Mimi and I have stars in our eyes (and she had curls in her hair) and we are filled with 'house love'. We met today with the architect, we spent hours going over plans and costs and all of that. We then went to see a house he has almost finished that has some of the details he wants to put in ours. It was a wonderful afternoon, I love the plans and I love the house. There are things to work out, for one thing the cost to build everything is higher than I want to go. I kind of expected that but I wanted to price it with everything and then see what we could do, what we could postpone, what we could skip. That's our job tomorrow, we're going over to the house with the plans and walking through it, measuring to get a visual idea of the space involved, and coming up with a list of what's vital, what's important, what can wait and what we don't need. We have agreed on several changes already and he will re-do the plans to include those. I'm sure there will be lots of work and some frustration ahead but today and tonight were wonderful. Afterwards, we took ourselves out to a really nice restaurant for dinner and we dreamed and talked about it.

Earlier in the day our attorney came over and brought us the original deed and trust, the actual title to the house. It's good to have that in our hands and really feel that we own this old house. After many houses and many years paying mortgages, refinancing, buying and selling, it is a really special feeling to own a house free and clear. It may be a dump now but it's our dump and we could hang a couple hammocks and move into it if we wanted. No mortgage and property taxes are about $100 a year + trust fees of about $500 a year. Compared to the $7000+ in property tax alone back in California, that is a wonderful feeling.

Another great feeling for me is that I really don't need to pay for homeowners insurance. I hate insurance companies, I think they are legal extortionists - "pay me a ton of money or I'll make sure something bad happens to you and if something bad happens anyway, I'll wiggle out of paying you". Here, I can self-insure for a lot less and for most things that could happen. Fire? It's a stone house. Furnishings can burn but would I rather just pay to replace them or spend years fighting with an extortion company? Hurricane? We're in a big city where houses are right against each other, they are all made of stone, and they have all lasted through 100 years of hurricanes. Flood? Well, that's possible but all the floors are tile, everything drains quickly here and I can live with some water marks on the furniture if I have to. No earthquakes here. Not that I could afford earthquake insurance in California anyway after they changed the laws and priced it way out of range. So, I've been doing a happy dance ever since it dawned on me that I wouldn't have to buy insurance on the house.

So, the way I'm looking at it is if the world falls apart for me and I have no money I could live in this house for $600 a year plus whatever utilities I could afford. Oh, did I mention it has a well? Heh! I have these bag lady fantasies of camping out in the house in a hammock with one floor fan and a light bulb. Beats the hell out of worrying about ending up old and broke and living in a flop house in San Francisco. I get these fear fantasies sometimes and have to imagine the worst case scenario... it helps me get it all in perspective if I can imagine doing OK in the worst case. Everything is up from there, right?

It is a long ways up from that to what we are envisioning creating with this house. The design is really spectacular, with some features that I hadn't seen before and that really excite me. Whatever we end up with, it will be ours and it will be paid for. That's a really good feeling.

There's other big news but I'll need another post for that. The picture I just had to include is Mimi's hair after she took the braids out yesterday. She got her hair braided when we got to Akumal as all that hair is really hot. They were getting kind of fuzzy so she took them out. She had some serious curly hair going.