Why has it been two months since my last post? Well, I haven’t gone anywhere beyond work, the grocery store, and Target. We just purchased a house this past summer so we could enroll our daughter in one of the top-ranking public school districts in the state. Ah, the sacrifices of parenthood. Going from an apartment to a house is quite amazing–we still have rooms we have no idea what to do with and we still have the habit of huddling together in the same room as we used to when we lived in only 900 square feet. So we have the space, but we still want to hang out. Either we’re that co-dependent or just truly enjoy one another’s company.
So while I haven’t boarded any planes, trains or automobiles to travel to someplace interesting, home ownership has proven to be its own kind of journey. We’ve been in our new house less than four months and I can report it’s like having another baby and trying to salvage a science experiment all at once. The house was built around 1926 and I was charmed the moment I saw it–it was old, quirky, and had withstood more than eight decades of ups and downs with a weathered gracefulness. During our two years of condo/house-hunting, this was the only place I visited where I walked around and immediately thought “I want to take care of this place.”
Well, taking care of it we are…and let me tell you, care requires money…lots and lots of money. I look at our bank account and think “Wow, we could be enjoying the Seychelles Islands right now.” Clearly, we’re not. We’re making trips to Home Depot and Ikea, we’ve got contractors traipsing through and squirrels running amok. We’ve discovered there’s no insulation along the wall in the room we chose to make the master bedroom (which might explain why the previous owner slept downstairs). I’m supposed to go tile shopping and I’m exchanging a sofa. I’ve got a main floor bathroom on the verge of collapse and bamboo growing wild in the backyard.
Oddly, there’s a great deal of satisfaction knowing that we own these problems. This Thanksgiving, I’ll be feeling very grateful that despite how much we now owe Wells Fargo, I am indeed queen of my own castle, and as long as Wells Fargo gets paid on time, I get to remain queen. The Seychelles aren’t going anywhere. And once the house gets a little TLC, we’ll be out and about again. We’re hopefully doing some skiing in the Catskills this winter and the Istanbul tickets are paid for, so that’s happening whether our house condones our vacation plans or not. Besides, the house knows we’ll come back from any vacation happy to be home. 
