Dream A Little Dream

Yesterday, RCC surprised me speechless when he asked if I wanted to go look at a house.

We are totally unprepared to buy a house - haven't even really thought about it other than, "one day, when we win the PowerBall..."

But...this last bout with our neighbors has just about done us in.  I've lived in this house for about ten years; my neighbors directly south of me hated me before I moved in.  Apparently, they saw no reason for a single mother with three young children to live in their neighborhood.

Though I despise our house, the kids and I have lived here longer than any other place.  It was good for us to move in here - no shared walls, no college kid neighbors, and the best part - we were in the county.  There's open space that the neighborhood kids call the dirt hills and the heathi spent their childhood much the same way I did: running around with their friends, exploring, getting dirty and doing things their mother would cringe at.

About the time RCC and I got married, the city began incorporating our little slice of county and the rules began changing.  Oh, how our neighbors must have rejoiced!  Even though we don't have an HOA, we now have to abide by city rules.  Stupid ones that make no sense to country kids.  Our neighbor is well versed in all of the city rules and has called the code enforcers on us for different infractions. 

The first being Digger's car that was parked in the side yard.  Yes, it was not running, but it was parked on our own property and hidden from the street. Even though it was a project car, it could not stay, even if we moved it to the driveway because it was unlicensed and uninsured.  The car was a project car - there's no way in hell I was going to insure a car that didn't run and without insurance, I couldn't license it.  We sold the car for scrap.

This last time was the straw that broke the camel's back for RCC.  He decided to part out Tinkerbell, his rock crawler.  He brought her home, started tearing her apart in our driveway, got most of the parts sold and we got a phone call from our landlord.  Turns out our neighbors had filed a complaint with the code inspector for having an "eye sore" and an unworking vehicle.  Now, it was obvious that Tinkerbell was being torn apart and parted out.  RCC was very aware of our neighbor's hatred of anyone/thing associated with me and took extra care in keeping the tear down organized and running smoothly.

RCC's a country kid like me, and of the belief that if we want to work on our cars in our driveway we should be able to without interference from the city.  Now that we are incorporated, we may only have our trashcan visible outside our house (other than our lawfully licensed and insured vehicles).  For living in a neighborhood without an HOA, it feels an awful lot like one.

Anyrantanddigression, RCC is done with living in this neighborhood and hopped online to look at houses.  Like I said, we really had not planned on buying for a while and are really unprepared to do so. 

Nonetheless, this little beauty jumped out at him...

It's pretty much everything we've always discussed wanting in a house.  Room for Estes...



Big kitchen...

Cozy living room...

And a small area for a garden...

It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere - the closest neighbors are 1/2 mile away and they are farmers/ranchers.  There's little to no chance of it ever becoming incorporated, as the closest "city" is a town of less than 900 people and is located almost seven miles away.  I'm good with that.

What really has me dreaming is the fact that not only could I keep Estes in the winter, but that we could also raise our own dinner.  Hello little cow.  Maybe we should name it "Tasty" or "Yumm".  Crap, putting the cart before the cow horse again.

Aaaaannnndddd...there's room to build a berm and set up our own shooting range.  Yes, you heard that right - our own shooting range.  No membership fees, no driving to go out to the range, just walk out the back door and across the yard.  I've already got a mental list of the guns we "need" and the steel I want to buy (Come to Momma, little Texas Star).

We so want this house.  So badly it hurts.  RCC's busy researching banks for mortgages. 

Me?  I bought a PowerBall ticket. 'Cause that's the way I roll.