Month in Review: August 2026

August 2026 in Review

August looked calm on paper. There wasn't much on the calendar, and after the major changes of July, I thought maybe life would finally slow down a little. Instead, the entire month was consumed by house hunting. Showings, open houses, offers, waiting, rejection, hope, and finally, one accepted offer. In theory, August was quiet. In actuality? It was insane.

Month by the Numbers

Weight: ↓ 6 lbs	|	Migraines: 3
Runs / Walks: 0	|	Books: 0
Blog Posts: 11	|	OMMs: 3
Savings: ↓ $140	|	Debt: ↓ $168.64

OMM = One Minute Memoir

Apparently all available reading and walking time was reassigned to house hunting. Still, the scale moved, debt went down, and by the end of the month, all that searching had actually led somewhere.

August, As It Happened

House hunting took over: If I wasn't scrolling through listings, I was talking to my realtor, driving to a showing, walking through an open house, calculating numbers, or waiting to hear whether someone had accepted an offer. We saw a lot of houses this month. Some were immediate nos. Some made me think. A few made me imagine our lives inside them. By the end of August, I had made three offers.

Two rejections: The first two offers didn't work out. Both hurt in different ways, especially because by the time you put an offer on a house, you've already let yourself imagine it a little. I learned quickly that house hunting in this market requires a strange combination of hope and emotional self-preservation.

And then, one yes: The third time was different. After weeks of searching, calculating, hoping, losing, and trying again, my offer on a house was accepted. I'm buying a house. By myself. For me and my boys. There is still plenty to happen before anyone hands me keys, but after spending so much of August wondering where we'd end up, we finally know where we're going.

Settling into my new job: August was also my first full month in my new position. I'm learning names and faces, figuring out new routines, and settling into the work. It's quiet, I have a window view, I get along really well with my new supervisor, and most importantly, I'm happy with my decision to make the move.

A luau and some Bingo: Our monthly Bingo night at the community center had a luau theme this time. Nothing life-changing, which was honestly a nice change of pace for August.

A summer afternoon at Seabreeze: Work held a summer outing at Seabreeze, which meant a half day away from the office, and the boys got to come along. It was a fun little break in a month when my brain was otherwise almost permanently occupied by houses.

What I Read

For the first time in a while, I didn't finish a single book this month. I've been slowly making my way through one, but between the new job and the chaos of house hunting, reading kept getting pushed aside. Hopefully September brings a little more room for it.

Yearly Progress: 17 / 100

What I Watched

August was another documentary-heavy month, with some true crime, a couple of trips to the theater, and the end of an excellent season of The Pitt.

TV Shows

The Pitt ★★★★★
HBO Max · 2026  · Season 2 · Episodes 10–15
The final stretch of another intense emergency room shift. Officially finished with season two, and this remains one of the best shows I've watched in a long time. Now I'm anxiously awaiting season three.

Grey's Anatomy
Netflix · 2005 · Season 2 · Episode 10
Slowly continuing my very long journey back through Grey's, one episode at a time.

Documentary Films & Docuseries

The Man Will Burn ★★★☆☆
HBO Max · 2026 · Docuseries · 4 episodes
A look inside the enormous Burning Man festival and the culture surrounding it. Fascinating and unlike anything I've experienced, though it could be a little slow at times.

A Toxic Love Story ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2026 · Documentary film
A relationship and revenge story that becomes increasingly bizarre as it unfolds. A wild ride, and I enjoyed it.

A Child of My Own ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2026 · Documentary film
A fake pregnancy becomes entangled with the abduction of a baby in a truly bizarre case. Fascinating, although the hybrid format of reenactments mixed with real interviews threw me off a little.

The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2026 ·  Docuseries · 3 episodes
A closer look at the murders of four University of Idaho students and the investigation that followed. It was a huge case I hadn't followed especially closely, so I found this interesting and eye-opening.

Skywalkers: A Love Story ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2024 · Documentary film
Follows a daredevil couple who climb skyscrapers and perform terrifying stunts high above the ground. Fascinating, especially after I'd already heard about them following their more recent climbing drama in New York City.

Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea ★★★★☆
Netflix · 2026 · Documentary film
Survivors recount a terrifying shipwreck and the chaos that followed. Engaging, frightening, and really well done. I still love cruises, though.

Death of the Pastor's Wife
Netflix · 2026 ·  Docuseries · 3 episodes · Watched episodes 1–2
Examines the death of a pastor's wife and the troubling circumstances surrounding the case. I watched the first two episodes in August but finished it in September. Rating to come!

Movies

The End of Oak Street ★★★☆☆
Theater · 2026
A strange story that takes an ordinary setting somewhere increasingly unexpected. A little absurd, but pretty fun.

The Odyssey ★★☆☆☆
Theater · 2026
An epic retelling of Odysseus's long journey home after the Trojan War. Obviously a very well-made film that I could appreciate, and I love Anne Hathaway, but it was a little too slow, long, and boring for my taste.

Favorite Watch: The Pitt

What I Wrote

Unsurprisingly, much of what I wrote this month followed the house-hunting journey right along with me. I published eleven posts, including three One Minute Memoirs, and documented some of the hope, disappointment, waiting, and absurdity that came with trying to find our next home.

Favorite Essay: The Night Before Everything Could Change
I think I loved this one because it captured such a specific emotional moment: the night when I still didn't know whether the house would be ours, but I knew everything could look different by morning. It held all of that hope, fear, and waiting in one place, and now that I know how the story turned out, it means even more to me.

Favorite One Minute Memoir: The Home Inspection
This one was just funny to me. The boys had already decided they didn't want the Hilton house, so they spent the showing finding increasingly ridiculous reasons why we absolutely could not live there. The sump pump panic, Holden repeatedly pulling the light string, and the fact that these same children had previously approved a basement with a dirt floor still makes me laugh. It felt like one of those very ordinary family moments that became even funnier once I wrote it down.

Coming Up in September

September is already here, and unlike August, this month actually has plenty written on the calendar. It also feels like we're standing in the middle of several beginnings at once.

• Holden turned eight! His birthday was September 2, so we're starting the month with an official eight-year-old in the house.
• Middle school begins. Caleb has Back to School Night at his new middle school, where he'll get his schedule, locker, and a glimpse of what middle school life is going to look like. I still cannot quite believe we're here.
• Back to school. Both boys start September 8, and both are beginning at brand-new schools this year. Lots of new faces, new routines, and new territory for all of us.
• A long weekend. I'm off for Labor Day, giving us one last long weekend before school routines officially take over.
• Preparing for home. I don't have a closing date yet, but I'm expecting September to bring plenty of paperwork, forward progress, and preparation. I'm figuring out everything we'll need to start a home from scratch and trying to pick up a few things each week rather than buying it all at once.

August was about finding the house. September, hopefully, will be about getting ready to make it ours.

♥

See you next month.

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This Was Why

On losing one house, finding another, and finally understanding the detour

Last Wednesday morning, I was still waiting to find out whether I had bought a house.

Offers on the house in Hilton had been due Tuesday at 10 a.m. We figured we would hear by late afternoon. We did not.

Instead, that evening, the seller's realtor called my realtor, Mike. The sellers were investors, not someone emotionally attached to the home, and my offer was already more than $40,000 over asking... and apparently that was not enough.

“We’d like to work with you,” they said. “But we really want $250,000.”

They were also supposedly "waiting on another offer." Hours after offers were due and delayed negotiations had ended.

The games had begun.

I had liked the house. Enough to make an offer. Enough to start solving its problems in my head. The bedrooms were small, so I had been trying to figure out whether a king-size bed and dressers would fit. The kitchen had no dishwasher. The refrigerator sat in a strange little alcove that looked like someone had accidentally placed it in a neighboring room.

Naturally, instead of allowing these things to deter me, I had already started redesigning. The weird refrigerator nook could become a drink station. I had found a sage-green sideboard with a wood top and started imagining a coffee maker on one end, a little Diet Coke sign in the middle, baskets and glasses and snacks tucked into the cabinets below.

This is what I do with houses. I move into them before anyone gives me permission.

