Rewelcoming Home Ownership

So, this isn't really a kvetch. Though I have much to kvetch about (low flying planes for photo opps! Swine flu frenzy!). HK and I bought a house (with all the awesomeness and scarededness and work that entails). Once we move in, we will be sans-Congressional representation (I will tell you what it's like, JL! I bet it's AWESOME). We are also moving to an area that borders a really nice neighborhood on three sides and . . .another neighborhood on the other side. HK calls it "real" and "urban." I call it "crack-heads" and "boarded-up buildings" and "Murray's is not that far away!." But anyway, we are excited. I can metro to work (red line, baby) and Brian can metro or drive. And it won't take him hours to get home anymore. So he can come home and see how many Gilmore Girls repeats I can watch in a row and question his love for me.

It's a 100-year-old row house. To suburban dwellers, would be considered small. To those people, houses with rooms aren't a big deal. And yards? The only question is SHOULD I GET A RIDING MOWER? To us, the pseudo-city-dwelling-wannabes, though, these things are new and shiny to us. To us, this tiny row house is palatial. I might have made references to Bill Gates when we looked at it. Because it has ROOMS and STAIRS and a YARD! Even a driveway for the complainers that don't like walking the 500 ft from the parking garage to our condo (whatever, just because you are carrying boxes and have small children who are running into the street and have a broken leg and our condo is a MAZE of despair, I still judge) (just kidding) (sort of). The inspection found nothing major, so we can feel assured that the house will not fall down around us while we sleep.

A word about the previous owners. They have a WALL of degrees. They both graduated from the AF Academy, they both have more than one masters (including things like electrical engineering and finance - that's just the husband) and the wife is now a doctor. I am hoping that the high achievement and intelligence genes infuse future children so that they can support us in our old age. Otherwise I am looking into hiring Future Children out as chimney sweeps and possibly give them a Cockney accent so I can retire.

Settlement is in a month and then we shall officially shed our state residencies and become residents of our constitutionally-appointed district of taxation and the only representation being strongly worded oppositions that are summarily dismissed. But we are less than two miles from where we are not represented. We can also welcome repairs that we both didn't miss at all from previous homeowning - shoveling, raking, cutting grass (well, we could do it with big scissors at this place, but still), gutters and all the rest.

Just talking about paint colors is stressing me out. But the house must be painted. The highly educated people we bought the house from have painted it in what I call "festive" and what HK calls "ow my EYES! the searing PAIN! SOB." Once this is accomplished, we may have more than two people over at a time! And be social!

Random Annoyances

So we've all kind of slacked on the kvetching lately.  In my case, it's not because I'm not angry about things, I guess I just haven't had anything frustrating enough happen to me.  

Apparently I Have the Worst Taste in Music in ALL THE LAND

So, every time I find a music station I like anywhere, it gets discontinued.

Yeah. 99.1, gone. WAVA, LONG GONE. (anyone else remember when it was all awesome and played rockin' 80's hits, way back in the day? Am I dating myself?) Hell, even the "crappic rock" stations are gone. 94.7 just turned into more lame pop hits.

FRED, GONE. Turned into 1st Wave, which is LAME LAME LAME. Seriously, why can't they just go back to the "All Depeche Mode, all the time, and when we grow weary of that, we'll taunt your ears with the Cure, or maybe some Joy Division" station that I HEART? Oh, 1st Wave, with your chatty, personable DJs, how I loathe thee. I want bitter, and I want it now.

The other day I was cruising through the music channels on my television, and found Retro Active, which was yet another 80's alternative station. Fabulous. Just enough of the cheesy retro hits for me, and no Taylor Dane or Debbie Gibson earworms. Perfect.

Today, when I turn on my television, what do I find? Some lame Alt Rock station. With PEARL JAM. Where is my Joy Division, I ask? Or my Flock of Seagulls? Flannel shirts and unwashed hair are a far cry from boys in eyeliner and an entire can of Aqua Net. Dag, yo. At the rate this is going, satellite radio will be cancelled entirely by the end of the year or something.

Sigh. Off to "Singers and Swingers" for me. At least the soothing tones of big band music can keep me from poking my eyes out. Of course, it HAS led to me Charleston-ing around the cat, by myself at various points. Not so condusive to a productive day.

Why must I have the worst taste in music in all the land? Oh wait, maybe it's because I'm TONE DEAF.

SWIM. FAIL. GO HOME.

I am taking swimming lessons in an attempt to become intermediate. I aspire to mediocrity. And while I knew how to swim, I wanted to refine the strokes that I knew so that I could not freak out the lifeguards with my flailing. Except the lifeguard at my gym who wears a big fur lined parka with the hood pulled up and totally deals drugs out of there (allegedly) - he wouldn't notice. Hence, swim classes at the local Y. Some definitions:

My swim instructor: blond, Johnny from The Karate Kid (who was not the guy in One Crazy Summer, nor is he the guy in Revenge of the Nerds. . .there are a lot of '80's movies rife with evil blond men - I thought it was all the same guy. . .who knew). Anyway, he says "bro" (pronounced br-AH), possibly has popped collars when not swimming, and is about 16.

Me: old, tired, crotchety, has the soul of a 93-year-old, manages to fall over in pool.

Johnny is under some sort of delusion that I am Michael Phelps. First, he makes me swim lots and lots of laps. In a row. Without a rest. Which is HARD. And makes me do my strokes right, which gives my brain mini-aneurisms because I have to change my rhythm and start inhaling under water in my confusion. But these things are to be expected, because I need to learn. And get some stamina and endurance so that the old lady with the flower swim cap doing sidestroke will not school me. So these are not the reasons why Johnny is so very evil. For this, he is only a little evil. Like Emilio Estevez in Breakfast Club. A sort of boring tool with the potential for evil.

But the evil escalated last class, because next on the agenda? Butterfly. What is up with that? Am I going to the Olympics? Well, in my head, I am (also am hilarious, a novelist and have won a Grammy). But in real life where it requires work, talent and determination? I have not these things, Sensei.

But he says no worries, after Butterfly, I will learn flip turns. Apparently he wants me to die.