housebuying

Holy shit. We've bought a house. Holy fucking shit.

My expletives are a little premature. Until we've waived the conditions, we can still walk away.

But in my opinion, the inspection was a home run. Our inspector, a different inspector from last time, was impressed with the house. I was impressed with the house. The real test will be Steve going over the inspector's report and having a look at the back unit where he and Shelley and the Little Dog will live.

Based on my extremely rigorous sample of two, I say that building inspectors are kind, efficient and thorough men. This one reminded me quite a bit of the Great Dater. I didn't get it quite at first, since he's a generation older, with a head of close-cropped grey hair and a neatly trimmed brush mustache. I had just a vague feeling of familiarity. Again, it was the hands - one particular gesture that riffled quick through my memories and came back with a warm feeling.

Of course, there are some things wrong with the houses. The century old foundation of the front house is going to leak. The water pressure's low. The front house attic needs to be vented properly. The water pipe from the house to the street is lead (ditto on the street water pipe).

Whenever something like those last two came up, I say "Okay, ballpark, how much is it going to cost to fix?" And he'd say something like "Well, if the city's already done the street pipe, then you're looking at, oh, fifteen" and here my heart fell into my shoes "hundred."

And it flew back up into my chest and burst into crimson blooms of joy.

I was so fucking happy that I almost said "Fifteen hundred?! That's nothing! Everything that was wrong with the other place was one more zero more expensive than that!"

However, I did not. My agent was standing right there, and though she knows that there was a possible other deal, we have silently agreed to pretend there never was.

In just over one hour, I will be going to another house inspection. I have everyone I know crossing their fingers for us. We really really want to own this house - these houses, rather, since it's two separate houses on one property. They're built against each other, but are entirely separate.

When we first started looking that would have been ideal. Their space, my space, very very separate space. To start, we really wanted a side-by-side duplex. Both sides with access to the backyard, lots of space inside, maybe my side would be divided into apartments and we could rent one out. But the only SxS's that came up were fucking dodgy and even more fucking expensive.

So almost everything we looked at was up-down, and we didn't think that was ideal. Little Dog really doesn't like stairs, and in almost all of the up-downs we looked at, the Ess's would have been in the upper unit(s). Not perfect. There was also the fact that in most of the units, the main floor unit (mine) was gorgeous and well kept and the upper unit was, well, generally not. Not perfect, but it's what was out there.

And then the more I envisioned how those spaces would work, saw us all living in the same house, the more I really wanted that. The more it came to seem like family all under one roof.

Because that is what this is about for me. Building family.

Mostly. Of course, finances play into it. I can't afford a home in Centretown by myself, and I won't leave my neighbourhood - my community - for the sake of owning. I love my current apartment, and I don't think that paying someone rent is throwing money down the toilet any more than I think buying food is throwing money down the toilet.

Especially when I do the math and realize how much money I will be giving the bank over the next 21.1 years.

Especially when buying food is literally throwing money down the toilet.

Buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can do. It completely disrupts your life in a way that moving apartments and looking for a job (the former top two activities on the list of things that stress me out) don't. Part of it is situational, I'm sure, with one of us here and two of us in Halifax. Shelley has thanked me a number of times for taking this on, and I brush it off. Not because it hasn't been stressful and disruptive, because it has, but because it's been equally stressful and disruptive for them. Just differently.

But we're in it, and we're dealing each in our own way,* and it looks like the deciding is almost done. The agreements have been signed, the financing has been firmed, and if it doesn't fail on inspection, and please please please let this be an easy pitch, we will be waiving our conditions in the near future.

And, one roof or two, starting to build a life together.

*For example, Steve's facebook status often seems to be "Steve is stressed and going out to hit people with sticks." In martial arts class.

Two-thirds of the way through the inspection, Shelley and I started eating the meringues. I’d cadged them from one of her co-workers to give to my co-workers, but the growing list of major problems with what we'd been calling "our house" made the sweetness call louder and louder. I’d given them a thought or two starting with the electrical panel, but then I’d adjust to each new wrong thing and the thought would pass.

Looking back, I shoulda known it was all over the moment Shelley said “Are those meringues handy?”

