Retail Therapy

It started with Vans.

I had a GC from Christmas to Madewell so it's not like I actually spent any money, but the floodgates were opened.

Breaking up

I went and saw a duplex yesterday.

I know! How could I? How could I betray the townhome and visit something else?



It's not like I wanted to, but I just wasn't getting what I needed from the townhome. It's been noncommunicative and I think it's been cheating on me.

Gesticulating Wildly

Sometimes I want credit for things working right. I think when I figure out a problem at work, I should get a gold star and be allowed to go home. The problem is that these wins at work are always at 9:30 in the morning and people might frown on my calling it a day that early. The truth, though, is that it will all be downhill from there. Thirty minutes later I'll say something dumb, or fall out of my chair (it happens) or I'll get yelled at for existing.

I'm not a pessimist or a cynic exactly. I'm not always waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I find with my wins there's always something coming soon to remind me to be humble.

Buy Two, Get One Free

It started off like any other week. Monday morning I was depressed about being in the office. By Tuesday I'd gotten into my groove. Wednesday I had to take Emma in for a teeth cleaning and extraction and I'd conned my real estate agent into coming down to look at a property with me that I wasn't really interested in.

In Real Estate, like in online dating, if there are no pictures, I won't even open the listing. It's not that I'm superficial, but if there aren't pictures, I feel like there's something that's being hidden. Like a lack of teeth. Or signs of a meth related explosion.

Haunted Housing

My agent and I looked at the perfect house today. Perfect. Everything I want and more... right number of bedrooms, nice kitchen, A/C, cute neighborhood, minimal yard obligations...

After we saw it I asked her to call the listing broker about a few things, but it was just a stall tactic. I needed more time to know why I didn't want it.

Why didn't I want it? It had everything and more and the quirks could be unquirked. And the unquirked could be quirked. Or whatever.

Life Report Card: Up and Coming

Remember when I said my home buying motivation would come when I fell in love with a house and couldn't have it because I didn't have my shit together? Well, that sort of happened. Tiny little house: 2 bedrooms (barely), 1.5 bath. Perfect lack of lawn. Cute little kitchen with cabinets I could barely reach. 

The biggest issue, aside from the fact that I didn't have my financing lined up in time, was that I knew my parents would hate the neighborhood. The gangs moved in during the 80's and crime skyrocketed... but 30 years later (yup, that's how long ago the 80's were) it is, what we call in real estate, "up and coming." 

There are certainly blocks still in some turmoil, but it's the city so that's normal.  This house was on a block bookended by the public television station and some brand new lofts. There was a broken down truck parked on the street all 7 times I drove by, and also cars much nicer than my own. The lawns were well kept. The next door neighbor had a Human Rights Campaign sticker in their window. Up and coming. 

I DO like them, Sam I Am.

This post is purely bragging about how awesome my life is. That's okay right? I mean, we're inundated with "FMLs" and terrible news stories and talking about all the failures in our lives so this is about successes and in order for me to not feel like a braggart asshole, you have homework: make your own list of amazing things. You can share them in the comments if you wish.

1. Friday I worked from home and my friend April came by with her real estate mentor to survey the state of the condo. After the "your kitchen is amazing," we had some real talk about things that would need to happen for me to sell. Sometimes I walk away from real talk situations thinking "Who did I trick into thinking I'm a grown up... Idiots!" But this time I was proud and really "Fuck yeah, I'm a grown up and can do this if I want to!" 

Church of the God the Utterly Indifferent

I finished my second of Vonnegut's books last week, The Sirens of Titan. On its surface it's about a war with Mars, a weird ghostman who appears and reappears every 50 or so days to torture his wife with predictions of the future, and luck.

The antagonist in the story, Winston Niles Rumfoord (ghostman), after his death and ghosting, starts the Church of the God the Utterly Indifferent. It's two basic teachings are: "Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God." Ultimately, God doesn't care what you do and God didn't make your life suck or not suck.

I WAS A VICTIM OF A SERIES OF ACCIDENTS, AS ARE WE ALL. (Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan)