I fell asleep yesterday at about 6 in the afternoon. Yes. Dinnertime. I woke up today at 1:30 in the morning to Jason’s glowing Blackberry in my face. “Sorry,” he whispered, climbing into bed. “I didn’t realize it was that bright.” (For the record– yes. Blackberries glow like an alien invasion.)

When I had Elias– like, gave birth to him– they introduced us, and I cried, and then within fifteen minutes I rolled over and fell asleep out of pure exhaustion. That’s the closest example of tiredness I can give you. This weekend felt like it was one appointment to another, one location to another, lather, rinse, repeat; the equivalent of a human wind-up doll that you gently nudge in the appropriate direction.

Chris and Michelle came down on Friday. They arrived around dinnertime. Jason had a BBQ at work (shoutout to Jason’s Sitcom Company), and he showed a half-hour later in casual gear. Our plan for the night was malling– shopping for Michelle and Chris clothes, and watching ‘Prince Caspian’ at the theater. J agreed to watch the kids while we went out, which was nice, and the next day, which was nice. I later made the mistake of telling him I owed him BIGTIME, which has turned into an argument about how much he can buy at GameStop.

Back to the mall. We walk around and visit a bazillion stores. I’m wearing my most Mom outfit ever. I don’t know exactly what it is that screams Mom, since it’s mostly American Eagle, but I feel really old and not-cute. It probably doesn’t help that the average age of mall-goers is closer to Eli than me. Michelle buys a bathing suit, which looks great. Chris buys a shirt. I keep looking like Mom. All of us gush about how awesome it’s going to be when they move and we can go out together all the time.

Prince Caspian! Get tickets, take seats. Jason said this theater wasn’t that nice, but it IS. Michelle and I get large Diet Pepsis. (Re: Diet Pepsi. I never buy it for the house anymore. I’ve only been treating myself when I’m out to dinner with in-town guests or for major holidays.) We end up sitting in the middle of the row. You can see where this is going. By the time Prince Caspian gives his first speech to the woodland animals, I have to go. Bad. Michelle accompanies me, since she’s been drinking too. I kick some nice college-age kids trying to squeeze past in the dark. Apologize profusely. Come back. I’m cold. Can I wear Chris’ new shirt? Okay. This is better. Oh! Fight scene!… Oh, crap. I have to go again. Peek down the aisle at the college-age kids. Tell Chris and Michelle I have to go, and I’m not coming back. I’ll just wait near the exit and watch the end versus unleash more martial arts on unsuspecting viewers.

When Michelle and Chris meet me at the end, it’s almost midnight. “What did you think?” Michelle said, and I start laughing.

Michelle: WHAT?

Becca: I’m sorry. It’s totally lame. I made a joke to myself in the dark about what I would say to you when you asked that, and it’s still making me laugh.

Michelle: What’s the joke?

Becca: You were going to say, “What did you think?” and I would say, “You don’t even know the things I want to do to Prince Caspian. I don’t even know the things I want to do.”

Michelle: [as Caspian] We will discover them– TOGETHAR.

By now, Chris knows the Ball is Rolling, and just rolls his eyes while walking away. Michelle and I trade a lot of bad puns and Spanish-esque accents. Chris finally says one of the girls is hot (the oldest, not the youngest), and we reply with YEAH, PRINCE CASPIAN IS HOTTER. Prince Caspian will tutor you in the ways of love. YOU don’t even know what you want to do to him.

Get home technically the next day. Jason put the sheets in the dryer, but they’re still slightly damp. Great. We move the mattress from the garage into the living room, and I reset the dryer. Chris lies down on the bare mattress and goes to sleep. Michelle and I stay up. Somehow, while we were in a shoe store earlier, I recapped the scene from “The Office” where Michael is conducting the exit interview, and I wanted her to watch it for herself. This scene is my favorite ever. Just the way Michael tries to make what are obviously fighting words into normal questions. (“Who… do you think– you are? What… gives you the right?”) Michelle and I exit interview each other for ten minutes. Okay, sheets are done. Good night.

