Happy House-iversary, and O...us, too. =)

Today is the anniversary of not just 36 years of marriage, but also 9 years of home ownership. I remember sitting at the real estate office at the little table there and receiving the house keys. Geoff and I looked at each other and both of us said something about what a gift we were giving ourselves, half jokingly. Thirty years of mortgage payments-- woohoo! We came late to home ownership, mostly due to job insecurities and my own reticence to take on something I was not sure we'd be able to manage, if things went poorly for us financially. In hindsight, nothing is ever guaranteed, so we likely could have taken the plunge a little earlier in the game. Twenty-eight years of renting-- we had a decent apartment, but it was in terrible need of repairs, and the landlord was not hopping onto that wagon all that quickly. The final straw was when my foot went through the bedroom floor--too many years of damp and water and, apparently, a leaking pipe had rotted the floor boards beneath. 

Couple that with a bathroom tub that leaked, then a poorly installed shower unit-- it was past time to go. We got lucky; a house we'd looked at before suddenly dropped in price, right into the range we were approved for (which was not a whole helluva lot, to be honest). I was at the Frost Place at the poetry conference at the end of June, spotty cell service and all, telling my husband to make an offer for asking price. We needed a home, and at the price it was going for, this one would not last long. Granted, it had been on the market for about three years, but the reduced price was going to catch some notice.

Then came an entire summer of sitting inside the house, beautiful weather be damned, doing all the paperwork, faxing, phoning, and packing. It was sometimes a little disheartening, especially when our paperwork was sitting on some doofus' desk for two weeks while she was on vacation. We got final word that our closing would, in fact, happen, at about 3:30 the day before. 

Was I a little panicky? Sure, I was. I had to go back to work the following week. My house was in boxes. Instead of taking an orderly month to move in, Geoff had us up and hopping, all moved in, in less than three days. The day before I had to report back for teacher PD day, I was not sure where I'd be sleeping-- but Geoff, and a tireless crew of a few friends and Meg, got it all done. I was flabbergasted and, to be honest, really, really tired-- but we had a home of our own. 

And it's been pretty good, so far. Yes, there are myriad projects that need doing, and I'm always worried that the window sills are going to rot away before we get a chance to scrape and paint them. The screens still have huge tears in them upstairs. And the kitchen linoleum is a disaster--the prior owner had put down really cheap stuff, and it's a mess. And the paint on the cabinets is slowly washing off, because it was not done properly, and it was cheap paint. But that's home ownership, right? The projects will take time, and I hope most of them will get done. But we have a home, it's pretty solid, and I'm writing this daily note to you while looking out at the gorgeous crabapple tree we planted in the front yard the next spring. It was a tiny little thing when we got it, but it's flourished. And, in most ways that matter, so have we.

Have a good day,

C