House

No, not that house.

I'm talking about A house.

As you may or may not know, Xteen and I have been house hunting for the last five months and haven't exactly found the house of our dreams (see #3 of this post for some of the crap we have had the pleasure of seeing).

Some have come very close, but ultimately fell short of what we really wanted to settle for.

Until Monday.

Our agent, I'm sure, was growing fairly frustrated with us. We had probably looked at about 30 houses in like 10 different towns ranging from 10 miles away to where we are now, to like 35 miles away. I started to think that we were getting a little too picky. But we figured that, if we were going to spend an ass-load of money, we better get something we really liked and didn't have to do too much with. Our list, picky or not, contained the following:

• 3 bedrooms (We like to entertain the idea of being entertainers and having folks crash at our pad. Oh yeah, also for the possibility of little Dims running around at some point)


• At least one and a half baths. In no way does this imply that Xteen takes about as much time to get ready in the morning as it would take for me to watch "Waterworld", "The Postman", and then write a 45-page paper explaining what rhubarb pie means to me, but Xteen takes about as much time to get ready in the morning as it would take for me to watch "Waterworld", "The Postman", and then write a 45-page paper explaining what rhubarb pie means to me.


• Closet space. We both have a lot of clothes. I'm a t-shirt fiend. What can I say? I'm a slave to fashion.


• A two-car garage. Our agent attempted to talk us out of this one. "You'll just clutter it up with stuff!" Uh-uh. We live in the Northeast. There's this season up here called Winter. It's treating us very nicely right now, kinda like Ted Bundy. You know something's up. And nothing sucks more than getting up early, knowing you have a shitty commute to work, and having to spend a half hour cleaning off and shoveling out your car after Old Man Winter decides to vomit about 2 and a half feet of snow on you. And that doesn't even count the times you come out to a skating rink on your windows that you need a pick axe to get through. Hey, that reminds me...read this post about stuff like this.


• Air conditioning. Our agent attempted to talk us out of this one. "It's waste! Just open your windows!" Uh-uh. We live in the Northeast. There's this season up here called Summer. And it can get hot sometimes. And when it gets hot, Xteen gets, let me put this as maturely as possible....whiny. And Dim likes whiny about as much as he would like watching "Waterworld", "The Postman", and then writing a 45-page paper explaining what rhubarb pie means to him.


• A good school system. This was Xteen's. I don't really care about stuff like this. I'm not on the 30-year plan or anything. I have my worthless piece of paper from a higher learning institution. I'm done. I don't need to take papier mache classes at the elementary school to keep my noodle sharp. That's what the Learning Channel is for.


• A finished or finishable basement. Every man needs a Mantown. Besides, Xteen is growing tired of our apartment being adorned with my music posters and collector figurines. They're not dolls.


• Town sewer. We wavered on this a little. Right off the bat, the idea of shitting where we eat (and having the shit stay there) really skeeved us out. But we listened to people who have private septic systems and they are totally cool with them. So, we started to come around on them. Moreso out of necessity, since most of the places we were looking out where we could afford (the stereotypical "Boonies") barely had outhouses, let alone something as technologically advanced as a giant tank buried in the backyard that holds all of our shit. Then, I just imagined all kinds of horror stories with it. Ours would malfunction, resulting in a volcano of #1, #2, and dead insects wadded up in toilet paper erupting from a hole in the ground and spilling all over my car (which wasn't in a garage, because we listened to our fucking agent). And don't sit there and tell me, "Dim! We have a septic system and that sort of thing doesn't happen!" Look. I saw "Meet the Parents". Don't bullshit me, OK, Mr. Jinx?


• A deck. Doesn't everyone want a deck? Doesn't everyone envision sitting out on the deck with a beer after work on a Friday in the summertime and just relaxing and breathing in the fresh air? Until the Crap Geyser erupts, sending you running for cover into your stifling, non-air conditioned sweatbox? I know I do.


• A decent yard. We would see all of these houses that advertised like an acre and a half of land, which sounded very inviting, until we actually saw it in person. At which time we realized that 0.01 acres was a patch of grass under which the Tank o' Shit was buried and the rest of the land immediately sloped down, at a horrifying angle, into a crevasse of Tolkien-esque Middle Earth. I just want a nice little lawn to mow. I don't want to be fighting fucking Orcs while I try scraping glaciers off of my windshield.

See? Is that too much to ask for?

We thought so up until Monday.

Our agent called telling us we had to see this house. She sent us a link and I wasn't very impressed at all. The pictures of the inside were "OK", but I borderline abhorred the outside. It was called a "contemporary", but was built in the mid-70s. That gave me a slushy headache. Like saying, "new wooly mammoth". Or something equally as oxymoronic.

Reluctantly, we went. It was the last house we saw in a day of showings. I wasn't expecting much and Xteen and I were starting to grow tired of the whole process.

We pull up to the house and, despite its boxiness (hey, it was the 70s, but I can safely believe that Mike Brady didn't design this house), it actually represented itself a lot better in real-life. It was at the end of a dead-end street. It had a nice, level yard. I saw no evidence of Hobbits. All good so far.

Then, we went inside and my immediate words were "Holy shit". It was awesome. I'll spare you the details, but tell you that the house has everything on our list except for the air conditioning. (I'm warming up by watching Ben Hur and writing a novella about foie gras). The inside was very artsy and updated. The kitchen rocked (no gas cooking, unfortunately, but we can deal). We LOVED it immediately.

It was out of our price range, even after the sellers had recently dropped it a considerable amount.

So, we crafted a lower, but not insulting offer, which was appreciated and understandably rejected. We thought to ourselves...do we really want this house? Would we be devastated if we lost it? Should we tighten the belt a little more and see if we can pull this off? We countered with what we thought was as much as we can afford and still have a little cushion at the end of every month.

Our agent calls us back saying the wife was OK with the offer, but the husband made these decisions and he was travelling and tough to get ahold of. Where's Gloria fucking Steinem when you need her? Pull the trigger, lady!!!

Anyway, another kink in the whole thing was that they had scheduled a lot of activity on the house this weekend; showings an open house, even a second showing. We really could lose this if we didn't play it right.

Our agent suggested we offer their asking price and get it wrapped up before they had a chance to get competing bids. She assured us that we were not overpaying for it (she's been brutally honest about everything so far, so we completely trust her).

I called our mortgage guy and found out that the difference between our last offer and paying full asking price would turn out to be about $50 a month over the 30 year loan period.

I then called Xteen:

"If I told you we would lose out on this house because we couldn't find $50 more a month for it, would you be devastated?"

She said, "If we can't possibly dig up $50 a month for a house we desperately want, we're stupid."

So, we did it.

It was touch-and-go for awhile as we basically wanted them to leave all of their stuff behind (they had great taste and we have practically nothing to furnish the thing with). Ultimately, we settled on things, and we aren't getting much from them at all, but I really don't care. We have our house. And we are thrilled.

Now, I just have to come up with $50 more dollars a month. If you're looking for me, I'll be turning tricks down at the naval yard.

Anyone got any furniture they don't want anymore?

- Dim.