Silencing the Voices

Today, I left work at lunchtime and headed home, I pulled into my driveway, I got out of the car and said hi to my sweet puppy over the fence, I headed towards the front door, and then I completely stopped in my tracks.
There....on my front porch....was a big giant box that said CRIB on it.
I stared
I fidgeted
Then I walked PAST the box, unlocked the door, and headed into the house where I proceeded to say a quick hi to my kitties, and head directly through the house and out the back door where I grabbed our weed whacker and showed that yard who's boss.

Seriously you guys - I WEED WHACKED ON MY LUNCH HOUR. Who does that?

I was silencing all those voices in my head who were cramming my thoughts with
"holy crap, there's a crib on the porch"
"that's where babies sleep"
"that's where YOUR baby will sleep"
"good LORD you're having a BABY"
"and it's getting bigger by the day"
"and it's going to COME OUT OF YOUR VA----"
which is usually where I would shake it off and proceed to whack the hell out of those weeds. I have to say, it was rather comforting in a way...and I'm sure my yard thanks me...and my dog who has been sleeping and lounging in the green jungle out there. Sometimes I can't even see her we've let the grass get so high! (our lawn mower is broken...note to self - must get fixed before I wear out the weed whacker).

Honestly though - I have to worry about this whole motherhood thing...since I can hardly seem to face the BIG BOX ON MY PORCH without going off the deep end and spending my entire lunch hour doing yard work. Pretty soon we'll get a high chair and some baby bottles and hubs will come home to me working on the car...or painting the house...or some other such oddball thing.
*******
In other news - we looked at another house last night. I'm not QUITE sure what to think about it just yet. It's definately a good price. It's also HUGE with tons of storage (helloooo walk-in closet the size of my current bedroom! and helloooo linen closet that I could probably move a family of 5 into!). BUT - it's part of a "community" which means there are HOA's involved which I HATE. And, it's not exactly in a town we were super interested in moving to. It was of course dark when we got there, so I definately think we need to go back during the day and check it out again. We lucked out and ran into the neighbor who was super cool and he gave us the scoop on the area and the other neighbors. He's lived there since 98 and it seems the HOA have only gone up about $40 total throughout the years...which is somewhat comforting. He also said they take very good care of the places - paint and landscaping and maintenance is all done regularly, so that's good to know. I'm still not sure that we'd be comfortable paying $130 a month extra for someone to do that stuff though, you know? Plus, we'd have to find out what exactly the rules are because those associations can have some real interesting and deal breaking rules!
Also - it's a foreclosure, and the family who lived there before had some...well....interesting decorating ideas. The entire bottom floor except for the bedrooms is covered in this hideous blackish brownish grayish UGLY tile - it's so horrible I can't even begin to describe it. The carpet in the bedrooms and on the stairs all needs to be ripped out - so basically covering all that tile and redoing all the rooms (3 bedrooms) would cost a pretty penny. Plus, the whole thing needs to be painted inside. One of the rooms is totally garish and has a big "G-Unit" painted on one wall (WTF?) not to mention the wall colors themselves just being really poorly done and waaaaay too bright and circusy for our taste. The master bedroom is painted this super dark forest green - but they didn't finish, so it's just....bad. All the baseboards and pretty much everything else in the house needs to be repainted - I think that might help alot actually.
The cabinets in the kitchen are painted a horrible chocolate brown and none of the knobs match up which we thought was weird. Also, it needs a new stove and the countertops need to be ripped out because there is a big burn/melty mark on one side, and it's just not our style either.
The biggest project would be the downstairs bathroom. There is a full bath downstairs - and full bath upstairs. BOTH rooms are tiled...and I mean like the WALLS ARE TILED. (wierd? I've never seen that before, but maybe it's a popular thing?) All the way up to the ceiling. And OY VEY I'm not sure what those people were thinking. The tiles are all crooked and they chose this horrible dark pink grout and it's EVERYWHERE...my gosh it's so bad we just started to laugh. If anything we got some serious amusement. But knowing that we'd have to rip all that out and probably put up new sheetrock and start from scratch is a pretty daunting task.
We figure there's probably a good $10-$15k worth of work that needs to be done to the place to get it the way we'd want it. Which is something to think about..along with the HOA's being added to our mortgage.
I don't know...I think I need to see it again...and we need to crunch some numbers. BUT - the price is super low, and it's definately livable - we've have to tackle the projects slowly while we lived there because I don't think we could afford to do it all at once and certainly not before we moved in. Also, like I said - it's huge. It's about 300 square feet bigger than our rental house now AND it has a 2 car garage (we don't have a garage at all where we are now). Plus, it's got a good sized fenced yard with plenty of room for the pooch and a garden for me. I don't care for the layout, or the fact that it's 2 stories...but hey, maybe a good way to burn some calories? haha!
eeeeeeeeek I just don't know. This whole house thing is a crazy thing to think about...especially in this market. It's hard to know if you should jump on a good deal or if you should hold out for something better to come along. I need a crystal ball right about now please!