House and Curly Girl Updates

*Just because I always write about stuff when it's new and exciting, and then forget to record any new developments!*

House-Hunt Update

Today while he was at work, Tom discovered a piece of paper through a random occurrence which he took to be a "sign from God" (but which didn't seem all that out of the ordinary to me -haha).  On it, he learned about another possible program to help first-time homebuyers.  If you're buying within the city and are under a certain income level, you can qualify for a special grant to assist with downpayment/closing costs, and a very low percent down.  Tom took this as an excuse to break our little rule about scanning the real estate sites "just for fun".

And he found a house - for an amazingly low price - that has everything we require in a house (it's old with unique charm, a big front porch, hardwood floors, an adequate backyard, off-street parking, enough counter-space in the kitchen, three bedrooms + attic bedroom, 1.5 baths, as well as a pantry and linen closet!  You don't know what luxuries those last two are unless you don't have them!)...and we can't stop thinking about it now.

I know it's bad, and we shouldn't let ourselves think about houses, especially when I just said two weeks ago that we're not ready to buy yet!  I mean, even if we could make it happen, by the time we get all the paperwork together and figure out some of the intricacies of homebuying, I feel like this place may well have already sold and we'd be left feeling so discouraged.

But we drove past after dinner to get a feel for the area.  It's in a nice-looking neighborhood in a part of town we'd been starting to talk about  as a good compromise area for the two of us - Tom likes the city, I like the suburbs near where I grew up.   It's a nice meeting point of the two.  This house is just *barely* in the city.  So enough to qualify for the good mortgage deal, but not enough to not feel city-like at all.  There's a beautiful big park (with grass! and trees! not just concrete like the park near us now!) right down the road.  And a friend tells me that there are some homeschool co-ops right in the neighborhood.  Sounds pretty dreamy.

Anyways, Tom's gonna call the agent tomorrow just to see if there are any offers on it already.  If there are not...I think we're going to contact someone to help us determine if this could be realistic for us at all, or if we're still just trying to jump in way too early.  I'm trying very hard not to get any hopes up, and just assume that it's not going to happen right now.


Curly Girl Update

Many months ago, I wrote about discovering Curly Girl, and the new way I had started caring for my hair (which is wavy, but not actually curly) to help work with its natural texture.  I continued helping it to be wavy all summer, though 99.9% of the days it was just clipped up off my neck because it was so hot.  Now that it's finally cool enough to wear my hair down again, I've been mostly going back to the old blow-dry-it-smooth method of the past.  Tom loves the waves, though, so begged me to wear it natural for a wedding we went to on Saturday.

(it's interesting to see how much more pronounced the waves are versus the first time I did Curly Girl, in above linked post)

Anyways, even though I'm now shaming the Curly Girl method by using an evil blow-drier most of the time, I'm still following the washing directions.  I only have to get my hair wet in the shower every three or four days.  Once a week, I use a sulfate-free shampoo to clean just the scalp.  The other time, I use a hearty finger-scrub and hot water on my scalp to get out the oils.  And I follow up each wash with conditioner to the bottom half of the hair.  I'm barely washing my hair these days, and it doesn't get greasy!  It's excellent.  And having to dry my long thick hair isn't nearly as frustrating when I only need to do it twice a week.

Anyways, break out of the cycle of harsh shampoos, and your hair will thank you! (ok, it will be really really greasy for a couple of weeks, while it gets the message that you don't need it to overproduce oil anymore.  But eventually...it gets really nice).