Take A Deep Breath...

Today, this funny thought crawled across my brain: my life breaks down into chunks by decade. There's the decade in which I was born. Then the decade of elementary school. Then the decade of high school and college. Then the decade of career and marriage. And Now I'm in the decade of having kids (and I will have spent dang near the whole first decade of the new millennium paying for and changing diapers).

I arrived at this blinding insight (which, like so much that goes on in my head is of no interest to anyone but me) because we are going to look at some houses today and one house in particular has piqued our interest and it is the only house that had no pictures of the interior posted on line. So now I am further piqued: what will it look like inside? I'm betting it's a nightmare of wallpaper. It was built in the '80s, the decade of mauve carpet and wallpaper, so that's my best guess. The house we live in now was built in the '70s, the decade of mustard yellow appliances and avocado walls, but we bought it from some people who bought it in the '80s and immediately covered all the avocado with wallpaper. I spent 2 years stripping wallpaper. I know, deep down, that I can't do it again. That was some serious work without kids running around. This house would have to be kick-butt wonderful for me to even consider trying to do it with kids underfoot. And how wonderful can it be if it's covered with wallpaper?

It is a big house -- it would more than double our living space -- and it's in our price range, and it's in a nice neighborhood, so there must be something reeeeeaaaaallllllly wrong with it. Maybe they have a meth lab in the kitchen? Not sure. Honestly, if it was a choice between a meth lab and wallpaper, I think I'd take the meth lab. It would be easier to get those nice Haz-Mat people out in their little white suits to clean that up than it would be to rent a steamer and spend years scraping off sodden strips of flowered paper.

So, we go look. I am not holding out much hope, mainly because moving represents change and I am NOT GOOD WITH CHANGE. Not even a little bit. I have to keep telling myself, it's just looking. Looking is not buying. Looking is just looking. NOT BUYING.