I am obsessing over house colors. I can't stop myself - when we are out now I am looking at houses for the color scheme - trim plus all the other bits. Does that look nice? How would that look on ours? They have a high roof too - maybe that theme would be okay. How does one choose something like this? It's not like a room where you could simply paint over in a day if you just couldn't stand it. This is an entire house. To change it will require much money and time and effort. How can I choose? How is anyone supposed to pick just one?

This house is making me dither on more things than I've dithered on probably in the last several years. All these tiny inconsequential things that mean nothing to anyone else, and I've done my best to not bore friends and family with my little petty issues (so of course I dump them here, because where else should I talk about them, after all).

And the funniest thing is that I'm not even worrying about the cabinets any more. At least not now. Even though the color of the house is going to be one of the last things on the list, I'm worrying about that. Go figure.

We have a week's reprieve on the whole question of electrical outlets and lights. We were to go out and do our (what has now become a) weekly meeting with the builder to discuss wiring, but it's been raining so hard that he called to cancel. They weren't even going to be there yesterday and there was just no sense in it. No need to let a little rain and mud stop us - we drove by last night to see. The boards once laid out to form a rather wobbly sidewalk have been moved so we picked our way carefully through the mud, trying to jump from random board to the odd pile of gravel that was deposited weeks ago in what will become our front yard, and has remained there ever since.

It was cold and windy, but we could see that they'd made a bit more progress with the siding, so we were compelled to go inside and see what it was like from there. We tromped around a bit, guided only by a little flashlight and the glare from the headlights of the car, but didn't stay too long because it really was cold.

One side effect of that little trip is that reality is beginning to raise it's funny little head. See, I had this marvelous idea for a disgustingly mushy and goofy romantic dinner - drag out a card table and a few chairs, set them up in our unfinished dining room, and have a candle-lit picnic dinner in our almost-a-house for Valentine's Day. But standing out there last night, it occurred to both of us that it's probably still a bit too cold, too windy, and the house a bit too open for any sort of comfortable dining experience. If this were several months down the road, we'd be just fine and the open design of the mostly uncovered frame wouldn't be an issue. But it's still February, and with the rain and wind lately, we decided that perhaps it might be better to have a Plan B.

Plan B is to have dinner at home - make it together, and actually eat at the dining room table. Scoff if you will; perhaps it's boring to you. But for two people who are so often busy that we rarely get a chance to even go grocery shopping, dinner at home - and not something we ordered over the phone, or picked up at a drive-thru on the way from work - is a rarity, and therefore classifies as special. I'm looking forward to this far more than I would if we were simply doing what everyone else is doing and going out to a fancy restaurant. Heck, we can do that any day of the week.

We'll make dinner, side by side, in the tiny little alcove they call a kitchen in this house we're renting, and we'll set the table with cloth napkins and napkin rings. We'll dim the lights and light the candles, and there will be soft music playing in the background. We'll have a quiet dinner, just the two of us, talking, laughing, spending time together.

And it will be lovely.