I knew this day would come, eventually. I knew this was a post I 'd have to write, eventually. I tried to prepare for it as best I could, and now that day has arrived.
*sigh*
We bought a house.
And by "we", I mean" the boyfriend". I had nothing to do with it. The house in LA was in my name and when we lost it in a short sale I became persona non grata to the US banking industry (The Nigerians still seem quite fond of me thuough, judging by the e-mail). My credit is ruined, I probably weigh more than my FICO score. All my credit cards were cancelled and now the only plastic I carry is a debit card and a supermarket club card, and that's actually registered to one of the dogs (I don't like people tracking what I buy and I still get the perks. My little dog got a free subscription to Sunset Magazine and I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it more than she did.)
But I digress. Back to the house.
When the boyfriend first proposed this cockamamie scheme of buying a house I thought he was mad. I know it made a certain amount of sense from his perspective. A year and a half of job searching in LA and other civilized lands had led nowhere. He now had a job in Bakersfield that he was actually enjoying and doing well with and making decent money. Homes were so cheap in Bako that owning actually saved us several hundred dollars a month over renting. It seemed... rational.
But it was still Bako, and I was still operating under the assumption we were still trying to get the hell out. But I could tell by the crazed look in his eye that this was a matter that wasn't up for discussion. I've learned from experience in situations like this to just play along and hope the fever burns itself out. And for the first couple of weeks I thought it would do just that.
Since he was going to have to swing this deal all on his own, we started looking at foreclosures. Luckily for him, the San Joaquin Valley is the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis in California and there was plenty to choose from. Almost every house for sale in Bako is a foreclosure, but the thing you learn very quickly is that people who lose their homes in foreclosure aren't very happy. I'd go so far as to say they're angry. Holes punched in walls, doors kicked off their hinges, windows shattered. Everything that wasn't nailed down had been stolen, as well as quite a bit that was. Missing toilets, kitchens stripped of cabinets. One house was even missing all the baseboards and door trim.
It was becoming very discouraging. For him.
For me? Not so much.
But a funny thing happened after the first couple of weeks.
First of all, the caliber of the houses went up dramatically. So much so that we ended up putting an offer on a house. We were outbid the next day and the boyfriend was crushed. I wasn't. Although the house was great, it was located on "Snowflake Court". There's no way in hell I was going to live on "Snowflake" in Bakersfield. I would've had to get a PO Box. But still, the houses we were looking at were nice enough that I could actually picture ourselves living here.
And the second thing that happened was with my job.
I had actually grown to love it. Go figure.
I had taken it out of desperation and in the initial weeks I hated it. But soon I found the work challenging and fun. For the first time in years I was actually feeling, dare I say it... creative. And the nicest thing about it was the freedom. For twenty years I'd watched my work be put through the middle management meat grinder, with every low level executive putting their personal stamp on the process. The final product was usually so butchered I rarely took credit for it. But when I approached my Bako boss with my first big project, girding for the criticism and rejection I was used to, I almost had an aneurysm when he said...
"If you like it, it's fine. That's what we pay you for".
Imagine that? I'd never heard that before. I could definitely live with that.
So there you go. I was onboard. We looked at houses and several seemed promising. Ideally we wanted to stay in our current neighborhood. We'd really grown to love it's Brady Bunch, Carter era charm. It was close to everything and walkable, as long as you had a map and were good with mazes. But the houses in this neighborhood were way over the budget.
And then...
I was walking the dogs one day and noticed a house around the corner had just come on the market. The front yard was overgrown but the house appeared to be in good shape. And the price, shockingly, fell right in our sweet spot. We arranged a showing and fell instantly in love with it. It hadn't been ravaged and the only apparent fault with it was the elderly woman who had owned it loved wallpaper. REALLY loved wallpaper. That alone was going to be a project. But despite it all, the boyfriend put in an offer, it was accepted and we entered escrow in October.
Of course, three days later I was laid off.
I assumed, for whatever reason, that that would put the brakes on the home purchase. But it was then that I learned that I was on a runaway train, one where I was only a hapless passenger. As I mentioned before, the boyfriend was buying this all on his own and he wasn't about to let a little thing like my unemployment stop the presses.
So here we are, 60 days later. The house closed yesterday and he finally got the keys.
The house isn't without it's problems. For example, here's our "spa"...
If only all of life's problems were so easy to fill in and cover over.
I still haven't quite figured out how to fill in the massive gaping hole that was my career, but it appears in the near term I'll be filling it with a lot of peeled wallpaper. I've been designated the home fixer. I guess if I had to be unemployed, now would be the time. We have three weeks to get the house livable.
And by "we" I mean "I".
Oh, and the best part? It's across the street from Jim!
