Impressions of our new house

The wonderful part about owning a new home is the impressions that you get when you walk into it for the first time as an owner. The final walk through for our home was conducted last week and as we walked through the living room replete with vaulted ceilings and beautiful oak floors, we popped open a bottle of a 1963 bottle of Viognier and....Wait, that never happened.

On our walk through the owner was still unpacking the house. It made it harder to imagine the house as our own because someone else still had stuff in it. And the air fresheners. My god, the woman had those plug-in air fresheners in every available outlet.

Conversation after the walk through:
S: How did you like it?
M: It seemed kind of small.
S: Yeah, it did seem a bit small.
M: I can't believe we just spent our xthousand dollars on that small house.

Luckily we closed that afternoon and were able to go back over to our new little chateau. We walked up the small hill to the extraordinarily dark house and concluded that the empty house was actually quite large. Unfortunately, we also both concluded that the house was likely haunted. S actually had this impression when we saw the house the first time, but I pooh poohed the idea. What a strange saying.

S: How did you like it?
M: It seemed bigger.
S: Yeah, it did didn't it.
M: It also seemed like it was freakin' haunted.
S: Really.
M: Oh yeah, we've definitely got some child ghosts living in that place.
S: That's comforting.

But now those days are gone. I no longer believe the house to be haunted. I believe the house is a place where you go to do hard work on hardwood floors.

S: We'll have to get fabric to cover the bottom of all the furniture so it doesn't scratch the floor. Oh, and we may have to buy one of those plastic things or we'll have to get rid of the office chair because it will scratch the floors.
M: So we paid x for these floors and now we're paying even more to not use them?
S: Sort of.
M: Seems like a good purchase.

Obviously I'm kidding. The only reason we got those hardwood floors spic and span is so other people in our age range can come over and admire the exact same hardwood floors they have in their house and compliment us on seeing the unique beauty of the old wood. Then we'll talk for a while about the grain of the wood. And someday when we're selling the house some young couple will come in and admire the nice floors and not realize how much hard work went in to making them that way, so I'll carpet over the floor again to teach them a lesson. I'm not sure they'll learn it, but sometimes it's good to just try and teach a lesson, even if it means you can't sell your house and you've got piece of shi- carpet all over your nice floors again.

Other highlights of moving in. While I was raking in the back yard I noticed that the neighbors behind us had a dog. Mind you, I hate dogs. Luckily this particular dog upon seeing me did one of those guttural snarls that communicates, "Not only am I going to kill you, but I'm going to eat your unborn children someday. What? You say that's not humanly possible? Well I'll make it happen buddy, just you watch me." Note: The dog had a very expressive growl. Thus, I decided that the leaves in the front yard probably needed more attention, and I left the dog to blissfully growl to himself while considering various ways to escape from behind his fence and murder me.
I'm thinking that privacy fence is sounding like a good idea! We're glad to be a part of the neighborhood, just not glad enough to want to see any of you!

So yes, it may be a small haunted house with a bloodthirsty dog and floors so hard that you can't actually ever picture being comfortable on them, but dammit it's ours!