Things I've Learned So Far

Things you need to prepare yourself for when you're buying a house for the first time:

1. You're going to be too excited to sleep.
I'm talking little kid on Christmas Eve, night before going to Disneyland, teenager getting their first car kind of sleepless excitement. This means your judgement is going to be shit for those first few house showings.

2. You'll consider living in neighborhoods you would normally be afraid to drive through.
At some point you will probably consider square footage per dollar to be more important than your family's safety. A good realtor will save you from yourself.

3.You're going to become an expert on your city.
Taxi drivers are going to ask YOU for directions, since you'll have driven down every single street in your chosen area so many times. You'll know which are the good areas, which are the bad, and where the borders are between the two.

4.You're going to over-estimate your budget and handyman skills.
You'll tell yourself it's got a lot of potential, especially once you fix that fence, window, bathroom tile, carpet, paint, and porch. And you'll probably have to replace that water heater, water softener, stove, refrigerator and washer/dryer. But it's a great deal!

5. Your free-time is gone.
Time not spent sleeping or working will be spent driving through neighborhoods to gauge the area and look for sale signs. The remainder will be spent looking up houses on the internet, and boring your friends with house talk. They may start to avoid you. One or two will start looking for themselves and you can obsess together.

6. You're going to get your heart broken.
You almost never get the first house you make an offer on. Often you'll make an offer on several different houses you've fallen in love with, only to have your hopes crushed into powder each time until you finally find the house that loves you back.

7.You'll get by with a little help from your friends.
Once they know you're in the market, you'll be amazed at the outpouring of support, advice and references from the people you know. They'll tell you about open houses, give you referrals to realtors, offer advice about neighborhoods, and if you're lucky, help you move. Take it all in, because see #1 again.

House Hunt 3: The Search For Red Brick

I got the notice on Monday evening that the house I loved couldn't be mine. The seller had accepted another offer. Curses! They couldn't possibly love that house as much as I did! I was devastated. But it's still early in my search, so I pushed on.

That neighborhood is perfect for me, and I love the little red brick houses with their scalloped trim and fairy-tale feel.

I grabbed my trusty sidekick, Boyfriend, and we cruised up and down every street in that neighborhood, looking for "For Sale" signs. I told him, "This is it. This is our life now. Looking for signs.". When I got home I looked on the realtor's website for more that I could have missed. I'm not obsessed. I swear.

I have 3 more showings tomorrow at 9am. The search continues...

House Hunting 2: The Offering

My heart nearly stopped when I saw a new listing in my favorite neighborhood. It had previously been listed as Under Contract, but the deal had fallen through! I requested a showing on that one instantly, along with 2 others that seemed to have potential.

I got more sleep on Friday night, but Saturday was the longest workday ever. Despite being exhausted, I still didn't get to sleep before 1:30 am. I was up and moving at 7:30 on Sunday morning. I was supposed to meet up with my agent at 9:45 am, but got a text from her asking to go later, since she'd had a long night. I'm basically a nice person, and I said sure, with my heart jittering like a 5 year old's on a sugar buzz. I only texted her once for an E.T.A. Be proud of me.

We didn't meet up until about 11am, which is the time I normally roll out of bed, being a second shift worker. You have no idea the amount of restraint I had to apply to prevent myself driving to the agency office early and just waiting in the parking lot. I have my pride.

The other two houses were a definite NO, but THE house, oh yes! I was in love! I ran from room to room, gushing like a mad woman. I videotaped it. Yes, I wanted to make the offer. No, my agent didn't have any objections to this one either.

We called the seller's agent to see if they had any other offers - the answer was an unbelievable no! We rushed back to the office to write up a proposal and initial everything important. The seller had 24 hours to review it and get back to me.

I show pictures of the house to my parents, my boyfriend, my best friend. Everyone loves it. Everyone is excited.

