Real House Hunting, Day 1.

Today after a quick sushi lunch, Tim and I headed out to view some properties on the west side. Nothing really jumped out at us, other than pure sticker shock. We were looking in a nicer neighborhood, but still, $749,000 for a three bedroom, one bath sort of blows my mind. One of the realtors was asking us about the property, and I said one of our "musts" was at least a bath and a half. She was like, "you could always build on another bathroom." Lady, for three quarters of a million dollars, I expect my house to have two toilets (the two toilet houses in the neighborhood were $900,000.) The one property that was sort of interesting to us would have required some renovations (it had two kitchens?) and it was close to the freeway. But all of the searching helps crystalize what we're looking for. Like... a home that has doorways big enough to fit a dresser through (the last house we looked at had such tiny doorways that we realized we wouldn't be able to get a dresser into the master bedroom unless we put it through the window.) We have also learned that we are probably not going to find anything in our price range in Mar Vista.

We also went to TJ McMarshalls and Tim got some new sneakers for his poor flat old feet. Between watching all of the March Madness, and seeing a show on the Science channel last night about people who are eight feet tall, I am feeling like my 6'6" husband is on the shrimpy side. Maybe he will put lifts in his new shoes. I got silver sandals, which I am already in love with.

The other thing we've been doing this weekend is torturing the cats. Thor really loves anything stick-like. He is like a puppy in that way. He steals pens, he steals chopsticks, and once he took a paring knife out of the dish rack and batted it into the bathroom. Thankfully, he didn't cut his paws, but he did give Tim a bit of a shock - he thought the cat was going to stab him. The other thing he really loves is straws. If you leave a straw-adorned beverage around the apartment, he will pull the straw out and then carry it around in his teeth. And I present, the Tale of Thory and the Starbucks Straw.

First, he stalks it, and looks at it with love.

Then, he tries to yank it out (and gets yelled at.) When I finished my beverage, I gave him the straw.

Then he bats at it and carries it around the apartment. Lulu is mostly uninterested.

She prefers to perform kittie karate kicks on the lamb puppet.

Here's Tim and his reluctant kitty machine gun.

And then he takes aim and fires! Lulu doesn't play kitty machine gun, because she doesn't like to be held. When you do pick her up, she makes noises like you're choking her. She's more of a grenade and less of a rifle.