, utilities, collecting of boxes, arranging for movers to help us move that heavy safe full of sex toys.

The realtor called back. The owners thought we'd make great tenants and did we think we could do $1,200 per month? Screeeeeeeeeech! Think. Think. Think. Oh the pool! The pool!!!!!! Hardwood floors! The wraparound porch! The master on the main floor away from the kids rooms!

My inner accountant wagged her finger. It's still $205 more per month plus whatever the added costs of pool care and electricity would be. My father the pessimist's voice became very pronounced in my head. "You just know something will go wrong with the pool anyway and you'll spend half the summer with it out of commission." Shut up, Dad. Go to hell, Inner Accountant.

But. But! But!!!!!! Oh, fuckery. They're both right.

"Thanks, all the same, the house is lovely, but we really must keep our rental expenses as low as possible," I tell the nice realtor lady. Then I hang up the phone and sob like the spoiled child I once was.

Speaking of the house.....for one of the other lisas, (there seems to be a growing army of us) here's a whole mess of pictures of our current location. And here are a couple of pictures of the new place...

The curb appeal shot. Or not.
See, in this here part of Georgia, we don't dig basements, we raise our houses.

The party deck. As if.
Okay - the place where I'll most often be freaked out by wasps who love the wood.
Needs flowers. Stat!

The living room trying to be more posh than is reasonably necessary.
Bets on where the first cat hurl stain will be?

The RED kitchen. I'll bet if we put a radio in there, it will turn itself on in the middle of the night and broadcast recent episodes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
It's that red.

More photos to come! Including:

• The love tub.

• The bathroom that will never match any of our towels.

• The Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs. (Note to MathMan - will that be the tornado shelter? We'd better not cram it full of the suitcases and the sex toy safe like we'd discussed, if that's the case.)

• The fight to the death over the basement bedroom with its own half bath.

• New blogging ops.

And with the money we save, maybe we can stimulate a little bit of the economy with a couple of day trips somewhere fun this summer or by purchasing more sex toys. The safe isn't quite full. Yet.