Huff and Puff

I bought my first house at the ripe old age of 23. Having developed and matured for a little over two full decades, I found myself worried that I didn�t mow my own lawn or have to fix my own leaky faucet. I wondered why I didn�t have the pressure and risk of a mortgage. I desperately needed more stress in my life. I was 23 for christ�s sake, and I considered myself more than overdue to take that leap into adulthood and buy myself some actual property.

My personal life was in a state of chaos that used to manifest itself in my dreams as a bloodthirsty wolf that was trying to catch me, and I craved a place of stability I could call home. A place that would force me to stop living the wild and carefree life of a junior actuarial student who comes home to study in a rental, and start living the stern life of a mid-level actuarial student who comes home to study in his den. It may appear subtle, but trust me, the difference is in entirely in my own head.

So, having just dumped the most horrible boyfriend ever known to man, I set out to become one of the privileged, the few, the proud, the homeowners. Believe it or not, my poorly developed and scantily thought out plan had a few problems associated with it. The most significant being, I was new to this state and had no idea where to start looking, I had a new job with no vacation time accrued to take time off to look, and I had no money with which to buy the joint, even if I did manage to find one. I was having daily fights with my bosses around this time, and the thought occurred to me, �Gee, this would be a great time to buy a home�. Idiot.

When I went to look at houses that were just too expensive to afford, I walked into damp, stanky, nasty boxes that smelled of something evil. They had no refrigerators, they had no stoves, they had no doors or glass in the windows, and they had no dignity. They slumped in their own lots, begging me to fix them up and make them like new again. A few of them I considered, because I really do like fixing things up. Unfortunately, my expertise stops at paint and spackle. I can work magic with a mop and some Pledge, but drywall and sanders intimidate me.

I had just left a property without electricity, after the one with a bathroom without walls � just a toilet in the corner of the living room, when I came to the house I ended up buying. It was like having just seen the little pigs� houses just before the wolf came and blew them down. My real estate agent was a short and plump woman with a slightly upturned nose, who was clearly not meant for this type of work, and when she knocked with her too-small fist on the door of the last house to see, I was impressed when I saw that the door did not simply give way and cave in under the force of her gentle knock. That was pretty much all it took to convince me that this was the house to finally defy the wolf, and regardless of what was inside, I was already mentally moving in.

I met SP between the offer to buy the house and the move in date, so although he didn�t help me pick it out, he did help me move in, and it was here that we began to share our lives. The floor may creak, you may have to walk through the snow in the backyard in order to get to the washer and dryer, and it may have taken months and gallons of spackle to fix it up, but it�s ours. It�s nothing fancy, little more than a bunch of bricks, but we�ve put so much work into it and it�s finally just the way I wanted it. And now we�re leaving.

As proud as I am that I bought it and managed it with no money and not a clue in my head how to do it, we�ve outgrown this place, and we�ve found something about four times the size, much easier to commute from, and something I can�t help but smile when I think about. The sellers accepted our offer this weekend, and now it�s just a matter of time before it�s ours. The cats will have stairs to chase each other on again. SP will have entire rooms he can smoke in and not have to worry about me bitching that I can smell it. And we may even find ourselves in the same house together, but unable to hear when the other sneezes. There�s something wonderful and terrifying about that, but I think I�ll be able to get used to it. I love my little house, and like a first kiss, I�ll never forget it, but the pigs are anxious, and we�re trading in the bricks for skylights and a jacuzzi.