draliman on life

Yes, it’s my birthday again. It came around so quickly! It seems like only a year ago that I last had one.

Here’s a freaky thing. I opened my Chrome browser (Google’s browser) this morning and clicked on the little animation to “view today’s doodle” (for those of you who don’t know, Google do doodles for famous events, birthdays and so on) and this is what appeared:

Holy crivens! A doodle just for me! I knew signing up to Google+ was giving one of the world’s biggest corporations too much information. Am I supposed to write a thank you note, do you think?

I haven’t been posting much recently, apart from trying to keep up with the Friday Fictioneers challenge, and there’s a good reason (and this time it’s not laziness!).

I’m house hunting. This isn’t taking up a huge amount of actual physical time (“physical time?” – you know what I mean). It’s taking up a huge amount of mental time. Even when I’m not actually looking at house websites or talking to the bank, I’m thinking about it. My little brain doesn’t have room for anything else.

Why am I looking to buy a house (let’s say it like it is – why am I trying to persuade the bank to buy me a house)? I hate change, big time. I like my routine. I hate making phone calls. I hate taking risks. I hate suddenly having no money. This doesn’t sound like the correct mind-set for such an endeavour.

I’m getting older, fast. My pension, as it stands, will barely keep me in cheese and pizzas, let alone pay rent. So I need to get a house and pay it off before I retire. Otherwise I’m going to be living in my car.

So I’m just going to have to suck it up, take it one step at a time and let the cards fall as they may.

I’ve also learned some great estate agent terms!

• cozy – not even enough room to swing a cat
• compact – see cozy
• low maintenance garden – no grass
• green views – if you go upstairs, hang dangerously out of the window and squint a bit you may catch sight of a distant field
• parking for 2 cars – parking for 2 Smart Cars or 1 human-sized car
• 2 bedrooms – house built pre-90s, 2 bedrooms. House built 90s onwards – 1 small bedroom and 1 “bedroom” too small to actually get a bed in
• in need of modernisation – falling to bits

Wish me luck!