Our house in the middle of our street . . .

Hey, remember when I used to blog? And I don't mean just flinging my brain drippings here in this virtual space for people to wander by and gawk at. "Whoa. Look at that spatter. If you squint, doesn't that kind of look like--"

"An epileptic rooster? Totally."

No, I  mean blogging in the complete sense, like when I used to wander by your blogs and read them. And then sometimes say stuff. Remember that?

Me, either. I've been elbow deep in an editing project and since I'm very prone to procrastination, distraction, and other assorted slothfulness, I had to put blogging on hold for a few days to meet a deadline. But, I AM BACK. You have been warned.

I started catching up today. Even subtracting the approximately 4,327 news feeds in my blog reader, I still had 172 blogs to get to and I'm only at half that. By tomorrow, those remaining 86 unread items will have mated like bunnies on Viagra and become close to an even half million or so, but I'll get to them, too.

Anyway, even though for all intents and purposes my absence (yeah, I know, you totally didn't notice. It's fine) would suggest I'm in no way interested in your lives, I'm going to tell you about mine. Because there's a certain narcissism to a blog like mine and instead of rationalizing that, today I'm embracing it.

As to what we've been  up to. . .

House hunting.

Oh, my.

We don't plan to buy until this summer but we live in So Cal where the majority of homes are distressed sales, mainly of the short sale variety, and these can take their own sweet time to close. So you have to give yourself a 4-6 month window on any offers you make for those. We'd be happy to go with a more straight forward equity sale, but they're actually really hard to find. So we're doing what we gotta, which is wandering in and out of houses, my husband bouncing with excitement and me waddling gamely behind him. Based on the toddler's behavior today, we can expect him to find the largest room in the house and just run circles around it until we leave as if he's trying to outdistance the unholy stank of living in 1100 square feet when there are almost five of us.

Or else he's just burning off the energy he stores up while sitting stoned in his car seat. One or the other.

But the house hunting is interesting.

I'd like to take an unofficial poll here. How many of you think I'd be a picky house hunter? Raise your hand in the poll on the side bar. Here, I'll insert a random picture here so you don't skim down one line to cheat and see the answer.

That's Grant at about two weeks old. I know. We seriously make cute babies.

Uh-huh. I bet most of you think I'll be picky.


You're wrong. So wrong. It's partly due to having a real estate agent in his mid-twenties who plays guitar in my husband's band and says "Dude" a lot. You spend time with a guy like Tyler, you kind of just mellow about everything. It's a strange narcotic effect. But also it's partly because I'm just not super picky about most things. Shoes, yes. How finely my vegetables are chopped when I'm cooking, yes. Everything else? Not so much.

These initial house gawking trips have been about establishing a point of reference between Kenny and I in terms of what is acceptable to me and what isn't. That way he can pretty much do all the house hunting by himself with full confidence that he knows my tastes and I can sit at home and eat waxy Hostess chocolate donuts and watch The Biggest Loser and not even feel bad about the hypocrisy because I'm going to go on the END ALL crash diet and lose like like fifteen pounds overnight in about six weeks. Or in four weeks if I'm lucky and this baby loves her mama and comes early to see me.

So, yeah. I'm going to mull over what I'm figuring out about how what you value in a house reflects who you are (because I'm realizing that although there aren't many dealbreakers house-wise for me, my absolute insistence on a room large enough to house a small Filipino house boy says quite a bit about me. Or maybe a really old English butler).

Let's see . . . there was something else I was supposed to do today. Hmmm.

OH, YEAH! Someone won something. Like the awesome book My Ridiculous Romantic Obsessions and a Vosges Barcelona chocolate bar. And I need to announce it!

That person (per random.org) is:  STEPHANIE FARIS!

I'm actually super excited about that because I know she LOVES young adult fiction, and Stephanie, I must tell you. . . this is really, really good. So make sure I get your address and I'll get it out to you.

If you ever cook Rachel Ray's 30 minute recipes, check out my sidebar. I try a couple every week and grade them. You can click to get the details and see if there are any you want to try. But I don't post the recipe so you'll need to own the book already. This week's new entries: Dily of a Quesadilla and Mix and Match Enchiladas.