one more quick note on homes

this morning i found out that the second offer on the house was for more than i can afford, so this is not my house after all. i'm a little disappointed but not as much as i expected. i believe there are two reasons for this:

1. reorganizing my current living space has made it much more livable
2. as i wrote about yesterday, home is not a building, it's a feeling, and i am learning to disassociate that feeling from "place" and instead carry it inside of me

this does not mean i will stop looking. i do believe my house is still out there and we will find each other. i am in no real hurry, and i need to trust the universe.

so there we are -- closure for the two weeks focused on home as sanctuary. time to move on to the next topic and let the universe work its magic in the background.

the meaning of home

my apartment is clean, well, mostly, and completely rearranged. the dining alcove now holds my red chenille couch, my grandparents' coffee table and a shiny new imac. and in the living room, my books, my sewing machine, my desk and if it works, soon, my small dining room table and chairs. the tv is still here, but not for long. yes, i am getting in my dying media hours while i can. i will be donating the tv and dvd player to goodwill as soon as i can find someone to help me move them. the whole place feels more open and more suited to the life i want to be living. but that's not what i wanted to write about.

over the weekend i went back to look at the house. it's not a perfect house but it feels like the right house. it feels like my house.

i talked to the realtor for a long time. he told me about the house. he told me about the neighborhood. he told me about the history of the town. he told me about the fog festival and that the nearby cafe barbecues every summer weekend. and then he told me that the real yard for the house was two houses down and across the street -- the beach.

after i left i walked those two houses down to the ocean, out onto the pier between fisherman, then down the beach. people were flying kites, and having picnics. they said hello and met my eye as i walked by. it was like living in a small town. the kind where everybody knows your name. it felt like home.

a house is just a building. it's what you find inside -- the house, the neighborhood, the town -- that matters.

send me good thoughts. they decide on my offer tomorrow night.

setbacks, signs and tests

my plan for this long memorial day weekend was to make some serious progress on the current topic at hand. i had seen one house on wednesday and had another scheduled for viewing this morning, with a third to see on sunday. i also planned to get my current apartment cleaned, sorted and generally made more conducive to creativity and health. i woke up early this morning raring to go, jumped out of bed and into the swampiest carpet i'd ever laid foot on.

after some sleuthing, i figured out that my water heater had burst sometime during the night, flooding the storage closet that houses it, the entire patio and the interior of the apartment including the bedroom, laundry room, bathroom and part of the office.

the good news is this:
- caught it fast
- only the bedroom is carpeted
- my apartment maintenance people responded with amazing speed
- after weeks of rain, it is actually 80 degrees and sunny outside

the bad news is this:
- the bedroom had to be emptied of everything except the pictures on the walls
- it will take at least 24 hours for the carpets to be dried
- it may be a while before i can sleep in my own bed again
- i spent the morning moving furniture instead of visiting house number two

not only did i not get to do the things i wanted and needed to do, i lost serious ground. my living room and kitchen are so stuffed with the bedroom furniture, you can't even walk into them. in fact, my bedframe had to be put outside because there wasn't enough room.

i have been trying to be philosophical about it. after all, there's not much i can do. but two conflicting thoughts keep rearing their ugly little heads:
- clearly i need to move the hell out of this place
- if i owned the home i would have had to fix it myself

but it also made me think about some of the important things i'm looking for in my next place:
- a feeling of safety
- a measure of control over my environment, and by extension, my health
- space for creative expression
- manageable size but with plenty of room to move
- garden space (roots in dirt)
- light
- airflow
- warmth
- clear of mold and other allergens
- quiet
- amenities within walking distance (ideally groceries, library, yoga)
- clean air
- soothing

but speaking tactically, no carpets is key. and i will seriously consider an on-demand water heater wherever i wind up.

