On the other hand, the house-looking didn't go so well. I had gotten myself pretty psyched-up about house #2 from our last house-related diary, especially after driving past it last week. So, I took mom+stepdad along on a walkthrough of it with teh agent Saturday morning, and the house showed quite well, so much so that I walked out of there thinking, it's time to make an offer.

Then we started driving around the neighborhood a bit. The first two streets, including the street where the 'target' house is, are very nice, and comparable to the house we'd just walked through. The third street in, though, featured several houses which had plywood or plastic for windows, abandoned cars out front, and, when the paint wasn't peeling off, were painted in dayglo colors -- pink, purple, fluorescent blue. I don't think the final effect was quite as cheery as the owners hoped, though.

This was disconcerting and gave us pause, so we went over to the next neighborhood, which is hidden from the main road by a thick screen of trees. Two blocks in, we u-turned and got the hell out of there, as it appeared we had wandered into a crack neighborhood -- a mix of decrepit and abandoned townhouses with broken windows and skeevy cars and, just, nowhere you'd want to live next door from, especially with an eight year old in the household.

So, that was a downer.

I also had second thoughts about house #2. I love the neighborhood and the location. But whoever they have doing the work on the house, someone's retired dad I think, is doing some very odd things, and I have... concerns about that. There also seems to be a fair amount of water in the basement, that wasn't there a few weeks ago. It's pretty small, and it would need a lot of work, so I've cooled on it. Back to square one?

Sunday, I spent some time at the respective parents' and stepparents' houses in honor of mother's day, and at dad's house in particular, The Househunt was a point of interest. Having spent the previous week obsessing over houses, and looking at houses online, and pondering an interim move into an apartment, etc., I was sick to death of the whole topic and frankly would have preferred a nap, but anyway, I was trying to keep a sense of humor about it.

My dad then made an interesting offer, namely that I should step up my price range by a fair amount, by quite a lot in fact, and with his assistance bypass the next couple of 'stepping stones' in the house-trading-up process he envisioned me traveling over the next twenty years or so. Needless to say, this changes some things.

Accepting financial help feels weird, especially because I don't *need* it. Affording my own stuff like a grownup has been something of a minor point of pride. So, now I'm griping about a gift? I don't know. I'm still getting my mind wrapped around the whole idea. I know they want to help us, and want to see us in a nice neighborhood where we'll be happy for quite a while... I can't articulate what I'm trying to articulate, so I'll stop here.

I'm looking for a financial advisor, I think. How does a person find a financial advisor, anyway? When I google for them all I turn up are insurance salesmen and consumer-credit counseling people.

The next few weeks should be interesting.