The Beginning

So I sat here trying to think of something to blog about, and I decided to just go ahead and tell you the beginning of the we're-moving-unless-something-really-weird-goes-wrong story, because it's pretty much all we've got right now in the line of Shafferland stories. {And yet, what a big one!}

I should begin this way:

Hi, my name is Bekah and I have a realtor.com addiction.

It's true. For the last five years, if there has been a house for sale pretty much anywhere in the continental United States of America, I've read the listing and possibly memorized random, useless facts, such as the year it was built and whether it's on a public or private water source.

I'm not kidding. I just liked to know  my options. You know...in case our house sold.

In that time frame, I learned one thing: if I loved a house more than life itself, it was guaranteed to sell in a week flat. And not to me. This is actually a proven fact. I cannot tell you how many houses I loved until it hurt and they just up and sold. It was kind of like my single years all over again. Find a cute man? He'd find a wife in a week. No joke.

Actually I guess I learned two things, because it also became pretty obvious that Ryan and I could never agree on a house. I would just be slobbering over one, and I'd hesitantly push the laptop his way for him to see, and before he'd even gotten to the INSIDE pictures, he'd found bushes and trees to rip out, a piece of peeling paint tucked under a window, and all manner of things I overlooked in the cuteness that swallowed me whole.

It's why we're a team. Otherwise I'd be living in some adorable shack that was about to fall over. But it would be cute as it fell! Let the record show!!!!

We went through seasons where both of us would spend our evenings perusing houses in various towns. We looked in our own town. We looked in lake towns. We looked in ocean towns. We looked in his work's town. You would think in one of those towns, we could agree on a house, wouldn't you?

Nope.

And so it was, not quite a month ago, I was feeding my addiction and I found the cutest house ever on the planet that had just come on the market. I showed it to Ryan and squinted while he scrolled, trying to avoid the forthcoming eyerolls and de-landscaping plans.

And he said, "I love it."

I'm sorry: what?

I wasted no time calling my real estate friend and asking her if she could get us a showing in that darling house. She set one up and I sat forever in front of each online picture, placing our furniture in the rooms.

The Friday before we were supposed to see the house, she called. It sold. In four days flat, the cutest house on the planet sold right out from underneath us, and we hadn't even gotten to see it for ourselves.

I immediately canceled all my plans for the day, curled up in the fat chair, and sobbed for the entire day. I didn't care. I didn't apologize. I was heartbroken and I intended to grieve it out. And I did.

By Saturday, Ryan and I took deep breaths and clicked back onto the realtor.com app to look for something else. We found nothing, but I felt we'd taken a big step by getting ourselves back out there. {When did life start to look like my dating years again??} And if nothing else, we'd learned that the truth was we really were both ready to move at the same time. And we had our sights set on the same town. That was new. And it felt good.

To be continued...