It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Daydreaming is a problem for me. In addition to my bizarrely fantastic nighttime dreams, I also have the ability to have intense daydreams. I think it might be a side effect of how my brain never stops. My husband has come to realize that when I'm staring off into the distance, I'm not taking a break from thinking, I'm probably thinking 18 million things at once, and if you ask what I was thinking in that 30 seconds, it'll take me 30 minutes to explain it all to you.

I do a lot of stupid things to encourage said day dreaming.

I've shared our realistic near-future plans with all of you: rennovation, family, staying in our house because we've already bought it and although it's small, it's a very low mortgage payment.

The Job market is bad, so we can keep our jobs if we stay here a while longer.

The housing market is bad, so we don't have to try to sell the house if we stay here a while longer.

And so forth, and so on.

And after obsessing about all of those details for a couple of weeks, my brain finally relaxed because I had reached the logical conclusion that sticking it out for a while longer can mean a more comfortable transition later, during a better time for the country, with possibly more money saved than there would be otherwise. And for a minute there, I thought "that's that!", and dusted off my mental hands and thought I'd get to work on something else like - what's next for rennovation? How are we going to decorate the office? And how next can I keep myself from spending money in a craft store?

But no.

I have a weekly obsession with checking certain housing websites - coldwellbanker.com, oldhouses.com, trulia.com, etc. I check them just to check. I check to see if there are any gorgeous victorians with turrets and porches and slate roofs etc., that have just gone on the market or have slipped past me before that are in our price range and in a good area for us to move to in the future.

Up until this point I honestly have had no luck. Oh I've found GORGEOUS victorians for sale - Even breathtaking ones that are in our price range. But they're usually located in Minnesota, or Wyoming, Or North Carolina. If they're in Pennsylvania or New York, they're even farther away from our families than we already are in Pittsburgh, and also consequently in an area with no jobs.

I found an amazing 5 bedroom victorian with everything we wanted AND a carriage house for $130,000 in an area that has an extremely high unemployment rate and they just shut down their fire department because of budget cuts and problems.

Suffice to say, these finds have always been plenty to fire up my imagination and even trigger dreams of living in those beauties with my husband, my future three beautiful genius children and our doofy newfoundland, but they've never been good enough to inspire anything more than an afternoon of sighing.

Yesterday I found the motherload. The Motherload is still not perfect. The motherload is listed about $100,000 out of our price range. But this Lady has a slate roof, several porches, two turrets, a big backyard, a driveway, a new waterheater, a dry basement, A/C, a jacuzzi, a steam shower, 5 bedrooms and original tiffany windows. To add to the mystique, they mention in the description that it is also where John Luther Long penned the short story that lead to the Libretto - Madame Butterfly. She's 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia, almost immediately between our two families. She's 5 minutes from a beautiful dog park and 5 minutes from the local high school. Crime's low and the next door neighbor has a pool.

Ever since I found her I've been swept into gut twisting highs of the most amazing stomach butterflies as I imagine the very real possibility of living in a beautiful place steeped in history with plenty of space for our new family and much closer to our parents. Near to a city that actually does have a lot of opportunities for Greg. She almost looks like the house in Spiderwick.

She's amazing. I'm in love.

And now I've infected Greg. Apparently that's what he was doing this morning - checking zillow and trulia and coldwellbanker for more drips of information about this house. This house that will probably never be ours. This house that is ever so slightly and yet so far out of our price range. This house that makes no sense to get nutty about because WE HAVE A PLAN.

We have a plan.

And then the day dream twists into somehow getting in touch with the people who own the house (who've apparently owned it since 1988), and having a heartfelt conversation with them. Telling them that we would love and cherish this place, we would give her all the love and work she needs to keep her beautiful. We would have our family there and fill her walls with love and precious memories. And they would cry and say that's all they wanted!! And they would say, we can wait! We can wait for you! And they would take the house off the market, and in another year when we were ready, we buy the house for a reduced price and it would be like a dream...

When will I stop torturing myself?