One month from today, Greg and I will be homeowners. Here are five things I'm looking forward to:

1. Not being able to look around the room and see almost everything we own in my direct line of sight.


2. NON-WHITE WALLS!


3. Big parties, dinner parties, holiday parties, craft parties, patio parties, etc.


4. Having a place to put overnight guests where they won't be sandwiched between the couch and the TV while Franny climbs all over them.


5. Finally feeling settled (hopefully).

Here are five things I'm not looking forward to and/or am nervous about:

1. Figuring out whether or not we are up to the challenge of a borderline fixer-upper.


2. Greg and I being outside of conversation range from one another.


3. Not having a landlord to call when things go awry.


4. The idea that this pretty much means we will be tethered to the Philadelphia area forever.


5. Blowing through 90% of our savings this year.

This being said, all in all I'm ecstatic. The thought of sitting down with my piles and piles of home decorator magazines and putting together "idea boards" thrills me to no end (yes I am a geek). I love that we will have room to stretch our legs, and room for me to actually work on projects, and room for a dog, and room to have guests and parties. When I think about our excitement over having more space to put things, the minimalist environmentalist in me wrenches with guilt. Plenty of people live in studio apartments and are completely happy. It's not that I'm so materialistic that I need to be surrounded by *stuff*. I'd probably be perfectly content to live in an 800 square foot apartment in San Francisco. Philadelphia, however, is most definitely NOT San Francisco. Or Portland, or Seattle, or Paris, or Glasgow. For those places, I might drop down below the thousand square foot mark. Instead I'm living in Philadelphia, so my consolation prize is a three-story 1700 square foot house.

Above all, probably the thing that scares me most is this: for my entire adult life, every aspect of my life has been tinged with "well, if only I had this, THEN I would be content." As soon as I move out of this dorm into an apartment, THEN I'll feel settled. As soon as I have my own apartment, THEN I'll feel settled. As soon as I move in with Greg, THEN I'll feel settled. As soon as we buy a house with more space, THEN I'll feel settled. The next few months will decide whether the pattern continues, although I'm pretty sure I can at least add "As soon as we get the house fixed up the way we want, THEN I'll feel settled." It just scares me that perhaps I'm ultimately a "grass is always greener" girl who will never feel content with where I am in life. I'm 28 years old, at what point will I be ready to start living?