Still, I knew the Hilton house was not worth $250,000 to me. It had two bathrooms and had been renovated beautifully, but there were compromises I would have to live with every day. So when the sellers pushed for more money, we bumped my offer a little. Not to $250,000.

Then Tuesday night dragged on. Wednesday morning dragged on. Still no answer.

Mike checked in with the listing agent. Then checked in again. The responses were vague. We suspected they were using our offer to push other buyers higher, and the longer it went on, the less I liked any of it.

At some point, the frustration started replacing the hope.

Just tell me. Yes or no. I could handle either one. What I was getting tired of was the waiting.

Finally, Wednesday afternoon, my phone lit up.

Mike.

“I am sorry to let you know that they accepted another offer.”

That was it. Another house gone. I had made two offers now and lost both.

The first loss had hurt because we genuinely loved the house. The second one hurt differently because I had somehow managed to talk myself into loving it during the thirty-six hours the sellers kept us hanging.

I was disappointed. But Mike gave me approximately thirty seconds to dwell on it.

His next text was another house. “This town has great schools. Only 1 bath.”

He sent the listing. I had already seen it.

It was on South Street, and I liked the photos. The taxes were high enough that my USDA loan limit would be tight, but it was still technically possible. I told him I had been looking at that one too.

Then, because apparently losing a house immediately sends me back to Zillow like some sort of deeply unwell homing pigeon, I opened the app again.

And I found another house nearby: North Street.

Four bedrooms. One bathroom. Big rooms. Older house. A huge upstairs laundry room. Hardwood floors upstairs and hiding under some of the carpet downstairs. A backyard. A deck. A shed. It had already passed its delayed-negotiation date and was somehow still active.

I sent it to Mike. Within a few hours, he had scheduled showings for both houses that evening.

So when I got home from work, I announced to the boys that we had to leave right away. We were going to look at more houses. Holden, who had been my most enthusiastic house-hunting companion from the beginning, did not want to go. At all.

He was tired. He was crabby. He was done with houses.

I tried logic first.

“I really want you there. I need your opinion. This would be your house too.”

No enthusiasm.

So I moved on to emotional manipulation.

“Mike wants to see you. He’ll be disappointed if you don’t come.”

This was completely fabricated. Mike had said no such thing.

But Holden had developed a very particular relationship with him over the course of our house search, mostly because Holden treated every showing like an opportunity to become Mike’s unpaid, highly intrusive assistant. Lockboxes. Keys. Doors. Basements. Anything that involved touching something he probably should not be touching.

Eventually, Holden agreed. The three of us got into the car. A few minutes later, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him asleep under his blanket.

Ah. That explained the earlier hostility.

We pulled up to North Street before Mike arrived.

The first thing I noticed was how cared for everything looked. The grass had been freshly cut. The bushes were trimmed. The landscaping looked tidy. The driveway was newly sealed. There was a pretty shed in the backyard and a deck off the house.

The boys and I got out and walked around while we waited. We climbed onto the deck.

“Wow,” I said. “This is nice.”

Then, because apparently I was already mentally owning outdoor furniture I did not possess, I turned to Holden.

“We could put the grill right out here.”

Mike arrived a few minutes later. Holden immediately forgot he had been too tired to come and resumed his duties as assistant realtor. He had to help with the lockbox. He had to help with the key.

And then we stepped inside.

The first room was the kitchen. I noticed the vintage appliances immediately. Not retro-style appliances made to look old. Actually old. And somehow, in that kitchen, they worked.

There was even an old corded phone hanging on the kitchen wall. Holden spotted it almost immediately.

"Look! They have one of those old phones!"

He said it with the fascination normally reserved for an artifact behind glass in a museum. I am old enough to remember when that was simply called a phone.

We continued taking it all in. The countertops were good quality. Mike pointed that out right away, along with the cabinetry. There was wallpaper that, in another house, I probably would have immediately added to a demolition list. Instead, I looked at it and thought: I kind of like it. Maybe not forever. But for now. It felt charming.

We moved into the family room. The boys did what children apparently do when evaluating a potential home and immediately found the couch, the Roku television, and the internet equipment.

