{ 07 08 2009 }

My House

I wrote the following on Friday, the first day I entered a beautiful townhouse as the legal owner. As if the house weren’t awesome enough, I also went out and bought one of those tiny laptops. They are perfect for any writer because they’re light, cheap, compact, and have a six-hour battery. And they can also survive a four-foot fall onto a hardwood floor. This post was the first thing I wrote on my new laptop in my new house.

As I type this I am sitting in the middle of the floor in my new house. My new house, my new home. It is one of the most glorious feelings in the world. I can’t stop beaming. Sure I’m sitting on the floor amongst dirt and lint and the occasional dead bug, but they are MY dirt and lint and occasional dead bugs. All week I have been dreaming about how sweet it will be to lie down in the middle of my empty living room floor and open my arms and legs out and back like a snow angel. But with dirt.

I walked around the house with my miniature bottle of champagne in hand. It really happened. After all the effort and money and Xanax, this house is mine. Sure I went from seeing the house for the first time to making an offer only five hours later, but when you know it’s right, you know. My parents and all my friends freaked out when I told them–until I emailed them photos. A huge master bedroom, a huge bathroom (two-thirds the size of the entire studio apartment I had rented in New York City years ago), whirlpool bath, beautiful brick walls, and a spacious attic. The best part is that it’s all for me.

The first time I walked up the stairs today (solid oak wood! and there’s a stained glass window in the bathroom!), all I could think about was how many things are going to happen here over the years. New paint, new floors, new furniture of course, but also things that go much deeper than my bank account, like where my writing future will take me, all the friends and lovers who will spend time here, the rites of passage that come with living in my own house (property taxes?! They’re HOW MUCH?!)

Of course there will be fights between us (I spent a thousand dollars on a new floor for you and you WARP IT in two months?!), lovers quarrels, jealousy (I can’t believe my house has the nerve to be PRETTIER THAN I AM), differences of lifestyle, and a thousand other problems, as all my coworkers have been reminding me. “Now that you’re a homeowner, the real fun begins!” and then they laugh and laugh. Sure there are quirks, like having a light switch that’s tucked inside a built-in bookshelf, but every house is going to have quirks. I’ll take them in an old exposed-brick townhouse instead of one of the hundreds of McMansions that are popping up all over Texas.

As long as I’ve been imagining this day, I always assumed I would start to cry the first time I walked into my first house. Although I would be lying if I didn’t admit I teared up a little, what overwhelmed me was pride. I pulled it off. I’m in my twenties, I don’t make a shitload of money or have a dual-income, but I managed to buy my own gorgeous house. Every time I signed my name on a contract, I looked at the unused blank to the right, where a spouse’s signature would go. Nope. I’m doing this on my own, right down to installing insulation in the attic and putting new tile in the kitchen. And, of course, painting an entire wall a deep HELLS YEAH pink, just because I can.

When the seller and I parted at the title office the other day, she gave me a long, warm hug. I knew she had received another offer the day after I made one, but she had chosen mine. I wondered if it’s because she knew I was a single woman too, if she wanted to pass the torch to the next generation of single women making it on our own.

Today when I took my first sip from a miniature bottle of champagne, I thought about all those before us who made living on our own that much easier.

Posted by Over Educated Nympho on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009, at 2:15 am, and filed under life, singledom, happy little things.

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