week nine: home as sanctuary

you know that old saying a man's home is his castle? well, for this woman, home is her sanctuary. or it should be anyway. but right now, it's definitely not. it's small, it's dark, it's crowded and thanks to my upstairs neighbor, it is often loud and smells like cigarettes. (you know you're getting old when the first thing you think about your bass-playing upstairs neighbor is "time to move" and not "wonder when his band's playing.")

at any rate, after years of living in over-priced, over-populated apartment complexes, i've decided it's time to give home ownership another shot.

i've actually been hunting for a while now. i started out looking in sonoma county, hoping to take advantage of the rock-bottom prices now and move there later, but realized i didn't want to have to pay rent and mortgage or become a landlord, so now i am looking closer to home. it will cost me probably double, but given how much i'm paying in rent right now, i may even come out ahead.

so this week (and probably next) i will:
- define and document what i want from a house (the "qualities" not the specifics)
- check out the local house and townhouse inventory
- find ways to make my current living situation more sanctuary-like (not sure how yet, but something will come to me)

double lucky for me, i have a long weekend coming up in which to get it rolling.

week three recap

 wow... taking a closer look at how i spend my money (and what it says about my values and lifestyle) was definitely an eye-opening experience. just filling out a spending and income history for the last couple of months revealed a lot -- mostly that i need to start paying a lot closer attention to where my money goes. here are a few of the high-level things i learned:

• i want to save more money. keeping that in mind when i shop makes it much easier to keep spending down, but that's not enough. if i decide i'll pass on a new pair of shoes, that's great, but i have to take the next step and deposit that same amount into my savings account or it will get spent on something else.
• there are also a lot of possible ways to make incremental income that i could start taking advantage of. i have been known to sell books to local used bookstores, but maybe i could do better with an amazon store. and i could probably amp-up the income opportunities on my blogs. and then there are my creative endeavors... i definitely need to think more about this.
• i waste a lot of food. this is disturbing to me on a lot of levels. i need to get better at meal planning and only buy perishables when i am sure i can use them. there are plenty of other alternatives.
• i need to get much better at measuring the value of things i spend on. for example, i haven't gotten my hair cut in probably 8 months. mostly because of time but also because i'd rather not get it done than get a bad cut. on thursday however i bit the bullet and walked into a salon. i walked out an hour later with a brutally expensive but fabulous cut. was it worth it? yes. because i get it done so rarely, it needs to be a good cut that will hold up. and as with shoes and jeans, i'd rather pay for a good one that will last than a cheap one that will make me sad every time i look in the mirror or put them on.
• prioritization is key. this is most evident in the whole "thinking about home ownership" thing. i want to own a house. i cannot afford a house in my area. i can afford a house in outlying areas, but my job is here. this doesn't mean i can't buy, it just needs i need to get more creative. maybe buy a house up there and rent it until i can find another job. i also want to go back to school which has many of the same issues as the house question. it also competes for the same savings dollars. school or house? local or distant? full-time or part-time? there are many options to consider which is mostly my way of saying that you don't have to rule out having it all. you just have to get creative with how you do it. (in this case it's looking like buying the cheap house renting it out and choosing an affordable part-time school program so i can keep my job, but i'll keep you posted on that.)

declutter challenge: files (including digital) and in-apartment storage
- got nowhere at all with this due to over-scheduling on other things.

food challenge: black beans
- gingered black beans from the self-healing cookbook: awesome and enough for many meals
- black bean chili (ostensibly from green's restaurant but i think it was a lie): bland and yet overly oniony, won't be repeating this one
- didn't manage the third dish due to time

nagging tasks: i was thwarted at pretty much every turn (once again a victim of my own poor planning). suffice it to say, tax day is not the day to try and deal with your 401k rollovers or anything else having to do with money. i will be scheduling meetings and handling those tasks another day. i did, however get online bill-pay and my budget spreadsheets set up so that was a win.

so even though i didn't complete a lot of "tasks" i definitely learned a lot and am glad i added this one to the list.

a-hunting she will go

you remember that resolution think about home ownership? today is the day.