Important infrastructure.

They sprawled out like they had already been living there for six months.

Then we went upstairs. The stairs were carpeted, and the carpet was soft. Holden discovered this immediately and began demonstrating how he intended to scoot down the stairs on his butt.

There were four bedrooms upstairs. All of them were big. That alone felt enormous after weeks of looking at houses where I was calculating whether a twin bed and dresser could coexist in the same room.

Caleb and I naturally claimed the two largest rooms. That left two smaller ones for Holden to choose from. I expected negotiations. I expected complaints. I expected him to point out that Caleb’s room was bigger. Instead, he walked into one of the smaller rooms, looked around, and happily announced that he wanted that one. Then he informed me that he would also like to keep the furniture.

Apparently he thought we were purchasing the house as a fully stocked dollhouse.

As we continued through the upstairs, we found the laundry room. Calling it a laundry room almost undersells it. It was a long room with the washer and dryer at one end, shelving along the wall, and enough unused space that my brain immediately started rearranging it.

The house only had one bathroom, downstairs. But the laundry room sat directly above it. Suddenly I could picture a future second bathroom upstairs without losing the laundry entirely.

Another problem that felt solvable.

We started to head back downstairs. We still had another showing scheduled. And somewhere on those stairs, I heard myself say it.

“I think this is it.”

I don’t remember the exact words around it. I just remember the feeling of hearing myself say it out loud.

This is it.

That startled me a little.

I had liked houses before. I had wanted houses before. I had made offers on houses before.

But this was different.

I was not standing there trying to convince myself that I could make the layout work. I was not mentally adding furniture to make the house more appealing. I was not talking myself into it because I was tired of looking.

It already felt right.

Mike said it was the best house we had seen. I agreed. We were both pleasantly surprised.

The boys continued wandering through the rooms like tiny prospective buyers with absolutely no understanding of real estate transactions. We took pictures of furniture we might ask the sellers if they were willing to sell. Holden pointed out tables he hoped we could keep.

Again: seven years old. Apparently deeply invested in side tables.

Eventually, we left.

We still went to the house on South Street. It was nice. I liked it. We even stopped at another open house afterward. That one was nice too. Normally, I would have been evaluating every detail. Comparing kitchens. Looking at taxes. Thinking about bedrooms. Mentally moving furniture.

But I could barely focus. Everything was being compared to North Street.

And nothing was winning.

By the time we drove home, I knew. Not that we would get it. Not yet. But that I wanted it.

Really wanted it.

And for the first time, losing the other two houses did not feel quite as random.

The first one had felt like ours until someone else paid more. The second one had become ours mostly because I kept imagining hard enough.

But North Street had required none of that work.

I walked in and knew.

Maybe that sounds dramatic. Maybe it is.

But after weeks of looking at houses and trying to manufacture certainty from square footage and taxes and room dimensions, something about this house quieted all of that.

I did not need to persuade myself. I did not need to rearrange the furniture in my head until the life fit.

The life was already there.

I could see the boys upstairs. I could see backpacks by the door. I could see laundry in that ridiculously long room. I could see dinners in the kitchen with the wallpaper I was suddenly in no hurry to remove.

I could see us coming home.

And somewhere between losing one house that afternoon and walking through another that evening, something shifted.

For weeks, every rejection had felt like something being taken away. Another house I could picture us in. Another version of our life that wasn’t going to happen.

But standing inside North Street, I didn’t feel like I had found another possibility.

I felt like I had found home.

Maybe the other houses had not been taken away at all. Maybe they had simply been getting out of the way.

Because suddenly, the losses made sense.  

This was why.  

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2026 Holiday Movie Schedule + Watchlist

Christmas movies are coming.

Yes, it is only September 1. No, I will not be taking questions.

The first 2026 Christmas movies have officially been announced, which means it’s time to start this year’s running schedule and watchlist. This post will grow throughout the season as Hallmark, Great American Family, Lifetime, UPtv, and the streamers release their holiday lineups.

