Lust and Loathing

First of all, this is hysterical. Because people? Guess what color I just dyed my hair (again)?

Your Hair Should Be Red

Passionate, fiery, and sassy. You're a total smart aleck who's got the biggest personality around.

What's Your Funky Inner Hair Color?

Oh yeah. It’s copper. {wild cackle}

Anyway. About the lust: We went and looked at a new house today (no particular reason, other than the fact that our current Den is having Issues and this always gives us the delusion that someplace else would be better).

It was palatial. The problem, of course, is that when you go and look at a palatial house…you come home and suddenly the house you own? Turd. Big, fat, smelly old turd. With moldy carpet, ill-conceived design and DAMN IT, how come this old box didn’t come with a BUILT IN WINE CELLAR?!

Being that the housing market out here is crashing like a wingless jet adjusting {ahem}, they are offering incentives on these new homes, which they built and now cannot unload.

They have dropped the price on this monster by $75,000. They are throwing in everything from the awesome stainless steel kitchen appliances (the kitchen is my throne room, people – upgrade my appliances and you have my attention) (say ‘no extra charge for the granite’ and you will have our royal favor forever) to inlaid bathroom tiles.

They will get down on their knees and plead with you to buy these houses.

I am upset. Because I want that house. I want that house oh so ever-loving much.

It is 1,500 square feet bigger than this house, in all the right places. It isn’t just “big for big’s sake”. It is “big and well-thought out by people who said to themselves, ‘Hey, you know what would be cool if you were, say, a family of six with four small children who are daily growing?’”

We walked around that house in a state of shock, because it was as if they had gone into our brains, extracted every single thing that is uncomfortable or ‘not quite right’ or ‘@*^&@!!!’ about our current house, and corrected it, right down to a perfect interior wall for the piano.

And yes. It comes with an actual wine cellar, not huge but large enough for about two hundred bottles of good old California red, white and pink. It has what they call a ‘library’ in a little rotunda – which we looked at and said, in unison, “Music room.” There’s a nook right at the top of the stairs which would be ideal for the harp, ‘on display’ yet out of the traffic zone. There are four bedrooms upstairs, all of them huge by comparison to what we’ve got here. There are two more downstairs, one perfectly positioned for a home office nearly double the size of the one we’re currently sharing.

The master bathroom…well. I may have licked the walk-in closet door handle to mark my ownership. I couldn’t help myself.

BECAUSE THE CALIFORNIA CLOSET SETUP WAS THROWN IN BY THE DESPERATE DEVELOPERS WHO CANNOT OFFLOAD THESE HOUSES.

As evidenced by the utter chaos in my office right now, my inner organization freak is still hanging out in that closet, people. She is not here. She is there. In the closet, with the California Closet accessories.

@*^&@.

I want it. We loved everything about it, from the little courtyard in front to the ‘just right’ backyard – not as huge as the one we currently have (which is a tad unmanageable, actually) (Jimmy Hoffa might be hiding in the grasslands back there, he really just might), not so small that you couldn’t have a decent little garden back there.

The neighborhood is fantastic. There are lots and lots and lots of children. They ride their bicycles outside, with their parents laughing and chatting on the street. Brand new schools, both K-8 and high schools.

It’s like…well. It’s one of those things where, when sitting around with a nice glass of Shiraz pondering the imponderables, I’d propose this kind of house in that kind of place as an ‘if money were no object, I’d like to…’ dream.

This, people, is the lust.

As for the loathing…I really, really loathe the fact that I cannot escape the cruel bonds of reality long enough to write a check for $15,000 to hold that house.

I have the money. Well. I sort of do, anyway. I mean. It would be stealing from other things and would cause something of an, erm, ‘issue’, in a couple months when the property and income taxes come due, but that is beside the point! The point is: I could come up with it.

And for normal people, that would be enough. “Oh look, something I want really, really bad! Hey! I have money in the savings account! Quick, let’s transfer it out of there and put the cash down on this sexy house!”

But oooooooh no. Me, I’m sitting here going, “…but, I need that for the income taxes in April, and also the property taxes…”

And we could qualify for the loan. Shoot, yeah, we could – and not one of those scary-a$$ed ‘exotic’ ones, but a good old fashioned 30 year fixed like your momma had. 360 equal payments of $X, thank you, and then it’s yours.

But! The housing costs would still be nearly 50% more than we’re paying now. And I can’t do like Everybody Else and just say, “Hey, it’s less than one of our salaries – LET’S BUY IT!”

I just can’t. I can’t shake that really old fashioned notion that your housing costs should not ever be more than 30% of your income.

UGH.

It makes me wish I could…well…just unbend a little. Scream, “WHOOPIE!” and throw money around madly. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow, and live for right now.

It makes me wish I had never heard of Excel, had no idea you could figure out a monthly house payment, and that the words ‘worst case scenario’ were as foreign to me as they apparently are to the vast majority of California homeowners.

I hate being a grownup.

Loathe. And. Despise. It.

I really, really do.