S and I traveled to Rockville today to take a look at the fine offerings just off Viers Mill Road, which as it turns out doubles as a parking lot. We met our real estate agent this bright and cheery morning. Note: The morning itself was not cheery, or in retrospect, bright. The light was a bit more like that of a fifty watt bulb through a grey lamp shade. Anyhow.
House 1
We always like to begin our days of house hunting by looking at something out of our price range, thereby making the rest of the day a never ending series of disappointing houses that don't quite measure up to the one that we can almost afford. I recommend this method highly if you enjoy being miserable. The townhouse had a nice brick exterior and a garage. Garages being a great place to store things like loppers and hammers, and other tools that frighten me with their inherent masculinity.
Real Estate Agent: You could probably put in a hardwood floor yourself.
M: Or you could do it for me.
The strange thing about this listing was that every room seemed to be at slightly different levels, thus causing me to feel as though I was walking on board a rolling ship.
M: How's the mainsail in this place?
Agent: What?
M: What are the chances that I'll get scurvy?
Agent: What do you think of this place S?
On the whole it was a nice listing, with a relatively cute (not a word I use often) deck and a hot tub. Which at this point in my life it's probably important that I have a hot tub, especially if I'm going to be wandering up and down stairs all day causing the joints in my seventy year old (in terms of joint health) knees to recover.
House 2
While approaching this listing we noted the proximity of the train tracks to the yard. Ie, your back yard is pretty much train tracks. As a child who grew up in a generation that watched Stand By Me, train tracks are right up there with clowns (damn you Stephen King) in terms of things that strike the fear of God into my heart. I'm already picturing our imaginary kids playing on the tracks and all the elaborate stories we'd have to tell them in order to keep them from going on the tracks as well as the no doubt nascent fear that I'd have of a train derailing and coming through our bedroom window to kill us. This fear is sort of akin to the fear I had of taking a bath after watching the movie Jaws. Rational? No. Plausible? Eh, lets go with yes.
House 3
House 3 was a charming little three bedroom. The only problem was that it backed up to the tracks, and was also the size of a two bedroom one bath condo, but actually had three bedrooms. Oh, and a woodworking shop. Which, as an aside, if we end up getting this place you'll all be receiving hand-crafted elves as gifts for the next three to five Christmases. Too small.
House 4
This was probably the real charmer of the day. The exterior of the house was simple enough. A large tree pushing up bits of the sidewalk, a small chain link fence skirting the exterior, and a pile of thirty beer cans and three bottles of wine ready to be taken out for the garbage man. Which, I'm assuming in this tenant's case the garbage probably had about five days until it was ready to go. I'm not judging this guy for having thirty beer cans in his front yard on a house that he was showing, and I'm not blaming him for looking as though he had had about ten of them that morning already, and I'm not blaming him for watching a show called, "Fugitives on the Run." However, I do draw the line at walking down the hallway and seeing a sign, (put up with your lower quality masking tape and the "sign" has been written in the sort of hastily scribbled black pen that makes you think of an insane asylum) on a wall that read poopsville. At this point we beat a hasty retreat from the house, partially from fear of what else we would find, and the fact that the tenant had disappeared without telling us where he was going, and we weren't entirely certain that he wasn't hiding in a back room/waiting to kill us vis a vis Fugitives on the Run. Poopsville. Seriously.
House 5
By house five, any home buyer pretty much feels like they have been sitting in the sun for about four hours, sans sun block, and you are now looking for a place to lie down/wondering why you're hallucinating a perfectly nice kitchen in yet another small house.
10:00 P.M. Tell S that I need to get cracking on my blog.
10-10:45 watch two episodes of 30 Rock.
10:45 P.M. Head of S's attempt to start a third episode.
M: You're interfering with my creative blogging space. This area, (denoting a small area around our Ikea furniture) is for blogging only.
S: Am I blogging your creativity?
M: (Laughter).
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