Los Porchs

Man, I wish I was up north at the cabin day drinking on the lake rather than here, day drinking while packing in bursts between naps & sleep.  We're loving that we're home for the long weekend and that the weather has been playing nice.  I'm just overwhelmed as I try to figure out what to keep, what to trash, and what to take to Goodwill.  I've been following that whole "if you touch it and it brings you joy" crap, but it just makes me feel like Dorothy in Return to Oz.  Haven't seen it?  I'll lend it to you.  It's a grown-up return trip to Oz (don't let your kids watch it until you do). I'm so SO excited to have space, but today I found myself saying out loud, "It's going to be 3 people in a 4 bedroom house."  Excessive.  And another reminder that we're a family of three. -- Porch just came upstairs with a bag of remaining syringes and drugs and I wanted to die.  Just melt into the floor.  He's still talking a

Porch and I are no strangers to moving.  Since we moved in together in 2008, we've seen some things.  Like the time we moved into our first apartment together in the West Loop and he had the mattress on top of his LR3 and went through a red light.  Did you know Chicago has red light cameras?  Not only will they send you the ticket for going through said red light, they'll throw in free video footage of your vehicle going through -- with a mattress on top.  There was really no fighting that. Or the time we moved out of that apartment to a place 2 blocks over and the landlord kept the security deposit because of a chip in the granite that no one but her could seem to locate? Or when we decided it was time to move to a place where we could "raise someone" and in the course of moving, had at least two boxes open and spill their contents in the middle of Malden? We have experience a lot of moving.  We've learned some tricks along the way. Moving to Wisconsin wa

We're in the throes of financing our new home and getting things lined up so that we can get a closing date and make plans to move forward with our big change.  We decided to do a  homestyle conventional loan that will allow us to wrap some of the renovations into our loan.  This house has amazing bones but is in need of some serious love in the form of updating and change.  I think I'm feeling more anxious about it because we've only been in the house twice and we're making these big plans.  I wish I could stand in the middle of the home and better understand the feel, the flow... I want to listen to what it needs and make a plan of things that we can do ourselves.  But someone is living there currently and it just isn't possible. We have a pretty limited budget so there will be lots of posts about our projects and lessons learned.  I have no doubt that our Google search histories are about to be all about "how to..." and that we'll be learning a lo