A couple hours later I get a text: the seller has gotten another offer. Should we raise our offer?! No, the appraisal won't warrant it, we're sure. Let's see what they say, first.

The wait has just gone from awful to excruciating.

More time passes. The offer isn't rejected outright...there's just...nothing.

That was yesterday. I'm still watiing for my counteroffer, acceptance, or...rejection.

And waiting.

I hate waiting.

Shhh... Be Vewy Vewy Quiet! We're Hunting Houses!

I was just pre-qualified by my loan officer to go house hunting, and Friday I was going to look at houses with my realtor. I'm a first-time home buyer, and the excited anticipation of Thursday night almost did me in. I'm very lucky my realtor was looking out for me.

I was positively drunk on possibility and sleep deprivation, so while I had driven through the area of the first house before, and noticed it wasn't the best neighborhood, I didn't want to completely knock it down. After all, it had a lot of square footage and it was in my price range! It could be mine!

It was on a hill. The whole back yard slanted. The weirdly shaped addition to the back where the two main bedrooms were had floorboards that creaked so loud you could hear them throughout the house. There were 5 entrances into a house that was located in an area where police raid escapes might be a necessity. There was no obvious place to put a fridge.

I tried to look at its potential. It's quirky! Not a whole lot of through traffic! Look at all the square footage! Firepit! Gazebo! The garage has barn doors! Right next to a mountain park!

Meanwhile, my realtor is all, " I think this building should be condemned. There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members, the wiring is substandard, it's completely inadequate for our power needs, and the neighborhood is like a demilitarized zone."

Reluctantly, I had to agree with her, and we moved on to the next house on our list for the day. And kept on driving, because of the dicey neighborhood and the fact the house was on the corner of a busy main road (always check the area before scheduling a showing folks, to prevent wasting your time and your realtor's). Dr. Spengler called out a cheerful "Good Luck!" to the real estate agent sign in the yard and we moved on to house #3.

House #3 was in the neighborhood I really fell in love with when I first decided I wanted to buy a house back in April, so I had high hopes. Agent Realist pointed out the bullet holes in the large kitchen window, the missing stove (FHA would not approve it without one), and the weird floor plan. Again, no obvious place to put a fridge... and the backyard was the heart-breaker. The dilapidated, four foot high wood fence was falling down in sections and completely missing in others. I have dogs, so before I could even move in I would need to rebuild the fence (preferably taller, since there was NO privacy), along with buying the missing appliances and replacing a window. I don't really have that kind of money.

All I wanted to do was keep driving, hoping we could find something for sale that wasn't already under contract that maybe just hadn't hit our listings yet. I was approved! I wanted to buy a house that day! We drove around a little bit, but sadly, there was no luck there.

That evening I combed the listings again, hoping to find something else to go look at. I had to work on Saturday, but I was off Sunday and Monday, so I could still look some more this weekend!

To Be Continued...

Henry Rollins

Like many people, I occasionally have dreams about celebrities. It’s to be expected, considering how bombarded with a million types of social media we all are. Some of my dreams have included guest appearances by Penn & Teller, Wil Smith, and Bat-Man.

Henry Rollins is my personal Boogeyman. I don’t really know how this happened, as I was never a huge fan of his music back in the day, though I have on occasion appreciated his stand-up as well as some of his intelligent , well-written blog posts. I respect the man.

Somehow this translates oddly in my subconscious. I once dreamed that he was a mall-cop, and as we rode the elevator together, I flirtatiously mentioned that he was looking pretty good for his age. Clearly the man cannot take a compliment, because this caused him to chase me throughout the mall, occasionally firing his gun. Maybe it came off kind of backhanded and he’s just touchy about his age? Regardless, I dreamed Henry Rollins tried to shoot me because I thought he was attractive.

