Did I recently mention here that I was moving?
I can't recall, because this certainly isn't a topic upon which I might fixate or anything. Oh, and I had a deadline, too. But I probably forgot to say anything because I tend to keep my stressors pretty close to the vest.
Heh. (Or I'm sorry. Your choice.)
So, we're here in the new house. And we're nowhere near finished unpacking. My shoes and pajamas still live in a box somewhere and we only have one television hooked up, so pretty much that's the only room that's even close to being done.
As I might have mentioned, the new place is a tad on the ridiculous side, starting with the fact that it's thirty-six hundred square feet larger than our last home. You guys? It's a fucking barn, stacked on top of another barn, stacked on top of a third, and then filled with Brazilian cherrywood flooring and granite finishes.
* * *
Lest I sound all braggy-braggy about my sophisticated new house/life, I just took a break to chase the dogs around the basement for half an hour with a can of compressed air. I'm sure Town & Country is going to call me any minute now.
ANYWAY.
The only reason we got in here at an affordable rental price is because of the crappy housing market. No one wants to buy such a luxurious place right now. However, the owner hopes to sell it to us next year, which is awesome because we hope to buy it. (If that has any chance of happening, I'll need to work harder than I may be capable of working. So if we don't get it, then I lived in a castle for a year, and that's cool, too.) (The downside of buying is if we owned this place, our landlord's dad wouldn't come over here to fix stuff any more and he's completely adorable and brings me Cuban coffee and tells me stories about his travels. You can't buy that kind of built-in cute.)
Before I get into the The Window Covering Debacle of 2008, I have to mention the old house. We moved on election day, and I went over there Wednesday, which was my birthday. We planned to scoop up the few things the movers had missed and then to return here where Stacey would bring take out and we'd all celebrate the big four-one.
What I didn't anticipate was how lonely and empty our old house would look, which made me cry... and not just a little bit. I'm talking big, wracked, sobbing-like-that-baby-with-a-bowl-full-of-spaghetti-on-his-head poster.
The thing is, even with all the stupid neighbors and the sinking and the mold, we were really happy there. I feel like that's the place we got our lives back on track. I stopped temping while living in that house. I had my first book party in that house. I became successful in that house.
Reflecting back on our time there, I was just overwhelmed with how sad it was to leave. Even Fletch got verklempt. He said that what did it was walking out of the garage and seeing the back of the house. It made him reminisce that no matter how bad his day had been, he'd come home and see the dogs and me waiting for him in my office and suddenly everything would be better. So, when he opened the door, even though I was behind him, he was somehow expecting to be greeted by a smiling me and happy dogs and the smell of dinner. But all that was there were some empty cabinets and the hum of an industrial dehumidifier.
So, I called Stacey crying to bail on dinner plans and instead went back to the new place, determined to make it look and feel as much like home as possible. We're not at 100% yet, but we're getting there.
We had to stop at the old place one more time last night because our movers had accidentally packed our landlords' mower and we wanted to return it. This time it wasn't so melancholy because it looks so different. The entire kitchen has been gutted because of the water leak and now all forty-seven of my pretty white cabinets are scattered throughout the wee first floor. Also, I could see the wall where'd they'd barely been hanging on to a rotten stud surrounded by giant blooms of black mold and I knew from looking around, there's no way we could have stayed there. There's too much damage.
And, in a bittersweet moment, I was vindicated for a year's worth of argument. Along the open area where the wall joined the floor behind the cabinets, I saw droppings. Not mouse droppings like Fletch assured me, but rat droppings. Big, fat, filthy, disease-ridden rat droppings. So I was right. There really was a ratinmyhouse, ratinmyhouse, ratinmyhouse.
'Tis a hollow victory, indeed.
Anyway, part of making this place feel more like home is getting window coverings. I've counted the windows a whole bunch of times and I generally come up with different numbers. The number I've gotten the most consistently is sixty-eight.
Sixty-eight means a lot of curtains.
For a number of the windows, I took your collective advice and put up little tension rods with sheers. At approximately five bucks a window, that's almost as cost-effective as my idea of covering them with old newspaper. Unfortunately, the very nature of them being sheer means these can't be in any rooms where I might eventually disrobe. Plus, I noticed that I can totally see into the neighbor's house next door, as it's five feet away. The first night here, I may or may not have spied him looking at porn and I figure if that's what he's into, he's REALLY not going to appreciate seeing me waddling from my bathroom to the master closet down the hall wearing nothing but a ratty towel and a look of distress.
I figure I have about ten windows where it's mission-critical that the covering be opaque and it's such a nice place that I don't want to half-ass the installation myself, so I called a professional. I wasn't sure what my budget was but I figured if simple white Roman shades cost $20 at Target, maybe getting them custom made would double or triple the cost, which would still be a small price to pay for saving the neighbor's retinas.
Long story short, I called Empire Direct, a consultant came out, and I learned that ten base-model, simple white Roman shades would run me four thousand dollars.
FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS.
And if I chose to do the whole house in them, then they'd cost as much as the 2006 Mercedes I walked by on my way to the bathroom at Carmax a couple of nights ago when I was there getting my tires rotated. (If I wanted to cheap out and go with wooden blinds, they'd only run about twenty-eight hundred dollars.)
Do you know how many months of student loans I could pay with four thousand dollars? Do you know how much rent I could pay for four thousand dollars? (Or, if you ask Fletch, do you know how big of a TV I could get for four thousand dollars?)
As of right now, my short-term plans for maintaining my privacy include buying a goddamned bathrobe. And maybe a newspaper. Longer term, I found a couple of affordable custom options online so we'll go that route should I tire of the robe.
I guess my point is that living here has been full of strange little adjustments, especially because there's so much space-aged gadgetry due to the new construction. I mean, we have a whole room of electrical panels. I'm not so sure of how I feel about a house that is absolutely smarter than me. (Sidebar? Our alarm system is wired for video surveillance. Tell me I'm not getting THAT hooked up immediately.)
Everything in here is beeps and chimes and little tones. All day long the house sounds off with noises I can't identify. (It's a bit sad that I could immediately tell you what a rat in my wall would sound like.)
A couple nights ago I almost fell down all seventeen stairs because something was beeping and I couldn't figure out which was the proper light switch on my way to investigate. (Do not ask me how many recessed lights are in this place. I'd have to consult NASA for an estimate.) I'd been in bed when I heard the first set of beeps and I ignored them. But when they went off again and then a third time, I figured it was important and I'd best find out which is when I slipped and twisted my ankle.
As I hobbled into the kitchen, I discovered I almost broke my freaking neck because the dishwasher wanted to let me know the cycle was complete. As I stood on my now-gimpy leg, I saw it sitting there all smug and beep-y, like it was expecting a cookie or a pat on the head for a job well done.
It was all I could do to not kick it with my healthy foot.
Point?
Just because I moved doesn't mean the adventures are over.
And if a rat ever does manage to get in, the good news there's enough space that we may never run into each other.
