Belly Up

During round two of the House Hunt 2007, I spied something truly horrifying to a chickenshit like myself.

The baby and I met with the real estate agent to view houses 4-6. Four sucked, 5 is a nice alternate, and house 6 scared me. Gave me the palpitations. Caused me to grab the toddling girl and hold her for the rest of the tour. What happened in there, you ask? I saw a baby snake. A very thin, probably 3-4 inches long reptile that prompted me to say aloud, “Please tell me that’s a toy snake.” The real estate agent said, oh, I’m sure it is. Then she touched it with her shoe, and that sonofabitch moved. It goes without saying that I am freakishly afraid of snakes. Never been bitten, never had one strike at me. Must be the Eve/serpent thing from the Garden of Eden (not that I believe any of that scheisse). Or it could be that I grew up out in the sticks and got tired of seeing those bastards on the porch, in the yard, in the driveway, in the creek, blah blah blah. This fear is the main reason I don’t camp. Really.

If you can believe it, I manage to view the rest of the house after the snake moves more to the center of the room. Did I mention it had a yellow band around its neck and a triangular head? Hello, poisonous! Anyhoo, the real estate agent sees what she thinks is a dead one in the master bathroom, then says, “I wonder where the mama is.” Christ, I’m out of here.

House 6 did not make the cut.

We toured three houses on Saturday, and the first two were eliminated immediately. The third house, well, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty goddamned close. The exterior and lot are 100% of what we want. The interior is about 60%. It’s on three levels, which isn’t nearly as fancy as it sounds; the house is built into a hill. The problem with a three-level home is that with a toddler, stairs are an accident waiting to happen. Hell, with my clumsy ass, stairs are an accident waiting to happen. Our biggest beef with the place is the upstairs bathroom: there is no tub, just a shower. Those suck because they’re always too small, but more importantly, we can’t give the baby a bath there. We’d have to carry her downstairs and use our bathroom, then carry her slick self back up the stairs to dry and dress her. Can you see disastrous results of this exercise? Yeah. I can barely hold her when she’s got a fresh coat of lotion or sunscreen, much less when she’s wet from a bath.

Here’s the little fantasy I cooked up: maybe the house will languish on the market for a while, then the sellers will be more willing to negotiate the price down enough to allow us to have the bathroom redone. Of course, the stair issue remains, but the house is so so so close to what we want. This whole process reminds me a little too much of dating: you just never know when compromising is the adult thing to do or when you’re settling like a dumbass.

So, we’re going to keep looking until we decide that this is indeed the house we want, or something better comes along. Just like dating.

This morning, I subjected the baby to yet another morning of obsessive house hunting. She and I were delighted to discover that every area we checked out today was totally fine. The only reason any houses crossed over to the circular file was location; by that, I mean those bitches were on some steep-ass hills.

When we return home, I excitedly call the hubby to tell him that two places are looking especially good. They look so good that I decide to embark on the most unpleasant phase of the house hunt: checking each address against the TN sex offender registry. And that’s when the day takes a depressing and enraging turn.

One of the top house candidates has a registered sex offender around the corner AND .3 miles away in the same neighborhood. I should note said neighborhood is about .5 miles from our current dwelling. Another top contender has 2 sex offenders within .5 miles. My husband asked, how can these people afford to live where we’re looking?! He’s not being arrogant or exclusionary with that statement, but honestly, how the fuck do these freaks ever get a job? Don’t employers perform background checks? I’m pretty sure rape or child molestation would come up on your record.

Bottom line is this: it makes me sick to think that not only do we have to worry about the financial constraints when selecting a home to buy, we have to worry about schools, the commute, the taxes, the proximity to conveniences, and the fact we could miss out on a great house because some fucking pervert who should have been hanged in the town square upon conviction is taking a breath around the corner from our young daughter.

The rampant sex crime problem could be greatly curbed if our society would wake up and execute these people instead of sending them back out into the world to ruin countless other lives. They cannot be rehabilitated. That is a fact. Take a shotgun and shovel to each and every one of these motherfuckers so the rest of us can sleep at night.

Why is it that I live in fear for myself and my daughter, and a convicted rapist lives down the road? Because I haven’t gotten a gun. Yet.

There is an indisputable truth in real estate: unlike people, ALL houses photograph well. Wish I’d known this last year; we would have hired a real estate agent to take pictures at our wedding.

Over the weekend, we drove 300 miles checking out different areas and homes around Nashvegas. Every single house was a disappointment…and that was just from the outside. We eliminated them one by one without stepping through the door. It’s amazing how many homes look good, only to be surrounded by craptacular neighbors who don’t take care of their homes or yards. The hubby and I were beginning to wonder if a single neighborhood existed in this area that we liked AND could afford.

I might have found it. Across the road from the subdivision where we currently rent. The catch? Not a single home in that neighborhood is for sale. Like the hubby said, the house we end up buying may not even be on the market yet. God, this is as bad as dating.

Yesterday, I contacted a real estate agent in our new state of TN. This is the knee-jerk reaction of someone who has lived here for not quite 6 weeks and found a house online that she thought was just DREAMY! Well, the house is already under contract, but it can’t hurt to start looking at dozens of houses with piss-poor decorating and indignant sellers who wish they’d flipped their property two years ago for double the money, right?

My husband and I looked at houses and condos a year and half ago in the outskirts of Chicago. By outskirts, I mean 30-60 miles away from downtown because the goddamn prices are so inflated you can’t find anything decent for under $200k unless you are out in BFE. That being said, we are so so so glad we didn’t buy up there, then have to sell before moving to the Nashvegas area. We have a definite idea of what we want, but it remains to be seen if the market can bear us.