1. K has another fucking UTI. We had gone several weeks this time and I had really hoped, but her pee started to get The Smell right before Christmas, and I knew I should get her checked, but she swore up and down it didn't hurt and we were so darn busy. And then this week she spiked a fever and it very definitely hurt. We did at least get a different antibiotic this time, one that doesn't taste horrible going down and then give her reflux, meaning she got to re-taste it all day long. This one actually tastes pretty good.

Maybe this one will work. Dammit.

2. We've progressed to looking at actual houses lately, although we haven't found anything that's totally blown our hair back yet. There was the one that was pretty nice except for the little issue of its only yard facing onto a twelve-lane insanely busy road. The house yesterday where they totally lied about the square footage, unless they were including the unfinished, low-ceilinged basement.

Today, we saw a house we might actually take. The positives were considerable: a nice neighborhood with a number of families (if the number of houses with swingsets is any indicator), reasonably sized yard on a quiet street, excellent size, great layout downstairs, good layout and good cabinet space in the kitchen, reasonable bedrooms with decent closet space, a decent sized finished room downstairs to serve as a playroom, good storage space and an excellent rent.

But here are the negatives: being instantly blinded by the gold-striped entryway, an almost equally blinding yellow kitchen, ORANGE shag carpeting in the dining room and living room, and perhaps most scary is how much time someone must have put in putting up that flocked wallpaper in the stairway. Basically, this house was decorated by Austin Powers. We can live with all of that, but the stove is an incredibly tiny wall model and dates from the 60s, possibly the 1860s.

We don't really bake that often, certainly not large things like turkeys. The stove is big enough for casseroles or a single loaf of bread, and probably a pizza, which pretty much covers the majority of our oven use. We would probably have to buy new baking sheets though.

Hmm... typing all of this out makes me lean a lot more towards taking it. I suppose my real problems are 1) it's hard to be truly enthusiastic about moving into a 60s shag lair, and 2) I really want to move into some nice spacious Midwestern house with about 2000 square feet. But Philadelphia houses just aren't like that and we can't possibly afford that much space. But it's nice to dream, isn't it?

Oh yes, almost none of the electrical outlets are grounded, which is workable but a pain in the ass.

So would you rent a house that left its heart in the 60s if the price was right?