Home Again

Our House

Sometimes you take a trip and end up in the same place. The place where you started.  Maybe all trips are like that. I don't know. I'm getting confused. What I do know is, I thought we were moving in one direction and it seems we're not moving at all. Anywhere.

The house plans went along swimmingly until they didn't. Tilt. Shock number one was looking at apartments. On New Year's Eve we checked out The Cove. It was the emergency back up plan because they accept pets. For $2,300 a month we could rent a tiny one bedroom. But, hey, they take pets.

The Cove triggered a tsunami sized panic attack. The idea of living in a crappy apartment while someone else lived in our house was horrible. And offensive. And horribly offensive. I know. I know. It was my idea in the first place to find a temporary rental, empty out the house so we could refinish all the wood floors, and then stage it for sale. The Cove cured me of that notion. Leaving the house before we had somewhere to go was a bad idea.

Then I realized the plan had another flaw. The part about leaving Mill Valley. The concept was that we would rent until we found something we could afford to buy and if we didn't find anything in two years (which is the deadline to transfer the property tax base) we could buy in San Anselmo or Fairfax which are more affordable. It was all perfectly viable until I realized I don't want to leave Mill Valley. It's home. My post "My Town"  (http://pearlsandlemons.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-town.html) says it best. How could I have forgotten all that?

Ruby enjoys the new window seat.

Reconstructing the past few months, and even the last year or so, I can see why securing my future became of such paramount importance. Cashing out seemed to be the right thing to do. Maybe it is. Maybe it's not. It's all in how you look at it. I am such a tricky combination of eternal optimism and doom mongering. Crashing about between feelings of bounty and scarcity, I even confuse myself.

We've done so many projects preparing the house for sale. At some point it stopped being for others and started being for us again. Well, maybe for me. Eric has been so whipsawed by the process, and all the changes of my mind, that he doesn't much care anymore. So much of the work needed to be done to care for the house properly. New hot water heater, new bathroom floors, getting rid of dry rot. It's all good. The landscaping in front was long overdue and is lovely.

Having automatic irrigation at long last is simply marvelous. Installing a lawn during a drought drew some ire, but I knew having timed watering would ultimately save water. We used to put the sprinkler on in one spot and forget about it for two hours. Talk about waste! Anyway, we ended the drought. The afternoon our sod was installed it began to rain and it rained off and on for weeks thereafter. The reservoirs have filled up. You're welcome.

I've always wondered how you know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. As the song goes, when to walk away and when to run. Is it too soon to leave or too long to stay? For jobs, homes, relationships, it's a perennial question. Selling our house is not the problem. Lots of folks want to buy the house. One of our neighbors offered to buy it for an exorbitantly high price, and have me list his for sale. He's never even been inside!

The problem is where to go. For now, the most affordable place for us to live in Mill Valley is our own home. It's partly why there is nothing to buy. People like us can't sell because they're locked in. Things will change. They always do. For now, I'm enjoying being back home, even though I never really left.