My latest dream involved me taking a couple of out of town friends to the local AZ Renaissance Festival to visit with some other friend s that worked there. In my dream, the office trailer had and upstairs where some employees had set up a couple of tattoo chairs and were giving discounted tats to other employees in their free time. I figured I’d talk to the girl I’d seen there to get an idea how much the work I wanted done would cost, and when I turned around, she was gone but there was… dun Dun DUN! Henry Rollins.

First he took a red ink pen and sketched a wicked looking skull on the back of my left hand. And while I thought it might look kind of cool if I punched somebody with it, I told him I didn’t really want a tat in such an obvious place, and not one that was random. I then showed him the crow I had tattooed on my shoulder (which I really have) and said I had thought it could be the centerpiece of a larger Halloween image, because Halloween was important to me. I thought the crow could at least be standing on a Jack-O-Lantern or something.

Mr. Rollins’ response was “No, I don’t like this idea”, because *of course* he doesn’t. He then proceeded to take a bunch of sharpies and cover my right arm in his vision of what I should get. It started off with him drawing a cartoon man’s head (which looked suspiciously like his own) wearing some red headphones. The end result was a black and rainbow striped sock looking upper arm, interspersed with what looked like a few political meme images from The 98%’s Facebook page. At the joint, he had covered up the head with black and instead made the red headphones encapsulate the numbers 98.88 fm, like it was an advertisement for a radio station.

This whole time, he’s got a grip on my arm and I can’t leave. In the middle of all this, he turns on the radio and starts bobbing his head to some 80’s punk song I’ve never heard of. My friends step in at one point and tell me they’re tired of waiting for me. I can’t leave. He won’t let me go and I’m afraid to tell him I HATE the sleeve idea he’s designed and I am desperately trying to figure out how to get out of this before he permanently commits it all with a needle. I get more and more frantic and finally wake up, because that’s the only way to escape Henry Rollins in my dreams. Every. Time.

Because my life Is some sort of comedy-drama for some unknown being, there will come a day when I will actually MEET Henry Rollins in person. I’m sure of this. And I am a little horrified that I’m either going to give him a strained laugh, like a colicky dolphin, or just turn and run for my life. And because I won’t be able to do so myself, one of you is just going to have to point him at this blog post so he’ll understand why. Nothing personal, Mr. Rollins.

Why I Don't Go to the Movies Anymore

Back when I was a teenager, my friends and I would go to the movies on a regular basis. It’s one of the few things we could do for fun in the summer while getting out of the desert sun. These days, I see maybe two movies in the theater a year, and I’m not alone in reducing my theater visits. Something needs to change in the industry, or I’m sure movie theaters are soon going to be a thing of the past.

Right now, new movie tickets cost about $9 for an adult. If you hit the matinees before 5, you can usually get in for $7 (and this varies depending on the area). So for a family of 3, you are spending about $21 just for tickets, to view this movie ONCE on the big screen. Let’s say you didn’t smuggle in your own drinks and snacks in your purse and actually pay at the theater for drinks and popcorn. At about $5 each for drinks and $7 for the big popcorn to share, there’s another $22. Candy is another $3 to $4 if you want to add one of those boxes of chocolate covered something-or-others. So we’re looking at $42 to $50 or so for the three of us to see this movie. Once.

I will concede that some movies are really great to see on the big screen. If you’re going to see a big budget special effects monster/robot smackdown like Pacific Rim, sure you want to see it larger than life. But let’s do some comparisons: According to Amazon.com, I can buy a home theater/movie projector that I can plug into my laptop for about $70 (free shipping!). All I need is a big white wall, sheet, or garage door now. If I want a bigger screen, I can pay more, but we can top out at about $190 and be a fair size.

Once a movie is released on DVD, you can usually pick it up right away for about $20. If you’re willing to wait a little while, you can usually get the digital download cheaper, or just pick it up for $5 - $10 once the excitement and demand has died down. Circle K will sell me a ThirstBuster for .87 cents. I can pick up a variety of soda 12 packs at the grocery store for about $3.50 or so. Snacks – heck I see the same boxed candy going for $1 to $2 at the grocery store.

