Home Ownership Thus Far

Well, it's been almost a month since we bought the house, and 10 days since we actually moved in. A huge branch fell in the backyard (that was the first day), the water heater conked out, we had to get a new sewage line put in, our old range was a piece of crap so we got a new one installed, I had to install a curbside mailbox since our original one was no longer protected by a grandfather clause, and the cats pooped & vomited on the new carpet.

Other than that, it's been peachy!

The Joys of Property

Baby G and I are officially homeowners. We bought a lil' place last week and have started cosmetic renovations. Wallpaper came down, paint went up. I am exhausted, my right arm is dead, and I could sleep for 1000 years, but I still have enough excitement to muster the energy to do a little happy dance!

Cost Curious

Curious about what something or a service might cost? This site has helpful estimates and allows people from around the country to post what they paid for a similar service/good. It's not exact, but knowing a ballpark number before you set out to do something or get something done can bring you back down to earth.

Brand new cedar fence around the backyard? Sure it sounds lovely and desirable! The three to five thousand dollars you're going to spend doesn't sound as pleasant.

A mile a minute, that's me

More thoughts on recent news and happenings:

• My favorite radical feminist blogger responds to the Spitzer case and the media's [unsurprising] misogynist reporting . She says,

"I don’t know anything about “Kristen”, except that as a prostituted woman — however “high class” or “expensive” — she is a de facto sub-human. As are the millions of other, more invisible prostituted women she so inaccurately represents in the popular imagination. “Kristen” may achieve a kind of kitschy, pop-culture cachet because of the high status and celebrity of the asshole who used her as a meatsock, and she might be able to parlay her position as a footnote to history into some kind of financial reward — such things are not unheard of — but the vast majority of what so many progressives like to call “sex workers” subsist much, much more precariously. Some merely teeter on the precipice of indenture and some are genuinely enslaved, but all are subject to violence, disease, imprisonment, marginalization, shame, and all the other degradations, large and small, that accrue with membership in the planet’s most despised class."

Wow.

• Yes, the U.S. economy is indeed in the shitter. It was only so long before the effects of an overblown housing market could be staved off with tiny interest rate cuts and carefully worded statements from "important officials." Larry Elliott at The Guardian says,

"Bear Stearns marks the moment when the global financial crisis went critical. Up until last Friday, it had been possible - just about - to believe that the worst was over and that things were about to get better. That pretence was stripped away when JP Morgan, at the behest of the Federal Reserve, stepped in when the hedge funds pulled the plug on the fifth-biggest US investment bank." "Having allowed the housing boom to rage out of control for too long and then delaying cuts in interest rates until the housing market was gripped by recessionary forces, the Fed is now trying to make up for lost time with a burst of hyperactivity."

Kinda makes me glad I'm too poor to have given in to my home ownership lust. I'd probably be one of those suckers with an exploding adjustable rate mortgage facing foreclosure and a brand new set of ulcers.

She'll be comin' 'round the mountain

A few things...

Tori Amos is putting out her 9th studio album in May. For those of you who may not know, I'm a big Tori fan; however, her past few albums have been kinda bleh to me, mostly because they've been heavy on the 'adult contemporary' and light on the traditional Tori. Her website features the new album artwork, and, it's wonderfully subversive. I'm hoping this is an implication that the music is going to be better than the soft mushy la-la stuff she put out on the 2 previous albums. I know the first 4 albums by heart --- but then things changed. Or maybe I changed? Regardless, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some good ol' angry, pro-girl, recovering christian, in-your-face Tori music! Is that too much to ask?

Home ownership is whirling around in my head. I'm addicted! I can't stop window shopping for housing. Real estate consumerism has me by the tail. Sure, I've investigated the realities of buying. I have good credit and a steady job. However, I can apparently afford house payments, but can't get a loan because I am "cash poor". This is sadly true. If I lost my job today (gods forbid!) I'd be out on the street in a month. So, I've gotta get this horse off my back. Stat. Or throw myself on the mercy of the FHA.

Trivia Night. Baby G and I are going with friends to play trivia tonight at some lesbo watering hole. Should be interesting. Hopefully the number of mullets and bois won't outnumber Baby G and I and our posse. We'll probably be the only "normal" looking mo's in the room. C'est la vie. It's just too hard to be a hipster these days. Too much attention to hair styling...

The last hour of the last day of the work week

This morning went fairly quickly, this afternoon has not. I've been in and out of attention for the past 3 hours, my eyes alternately glazing and clearing. I've been surfing the site that DM sent me a while back. It's become something of an obsession. I want my own home so bad I can taste it; unfortunately, I can't afford my own taste. Sigh.