Thursday, April 30, 2009

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!

1 comment:

OptimisticalCynical said...

I saw the pictures, it looks really nice