a cute charming cheap house thoughts

And so begins the search for the house.

I have looked in Lewisville, Corinth, The Colony, whatever. There seems to be a trend I luckily avoided in my youth, of living in a neighborhood of clutter. I turn down these streets and I physically start to feel claustrophobic. The street is narrow, you can barely drive down it as both sides are flanked with parked cars (despite the readiness of each home's garage which is what, filled with shit?) and the houses themselves are positively crowded together. I keep feeling like I'm the Emperor in "Amadeus," muttering, "Too many notes." My neighbors would practically be in my lap, the backyard is big enough for two people to lie down in...and frankly, so far I've just been too afraid to venture inside.

I found one neighborhood I liked and unfortunately, we both seem to really want a house there. Falling in love is such a bad idea. I try to break out from the closing gap, but I always return to it. I'm going with my realtor friend tomorrow to look at a few. I don't expect to love them or anything and I can't decide what would be worse. Falling in love three weeks too early in a zip code where my heart will surely be splattered (these houses seem to be more sought after than cherry-filled chocolate dildos) and I'll have to spend the rest of my life (or whatever, the next five years) knowing that someone else is living in MY house. OR--finding only mediocrity as the need for a house draws ulcer-tighteningly closer. Dunno. Since I have the patience of a gnat, I opt for the first one.

On a far more interesting note, I made ganache centered truffles and they worked! They came out as delicious lumps of chocolate and I could not have asked for more. I tempered the chocolate like a mofo and that is just some tedious-ass shit not for someone of my (as previously noted) patience. Some were still tacky in the end but that's what the powdered sugar and cocoa is for. And really, I got so bored I rolled most of them anyway. They tasted wonderful (rum is so funny that way) that next time I hope to divide the ganache into three batches and have orange liquor, cherry and...well, we seem to have a rather large bottle of mango rum from a day during which the fiancee decided he'd like to make daiquiris. He did. It sits. And waits.

I am also beginning the stock-up on the alcohol for the wedding. Trying to avoid large pocket-emptying runs to the liquor store days before. I don't know which looks worse to my regular cashier at Siegels: my steady buys of ginormous bottles of vodka, gin and wine or just one big ass-pounder of a buyout one Wednesday morning in October. He has started giving me the Monday senior discount, so in either case I'll be buying on Mondays from now on...and it's also starting to occur to me that when I get the same cashiers I can't always remember the outageous off-the-cuff lies I sometimes espouse on a whim. Note to self...