I liked our home inspector right off; he reminded me of my brother. Not in looks – Mark is dark-haired and -eyed while Dave shares the genes that give me sandy hair and hazel eyes. Mark is barrel chested and stocky where Dave is thin and wiry. But in spirit? Yes. Both in the trades, intelligent, hard workers. Warm people, nice smiles. Guy guys, very masculine, but with a generous softness. The occasional flamboyant flick of a wrist.

He explained the bit of the house and what he was doing in simple terms but not like he was talking to simpletons. He muttered under his breath a bit. When he started railing at the nincompoops who’d built the third floor in a shoddy manner, he stopped himself. “Well, they’re not here to defend themselves. It’s too bad.”

I think he meant about the shifting third floor, not that he wanted to get into a debate about the relative merits of reinforcing rafters before creating rooms out of dormers.

So we’re not communal home owners, not yet, not that house. It was disappointing, and it took more out of me than I was expecting it would. I wanted the search to be over. I was ready to stop trolling the net and settle down, not with the perfect house, but with the good enough house.

But that house? No, not with the house we started calling “that money pit on [redacted].”

And on with the showings.

Seems like in the next few weeks, Shelley and Steve and I will be homeowners. There's many a slip, yadda yadda, but it's likely.

Stealing words from Steve's last email: Viva la commune!

This is what the stress has been for. I knew that even as I was feeling like my head might pop off, but now that we've a few days calm, I'm feeling it.

In fact, I'm about to snap the laptop shut and head out to the airport to meet Shelley in NYC. I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait. I am going to see her and grab her and give her a big long squeeze of excitement. And probably get a little teary.

I am so fucking excited that I get to live with them, and their Little Dog too.

The plan was to write more about the nature of family and friendship and the owning of things big and little, but all those last minute going-on-vacation house jobs kept extruding from unexpected corners, and here it is 1:38. I need to put on my boots and head out for slightly warmer pastures.

The past 24 hours have been a very difficult stretch indeed.

I had resigned myself to never owning a house. I won't live outside of a very small area in Ottawa, bounded by the Queensway on the south, Laurier to the north, Bank to the east and Preston to the west. And though I make a good salary, I can't afford to buy a place in that square by myself.

Though it was never only the money. I don't want to take care of a house by myself. I don't like yardwork. I like the idea of gardening, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't follow up on it. I don't want roommates and a partner, well, I'm not a big fan of waiting around for someone else to do something.

I put the house-owning idea out of mind. I love my apartment anyway, my street is great, my landlord is great, I love my neighbour. So I figured I had it pretty damn good.

Then I poked around in why I felt the need to own. There's the financial argument, but really that wasn't it. It was sentimental, why I wanted to own. It was part of the "that's what you're supposed to do" stuff of growing up middle-class. I have resisted that indoctrination in many other areas of my life. I damn well wasn't going to put myself into 20 years of debt just for that.

And then Shelley and Steve decided to move back to Ottawa. I was ecstatic about just that fact. And then Shelley suggested we all look for a duplex together. I was ecstatic over the moon.

I'm still really excited, don't get me wrong. But the reality of owning, and the worry of buying a house on behalf of two people who won't see it until after they've plonked down their hundreds of thousands of dollars? That has tempered the unbounded joy I was feeling at being able to live with Shelley and Steve.

Looking for a house is like internet dating. Seeing the pictures, they're beautiful, great bones, brilliant descriptions - everything fits! we're perfect for each other! I'd get all a-twitter that this might be the one, that we could maybe stop looking, that I could stop reminding myself to breathe deeply and stretch into this space that would soon be mine.

And then the disappointment, over and over and over again, my heart a little less stretchy each time. The photos were white lies, too much work for too much money. Not enough space for too much money. A bad fit, each time. After all that, nothing, no houses - the lull before the spring realty storm.

Hit it did. Yesterday was the most stressful day I have had since the day at work I had to go lie on my back in Confederation Park for 20 minutes watching the clouds move.

Thank god for yoga. I kept hearing Jamine's voice in my head. She talks a lot, and importantly, about yoga off the mat. All very well to be able to grab your toes, but how useful is that kind of stretch, what good is knowing how to breathe into tension if you can't do it, as she says, at the dinner table?

So I did the hausasana. Every time I thought my head my pop off like a mutilated Barbie's, I would hear Jamine's voice and I would take a deep breath, using it to search out the stress, using it loosen the tension and breathe a least a few of those molecules back out.