Crossing the Threshold

We’ve closed. For better or worse the yellow house is ours. There’d been a delay. We found a zero point loan, they couldn’t get the assessor in, Escrow was slow, some papers were missing… the regular drill. But, about a week after we’d hoped, the keys arrived and voila; no more second guessing, no more anxiety (insert ironic laugh) it’s over. We officially live in the land of the posh. We have started a new chapter in our lives; the fixing up chapter. We’ll call this chapter: THANK GOD FOR JAVIER.

Packing

There was a time when I could stuff everything I owned into the trunk of my ’66 Valiant and drive off into the sunset, or sunrise, depending on what the situation called for. I crossed the country several times, water bottle poised over radiator to prevent overheating, reveling in the freedom. It was good thing. And, it meant moving required only a few hours and a full tank of gas.

Eventually I graduated to a small U-haul. But, still, a half day, max. Sigh. I’ve since acquired all sorts of stuff. A lot of it is good. I’ve traveled a bit and brought home some nifty nick knacks filled with memories; netsuke, Inuit carvings, Turkish inlay, those breakable thingies from Italy. And, I’ve got tons of photos. None of my most precious possessions are terribly cumbersome; they’ve all fit in a suitcase at one time, and probably could again, if I was seriously determined. They’re manageable, and well worth toting to the new house. The books are worth bringing too, although the husband is less convinced. I love books. I spend way too much money on them. Did you know that a bookcase equals more than eight very full boxes of books? Currently my garage is full of books. My first order of business in the new house (once the blue carpet is pulled) is to head to Ikea and pick up a truck load of those $60 bookcases. I know they’re cheap and don’t last, but we’ve got a roof to buy; real cabinetry will have to wait.

Besides the books, there are wedding gifts; the china that we use, the china that we don’t use, the glasses under the stairs that we forgot we owned. There’s the furniture, most of which I could leave behind but can’t afford to replace. And there’s the kidlette too, of course. Although, as children go she doesn’t take up all that much space, she’s never been one for disposable toys.

So there it is. Consumerism won. In one decade I went from a car trunk of necessities to a 11,000 lbs of stuff, and what once took a few hours to pack now takes, well…a bit more.

Onward

(Goodbye fair, remodeled-with-sweat-and-tears, love you so much, seriously going to miss appliances that work, kitchen)

Everyone knows that two of the most stressful things you’ll ever do is sell and buy a house. Selling our house wasn’t so bad, so far as those things go. Our agents had a solid strategy, a system really. They come in; they make the house perfect, hire a stager, put in flowers, fix EVERYTHING (at our expense, of course), price it low, real low, and spread the word. The idea is to attract a lot of interest, multiple offers, which will in turn drive the price up to where it should be and as a result the house will sell at market really quickly. It made sense, but it felt risky. In a bottomed out market with threats of a double a dip looming, it probably was risky. It certainly wasn’t cheap. The house looked realllly good. But, it worked. We had full price offers at the brokers open. If we were normal, we’d have been ecstatic I’m sure. But mostly we felt we’d left a whole lot of money on the table. We accepted offers through the weekend and a small bidding war ensued. Eventually we picked a winner, the highest bid, of course, although perhaps not my first choice of buyer. (I’d have gone with the people with the dog or the ones with the kid, not the overly demanding, seriously unlikable, first time homeowners) but regardless, it was basically off the market in less than a week and we needed to find a new house, like, soon. We negotiated a three month rent back to buy us time. A week, or should we say a sleepless eternity, later; just as our wise agent kept saying we would, we found the ideal property within our price range in a neighborhood we’d never dreamt of owning in. Ahh happy ending. Doesn’t that make it sound simple? We’re a regular HGTV half hour program I tell ya. Not.

We’re the worriers. Ask our friends. They probably won’t reveal details, they’re loyal folk, but they’ll give a telling, sarcastic, laugh and hand us a glass of wine. It’s not that we’re type A. Type A’s are organized. Type A’s don’t worry about anything because all their problems are neatly listed. We’re more like B+1/2’s, we’ve anticipated every possible issue, figured out multiple solutions, agonized accordingly, but in the end probably wrote it down on a piece of paper that we somehow misplaced and are frantically searching for. We stress. Wine does help. The new house has a patio that will be perfect for sitting out on sunny afternoons and sipping wine. I visualize that patio in all it’s glory. I’ll need that patio. Because when the inspector’s report came in, it was pretty obvious that the ideal house was a tad short of perfect.

Nine Days to Closing

People move to Southern California for all sorts of reasons. They come for the industry or the weather or simply because it’s the last place to go before running into the ocean. Other people, like me, just end up here.

My first impression of the LA basin was from an airplane. It was a brown day and the marine layer was so thick that the first buildings visible on the approach to LAX were just past the 405. I looked down upon the industrial muck, compared it to my beloved San Francisco, to the lush Midwest, the idyllic Northwest, to my compass New York, to London, Istanbul, Rome, and wondered how anyone could possibly call it home. I turned to my flying partner and exclaimed in a voice as sure as youth that I would never live in such a place. Never is a cursed word.

More than a decade has passed since I moved here. Blame it on a boy; ahh love. Southern California does have good weather, and the ocean. I like the ocean. My husband is a beach kind of guy, a sports kind of guy, an engineer; a South Bay kind of person. So, despite my hope that we could pick up and head a smidgen north to Pasadena or Silver Lake or any other more 'cultured' locale we have remained south of the airport. It's not bad.  We have good friends. We’re near the beach. My daughter’s school is awesome. We’re close to the freeway. All in all it’s actually pretty good. But, it’s not me. So ten years on, we’ve sold our dubplex, the one he bought before we met, and are moving to a new neighborhood, still south of the airport, but one with a little more art and a lot more trees.

Our new house is a fixer. Even with the steep decline in the housing market, this is still SoCal. If you want to leverage yourself into a good neighborhood you’re going to start with a fixer and you’re probably going to pay enough for it to make your EKG abnormal. But our (crazy expensive) fixer has potential. It’s a nice family house. Tricked out, it will be down right bucolic. But more importantly, with some creativity, it could possibly be home.