Time After Time

You never really mean to lose touch with your friends. I've always prided myself on keeping in touch with my friends. When you are young, you have all the time in the world. When you're single, you are busy, but you make the time. When you become a couple, your time gets split further into time with your significant other and both sets of friends. After you buy a house or have kids (I presume, since we are currently without!), that time dwindles so much that you're trying to plan things weeks sometimes months in advance. Heaven forbid you achieve the house and kids- does that mean that you no longer have any friends? Either because you don't have any more money to spend or you're too exhausted to hang out? Oh- and time for yourself? Is there any time left?

We keep telling ourselves that we'll have more time after XXX. First, it was planning the wedding, then it was buying a house, now it's the kitchen renovation. I think this is why we delayed starting the process for so long. We moved in 4 months ago. We probably could have started the kitchen about 2 months ago. Part of it was getting ourselves mentally prepared for the project. Now that we have started the timer, we find ourselves looking at flooring, counters, knobs, etc. during all of our free time. This is not necessarily something that you can do with your friends. Being single and a homeowner must be easier. There's no one to tell you you're spending too much and you don't have to agree on anything with anyone. You get everything that you want and you get to decorate it however you want. Cons- you got that big old mortgage to yourself too.

Edwin and I actually agree a lot- we estimate that we agree on 70% of what we both like in a kitchen. However, it's that last 30% that's hard. It's true what they saw about planning a wedding- if you can last through planning a wedding together, you should be able to withstand the challenges that come with being married. Decorating a home is a lot like planning a wedding. There's a lot of coordination required, both from an aesthetic perspective as well as a timing perspective. You may like this one tile and these other cabinets, but then they just don't look right together. I just have to keep on telling myself how awesome our wedding day was. It's also similar in that you're spending so much money at once and you don't want to make any mistakes. (I guess we could say the same thing about buying the house in the first place. And again, we're both pretty happy that we moved to Alameda.)