Pine Quail Oak Valley Deer Trail Lake Estates

Ok, so I'm not doing as good of a job as promised as getting back into the swing of blogging, but I do believe I'm justified considering our pending relocation to central Arkansas. Relocating stinks. Flat out stinks to high heaven. While I'd rather be spending my mornings relaxing out on the back porch at home, hot mug of coffee in hand, thinking of things to blog about, this past week I spent a majority of my time down in Little Rock hitting the real estate hard. One word will very aptly describe my feelings during this hunt: FRUSTRATION.

Looking for a new house to buy can be fun - it's just shopping on a much larger scale, but with much more at stake. Once you sign, you can't just simply return it. But the excitement is that much higher, also. Finding a great-fitting pair of pants, as wonderful as that is, doesn't come close to finding your perfect home. So much of our lives and identities are wrapped up in our homes. A home shows our personalities, and also dictates how we'll live our lives, whether in the country, city, or a subdivision.

Several things, however, have put kind of a damper on the excitement of finding a new house. First of all, I still don't want to leave Mountain Home. I know it's best for our future, and there ARE going to be advantages - but I still don't WANT to. It's much more exciting to house-hunt when you're totally 100% into the move. Second, I'm extremely intimidated by the city. I've never really minded VISITING cities - probably because of the knowledge that I would soon escape back to familiar territory. But lately when we've been in Little Rock, I've had to fight nearly full-blown panic attacks. Though it sounds a bit dramatic for even me, the fact that this will soon be "home" nearly sends me into involuntary hysterics. Thirdly, I've been hugely disappointed with the houses we've been looking at in our price range.

Unfortunately we're moving to a really booming area where land is more expensive. I knew from the beginning that we wouldn't be able to afford a house on 20 acres like we have now, but we still figured it wouldn't be too hard to find a reasonable house on a few acres out of town. My dreams include much of what we have now, though on a smaller scale and preferrably outside city limits. I wouldn't even mind neighbors - real neighbors that you actually get to know, visit with over the fence, and take some fresh eggs or even a pie to every so often. Yes, I DO want to live in Mayberry.

This has turned out to be harder than I ever thought. Instead of "acres per house", we're moving to an area where it's more of a case of "houses per acre." I thought Mountain Home was booming - which it is, much too fast for my comfort. But, compared to the central Arkansas area, Mountain Home is in a rut. Radiating out from Little Rock seems to be a never-ending procession of bulldozers making the way for new subdivisions, with sign after sign proclaiming "Future home of Arbor Ridge" (that one was ridiculous because it was clear-cut) or "Lots Available now in Quail Glen Estates". It seems to escape this parade of "progress" will mean getting too far from hubby's work.

A majority of houses out there for sale in the area are located in subdivisions. In the past week, the word "subdivision" has reached the status of a dirty word. I'm APPALLED at the number of these housing developments in central Arkansas - acres and acres, miles and miles which were so recently forests and fields are now covered with brick cookie-cutter houses all jammed up to within a few feet of each other, all with ridiculous titles such as "Whispering Meadows" (uhh...excuse me, but where's the meadow?) and "Majestic Pines Estate" (again...where are the pines??? And does a 1/8 acre lot really qualify as an "estate"?). These titles are of course all perched on pretentious brick or stone entrance gates. And we've all seen the houses in these places - about three variations on the same brick structure, featuring a very small front porch (not meant for spending any time on) and a very large garage. Front yards are for looking nice only - nobody hangs out in the front yard. Certainly not in view of other residents of the neighborhood.

One of my best friends lives in the area in one of these places. Acutally, one bright shining beacon of hope in this mess of a relocation is that we'll again live in the same vicinity. We were taking a break from house-hunting one day this week and visiting on the back patio of her cookie-cutter brick sub-divided home, gazing into the windows of the house behind hers (the privacy fence isn't high enough), listening to the yapping lap dogs in the privacy-fenced yard to the left, and the soothing sounds of a weedeater in the yard to the right. In a nearby yard, someone was talking on a cell phone. I felt like a rat in a trap. How does one get used to this kind of living? Of course, Laura is a bona-fide city girl, married to a bona-fide city boy, who both think their perfectly landscaped postage-stamp yard is just heaven.

"I just noticed we don't have squirrels", Laura observed during our visit. Really? If I were a squirrel, I'd live somewhere else, too. The largest tree in the whole neighborhood is in Laura's yard, a scrawny pin oak with a whopping 6" diamater trunk. Besides, I'm not sure that neighborhood would tolerate squirrels, what with actual nature and wildlife messing with the picture of utter perfection. This got us on the subject of restrictions on their house dictated by the subdivision - what color they can't paint their garage door (it's the only thing not brick), how many shrubs one must have, how short the lawn must be, etc. In addition, there are many restrictions on what you can/can't have in front of your house - such as a boat. Where else are you going to keep a boat? Paid storage, I suppose. Hmm...sounds an awful lot like Socialism to me.

(side note: Maybe we should all live in subdivisions to acclimate ourselves to what this current admisistration is leaning toward.)

I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before. Goodness knows I've heard and read plenty of anti-subdivision rants, so I'm just adding my two cents into the fray. Subdivisions are definately too lucrative for developers to go away. But, I'm going to do my best to stay out of them - if at all possible. I do think I could come up with some more truthful names, though. Here are some I compiled during my house search:

Brick Houses Only Estates

Privacy Fence Drive

Previously A Farm Acres

No Tree Valley

If anyone has any to add, feel free.

The ray of hope finally appeared late in my search, after meeting with a real estate agent. She seems to genuinely understand our plight, being a country girl herself. She assured us that while what we're looking for is relatively rare in the area, they do exist - it's just a matter of being willing to dig while being patient. We actually looked at a couple of possibilities, one of which is actually going to be a consideration. We're really in no huge rush, since we of course can't buy until we sell. Despite my cynicism I do have faith that all will work out eventually, and we'll find a home that meets our expectations. I just hope my sanity lasts until then.