Posts Tagged ‘house’

• Pros(e) About The New House

  Date: 2011.05.20 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  You like what I did there with the “e” in parenthesis? Because it is prose about the pros about my house! Yay, a little grammatical/literary humor that either only I get OR I’m the only one who thinks it’s funny. Ok so this post is basically having to be dragged out of me. Which is terrible because it makes me seem unhappy, ungrateful, and unsatisfied with my house. I do really love the  house we bought–I promise! I’m just not the type of person who gushes over something–at least not outwardly–and it’s soooo much easier to  blog about complaints than the good stuff. It’s a sad reality of my world. So now on to the pros about our new house!

  1. Outside: It has a fully fenced in yard for Dog to enjoy. The last house we were in didn’t have a fence AND it didn’t have a back door. So about four times a day we’d walk her from the front of the house to the little stretch of yard we had in back, wait for her to do something and walk her back to the front again. She got very little running around time and drove us nuts with all her indoor barking she did. Now we can just unleash (heh heh) her upon the world when she starts to bark. It also has a total of three trees on the entire property!!!! If you had spent an entire weekend raking leaves (at another house we rented) and then the next two weeks with a throat that had been irritated so much that it tried to close up whenever you ate or drank, you’d be happy about that too. The two trees in the back are a peach tree and an apple tree and one squat Christmas-esk tree in the front. We have snap dragons along the front side of the house which are so fun to make talk. (I am Not crazy! Try it and you’ll see.) We also have buttercups in the back–at least until the husband goes crazy and decides to mow the lawn for the fifth time in the three weeks we’ve lived here–then we have decapitated buttercups in the back.
  2. Inside: We have a beautiful kitchen that isn’t enormous, but it has more than enough storage for us. Also it’s completely open to the living room so I’m not stuck away in a corner cooking AND that means that the husband and I won’t have to shout at each other from one side of the house to the other–we usually shouted that we couldn’t hear what the other was saying. Hmm…basically we’ve needed walkie talkies for the past two oddly arranged houses that we rented and I’m only realizing it now that we no longer need them. (Something like this is pretty much my trademark.) Our master bathroom is beautiful and we have a huge master closet which I’m proud to say contains the shelving that the husband masterfully installed. The living room has a light fixture. Ok, just know that you have no idea how big of a deal that is until you’ve lived in two houses and three apartments that didn’t have this feature. We have huge French doors that lead to the back yard. They are great–they let in tons of light, they made it so much easier to move everything into the house, and they give me a great view of the Dog giving all the other creatures in the world hell for even thinking about going into her yard. I did, however, discover how badly we will need curtains for these doors one night as I was outside and realized that everyone could see everything in the living room perfectly clearly. In fact if it weren’t for the nice thick foliage that lines the back of our fence we would be  “TV” for the  three houses behind us. We’ll have to remedy that before Fall comes.
  3. Area (told with keeping a little anonymity): We now live really close to a big city where loads of events happen all the time, but we live far away enough that we don’t have the city towering over us. We also live in what the locals believe to be a “bad” town, but we’re on the good side of town and so far on the good side that we’re almost in what the locals know is a “great” town, but since it’s technically in the “bad” town it was way cheaper to buy than it would have been in the “great” town. While there isn’t a Super Target or  a mall with everything in it nearby, we are close to a ton of really cool stores (both mainstream and little independently owned stores) and two tiny, completely odd malls (one has the town’s post office and another has Khol’s as an anchor store). One of the best stores I’ve been to is a tiny book shop that specializes in children’s and young adult literature (my favorite!) and has bags that look like the cover of a book. I would normally post a link for it here, but that would be me giving up a little of that aforementioned anonymity. We’re also really close to a huge farmer’s market. We haven’t been to it yet, but we’re anticipating the day that we actually have time to go.

  Geez, that wasn’t too hard. Why did you beg me to hold off on this post? You people are silly.

