The thing about depression is it casts a pall on everything. I am excited only I’m not. I’m happy only I’m not. I feel kind of dead inside only I will absolutely keep marching forward. I miss pot. Pot allows me to feel more in touch with feelings of happiness instead of viewing them through a screen.

Just keep swimming. Fake it till you make it. It’s not about how you feel it is about what you do.

I want this house. I want this house for a bajillion reasons. Are there things that I would do differently if I were building a house from the ground up? Probably. But this house is quite lovely and will be a great canvas for all of our needs.

If we rent out the annex for a couple of years to students at the local university we could get them to pay 2/3 of our mortgage. Noah has mentioned that he might talk to his parents about helping with the mortgage. (I have mixed feelings about this, but them helping us with a mortgage on another continent means I definitely won’t have to spend time with them to thank them.) If Noah can keep his California job (looks quite probable) and we keep paying our California rent we can have this house paid off in less than 6 years. If his parents helped… we could be mortgage free quite quickly. Then it wouldn’t be such a big deal for him to work.

I would really like for him to not have to work for rent money.

I suspect that our food costs will be similar in terms of money, despite translation. So our CA dollars won’t go as far. One good thing about not having a car: eating out all the time is more work than cooking. Also, having four people in the house who are competent to make food really changes the dynamic. When one person isn’t in the mood to cook… someone else probably is. We will definitely need to figure out where we can put a big freezer. There isn’t a ton of space for that. It might have to live in the kitchen where they currently have the table. I might want to have an island in the middle with the freezer against the wall, then we will have more space for working and setting stuff that is in transit. I don’t think there will be room for a chest freezer in the utility room and we won’t have a garage. (EC saw the reference to a big freezer. She says: “It will be important for our ice cream tastings!)

I wonder how water proof the outdoor shed is. Hm. It looked snug enough.

Of course when we did a walk through Middle Child declared that the room he wants is the master bedroom. Offfff course. It’s 2.23 sq m bigger than the next largest bedroom on that floor. (Master (has bathroom): 14.4, son room (no bathroom): 12.23, additional bedroom (has bathroom): 11.18 , daughter room (no bathroom): 10.34, downstairs (with bathroom): 20.62, annex (has bathroom): 11.38)

I think the very smallest bedroom is bigger than the master we had in Fremont. That’s funny.

Son bedroom and smaller upstairs room with bathroom overlook the burn. Master and smallest upstairs room overlook the road/city. You can see all the way out to the firth (Moray).

(I’m just calling them son/daughter room because of current inhabitants. I am not sure I need to assign them to my kids to keep up the tradition.)

The burn is kind of southwest. The firth is mostly northeast. I think if we manage to move in during January it would be fun to have a year of charting where the sun hits different parts of the yard before I start planting anything. I would like to grow some food, but getting used to doing so in this climate will be tricky.

Now we have appointments with mortgage brokers. Eeep.

Questions for the current owners: is the shed waterproof? Where do you store your holiday decorations?

Gosh. Today is going to be lovely.