A house is not a home.

I've found my mind completely shot the past two weeks.

I am still not sleeping. My dreams are full of all the rental houses I've been looking at obsessively.

When we moved up to NY from Fort Benning, GA...there was a similar problem with quality rentals being available on the market. Mostly because there are no quality houses up here. (lol. but seriously.)

So I found a house on Craigslist that looked SUPER nice. After finding out it was a SGT Major that owned it, I figured they are senior level and trustworthy.

Boy was I wrong. $2500 worth of wrong.

I had given them the deposit because I was a homeowner and I knew how antsy they must be renting their house to a stranger. Plus, then I knew it was locked down and we had a place to go.

Then we arrived. The house was a DISASTER. Mold in the basement, where three of the bedrooms were, melted popsicles on the floor, spray painted windows in the living room and an iron mark in the middle of the bedroom floor. I was pissed. The lady's mom was there and got furious with me when I said I wasn't taking it. She shrieked at me how it was a beautiful home.

Even if these people were so inbred that they thought their house was amazing, it was telling that NONE of these issues were in the pictures. They kept close attention to masking those details. The people up here are like that movie, "The Hills Have Eyes." I am terrified to drive through the southwest.

Basically I tried to get my money back, and even tried to file in small claims court against them, but I couldn't because they were in Texas. So we were screwed, homeless and out another $2500 deposit that we had to put down in a shoebox of a townhouse to wait until housing was available ON Ft Drum.

In essence, it was a disaster of epic porportions and Andy blames me BIG TIME for #1-Renting a house without someone seeing it in person and #2-Because I was a moron for making us move to Ft Drum because my friend was moving here and no other valid reason. (It's true...I have to suck both of these up, much to my chagrin. There is simply no one else to blame this on.)

So now Andy is afraid to lock down a house in CA before we can see it, which I would be too if it weren't for my BFF's who can go look at homes for us. I trust their judgement. If anything, they are even more picky than me.

I found one great one, minus the fact that it's only one bathroom. But Andy is skeptical. Leaving us disagreeing on what we are going to realistically get. I can tell you this much...if we don't go with something good bc we are waiting for something better to come along and then can't find anything, I will be the one who is mad.

FML.