Settling in at the new place

I'm never, ever moving again.

I mean it. I'm done with the whole purge/pack/clean/schlep/collapse-and-look-at-the-mess/unpack drama. Five moves in the past ten years, three of those in past barely-more-than-three years, and I've had enough.

Good thing we're finally in a house we love.
Too bad it's a rental.

The silver lining: owner says he's open to selling to us should we ever decide we want to buy it. I'm ready to buy it today, if that would mean I didn't have to move again for a while. Not sure where the buckaroos will magically materialize from to support that little fantasy, but I'm deteremined this one is gonna be MINE some day.

It has to be. I've been affirming for two years now that "the next house we move into, we're going to buy." Clever me: I had in mind some kind of a rent now-buy later plan, as that's all our finances will stretch to a the present moment. And that's what I got.

Thing is, I wasn't actively looking for it. We'd talked early in the year about whether or not to renew our lease at the old place when it expired at the end of May, and had decided that moving was waaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a hassle (and expense) to be worth leaving the very nice, big, comfy house by the water we were already in. So, decision made: we'd stay put.

Then one day my Inner Voice spoke up out of the blue and said, "Go see what's on Craig's List." So I did. And there, in the Hilo rental listings, was a photo of our dream house. Seriously. The house DH and I have been talking about having "someday": north side of town, great deck, ocean view, etc., etc. It was all there.

"Honey," I said, "come look at this house on Craig's list."
"Why are you looking at Craig's List?" he complained. "We decided we aren't going to move this year."
"I know, but come look at these photos."
"Holy Sh*t," he said, looking, "that's our Dream House."

He's as big a believer as I am in listening to your inner voice, so we contacted the owner and after months (literally) of nailing down the details (much waiting on previous tenant to schedule his move-out), it all worked out beautifully and with perfect timing, and we're finally in. [I was gonna insert a photo of the view here, but realized they're all on hubbie's hard drive... oops.]

My estimate (based on way too much prior experience) that it would take a full two months to prep, move, and recover is turning out to be accurate. I haven't blogged, I haven't written, I have done barely more than nothing about the agent hunt, I've hardly even cooked, I have a pile of aging admin/bookkeeping tasks to do that's about a foot high and getting taller... but I have a new home office with a view of Hilo Bay and the ocean that takes my breath away.

There's some time-sensitive paper-pushing to be done (semi-annual General Excise/Use Tax filing, fun things like that), and a ton and a half of mental clutter to clear away, but finally, at last, I feel settled in.

So long as I don't think about the fact that it's July 1 and that means the year is half over (which could lead to panic attacks), I'm good to go.