• New Homeowner: Thoughts

  Date: 2011.04.27 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  So we finally did it! We bought our very own first house, moved in, and got everything (?) set up–meaning utilities. No. We are not all unpacked and in place right now. And no you cannot come over unless told otherwise by us–and we’re the ones who brought it up, not you. If those last few sentences seem a little harsh, then you can blame it on this awesome blog that I’ve been reading (http://temerity-jane.com–a girl who almost always entombs in her blog exactly what I’m feeling or how I’d react to something, but I never have the guts to say it) or you can know that I’m telling you exactly how I feel about this in a warning matter and pretending I’m joking or acting like you didn’t hear will only get you into passive aggressive trouble with me. So here are some thoughts since becoming a homeowner.

  1. We signed ourselves into a house. They say that we’ll be paying it off for the next 30+ years, but then everyone talks about how in 5 years or 10 years we’ll want to sell it and move on to something else. Maybe that’s a contributing factor for what is wrong with our economy. We take on huge amounts of debt for longer than anyone expects us to use the thing that we’re buying. But yeah…when we have kids we’re going to need something bigger and in better school districts. Which also makes me think about how pathetically easy most of America has it. We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. We’re using one bed room as a guest bed, one for us, and one as an office. We Have Too Much Schtuff (read: appropriate curse word to go along with that spelling) To Be Able To Bring In TWO Children Into Our Brand New, Beautiful Home that when we decide to have kids, we will have to leave it behind. That doesn’t seem right, does it? Four people–two ok with sharing a room–in a 3 bedroom house not fitting. The math doesn’t quite add up for me…. What can make me feel really bad is seeing the homeless people on the street or watching “Slumdog Millionaire” and knowing that they would be more than ecstatic to shove 15 people in here no problem, but we can’t handle 4.
  2. I really don’t like my appearance. Thanks to bigger longer mirrors that we have–instead of the itty, bitty and placed high on the wall medicine cabinet mirrors we had in the rental–I am now fully aware of what I look like.  I got to tell you, it is not pretty. It also makes me wonder if my new neighbor had meant she thought I was pregnant when we talked yesterday–which just makes me feel sooo much better.
  3. Cat related thoughts: A. I will never be the cat behaviorist that I think I am. I will spend an extraordinary amount of time watching my cats and marking their behavior before revealing to all the world (i.e. my husband) my theory on what exactly is going on and why Newly-Adopted-Stray Cat has suddenly come out more often…and then they’ll up and CHANGE their behavior on me! How dare they be a living thing with a free will and thus capable of whims and changes in mind. How dare they consistently show me one behavior and then do the opposite the minute I hand in the final draft on my thesis? Ok, perhaps I’m getting carried away. It would just be nice to say 2+2=4 with them and when I show my work to the teacher they don’t insert and asterisk next to each “2″ and I miss the tiny print where it says “for extreme values of 2.” B. Boy Cat is weird. Maybe it’s because he’s the only boy cat–and the only boy pet for that matter–but none-the-less weird. Three times now I’ve caught him nibbling on cable cords and then daring anyone else to come by to see what he’s doing. C (sub 1). I’m going to have to beg for a Roomba soon, because if I don’t I may go crazy from sweeping up all the hair that Dog, Balancing Cat–she helps keep the balance in the house hence the name, Boy Cat and NAS Cat produce on an hourly basis. Yesterday I swept up 8 times and today I spent the entirety of “Knocked Up” and commercials brushing them as a preemptive attack. Guess what? They are still shedding. C (sub2). Which causes me to think, from an evolutionary/progress point of view, aren’t hard wood floors a step backward? I mean people had dirt floors, then they had wood floors, and then the amazing discovery of wall to wall, grab-all-the-dirt-and-hairs-it-can carpet! I do love my new house. It’s wonderful and elegant looking, but I could live without the tumble weeds of pet hair and the constant picking up any little piece of dirt by my feet and then ultimately transferring that to my bed when I go to sleep at night. Don’t suggest that I just wear socks around the house. I am not that kind of person.

  So perhaps this post was a little complainy. Ok, a lot complainy. The next one I promise will detail the great attributes of this new home.  I will, however, make no promises on when it will be posted as the newly set up cable is calling me.