Home Sweet Home

All right, I’m just going to skip all the usual, “Sorry I’ve been away, blah, blah, blah” bullshit and get straight to it…I BOUGHT A HOUSE! Well, we, my boyfriend Steve and I, bought a house. Together. To live in for, like, longer than a year. I KNOW! I crapped my big girl pants, too!

It all happened really fast in the slowest way possible. One day we were carefree renters and the next we were homeowners, give or take a few months. The process of searching for a house was not what I expected. It was a lot like shopping for jeans, you think it’s going to be fun because it’s shopping, but somewhere around the tenth pair of muffin top-inducing denim and the salesperson’s rude “Can I get you another size, ma’am?” questions that sound like, “Can I get you another doughnut, fatty?” you decide to boycott jeans and invest in more pants with elastic waistbands. Every house we looked at I found a problem with, whether it was location, size or the way the air inside made my skin feel weird and jumpy. People kept telling us, “Don’t worry, you’ll know it when you find it.” Know what? I wondered. “You’ll just walk in, and you’ll know that it’s the one,” they said. Once this was in my head it made things even harder. I walked into every house we looked at expecting to have an epiphany, but I never did. In the end, the house we bought was the one with the least problems, the best neighborhood, the greatest value, and the fewest weird smells.

Once we put an offer down and signed the contract, we spent two months wondering if we had made the right decision; I still didn’t have that feeling, I didn’t know if it was “the one.” We moved in on the hottest weekend in June. After a day of hauling boxes and sweating on everything we owned, Steve and I took a break and stood in the front yard, looking our new home in the face. It had been sunny all day but suddenly the sky was tornado green and the temperature felt different at my knees than it did at my shoulders. Steve grabbed my hand.

“This is our house,” he said.
“I know. It’s so…adulty,” I said.
“Yeah, but, adulty in a good way, right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I hate it when you say “sure.” “Sure” never means sure when you say it.”
“Sure?”
“Look, we can put a beer pong table in the front yard…and Bob Marley posters on the walls…and never do the dishes…will that make it less adulty for you?”
“I don't know. I feel like the owners of this house should wear snazzy pantsuits and carry briefcases and play in the stock market and have well-trained dogs,” I said, glancing at the front window where I could see our dog Bear chewing on the curtains.
“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” he said.
“Well, don’t you kind of feel like we don’t go with this house?”
“I think it’s our job to make this house go with us,” he said. In that moment I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to smack him or kiss him, but that’s usually how I feel when I know he’s right.
“Good. I hate snazzy pantsuits,” I said.
“Me too. Let’s go inside before it rains on us.”

What followed was a week of torrential downpours. Streets were running rivers, yards were flooded pools and everyone with a basement had water or sewage coming in, everyone except us. Since the house we rented last had a lot of basement issues, we were keeping a close eye on ours, going down there every day to check for leaks, but despite the record amount of rainfall it remained dry. That’s when we heard it…drip…drop…drip, drip, drip…drop.

“I think it’s coming from the attic,” Steve said. We grabbed a flashlight and opened the secret passageway-like door that’s in the back of a closet and climbed into the attic. The dripping noises got louder, I held my breath and Steve held the flashlight.

“What. The. Hell. Is. THAT!” I said, pointing to a dark, spreading puddle where the roof meets the ground.
“Shit! Okay, no big deal, no big deal. We can handle this,” Steve said.
“By handle, you mean call someone to fix it, right?”
“Well, yeah. But for now we are going to have to fix it ourselves. Go get me some pots and pans. And some towels. And a hammer—no, a screwdriver, Phillips!”
“I hate everything about what you just said.”
“I’m not going to do anything major—I’m just going to try to keep it from leaking through ceiling,” he said.
“IT CAN LEAK THROUGH THE CEILING?!”

We’ve called roofers and contractors and they all say the same thing: we need a new ruff. I don’t know what the hell a “ruff” is, but apparently it’s going to cost us our savings. We’ve had other disasters pop up along the way, but that's all part of what makes being a homeowner "fun," according to the sarcastic assholes we call friends and family. Sometimes I think of it as getting to know a new person who has a lot of weird quirks, but sometimes I’m sober and I think of it as a monster trying to eat us. One of my friends said, “buying a house is like marrying a pickpocket,” which seems pretty accurate. Although, in our case, I think it’s more like Steve and I married a golddigger that just happens to be a 1,400-square foot Cape Cod.

It's no secret that becoming homeowners has been most gratifying for our parents, who, after years of not knowing or understanding anything, suddenly have all the answers. When something goes wrong, they are the first people we call.

Voicemail 1:
Hey, Dad! It's me...listen, when you get a chance, give me a call. We have these holes all over our yard...like, crittery rodent holes. Anyway, yeah, I don't know what they're from, but when you get a chance just call me. Okay, bye!

Voicemail 2:
Hi, Dad, it's me again. Just wondering if you got my last message. Oh, also, our kitchen sink is leaking. Should we just get down there and tighten some pipes, I mean, can you even tighten pipes? I don't get it. Okay, call me!

Voicemail 3:
Dad, it's me, where are you? I've found, like, ten spiders INSIDE today! What do I do? Exterminators are too expensive and all those sprays are toxic. So, yeah, I don't know where you are, but call your daughter back!

Voicemail 4:
DAD! We bought a desk and it won't fit through the door! Should we try to put it through the window? It looks bigger than the doorway but it's really heavy—oh, CRAP! Got to go! Call me!

Voicemail 5:
ARGHHHHHHH!

"Hello?"
"FINALLY! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? DID YOU GET MY MESSAGES? WHY HAVEN'T YOU RETURNED MY CALLS?!"
"Quinn, I was in a meeting. My phone was off for an hour, you left five messages. What's wrong?"
"Oh, an hour? Huh, well it felt like a lot longer than that. Anyway, I need your help..."

I wasn't prepared for this sudden role reversal. Now they are the ones avoiding our calls and coming up with excuses as to why they didn't call us back. Sometimes my dad even does the whole hanging up while saying goodbye thing because he can’t get me off the phone: “Yeah, okay, yep, right…okay, got to go, yeah, love you too, okay, really have to go now, uh-huh, all right…bye!” But that’s usually only after the tenth or eleventh time I've called him that day, or hour, whatever.

We’ve been living in our house for a little over a month now, and sure, sometimes it’s a monster, but everyday it becomes a little bit more our monster than it was the day before and there’s something endlessly satisfying about that. I spent eight hours working in the yard yesterday; by the end of it I was covered in scratches and bite marks, so I guess it’s debatable who worked whom, but the important point is: progress was made. At first I was trying to figure out what every plant was before I did anything but then I just decided that if I didn’t like it, I was going to pull it out, because it's my house and I can do whatever I want! Six huge bags of yard debris later, our front yard looks…clean—okay, maybe I got a little carried away and now there are some bald spots, but no big deal, I’m totally going to plant some new stuff that will look WAY better than that stupid, fancy, sharp, spiky grass that was popping out everywhere. Besides, this homeowner thing is a learning process, and sometimes I just have to figure it out as I go along. Of course, “reorganizing” $3,000 worth of landscaping the previous owner did was an expensive lesson but at least I learned something...like, that I'm still definitely allergic to poison ivy.

She take our money, well we’re in need
Yeah she's a triflin' house indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over time
That digs on me…