Morning! Jason wakes up first, then me, then Michelle, then Chris. Everyone is slow on their feet. By 11, most people still aren’t dressed or showered. We go to look at homes with a realtor named Abbey. We can’t tell from Abbey’s picture whether she’s going to be pleasant or mean. Chris had his phone on silent from the movie, and she called three times to ask us to meet her somewhere in Durham. CRAP! We hustle over there. She’s waiting at the first home, and gives us a run down of how to buy a home and what to look for. Michelle looks cautious while she listens. (“This is surreal,” she said later in the car.) My mom showed up before we even started the tour, so she was there for all of Durham.

I could go into great detail about every. single. home that we went to over two days, but I’ll be kind and just give a summary. The first day we saw three communities. The first was quiet and on a golf course. The first house everyone liked. It was just cute and had a good kitchen layout. The second one was less cute. The third one, which looked adorable online, was pretty janky in person. The refrigerator’s handle was held on with tape. People were throwing bottles off the porch stoop across the street, so there was the noise of broken glass (classy), and a mean old man yelled at my mom to move her car, because he wanted to park on the street too. Jerk. Suffice to say, on a scale of one to ten, the home grades were: 7, 3, 0. Everyone loves Abbey, though. She’s someone we’d hang out with regardless of business connection. Sort of like Jason’s boss Robert (shoutout to Jason’s Sitcom Company again!).

We discuss what we’re doing next. Maybe Target? I need a bathing suit, too. We stop at Burger King while we talk. This is the beginning of me gaining five pounds from eating out. I mention there are some brand new homes going up down the road. I’m not sure on prices, but I know they’re big. Michelle isn’t sure she even wants to look, but Chris is interested. So is my mom. We go.

These homes are probably a 9. The cons are that they’re on the very high end of affordability– meaning Shelly would have to keep working for sure, and their baby plans would be on hold awhile longer. The lots are also either tiny yards to no yards. My postage stamp sized lot trumped these. The pros were that almost ALL upgrades were included in the price. Corian counters (some were granite standard), upgraded 42″ cabinets, kitchen islands, finished two car garages with garage door openers, wood floors, crown moulding, tiled bathrooms with garden tubs, AND a finished third floor with its own bathroom. They were huge homes– almost 3,000 square feet. We walked away feeling a little mixed.

Erin is having a cookout. We go home, grab J and the kids, drive over. Eat burgers and hot dogs. The boys watch Ninja Warrior on television, and the girls look at home plans. Everything is delicious. More shopping afterwards– church clothes for my mom, bathing suit for me. This part went so fast: hanging out with my mom and sister. I wait forever to see them and then it flies by.

The next morning, the women and children go to church. We talked up my church A LOT, so I was crossing my fingers that it delivered. And it did. Everything about that Sunday was perfect: Eli and Addie’s favorite teachers were there, there was the free Starbucks coffee, awesome music, and a great sermon (which was about the music, in part, and how people really don’t think or care about what they sing in church: like, GOD YOU ARE THE GOD OF ME AND EVERYTHING I LOVE YOU GOD MY WHOLE LIFE IS FOR YOU I WILL NEVER SIN AGAIN I PROMISE– they don’t bat an eye, but if you had them singing GOD I LOVE YOU ALSO I WANT TO EAT AT CHILI’S LATER; they’d be like, WAIT a second. I don’t like Chili’s! No WAY am I singing that.). My mom told us afterwards how much she misses doing things like this with us, and how much she misses having Eli and Addie around. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal to her– it is to me, too, but I thought I was alone in how much I love being near my family.

We all go out for lunch at Two Guys Grille. It’s awesome. I get steak fries and grilled cheese with three kinds of cheese. Add three more pounds.

My mom has to leave, so we bid her a tearful goodbye. Call Abbey. She agrees to meet us at some brand-new homes being built five minutes from my church. They’re townhomes– large ones, but townhomes– and they cost almost as much as my current home. With more HOA fees. We’re not impressed. The saleswoman is REALLY aggressive and pushy, and Oh! Don’t you love this! Have you ever SEEN such windows! Yes, this room is a little small, but what a HUGE closet it would make! Chris and Michelle and Abbey commiserate once the woman leaves. Abbey is very frank, which I love. She tells them almost exactly what I have: forget this. Forget Durham. They should look near me. Not just because they’d be near family, but it’s a prime location with great resale value. She also says there’s a little gem of a neighborhood about five minutes from our house with single families in their price range. It’s a little older, maybe ten years, but it’s an established, safe area. We tell her we’ll drive by that afternoon, pick out some properties.

