The "Perfect" House for a homebody

(please excuse the formatting errors. I can't figure out how to sort the iPad to blogger thing...) "How'd you go?" she asked. Um. Counterclockwise. Out to the courtyard and back? Oh! I mean, "Good." I went good? Did good? It was good? I settled on, "Love the shop! The recycled teak is so gorgeous!" So far "How you going?" is my favorite colloquialism. Everyone asks me, and I have to try hard not to giggle every time since it totally catches me off guard. It feels a bit weird to be "going" again since I've discovered I am a bit of a homebody. Funny enough, I don't seem to mind home being in the far stretches of the globe, but once I'm there I like to be home quite a bit. I got a clue of this the first time Scotty and I traveled. I believe I've mentioned this before? We had planned a backpacking-through-Europe excursion after graduating from university. First clue that we were clueless? We thought we could see Europe in two weeks. Well, teaching English in Ukraine for two weeks and then traveling for two. It was going to be awesome. Just fly by the seat of our pants. Go where the wind blew us. Chill out. Adventure. I was so excited. Then I discovered I am fine flying by the seat of my pants if I know where my pants are going to rest in the evening. I need a home base. It's no wonder then that the 'home' question has torn me up a bit the last couple of weeks. House hunting is kind of insane here! We viewed 14 properties total. Ten in a Saturday marathon that saw us viewing all ten in a little under 4 hours. Each house only open for 15 minutes and some of the best places we were viewing with 20-30 other people. My understanding is that you can double and triple those numbers during the Australian summer when most of their turnover occurs! Whoa! It came down to two favorites. One with loads of natural light and a great kitchen and one with doors on all of the bedrooms that was two blocks from the beach. We heard back from the doors-on-the-bedrooms place first and went with it because places go fast and we didn't know when or if we'd hear from the other place and didn't want to be out both of them. In the end we did hear back--"our application was successful." Shoot! I obsessed and obsessed until I found out we couldn't get choice #1 anyway. Ah who am kidding? The obsessing did not stop just because we found out we couldn't have it. Then instead of obsessing about which one was better I was obsessing about whether we blew it or not. Sigh...I think it's the homebody thing. I want it to be perfect. But what the heck does perfect mean anyway? In England we did the whole house hunting/school locating marathon and viewed tons of properties and chose the "perfect" house only to have it fall through 2 weeks before we were set to leave. Our last minute seen-in-internet photos only house was just fine though it wasn't a great location and we had a break in and our car stolen and the neighbors weren't nice. Many a night I cried and cried about how bad I felt it was. I was so bummed. Then we got a lead on a little house in a village we had considered "too far" from London at first. It was without a doubt the perfect house. Crappy carpets, tiny bedrooms, mold in the bedroom, only one bathroom, perfect. Why? Because it was two doors down from the best neighbors ever who introduced us to the best group of friends ever and took us all over the local woods and areas and generally made us never want to leave. So...here I am obsessing about location and size and natural light and kitchens and whether a master bedroom door is all THAT important (I think yes don't you?) when in my heart I know that it mostly boils down to factors I have no control over whatsoever! Deep breaths. Let it go. Open up to the crazy new fun (and hopefully new neighbors) that are on their way. It's going to be great.