Personal News!!

I bought a house! Pete and I did, together. Me! Us!

I have never owned a house before. In fact... have I ever lived in a non-rented house? Oh, Bird Street (where we shot the suicide scenes) - my mom's house - I lived there for a couple years. But my life has been pretty mobile. When, at the closing, they asked me to write down all my addresses from the last ten years, I choked. Pete put down his two little addresses, and then I had to confess I didn't think I could remember them all. It took me several minutes, with everyone else in the room watching me and coaching me, basically, just to make stuff up, so we could get on with it (!!). As it was, I think I ended up putting 242 1st Ave, Tucson, when actually it was 242 E 5th St, Tucson, and 737 1st Ave. Or 1st Street? East? And I was so unnerved, I couldn't remember the name of the street in Davis Square where I lived for a couple years and where Louise lived for innumerable years (Elm).

This was quite a rigmarole -- we almost didn't get it because our financing fell apart after they accepted out offer. We didn't know if we'd get new financing until two days before the closing, and didn't know if the seller would accept our new financing until 16 and a half hours before the closing! And all that was after losing two other houses we'd wanted (one of which might still have trumped this one -- but only in some ways, not in all ways), and seeing more than 20 others that were not for us (our low price range made many of the houses we looked at basically uninhabitable - "investment opportunities," as they say). In the end, though, good luck triumphed!

The house is a converted storefront -- years ago it was a candy store, we're told. Neat! I'm going to have to look it up, see if I can find any references to it when it was a store. It's right across from a high school, so there must be thousands of grown-up kids that remember buying candy there. Maybe there's a memoir online or something.

Whenever we see a news report about the horrible economy and housing market, Pete and I recall that line of Jimmy Stewart's in 'It's a Wonderful Life' -- During the panic, when Bailey's trying to get people in the 'building and loan' to calm down, he says, "Look - Potter's not selling - Potter's buying!" [...wait, though - is that backwards?...] Well, that's us!! You can't say we're not doing our best to boost the nation's economic confidence.

Anyway, there it is. We still are in our apartment and will move little by little for a while.

And I'm going to have a garden to plant! Hooray!!!!!