So we live in a house now. A real live house that we own. Nutsy! What in reality was two and a half months of sweat and red tape and paperwork, in retrospect seems like a few days of rushing and packing and signing. Not that that's much better. Though I'm confident that it was and will be entirely worth it, I will not look forward to buying a house in the anything-like-near future. I'm sure that if we're able to do it with a regular loan and keep FHA many many miles away from the process, it will all be quick and painless. On the other hand, FHA is the reason we're in a house at this point. An FHA loan is a really pleasant thing for people much more patient than I.

I'm making a mission of recruiting friends to live in our new neighborhood. It's a fantastic collection of houses built in the nineteen twenties and thirties. They're quirky and beautiful and exceedingly cheap--the area is beginning to be built up and older houses are being renovated very rapidly. I love our house. I do not, however, harbor much love toward whoever was supposed to be taking care of the place last. We bought it from an elderly couple who'd lived there since 1969. By the time they sold it they were too feeble to care for the place, but if any of their many, nearby, adult children had given a damn, they wouldn't have had to live in squalor. We are unpleasantly surprised almost every day by some weird and absolutely moronic thing that has been done to the place--- Almost all of the following things we have taken care of one way or another, but even thinking about them burns me up a bit...

Exhibit A - GUM. Yes. Chewing gum. At one point, long ago, there was a brat living here who chewed mass quantities of gum, and stuck it heedlessly in a dozen impossible places. One bedroom had a solid line of ancient gum mashed onto the hardwood floor right along what could only have been the edge of a bedside. I've found gum on the tiles in the kitchen, stuck under windowsills, door frames, and on various pieces of furniture that were left behind. I don't care if that brat is 56 years old now, he or she is still "that damn gum-chewing kid."

Exhibit B - Nails. Yes. The kind that are hammered into things. Except that vast numbers of nails seem to have been hammered half-way into various door frames, stairs, floorboards, etc. Then the hammerer got tired, or perhaps the nail bent a bit, because whoever it was gave up and whacked the rest of the nail to the side and hammered it down that way. As a result there are nails sticking out of wherever you least expect it. I scoured the stairs with a hammer, pulling dozens of blossoming nails. They weren't in anything particular, and weren't nailed in far enough to make a difference anyway. Halfway up the stairs, I had mostly filled a paper cup with nails of a thousand different shapes and sizes. Damn that gum-chewing kid. I imagined him or her attempting to ease the sneaking out at night process by "fixing" the squeaks on the stairs. (didn't work, by the way. The stairs still have that great, creaky, built in 1928 sound.) I just can't see that an adult would be incompetent and stupid to do a "job" that way. But then again, several adults ignored or failed to notice all those nails for years and years. So which is worse?

Exhibit C: "C" is for contact paper, which the previous owners used to cover an entire kitchen--cabinets, counter, back splash--you name it. (in an awful dark "wood" grain.) That layer rested on three other layers of equal awfulness. I peeled them all away to reveal the beautiful original tile back splash, which (perhaps thanks to the contact paper, though I'd never like to admit it) was in almost perfect condition. "C" is also for...uh, other sticky stuff, like duct tape, masking tape, scotch tape and electrical tape, which was used in great unorganized wads to solve perplexing problems like a doorknob that wiggles because the screws are loose. Never mind tightening the screws, just wind some twine around it and then create a monolith of gummy various tapes to hold it in place for the next 34 years. Yes. That is the way of the house.

All that said, I have to grudgingly thank the former owners for never renovating and living like pigs because inevitably, we were able to afford the house because of it. Also, we are fortunate to have ALL the original fixtures. there are some whimsical chandelier-type lights in the dining room and living room, and in every bedroom there are intricate little ceiling fixtures that just need a good stripping and scrubbing. Darn it all, I love waking up and looking at our bedroom ceiling with that pretty little fixture there. We'll get around to reviving them eventually. Lots of "sweat equity" in this house. The Boy refinished all the oak floors, and now they look like silk. The second floor and most of the first floor is now spic and span... and although I managed to tear down the lurid wallpaper and paint the walls, I fear to tackle only the kitchen, mostly because the cupboards under the sink are so full of dirt, grease, hairs, and mouse turds that I shudder to think of it. I'm also avoiding the kitchen because at this point we have about 12 square inches of counter space, no drawers, and almost no cupboard space. I can't unpack because I have nowhere to put things. Again, eventually, we'll tear out the cupboards, which are nothing special, and, saving the tile backsplash, replace and expand everything. That's quite a ways off though. That's lots of money right there.

Mike and Wendy came over to warm the house tonight, and after eating at our favorite Vietnamese place we watched Tampopo. That's a hard movie to watch on an empty stomach. Even full of fantastic curry chicken, I still salivated during the "proper way to eat noodles" scene. Ed had bought a pack of pumpkin ale, and they turned out to be a perfect pleasant surprise to match a film full of the joy of savoring food. At first sip it tasted like a nice light ale, but after a second or so, the full round taste of the pumpkin and spices hit the back of the mouth, and it was like drinking autumn. yum.

It must have made me sleepy, because I'm drifting off right... now.