Now, keep in mind that I only have to buy that movie projector ONCE. So for that first movie I’m spending about $95 for the three of us. We’ll call it an even $100. That’s TWO movies at the theater a year. However, buying a new movie and snacks ever after will be about $30 for three people, assuming I don’t have to buy drinks and snacks, because hey! My fridge and cupboards aren’t bare!

For the price of 4 movies a year at the theater (for just three people, about $200), I would probably watch 8 at home – and the cost wouldn’t go up if more folks wanted to come over and watch with me. And I could pause the damn thing for bathroom breaks whenever I want and not miss a single minute that I’ve paid for, like I do if It’s mid-movie in the theater. I don’t have to park. I don’t have to rush to meet movie times. I don’t have to deal with other people’s screaming children, cell phones ringing or big head in my way. I can even rewatch the movies I already have on the big screen! Heck, someone else can buy the movie and bring it over to watch.

In the mad rush to make profits off DVD sales, many movies come out on DVD within only a few months of being released at the theater – and they certainly don’t stay in the theater for that long anymore, anyway. Why am I going to the theater at all anymore?

Home.

They say owning your own home is the American Dream.  It’s certainly one of mine. Maybe it’s because I moved around a lot growing up.  Maybe it’s a nesting thing.  Perhaps it’s one of those fantasies we grow up with, like meeting Prince Charming or being a Rock Star – an American fairy tale.  All I know is that for a long, long time, all I’ve really wanted is a place that was MINE.

Not just any house will do though. I have an obsession with restoring old homes.  I can spend hours on OldHouses.com and envision how I would paint and decorate and landscape the hell out of one of those Queen Annes (in fact, I’m doing it right now, while I write this blog). I just spent hours on youtube watching episodes of This Old House from 2007 where they restored and remodeled a house in Massachusetts that was built in 1897.  I have subscriptions to This Old House magazine and Better Homes and Gardens. I pick up the occasional copy of a variety of other home-related magazines, too.  I could watch HGTV all day long. It’s ridiculous.  Do I have any related carpentry skills? Hell, no. But I’m familiar with all the Do-it-Yourself instructional workshops available at the local Home Depot, and I have books. And the internet -oh, how I LOVE the internet!

I currently rent a 1200 square foot home that was built in 1986. It’s…a house. But it’s not MINE and it’s far too new to have any of the real character I enjoy in the old Victorians. I also have rocks in both the front and back yards, with limited desert landscaping. Meh. I think previous posts have covered exactly how I feel about the desert. I do have a limited amount of freedom with improvements I can make to the house if I want, but who wants to pump a bunch of money into someone else’s house?  

So I spend a lot of time looking at houses for sale on Zillow.com and other sites, hoping to someday make my dream a reality. And as I do, I think a lot about what home means to me. And I wonder what home means to others. I see a lot of investment homes. There are still a lot of houses that appear to have been bought just to renovate and flip to make a profit.  You can usually see their sales history on the websites. It’s crazy, you’ll see some houses that were owned by the same people for like 30 years, then flipped 3 times. Are they truly investor homes, or is there something seriously wrong with the place? Is it haunted? Or is there just a constant stream of people who have Goldilocks syndrome, still on the quest for the one that’s “Just Right”? (I’m looking at you, Mom)

I think of a home as an extension of yourself. You improve it and decorate it to your own tastes and lifestyle.  You decorate it for the holidays (or not) and invite all your friends and family to share time with you there. You raise your kids and your pets there. Maybe it’s even where you work.  I can’t imagine buying a place you didn’t love, and I certainly can’t imagine wanting to sell a place you love every couple years.  I look through these houses and it makes me sad that for some of these people, they surely feel as I do, but the economy and their financial situation is pushing them out of the place they love.  Pushing them out of themselves.

Maybe I’m just overly sentimental. For some folks, a house is just a place to store your stuff. But is it a home?