Domesticity

It is the title of a very good Cursive album, and also the state in which I live and semi-constantly ridiculed for (yet everyone lives in it as well). And yes, that is a toilet that I have to use. Though it looks 3rd world-like, that's actually in the house I live in... outrageous.

Since its been, oh 8 months, since I’ve blogged. Its at true testament to the passage of time without any actual worthy events to write about. I haven’t traveled out of the country. My family has further splintered. Mike and I are already rolling towards our one year anniversary. His mom asked if I wanted to freeze my eggs since it appears that 27 is already old (I politely said, No, in case you are wondering.) Here’s a recap on some other things since I can’t commit to writing on a regular schedule.

Living in the Basement
So last fall we moved into the Basement of 3907 Kansas Ave, which all the whiteys call Petworth, the hood kidz call Georgia Ave. and my brother likes pretend it is in the phantom area called North Columbia Heights. The neighborhood is what a realtor would call up-and-coming or transitional. The place has tons of demolition of the crumbling older buildings, to make room for over-priced condo high-rises right next to the Metro, but the rest of the neighborhood has somehow been left behind a bit.

We only planned to stay a few months but our housing search totally derailed as we decided not to move to N. Arlington to a house too pricey for our salaries. First off, living without a lot of light was tough. At times it felt like a cave. Due to be an domestic that has hung up her partying boots, the allure of the neighborhood bars like the Red Derby and all those indie-whatever places like DC9 and Velvet Lounge was absent. Most of the time, I wore long underwear for the walk to the Metro and stayed inside all day at DOT (even during lunch to go to the gym). We didn’t move out until June. That marked about 9 months in the basement without me going out in the District too much.

During our time there, most notably, I’d say was our experience with Rodents. You heard me. You wanna hear about up-and-coming, where do you think all the vermin go when their old dilapidated shelters are knocked down. We found some mice eating into our large sack of rice (I had to throw the whole thing out, I felt like such a waster). We attempted to trap them via glue traps. Stinky the Cat got to one first and one did fatefully perish in a glue trap.

The Real Estate Hunt
So we got sucked in, while the market was crashing and all you could hear was the doom of the credit crunch that would do us all in, Mike and I dragged each other to just about every house in North and South Arlington. We settled on this nice neighborhood, Alcova Heights, and then we WAITED for about 5 months while we tried to sweat out a short sale. We finally won. But unlike everyone else that allegedly gets fabulous deals on these sad homes, we paid full price and had a lot of work cut out for us. It was like an HGTV show gone bad. (You’ll see.)

The house has got some character due to the Asian/Latino take over of the place. The house was built on that lot in 1978. It was one of those pre-fab homes that looks pretty cookie cutter: rambler with a basement. We dug up the public records on Washington Post and turns out a Korean family lived there, then some Nguyens took it over (Mike blames the weird renovations on my people), and flipped it before the Bolivians moved in during the housing boom in 2006. The Bolivians decided it was a good idea to start running some kind of illegal kitchen/restaurant out of the basement. I mean it was the real deal, with long plastic tables, a counter you could order from, huge propane woks in the Utility room and a menu board. The place smells as Mike likes to say “like Boiled Rib”.

After finally securing the restaurant house, which was a circus in itself, we’ve basically unloaded tons of cashola into our Money Pit (Yes, yes, we know of the Tom Hanks and Shelly Long movie and this is worse because of inflation, we’re spending that much more.) Now, I wasn’t even considering our house initially because the Bolivian kitchen, but now I wonder if I should have kept the business alive for the following reasons 1) Dedicated customer base: we had folks showing up at our house in droves in the following weeks 2)We could have kept all the bad smelling rib dry wall 3) It would be like a franchise and I’d finally learn how to cook.

Ok more on domesticity at a later date since I’m not good at following through.