I’ll keep adding premieres as they’re announced, update dates if anything changes, and use this as my personal checklist once Christmas movie season officially takes over my television.

As I watch, ☐ becomes ✅ and I’ll add my rating.

Last updated: August 31, 2026

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🎄 2026 Christmas Movie Stats

Watched: 0
★★★★★ Movies: 0

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🎄 Holiday Movie Schedule + Watchlist

The schedule below is chronological and combines new holiday premieres from Hallmark, Great American Family, Lifetime, and UPtv.

Legend: ☐ = To Watch  •  ✅ = Watched  •  📺 = Series/Episode  •  Channel shown at end

October

☐ Oct. 10 – An Accidental Arctic Christmas (GAF)

☐ Oct. 17 – Christmas at Moose Lake (GAF)

☐ Oct. 17 – Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story (Hallmark)

☐ Oct. 24 – A Christmas Prayer II (GAF)

☐ Oct. 31 – Christmas Wrapped in Love (GAF)

November

☐ Nov. 14 – Sweet Christmas Anniversary (GAF)

☐ Nov. 21 – Silver Bells at Christmas (GAF)

☐ Nov. 28 – A Christmas Rescue (GAF)

☐ Nov. 28 – Holiday Ever After: A Disney World Wish Come True (Hallmark)

☐ Nov. 29 – A Second Chance Christmas (GAF)

☐ Nov. 29 – The Greatest Christmas Gift (GAF)

December

☐ Dec. 5 – A Grand Biltmore Christmas (Hallmark)

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🎁 Announced for 2026 · Premiere Date TBA

These movies have been announced for the 2026 holiday season, but their premiere dates haven’t been confirmed yet. I’ll move them into the chronological schedule as dates are announced.

Hallmark Channel

☐ Christmas Delivered

☐ The Nights Before Christmas

Great American Family

☐ A Christmas Prayer Tradition

☐ A Very Evergreen Christmas

☐ An Ozark Mountain Christmas

☐ Christmas at the Starlight

☐ Christmas By the Spoonful

☐ Christmas Meant to Be

☐ Letters this Christmas

☐ The Christmas Ring

☐ The Christmas Yes List

☐ The Ornament Library

☐ Three Generations at Christmas

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📺 Other Holiday TV to Watch

Holiday series, specials, and episodes from outside the featured holiday movie networks.

More to come as 2026 holiday programming is announced.

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✨ Other New Holiday Movies to Watch

Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and other streaming releases will be added as they’re announced.

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🎁 Older Releases to Watch

Because apparently several dozen new Christmas movies a year are still not enough for me.

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🎄 By Channel Reference

Looking for a specific network? Here’s a quick alphabetical reference for the 2026 movies on my list.

Hallmark Channel

☐ A Grand Biltmore Christmas

☐ Christmas Delivered

☐ Holiday Ever After: A Disney World Wish Come True

☐ Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story

☐ The Nights Before Christmas

Great American Family

☐ A Christmas Prayer II

☐ A Christmas Prayer Tradition

☐ A Christmas Rescue

☐ A Second Chance Christmas

☐ A Very Evergreen Christmas

☐ An Accidental Arctic Christmas

☐ An Ozark Mountain Christmas

☐ Christmas at Moose Lake

☐ Christmas at the Starlight

☐ Christmas By the Spoonful

☐ Christmas Meant to Be

☐ Christmas Wrapped in Love

☐ Letters this Christmas

☐ Silver Bells at Christmas

☐ Sweet Christmas Anniversary

☐ The Christmas Ring

☐ The Christmas Yes List

☐ The Greatest Christmas Gift

☐ The Ornament Library

☐ Three Generations at Christmas

Lifetime

Nothing announced yet.

UPtv

Nothing announced yet.

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This post will be updated throughout the 2026 holiday season as new movies are announced, premiere dates change, and I make my way through the list.

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The Home Inspection (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir on House Hunting, Sump Pumps, and Questionable Safety Standards

Setting: August 2026 — A dangerous basement in Hilton, New York

By the time we went to look at the house in Hilton, the boys had already decided they didn’t like it. This was not based on the house itself. They wanted the house we had already made an offer on, mostly because it had a pool.

