The Quest Has Begun

It appears that we are one step closer to being fully grown adults.

We recently decided to tempt fate and humbly approached the bank with the question if they might ever be so kind and allow us to purchase a home even though we do not have a first-born child to offer to them at this time.

After the "we need to review your situation further" e-mail, and the somber sounding voice-mail to give the Mortgage banker a call, I sucked it up and called the next morning. The happy news is that the bank has given us a "You can give us your first-born child later, but here is the money to buy a house to help facilitate the creation of said first-born child" decision. While we do not yet posses a home, we are the proud owners of a pre-approval letter from out bank.

But with the happy news of "You can buy a house" comes the non-happy "you have to look at hundreds of houses until you find one to buy" portion of the home purchasing process. During the last few years I have already come to the conclusion that Mrs. D-USA has become house crazy...

I will use this opportunity to give the single or renting married men out there some words of wisdom. We are all aware that after little girls learn to walk and become potty trained, they immediately start to plan their wedding. By the age of 5 little girls have managed to put together an unrealistic list of what their perfect husband will be like. By the age of 10 they will have the entire wedding ceremony planned out. By the time they are teens, any boy that they date will be subjected to mental scrutiny about how he will look in the wedding pictures, or if his sister will make an ugly bridesmaid. Now what happens when that girl finally gets married? Do you think all that crazy dedication to details will suddenly go away? Sorry buster, your new bride will simply channel all that crazy dedication to details into purchasing that perfect house to raise a family in.

So now we are spending countless hours on the internet taking virtual tours of houses. We are aimlessly driving through neighborhoods looking for flyers and open houses. We have to find the house that is not to big/small, new/old, close/far away, and many many many many other factors. Once we find that perfect house we have to hope that the inspection will pass, that the people will sell it to us, that nobody else will buy it out from underneath us, and who knows what else will go wrong.

I hope this quest will end soon, before I become crazy and decide to purchase a 3 bed/2 bath cardboard box to move into. I will cross my fingers, and hopefully we will not turn crazy.

Question for any married men that are further down the road than me:

After the wedding and buying the house, what is the next focus of crazy dedication to details that I can expect from Mrs. D-USA?