November 21, 2005
Keith and I have lived in a series of rentals -- apartments and houses both -- since I moved in with him back in 1999, ranging from relatively decent to total, utter, shitpit. The house we rented together when I first moved out there was actually quite nice. A year later, tired of the insane property agent who was our de facto landlord, we moved into a nice but elderly one-bedroom house in the U-district of Seattle. It gradually filled up with more and more of our accumulated crap until it resembled what I can only imagine as the residence of a somewhat mentally disturbed person with obsessive packrat tendencies.
That home was followed by a relatively nice apartment in the Northgate area of Seattle, and then briefly by my mom's basement when we moved back to Ohio, and then another elderly but charming (read: in desperate need of repair) house in Zanesville, and then the duplex near Ohio State that we just moved out of.
Most of these places had their drawbacks in one way or another. We've weathered crummy electrical systems that cause blown light bulbs and blown fuses on a near-daily basis; basements that leak so badly there is a little river of fetid water streaming from the walls to the center drain; plaster that is cracking and falling from the walls; windows that won't even close properly, much less lock; a "central heating system" consisting of a giant red-hot gas furnace located in the middle of the living room; mice and roaches; and countless appliances that work only through excessive jerry-rigging and the occasional desperate prayer. Not all of this in the same location, thank God, but still, it's been a succession of problematic residence after problematic residence.
It became a part of my self-image after awhile. I started to think of myself as the type of person who lives in a run-down house/apartment. I'd drive past nice homes in nice neighborhoods and wonder to myself who the hell could afford something like that. Part of this was my real estate pricing knowledge, which was still based in the insanely overpriced Puget Sound area, and part of it was just thinking that we are not the kind of people who can afford a nice home in a nice neighborhood. I didn't give much thought to who those people were, but I knew that we were not they.
Except it turns out we are, after all. The house we just bought is a nice home, and it's in a nice neighborhood. People put up Halloween decorations, followed by Thanksgiving decorations, followed by Christmas decorations. They walk their dogs. They say hi to you when you pass on the street. The house is in good repair. Nothing in it is falling down or apart. It has up-to-date appliances and good carpeting.
It's taken a little mental adjustment on my part. I think there's always a period of time after you move during which you feel like you're living in someone else's home, but this time it seemed a little worse for me. I keep having this creeping sensation that the previous owners are going to come back and tell us it was all a hoax and they want their keys back. So far this has not happened, but I keep peering out the living room windows, just in case.
The place we just moved out of, which never looked great, now looks even worse. Both because it suffers in comparison anyway, but also because it's now filled with the flotsam and jetsam left after our move. We have until tonight to turn in the keys, and we've been moving a carload of boxes at a time all week long in an effort to get out the last bits of stuff that didn't fit in the moving truck. I went over there yesterday to pack up some stuff, and moving around the now-unheated, mostly-empty place, I can't believe it was really our home. Was it really just a couple of weeks ago that we passed this missing chunk of plaster in the staircase wall every day? Did we really think nothing of the fact that we had to prop up the dishwasher door with a canister of rice to keep it from falling on the floor?
We've moved from what might charitably be described as student tenement housing into the home we're going to raise our family in, and it feels a little weird right now, but day by day, we're settling in and before long I suspect that the sounds of mice desperately scrabbling at the insides of the walls and the neighbors who like to throw drunken parties lasting until 4 AM will be a distant, fading memory.
Posted at November 21, 2005 10:34 AM
Posted by: Bibiana Powell at November 22, 2005 11:42 AM
congRats on the new pLace!
Posted by: christine at November 29, 2005 6:40 AM
Another big congratulations to you and your family. What a grand way to move into your own home. That sounds so wonderful...since us in the Puget Sound area (okay, Seattle proper since if you go out far enough you can get a house resembling yours if you're willing to have a 2-hour commute) have to contend with old-building issues. We, too, have been living a not-us life for 18 months during our extensive home remodel. Everything is filthy, because I can't get to the dirt and everything looks so awful, who care's how dirty it is anyway? Soon, soon, we will have the other half of our house back. Hopefully in a few months all the discomfort will be a distant memory. Your kids won't remember the rentals, even. Have a fabulous holiday season in your new home!!