Grinding Us Down - No Luck at All

No luck at all.

Spent all day yesterday looking at houses back at Sydney Harbour in Cypress north of Houston, where we’d seen one house that we liked on a man-made lake. We looked at maybe ten houses from the three builders working there. We saw one we liked a lot, but it was directly across the street from the community swimming pool. Did we want to deal with that traffic and noise on the weekends? We saw one other one with the same floor plan, three car garage, larger lot, extra built-ins, and naturally it was the most expensive one we saw. And still with that hour-long commute.
We gave up finally, and had lunch, then drove 30 minutes to another new subdivision. Very nice. On a “lake”, catchment pond really, that wasn’t usable but provided a pretty back drop. It had a nice walking trail around it. But, we noticed that the water line as delineated by the slight erosion marks actually came above the walk-way. The pond is a retention pond for run-off during rains. If it comes up that high without a hurricane, what’s going to happen when you get 30” in a day like Florida just did? Also the four bedrooms were down relatively dark narrow hallway, the master bedroom was an “interesting” shape. Huge kitchen though, and beautiful view from family room and master bedroom.


So we decide to drive to Sugarland – another town that had some new homes on lakes. We’re following our realtor. I lose her on the expressway, but no problem, we have our sat-nav. Sat-nav takes us toward downtown, but no problem. Then crunch, dead stop. Lighted signs say, “Major accident. Freeway closed.” Chug-chug-chug. We finally get to where they’ve closed off the road, exit onto another expressway, and finally fight our way over to Sugarland. Our realtor has hit a similar problem on her more direct way there. It takes us nearly 2 hours to go what should’ve been 45 minutes. And, when we finally get there, the house we meant to look at is directly next to the pumping station for the lake. We don’t even bother to go in. The salesperson for the development says she has one other new build available. We drive over. It’s huge, and beautiful, and on the lake, and when we look across a big field in front of the house our realtor points out the prison farm about a mile away. Cross this one off too.

So what are we going to do? The house we like in Cypress means an hour commute each way. Also there’s just building building building going on. If we decide to sell, will we come close to selling it for what we paid for it?

To top everything off, poor Wife has a horribly swollen jaw from a bad tooth. She says she’s not in a lot of pain, but obviously she’s not feeling well. She’s a trooper and trying to hang tough until Monday when she can get to the dentist. I feel so sorry for her.

Only bright spot: I cooked fresh shrimp last night. I’d not even checked the price when I bought them at Kroger. As I unwrapped them I realize that a pound and a half only cost $2.50. AND, they’d already been deveined. I made them with a little tortellini with pesto and a tomato-carrot salad, and more than a couple glasses of wine.

At least something went right.