Gussie in the airport watching Dumbo for the 451,568th time. He has watched it yet another 7,501 times between then and now and that was only 5 days ago.
Whenever we ask Gus to "smile!" for the camera he does this weird underbite smile thing. Here's Tim joining him in his weird grin. This is us at the Joe's Crab Shack right down from our hotel. The place is great because Gus can tear it up and nobody even cares. We especially don't care after a few much needed beers. House hunting is stressful, OK!?!?! Our hotel, the Courtyard Marriot in Gaithersburg has a ton of restaurants and stores around it within walking distance, plus a playground, places to feed lots of ducks, a Starbucks, in other words, it has everything. And there's a Target, thankfully, as we've been there every day. God I love Target. We initially were supposed to only be at the hotel through today, then we were going to stay with some friends of ours here, but they have a tremendous virus going around their house so we're staying at the hotel the whole time. I normally love hotels- maid and room service, I could live in one for all I care- but with a very, very active almost-3 year old and no yard for him to go nuts in, it's nothing short of torture for everyone. Thank god there are places within walking distance where Tim and I can get a few cocktails after a day of househunting.
This is the playground right by the hotel. It's actually part of the whole shopping/dining/entertainment complex. It's not very big but it's big enough to keep all of us sane. If you squint you can see Tim and Gus playing.
You know, my cousin Sam and his wife Anne have 3 kids and as Tim and I traverse this whole parenting/PCS/military thing, I think of them often and I wonder how they do it...or how they do it well. Gus seriously goes coocoo in the hotel. We try to give him physical outlets- swimming in the hotel pool, running outside, playing in the fountain, feeding ducks-and even in inappropriate ways such as jumping on the hotel beds/chairs/whatevers- but he still is borderline going insane so I can't imagine doing this PCS process with 3 children with 3 different and distinct needs. And the one fact that we can't get around is that we're loud. I mean, we talk loudly, play loudly, fight loudly....so I feel for our poor neighbors and it's constantly on my mind that we'e loud. I feel that if we we're out of the room then we don't have to worry as much about it, but in this instance we have to say "NO" less to Gus in the room than out so we tend to sometimes stay in more than out. Rock, meet Hard Place. Gus laughs loud and screams loud, god help them all- our poor neighbors. He's also doing this new thing when we decline a request which is scream at the very, very top of his huge lungs at an earshattering decibel. Dolphins can't even hear it, it's so high pitched and loud. But poor Gus is mostly doing really well riding in the car looking for houses for hours on end- and we finally set up the DVD player for him to watch (Dumbo) in the car- but the last day we drove around before we even got int he car he looked at us and said "I don't want to go in the car" in the saddest and most pitiful way possible. Every so often and out of the blue he'll say "I want to go home". Oy, I think this move will be hard. Maybe next PCS Tim or I will drive around and narrow down houses and the other can stay with Gus and do other non-stuck-in-the-car things. I don't know what the solution will be for leaving his friends :(.
As for the actual house hunting...well, it was ugly the first day. Since our house in PC shows no signs of selling we've pretty much decided to rent here instead of buy, though we may reassess in a year. On our first day, between 9:30 and 3:00, we looked at approximately 11 places in the Gaithersburg, Germantown, Potomac and Rockville areas. Ah, the joys of a realtor and GPS. Our realtor Lupe was recommended to us by all the guys that Tim will be working with here in Silver Spring. She's amazing and driven and nice and hard-working. We found 2 houses that might do...if they accept the dogs, that's the one factor our entire house hunting is based one....is there a fenced in yard or can one be negotiated, and will they accept 2 dogs...big ones. All other factors are non-factors at this point...except the place can't be gross, obviously. So! In no particular order, on our first day we looked at these places and they were hereafter referred to as:
-Nice Pool but Crappy House (it had a good pool but the entire house and yard was suspect, partially fenced)-The Weird Fridge House (the house was great, bigger than we needed really, but had everything we required including a fenced-in yard, but they had redone the kitchen and didn't leave room in the kitchen for a fridge and so the fridge was in the dining room adjacent to the kitchen so it had no water for ice and wasn't even in the kitchen, it was also more than we really wanted to spend)
-The Smells Like a Dog House (had a great backyard but the house smelled like dog and appeared to have mold in the carpet in the downstairs bedrooms...dog smell can be gotten rid of, mold...not so much)
-Bad Floor House (the flooring in the house was lifted about 3 iches off the floor...who knows what else was wrong with it and that also explained why it had been on the rental/sale market for 351 days)
-the Doable House (a great house inside but with an incomplete fence in the back. We'd be willing to pay for a fence but right inside the front door was a laminated sign saying "Take Off Your Shoes Upon Entering" so we doubted they'd accept two big ole' dogs so we put this one at the bottom of the list and figured we'd beg if it came down to it)
-Kitty Cat Smell House (decent yard, weird house layout, small, overpriced, stinky smell like cats)
-Moldy Basement House (since half the bedrooms were in the basement...'nuff said)
-The 9 Acre House (well, we loved the location in the boonies and the 9 acres was great and the house was plenty big but it was very outdated and a little (lot) run down, however I was willing to consider it, but after we left Tim was so grossed out by it that he felt he had bugs walking all over him, so I guessed that house was out)
-Stonecutter (the name of the street the house was on...great house, absolutely no fence)
Two other places on our list had already been rented and two others didn't accept big dogs, only those under 20 lbs (aka cats). On our first day we basically saw every house at the top and semi-top of my list. So that was our first day house hunting! Needless to say, we had drinks when we got back to the hotel.
In the end and having looked at about 20+ houses in person since that first day, we've put in applications for rentals on the weird fridge house and one we refer to as the Rockville house, even though it's actually in Potomac. I doubt the Rockville house will work out- for a few reasons- but if we get the fridge house we'll consider ourselves very fortunate. Tomorrow we shall see, I guess.
All this nicknaming of houses has gotten us speculating what people that look at our house in PC call it. We suspect it's either the Far Away House or maybe The Beaver Pond House. We just hope it's not The Dog Smell House or the The Double Fence House (because we have our normal wood fence then another small area fenced off by chain link by the last owners and it's a little weird though can be useful).
