Thursday night, at 2 in the morning, Ian vomited. Ian vomited on his bed. On the rug in the hallway. And about one foot away from the toilet. Ian would continue to vomit for five days. 

On Friday, as Ian watched TV downstairs, I spent five hours making a list of all the houses that we wanted to see. And because it's no secret that I'm very neurotic, I did research on every houses using Zillow, Realtor.Com, and NJMLS. I wrote down notes on every house, including pros and and cons. I found out taxes, the time on the market, proximity to the center of town , original asking price, etc… I suppose that I did the work that an agent should do, but whatever. I like control. 

The agent looked through my list and crossed off a few and added one or two of her own. Then she made appointments. 

Steve, my dad, and I started off at 11:00. I left the puking kid and the increasingly suspicious and stressed out 12-year old with my mom. My mom packed up a sandwich and a coke for my dad. We started off at Town A. Town A is a super small community with no downtown. It has excellent schools with a range of middle class to super rich families. I think a few New York Giants live there. The agent had us look at three split levels in a 60s development. 

When we put the house on the market, I told the agent that I wanted a funky, older home. I didn't want a split level, because, really, I don't want to live in the suburbs at all. I want to pretend that I'm living in Brooklyn, but with a driveway and a washing machine. It's very hard to pretend that you live in Brooklyn, when you're in a split level. 

However, the older homes that were on the market that Saturday were either ready for the bulldozer or were way too expensive. The homes that were available that Saturday in our price range were split levels. We looked at one older home, but when we heard that it had an underground oil tank, we made a sharp U-turn out of the house.

The agent urged me not to buy one of those wrecks with the nice details. "They need so much work, Laura. You'll have to keep putting more and more money into it. I know you like them. Well, you have good taste in men." 

We looked at three split levels in Town A. Two were homes that I had chosen. She threw in a really bad one with a leaky basement in order to make the other two homes look better. Then we drove to Town B.