Hmm. It Might Do.

The Emperor and I met our real estate agent last week and took a look at the house I described in the last post, and it was like-very-much at first sight.  The wood floors are in pretty good condition, it has wall-to-ceiling windows in the main room, and a snug basement with a functional bathroom.  The two-car garage is well-lit and lined with sheet rock.  The bedrooms are light and airy.  There is nothing about that house that I'd change immediately.

The home sits on a corner, and has a huge front and back yard.  That part didn't thrill me, but the Emperor discovered a riding mower in a backyard shed.  If it works, and if it comes with the house... the Emperor will take over the mowing.  He's not a glad gardener, but he loves gadgets like that.  There's also a tree in the back yard that has branches right over the power lines -- the first thing I'd do would be to get those branches trimmed.  I do not want a repeat of Ice Storm Jupiter (I just realized that I never wrote that story down.  I'll do that later, but suffice to say that I look at tree branches and powerlines very differently now).

I walked around that house and could see our stuff in it.  They say that's when you know you have the right house -- when you can see yourself living in it.  This house ticks every box.

It's in filling out the paperwork to get a loan from the bank that I hit the snag for this week.  There's a space where you're supposed to put in the liquid cash value of your life insurance policy, and I realized that I had five of those -- I've worked for the government in four states, and each job came with life insurance, and I have a policy my dad took out on me in 1979.  The Emperor has one, too. I'm just going to take the pile of paperwork with me to the bank and see if they can help me with this part.  Otherwise, the form was pretty straightforward, because we don't have any debts and almost no property of our own beside the nine-year-old car in our driveway.

That's it -- a mathematical problem stands between me and buying that house.

There has been some movement on the cone box front.  I picked up a nice box on sale at Michaels, and the other day bought a dowel and wooden end caps.  All that remains is to cut holes in the box, trim the dowel, and assemble it.  I could be knitting with a lovely cone box this evening if I show some initiative, although getting the stuff together in the first place was a form of initiative.  I'll come back and post a picture here if I get it done today.