Valentines, etc.

Tim and I did the most romantic thing on Valentines Day - we went and met with a realtor, to get our dreams of home ownership off the ground. The guy we met with seems like a good dude - he's been in the Culver City area for thirty years, and is the second generation owner of the family real estate business. The initial meeting was just to sort of feel each other out and see if we liked him. I think we do, and our next step is to look at some of the listings he'll be sending us, and of course, to get pre-approved for a home loan.

We're looking for a single family home with at least two bedrooms, and at least a bath and a half. We'd like a two car garage but could live with a one car garage and a driveway for the second car (we stack park now, so we're used to moving one car to get to the other.) We're fine with a house that needs some surface repairs, but not looking to rewire or rebuild anything. Our goal is to stay on the Westside, but we're not married to the idea of a particular neighborhood or zip code. My biggest goal is to stay north of LAX airport, so that my commute doesn't turn into a nightmare.

We're looking for something we can afford on Tim's salary alone, to give us more flexiblity in terms of my future work schedule (or lack thereof, depending on how cute our offspring turns out to be. If it's ugly, I'm just going to leave it for Lulu to raise. What? She raised four kittens when she was only 8 months old, she can parent a human baby, I'm sure. And we got her after she had babies - we were not the irresponsible owners that let their teenaged cat daughter get PG.) Thankfully, the market has begun to drop in Los Angeles and we are in a much better position to get into a single family home than we were a year ago.

The whole experience was really exciting and also nerve-wracking. At the end of the meeting, the realtor was like, "well, let's get started. We could probably have you in a home by the end of the summer." I have to be honest, I got totally freaked out at that point - my heart started racing and I got a little teary. It's just amazing to me that we are going to take such a big step towards grown up time. We've been living in our postage stamp apartment for almost five years now (which is four years longer than I hoped we'd be here for) but what we've been saving in rent will go into our house downpayment. We're going to get a house and pay a mortgage and be homeowners, and providing we can get all of that stuff figured out, then we will become parents, to human babies (we are already very successful cat parents, as evidenced from recent posts.) Who would have thunk it?

I love building my life with Tim. He's the best Valentine ever.