So instead of touring this one with an open mind, they seemed to be conducting some sort of investigation into why we absolutely could not live there.

Eventually, we made our way into the basement. And honestly? It was one of the better basements we had seen. Dry. Clean. Not especially creepy. I told Mike, our realtor, as much. He completely agreed.

The boys continued their inspection.

Then they found the sump pump.

It was tucked into the corner, a small opening in the floor with a few inches of water inside.

One of them pointed.

“What is this? We could fall in!”

Absolutely fucking not.

The hole was too small to fall into. The water was too shallow to drown in. And even if one of them somehow managed to wedge himself into it, he would be approximately six inches lower than he had been before and perfectly capable of climbing back out.

Still, they had seen enough. They did not like the basement.

This was particularly interesting to me considering they had previously toured basements with dirt floors and horror-movie energy without expressing nearly as much concern for their personal safety.

I reminded them that it didn’t really matter anyway. If we lived there, I would probably be the only one regularly using the basement.

Around this time, Holden began repeatedly pulling one of the light strings.

I hadn’t noticed.

Mike had.

“Don’t do that,” he told him.

I turned around.

“Why do you always need to act feral?”

The Hilton house had failed inspection.

By two children who had previously approved a dirt floor.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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The Night Before Everything Could Change

On hope, fear, and waiting for the phone to light up

Tonight, somewhere, a woman I have never met is deciding whether to sell me her mother’s house.

She is the executor of her mother’s estate, and according to their realtor, the family is having a hard time letting the house go.

I understand that. What feels strange is that while they are trying to figure out how to let it stop being their mother’s house, I am sitting here desperately hoping they will let it become mine.

My phone is next to me. I keep looking at it. Every time it lights up, my stomach drops. Every time it doesn’t, I look anyway.

I know there is nothing I can do tonight. The offer has been made. The contract is in their hands. My realtor has talked to their realtor. The questions have been asked. The explanations have been given. Now there is only waiting, and I have never been particularly good at waiting when the thing on the other side matters this much.

I have spent the last month looking at houses, studying listings, calculating taxes, driving through towns I barely knew, walking through bedrooms and kitchens and basements and trying to imagine whether any of them could hold our life. Some houses were easy to leave. Some I liked enough to picture furniture in. Some I wanted badly enough to make an offer.

I have done this part before.

Twice, actually.

The first house I offered on was one we genuinely loved. I could picture us there. I let myself hope. Then I lost it.

The second one I placed an offer on was stranger. We did not love it when we first walked through. But after losing the first house, I started trying to picture us there anyway. I rearranged it in my head. I imagined how we would use the rooms. Somewhere in that imagining, I changed my own mind and began to want it.

Then we waited thirty-six hours while the seller went back and forth with us, and somewhere during all that waiting I realized how badly I had started to want that house too. And then we lost it. Again.

I was anxious both times. I watched my phone both times. I wanted both houses.

But I did not cry.

This one was different. I knew it almost immediately.

We had barely stepped into the first room, the kitchen, when I felt it.

Not eventually. Not after I had gone home and mentally arranged the furniture. Not after I had talked myself into the possibilities.

Immediately.

This is supposed to be ours.

And almost as quickly, another thought:

What’s meant to be ours won’t pass us by.

I do not know where that certainty came from. I only know that I felt it.

Not because it was perfect. It wasn’t. There were things I would change. Rooms I would rearrange. Projects I could already see myself doing.

But when we walked through the house, something in me settled.

This is it.

I could see us there. Not in some Pinterest-board version of our lives. In the ordinary version. Shoes by the door. Backpacks dropped somewhere they shouldn’t be. Dinner in the dining room. Laundry upstairs. Kids disappearing into their rooms. Me sitting in the living room at night after everything finally got quiet.

I have already arranged the furniture in my head. I have pictured the boys running up the stairs. I have imagined us standing in front of the house for the picture you take when the sign finally says sold.

Our little family.

Just us three.

Our stuff in those rooms. Our cars in that driveway. Our life inside those walls.

Home.

That is why this waiting feels different.

