And so it is settled.

The road to making an offer had been rocky for a lot of reasons, like I thought the house was in a flood plain and jumped through a million hoops, calling engineers, insurance guys, bankers, and finally demanding that the seller get a flood elevation certificate. Which he was supposed to do, and we waited, on pins and needles. Deep inside I knew we'd probably buy the house regardless of the outcome, because it would still be a better house for less money than anything else we'd seen, but I wasn't really hip to paying an extra two grand a year in insurance premiums. Flood mapping, I learned, is voodoo, according to my map-knowing friends, and I knew the house was barely on the edge, if it was in at all. And the whole thing was stupid aggravating. I'm barely on the edge of sanity, here, people. Maybe you should take out extra insurance on ME.

Finally, I called my mortgage banker (HI DEBI!) and said GODDAMMIT, FIND OUT IF YOU'RE GOING TO REQUIRE THIS FLOOD INSURANCE, and she said "Hey! Looks like we don't!" and then I cried some more. And *that's* when we made the offer, shook the hands, and drank the margaritas.

From there it was a series of formalities. You know, like signing our lives away. But a lot of good things happened. Like we were able to use some profits from our old house and pay off a vehicle. And our insurance actually went DOWN, as did our security bill and our internet bill, don't ask me why. It's ALL VOODOO. But that's amazing, because of course our mortgage payment went up (but not a whole heckuvalot)and that pool? It costs a little money. But with the savings from the car and the other breaks, we're about breaking even.

How do you like that? We doubled our square footage, got ourselves a pool and a basement, and our monthly output? DARN NEAR THE SAME.

Butter my butt and call me a biscuit, I think this just might work.