Time Machine Wanted

I am a reactive person. And impulsive. Those are different enough that I think it's right to list both. Husbandguy isn't good with the foresight either, and neither of us is good at telling the other "no" when something is wanted. This has led to several (hundred) spur-of-the-moment decisions and consequential bail-outs down the road. Like a new car we couldn't quite afford (HG's impulse - Poppop bailed us out) and a For Sale sign in our front yard (my desire - we are just bailing on that). We love the car, still have it and use it way more than we would have the old car, and have learned our lesson about shiny, new-smelling things that we just can't pay for. The house is kind of the same thing, I think. Except in this case, the shiny new thing was a larger paycheck. Why not, then, a larger debt (mortgage)? Right?

We can absolutely use more space. Sure, we can (and will) pare down all the crap we have that we don't need, and the tiny kitchen works, it just doesn't have room for more than 1½ people in it at a time. But the girls and the dog all need a place to run outside, and we, being lazy, decided to take the easy route and just buy a back yard, not considering that, because of the real estate market we would probably have to take quite a bit less money than we wanted to sell the back yard we already have. It occurred to us; we just didn't consider it. You know?

Yesterday I realized that we were looking at it all wrong. Yes, a larger paycheck is nice. Yes, a larger paycheck means that we could have a larger space to call home. Yes, we are constantly stepping on each other and there's nowhere here to go for quiet time what with the giant TV right in the center of everything and always on (don't get me started on that - it's not on now, by the way, because I'm home alone). But we have ⅓ acre of land, and at the bottom of the steep hill that begins a scant 10 ft from the back of the house is a nice flat area. Sure it floods when it rains a lot, and right now it's heavily wooded, but the right people, with a little know-how and a larger paycheck (see where I'm going?) could turn the giant, currently unusable space into a fenced, grassy haven where there could be dogs and children running around safely and perhaps a gazebo (HG wants this) for quiet no-TV time and a swing set. And then when the market turns around and we list our house again, potential buyers won't be able to say they liked the house but want more back yard because it will be beautiful and useful.

My other plan, if this turns out to be too much, is to sell HG's parents' house and move them into this one and get a bigger one for ourselves. But that might actually be more work than a complete back yard overhaul here.

I want to clarify that not all of our spur-of-the-moment decisions have required rescue. We were married within 2 weeks of deciding we really wanted to get married more than 12 years ago. We had been talking about it for a while, but the deed was done lickety-split.