A Woman Without Country

So we're thinking about buying a house. I know, it's a HUGE step. I want to get out of the gates and get a real estate agent so we can start looking at places, but I keep waiting because I want to have a better idea of where we want to live. Ideally we would live close to Mason so C's commute wouldn't be a bear, but it doesn't look like it will be easy to do that. Plus, while I love Masonvale and our neighbors, Fairfax is a little too suburban for us. There are too many professional stay-at-home moms, too many Chuck E. Cheeses. Plus, I keep feeling the pull of DC. I read about so many cool stores, restaurants, concerts, and such, not to mention the museums. I don't need to live in the District, but I would really like to live closer. C was in Maryland the other night for a meeting and he said it was less pretty than Virginia, but it felt more like home. And we could try to find a needle-in-a-haystack affordable place in the NW part of DC. These are all really good options, so I shouldn't really complain, but it makes me feel ungrounded. I like to plan for the future, and I need to plan for our immediate future. I will be filling out preschool applications for Wiggle this winter, and I am applying to school and would like to be able to get in-state tuition, so knowing where we will live does matter now. Ugh.

No area is jumping out at me, but plenty of them are hard enough to price into that it's worth looking somewhere else, so the list just keeps getting longer. And for those of you that say we should continue to rent, we may, but it looks like buying might be more affordable, and that's a strong motivator right now.

Any thoughts about Silver Spring, MD?