My uncle recently asked me if my life was exciting. It's plenty exciting, thank you very much.

We've made a decision that seems very strange, but feels like the right thing to do for us. We are going to move in with Steve's mom on Long Island for two months. He's been going down there every other weekend for the past year to renovate her kitchen and build a deck and it's still not done. It's been something that's prevented us from delving into relationships up here more deeply, so we are going to take this opportunity to go down there and finish this project and liberate ourselves. It just so happens that Steve's mom is going to rent a house in Montauk July 3-20th, so we will take full advantage and just extend our stay with her through July.

I told Aidan that we were going to go and live with Grandma for a little while yesterday morning when he woke up. I was sure that he would be thrilled - he loves Grandma's house, but he started to cry and I felt awful. We've been telling him that we were buying this house and I guess it's all overwhelming for him. Maybe he was just tired.

I've been telling everyone that we know to look out for houses for us to rent, and my friend Sue might have one. She knows someone who has a house that got wrecked by his ex wife after they separated and its been vacant since she left (I don't know when). It's in the country and she doesn't think he'd mind the dog. It's a manufactured home - the size of a double wide trailer home, and it's not too old - probably 5-10 years old. It's basicly the same house that Sue has, which means it has 2 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, 2 bathrooms, an office, a laundry room, and a kitchen with a dining area. I think I could be very happy with that for the next two years - especially if it's in the country and we could have chickens and a garden - I think that's really all I want in the world right now! Aidan kept asking if the Easter eggs had chicks in them, and almost cried when Steve said no. I think he wants chickens too.

Once I had all of the above sort of settled in my head, our realtor called last night. The seller's daughter had called her office and spoken to her partner about re-listing the property. She had the idea that if she re-listed it, she could offer the sellers a commission cut in half if they would continue with our deal. She called me to see if she should make this offer to them, I of course said yes, with a lot of hope because these people are cheap - I thought that they really might be motivated by a bargain. So I went out to the grocery store and started renovating the house and the land again in my mind. By the time I got home, the realtor had called back - she told Steve that some people just don't want to be helped.

Then I just read a comment that CM left me on the Weeping Willows post:

I had a dream last night that you bought the house and it had all sorts of terrible problems. You were eaten alive by the mortgage and the repairs, and it affected your relationships with one another as a family. And then it burned down. You told me not to buy a house and that you wished you had bought land and built your own house instead. I awakened thinking that the dream meant that I was supposed to forget buying a house and instead pursue my original goal of communal living.

And now I have come to read this... and I wonder, what did my dream mean?

Heh, maybe we're both supposed to pursue communal living. I've been meeting some really wonderful people up here - and bouncing the idea off of some of them. I usually have the words low-income built into it, because co-housing is what I really want, and co-housing communities tend to be expensive. There is such a need everywhere for low-income housing, and I've been thinking that maybe there are grants and such available for it. I know that it is largely devoted to urban low-income housing, so I don't know how a rural plan might qualify for money, but it is something that I keep in my consciousness, and bring up sort of carefully with people I trust. I feel like I am telling people a precious secret when I talk about it, and most people's initial reaction is pretty negative.