Moving on up

Hey! I really have nothing interesting to post about in the way of running. Just like most of you guys, our weather has been CRAP lately. Loads of rain and it's also SO cold! Today our highs were in the 50's and the weather guy said our avg temps in April were higher than what we've had in May. It seems like it's always raining after work, or about to rain, or so stinking windy that it's just miserable. I've had 3 runs on the treadmill in the past week, and it's MAY! Yesterday was cold (and I'm over that!) so I did 4 on the 'mill, and tonight it was pouring down rain so I did 6 on the 'mill. Boring!!! Last night I watched the season finale of How I Met your Mother (I love that show!!) so it went by quickly, tonight's was more boring - I watched some HGTV show and a Seinfeld re-run.

So, I mentioned we're shopping for a new house. We've been in this house for nearly 7 years, so it's time to move on. We don't like our suburban neighborhood anymore. We've gone from one our two annoying neighbors to TONS of them. Barking dogs 24-7, cars parked everywhere, etc etc. Our neighborhood is very safe - but it's just not the same as it used to be. This subdivision is now 10 years old, and this area has grown like gangbusters. There is new subdivision on top of new subdivision - so most of the people who moved here when we did have upgraded to one of the newer, bigger, nicer houses nearby and capitalized on the nice value increases our homes have had. The new people that have moved in are nowhere near as nice as the ones we've lost. They can't afford the super nice new houses, but they can afford these. Nice. We have no desire to relocate to one of the nicer, bigger, newer houses - this suburb sucks!! It's so vanilla, and it's gotten to be ridiculous. They're now building a brand new Home Depot across the street from our still very new Lowe's. Why???? There's not a tree left in this 'burb. We used to see deer and other occasional wildlife, but now all their homes have been burned down for 50 BBQ restaurants, 500 nail salons, and millions of cash advance stores. So we want to go more urban!! I grew up in urban Memphis and I'd really like to go back to the urban lifestyle. It just has more personality. We'd also like to change gears and have a really old house, something incredibly historic. Something with some STYLE! We're fine with a smaller house, this one is too big for two people anyway. The bigger the house the more crap you have, and we've done a great job at cleaning out the crap lately. We've been living a much more minimalist type of lifestyle this year and it's been GREAT! We also want a smaller yard, all we need is something big enough for Pippin to poop in.

So, those are our ground rules. After a frustrating day of the neighbors on Saturday we were more than eager to check out some neighborhoods around downtown/East Nashville. There are tons of beautiful old houses down there, and I had printed out directions and info on about 9 houses. We headed down to the first one. It's just a little off of downtown. The house itself was gorgeous, exactly what we would like. Except for the fact that the projects are literally at the end of the block. A ton of houses on the street have already been revitalized, and I'm sure you could make a ton of money off of this house one day.......but it will always be two blocks from the projects. How can I do a run by myself or walk Pippin in the early am that close to the ghetto?? We drove around a little more in that neighborhood but didn't see anything else. So we headed over to the next area of houses. Really, it wasn't much better at all. Crappy house crappy house revitalized house crappy house. There was one house that was SO gorgeous – with a fantastic front porch and the works – right next door to a really run down set of apartments. Why is it that the projects are really in THE best part of town?? Close to downtown – beautiful old architecture – lots of sidewalks! I don’t get it. We found one house we did like, and a few others we saw just driving around (a couple of which turned out to be insanely priced). The topper was one that’s only two blocks from a trailhead entrance to Shelby Park. The inside was gorgeous – the outside I wasn’t huge on. But it said it had a river view! SWEET! We drove way out of the way, got turned around but we finally found it. It was so dog ugly, some really scary looking duplexes are right around it, and the only way you would be able to see the river from that house would be if all the houses across the street burned down. It’s not even ON THE SAME SIDE as the river! Puhlease. It’s all very frustrating, and we haven’t even started dealing with a realtor yet!

We did manage to get some projects done around here last weekend, too. We repainted our front door and our mailbox. We still need to repaint the molding around the front door and there are several other things we need to do around the house. I need a month off to get all this stuff done!!!

Anyway, Friday is Brent’s birthday. I have a few things planned for Saturday but I think we’re going to look at a few more houses this weekend and hopefully get a few more projects done.

That’s it around here, hopefully the weather will behave and I can have some running news to report!

Rachel