We find it with a little confusion (it’s AFTER some schools, not BEFORE them), but– woah. This is it. We’re convinced within five minutes. Chris wants to look through every single street, which is okay with me (and Elias, who is being insanely nice). We get fliers or write down addresses of every house we’d like to look at. They’re all within ten thousand dollars of the desired price range. I don’t remember what we do the rest of that day. Ate Sonic. It stormed. I’m pretty sure we went to Blockbuster– yeah, we did; Chris made us read an article on Mila Kunis because she plays Warcraft and geek girls are hot– and we rented ’27 Dresses’, which I watched but Michelle never got a chance to, and we drove out to Wal-mart so Chris could look at games and they could buy medicine. We’re so tired. Bed around 1 again.

The next day Michelle and I didn’t even want to get up. Chris was AWAKE, though. He was ready to House again. We dress the kids, drop J off at work. Abbey can meet us in the established neighborhood. I point out the awesome shopping center right next door, but Chris is already sold. Michelle wants to move and everything, but Chris is all: “Let’s not even go back. Let’s just tell them to ship our crap here.”

We see the first house in the subdivision, which is nice. It’s perfectly– nice. There’s nothing really wrong with it. It’s the right size. The rooms are a little small and there are some stupid cable drops, but it’s workable. The backyard is big. It’s full of pine needles, but big. The kitchen is nice, it just needs new appliances. There’s new carpet. Okay.

The next house is new on the market, and we didn’t even remember it. It’s on a cul-de-sac. Yellow siding, black shutters, white front porch with flowers boxes and an American flag. It is precious. There’s even the requisite climbing tree in the front yard. We go inside, and it’s even better. Wood floors, tons of light, a gorgeous kitchen with new appliances and Corian countertops (and integrated sink). Upstairs are three nice-sized rooms. The master bedroom is a little bigger than the first one, and the cable drop is in a good location. There’s a picture of the current owners on the wall. They look SUPER NICE. Big smiles. They have a cute little toddler named Katelin, whose room is decorated like a Pottery Barn ad. They also have two greyhounds, who are gated in the office. Elias is scared, then curious, then smitten. They’re very gentle, quiet dogs– almost like small deer. The backyard has a nice deck that looks over the entire neighborhood (“Imagine the trees changing color in the fall,” Abbey says). The backyard is large and fenced; high enough to contain Charlotte. “The twins can play out here,” Chris notes. What twins? Maybe it’s an Irish twins joke I missed. Abbey and Chris refer to The Twins multiple times. (Either that, or it’s a really inappropriate joke about Michelle’s chest.)

We love the house. Period. If Chris and Michelle had a job today, they would put an offer on it.

We look at another home, closer to me, which is just a big Eh. We guess who lives there. I think it’s a single guy. From the posters and awards, he obviously graduated from Virginia Tech. Most of the furniture is hand-me-downs or what l imagine was on sale at Pier 1. There are some womanly touches, like flowers in a vase and throw pillows (his current girlfriend’s influence), but the master bedroom is a bed and a TV, the office is a desk and a computer, and the guest room is nothing.

Michelle and Chris have to go. BOO. It was a good trip, though. We packed a lot in.

I still have the car, so I drop some money at the bank, return the movie, and get groceries. Addie naps. Eli plays outside. We go to Erin’s, and then Erin’s family goes to the pool with us. I wear my new bathing suit. I get some LOOKS. At first I feel embarrassed, but then I feel like– what? I had kids so I can’t wear anything hot again? It isn’t obscene and nothing’s being flashed, so get used to it, Random Gawkers.

I have a tan line after thirty minutes. It’s most obvious around my back, like a Coppertone baby. Drive to J’s work to pick him up. Wait in the car for ten minutes, listening to the White Stripes’ cover of ‘Jolene’, getting more and more sleepy in the heat. Jason finally arrives. I drowsily tell him about the houses and blah blah blah. By the time we get home, I tell him I’m just going to lay on the couch for a minute. And then I wake up this morning.

Today has just been me trying to entertain the kids long enough to write this entry, and wondering why I thought it would be a good idea to eat three packs of snack crackers.

PS: I’m not going to spoil anything with this, and I have to say it– I cried for five minutes after “House” ended. I don’t think I’ve ever had a reaction that strong to a fictional show, EVER.