the south, pt1

For those of you who don't know, I moved from the DC area to Raleigh, NC almost three years ago. It was time to "buy the house, have the baby", blah blah blah and the housing market in DC, MD, & Northern Virginia was OUT of CONTROL. For real. We were renting a tiny 2-bedroom "garden" apartment ("garden" hahahahaha, read : the door opens into the parking lot), I think it was 700sq ft, with one parking space and shared laundry. On a 6 lane road. When we left those condos were selling for more than $240k. And they were selling!

My mom lives in Chapel Hill which isn't far from Raleigh, so we decided to look for a house down here. We found a great house, built in '65, it's almost mid-century modern (there are touches, like the odd design element in the front hall of the cut off chimney looking thing. It was filled with the most hideous dust-filled plastic plants. Why??)
bought it from the original owner, move in ready. There are definitely things that need work but all in all it's a great house. Nice neighborhood, family friendly, park right next door.

The park was a selling point. It's 1/2 block away, has a little play area, sand, and a pond. It also has tennis courts, a basketball court, and a soccer field. It seems to also be the perfect place to shoot off fireworks. At 3:40am!!!

I don't sleep well to begin with. Ok, wait, that's not true. I sleep fine until something wakes me up. Sam stealing the covers, the cats fighting on top of me, Isabel having a nightmare, these are things I chose to bring in to my home.
FIREWORKS at 3:40am (!!!!) I did not. And lucky me, living in the south, you can buy fireworks pretty much anywhere, anytime. They had them in Target with the Christmas decorations.

Needless to say I was up at 3:40am, watching the X-files, and missing the street noise from my tiny 700sf "garden" apartment.

Stupid south.