I liked the other houses. I could picture us in them. I was disappointed when we lost them.

This one has already made me teary-eyed before I even know the answer.

Because I am not trying to imagine whether we could belong there.

Some part of me already believes we do.

And now I am terrified.

Because hope is easy when it is vague. Someday I will buy a house. Someday we will have our own place again. Someday something will work out.

There is safety in someday.

Tonight, someday has an address.

And suddenly, hope feels dangerous.

I keep thinking, I need this.

I know, technically, that I don’t. I will survive if the answer is no. I have survived worse things than losing a house.

But after years of rebuilding, of starting over and figuring things out and trying again, I want something I reach for to finally reach back.

I want to hear that I got it. I want to tell the boys. I want to walk through that front door again knowing I am not just visiting. I want the next chapter to start there.

Maybe that is too much to put on a house. Maybe tomorrow I will know that.

But tonight I don’t.

Tonight I feel it in my bones.

This is supposed to be our home.

And somewhere, a woman is holding the contract that could make it so.

So I wait. I watch my phone. I will it to light up. And I sit here in the strange, unbearable space between the life I have now and the life I might wake up to tomorrow.

Nothing has changed yet.

But everything could.

Update:

Our offer was accepted on August 28th! We are finally going home!

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The First Offer

On county lines, calculated risks, and putting hope on paper

For the last few weekends, house hunting has meant driving.

Across county lines. Through towns I barely know. Past fields and farmhouses and roads that seem to stretch forever. To open houses. To private showings. To houses that look promising online and somehow feel completely wrong the second I step inside.

I’ve been looking in five counties, trying to find the strange little intersection of everything I need: enough space, manageable taxes, a reasonable commute, a price I can afford, and some intangible feeling that makes me want to stay.

For weeks, I looked.

And then I found one.

It had a small front porch, something I’ve always wanted, and the kind of farmhouse feel I’ve pictured for years. The rooms were big enough for the boys and me to spread out. There were two living rooms, which immediately became one for them and one for me in my head. There was even a fourth bedroom I didn’t need, so naturally I turned it into a library before I had even made it through the rest of the house.

There was a pool. A porch. And it was in Ontario, less than thirty minutes from Greece, where the boys have grown up, where my parents live, and where so much of our life still happens. It felt far enough away to give us the quieter, more rural life I’ve imagined without feeling like we were leaving everything behind, but close enough to keep the people and places that mattered within easy reach.

I arrived early for the open house and sat in the driveway waiting for it to start, anxious to get inside.

The house was as good as the pictures. The yard was spacious. There was a deck out back. The basement had a walkout, and I caught myself thinking about practical things like whether I could wheel a lawnmower down there.

I pictured our things in the rooms. I pictured collapsing onto the couch at the end of a long day. I pictured people pulling into the driveway to visit.

The boys were with their dad that afternoon, and my realtor, Mike, was out of town, so no one else had seen it yet. I texted him before I had even finished processing what I’d seen.

We needed to come back. The boys had to see it. Mike needed to assess it. And offers were due Thursday.

Wednesday evening, we got in just in time for a showing. I packed up the boys, and we drove out of town and into the next county, past fields and open stretches of road that looked a little more like the life I have imagined for us.

This time, I wasn’t walking through the house alone.

The boys moved quickly from room to room, making claims. Of course they did. They inspected bedrooms. We went into the basement. We walked through every room again, only now there were three of us imagining what our lives might look like inside them.

Mike said it was the best house we had seen so far.

The boys agreed.

That mattered because Caleb rarely gets excited about houses. He usually approaches my announcements that we’re going to another showing with considerably less enthusiasm than I do.

But he liked this one.

They both did.

It started raining while we were there, and when it was time to look around outside, Mike went to his car and came back carrying umbrellas for all of us.

So we toured the yard in the rain.

We climbed onto the deck. The boys looked at the pool and immediately wanted to know whether it came with the floaties. Holden loves grilling outside with my dad, so I showed him where we could put the grill.

It was ridiculously easy to start filling in the blanks.

Here would be the grill. 

Here would be the library. 

Here would be their living room. 

Here would be mine.

Here would be us.

We left to look at one more house that evening, partly because it seemed responsible to have a backup.

It was freshly remodeled. Clean. Nice.

The boys hated it almost immediately.

The bedrooms were smaller. They didn’t like the yard. They began listing their objections before we had finished walking through it.

I tried to talk all of us into liking it. I pointed out the new finishes. The updates. The things we were supposed to appreciate.

But I didn’t feel it either.

I didn’t tell them that.

When we finished, Mike and I stood in the driveway talking, and within minutes, the conversation had drifted back to the first house.

I had walked through close to ten properties by then. Some were too small. Some were too expensive. Some looked better in pictures. Some were perfectly fine but left me feeling absolutely nothing.

For the first time, I was ready to make an offer.

That realization scared me more than I expected.

Buying a house by myself was always going to involve numbers that made me uncomfortable. A mortgage. Taxes. Insurance. Repairs I couldn’t predict. Utilities and maintenance and all the little costs that come with being the sole person responsible for the house.

There was no version of this where I could calculate my way into complete certainty.

I could run the numbers a hundred times and still not know exactly how it would feel six months from now to be responsible for all of it.

And I am not particularly fond of financial uncertainty.

But standing in that driveway, I also knew something else.

I wanted this.

Not necessarily this exact collection of walls and floors. I wanted what it represented.

A place of our own. Bedrooms the boys could claim. A yard they could run through. A grill outside. People pulling into our driveway. Room for us to spread out after years of living in a space that was never meant to be permanent.

The boys are eleven and seven.

Their childhood is not waiting politely for me to feel completely ready.

There are only so many summers when a backyard pool will feel enormous and magical. Only so many years when they will run through a house arguing over bedrooms. Only so many ordinary evenings still ahead when we can come home together, drop our things, and belong somewhere that is ours.

I want those years.

So Mike and I made a plan.

My offer would be higher than I had originally hoped to spend, but still within the number I had decided I could live with. We knew there would be competition.

That night, emails and documents started going back and forth. By the next morning, there was an offer waiting for my signature.

I signed it.

Mike submitted it before the noon deadline.

And then there was nothing left to do.

I watched my phone all day. I watched the clock.

No news in the afternoon. No news at dinner.

By 8:30 that night, I knew the silence probably wasn’t a good sign. I didn’t want to bother Mike, but eventually I texted him anyway.

Had he heard anything?

He checked.

The sellers had just made their decision.

Six offers.

They had accepted one.

It wasn’t mine.

There was a small sinking feeling in my stomach, although I immediately reminded myself that I had known this could happen. I had even warned the boys when we left the house the night before. We might not get it. There were other people looking. Other offers coming. Nothing was ours until it was ours.

I had prepared all of us for disappointment. But apparently preparation and immunity are not the same thing.

For a few minutes, it felt like we were back at square one.

No house. No offer. More listings. More driving. More open houses. More searching.

Except we weren’t really back at square one.

Square one was me wondering whether I could do this at all.

Square one was gathering paperwork and applying for a home loan without telling anyone because I wasn’t sure whether this whole idea would ever become real.

Square one was looking at listings as possibilities instead of plans.

This time, I had chosen one.

I had looked at the numbers, felt afraid of them, and decided to try anyway. I had signed my name. I had allowed myself to want something badly enough that losing it could hurt.

That may not sound like progress.

It is.

Because somewhere along the way, this stopped being a hypothetical life I occasionally imagined for the boys and me.

I am trying to build it.

And trying means there will probably be more houses we love and don’t get. More offers. More waiting. More tiny drops in my stomach when somebody else gets chosen.

I don’t know which driveway will eventually be ours. I don’t know what the kitchen will look like or whether there will be a pool or a porch or an unnecessary fourth bedroom that becomes my library. I still don’t know exactly how all the numbers will feel once they become real.

But for the first time, I wasn't just imagining a different life from a distance. I had reached for it.

And even though I came away empty-handed, I knew I would reach again.

Because I had spent enough time wondering whether I could build a different life.

It was time to start living like I believed I could.

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