We bought a house.
It's a solid little Craftsman-style 3 bed / 2 bath place in a neighborhood called Villa Heights just outside of Uptown Charlotte. And it's great. I can say I never would have expected that we'd be buying a house 8 months after moving here, but this whole thing just kind of took off and we lucked into a great house right within our budget.
So, with that good news taken care of front and center, I will say the whole home-buying process has led me into some interesting thought processes. Bear with me.
I've had a pretty easy life.
In no way do I mean this to be self-congratulatory, because I genuinely believe most of these things to be the benefit of existential good luck. I was born in a first-world country. My parents worked hard and provided everything I needed as a child. I was raised in a safe neighborhood in a great suburban town. I don't know how difficult it is to go without necessities. I grew to be 6-foot-5 despite the fact that my parents are 5-foot-9. I lived in a town with a great school system. I graduated in the top 10 in my high school class, and I got PLENTY of sleep. I got into every college I ever applied to, even when those more deserving were left out. My first and only full-time job was a benefit of having a friend who gave her boss my name. And even then, I only got the job because my best friend couldn't take it. I've never been punched in the face. In fact, I could probably say I've never really been punched, period. I've never broken a bone or torn a ligament. The only fracture I've had was in my pinkie -- my LEFT pinkie. The only woman I ever asked to marry me said yes. And, even though I'm convinced it will happen every single time, I have yet to be in a plane crash.
I realize I'm invoking every possible jinx there is by saying all of this, but I do appreciate the good fortune I've had throughout my life. Normally stress is not something I even think about. I have it good, why should I be stressed? I say all of this now, because as I've been dealing with the difficulties of buying a house and moving in the last month, I've come to realize that it's the most stress I've ever been under for an extended period of time -- in my life.
I've kind of made a mountain out of a ... pitcher's mound? ... with this whole process, and I'm realizing it now. It's not that moving has been hard or that we ran into issues with our mortgage or anything, it's just been a constant stream of one thing after another that I've felt I needed to take care of immediately or suffer the consequences. We needed to secure a mortgage at the best rate possible, so I tackled that goal. We needed to find someone willing to take over our lease at our apartment, which turned into a terribly long process with several people showing interest and then backing out at the last minute. Until finally we found someone, who disappeared and stopped contacting me for a week. Even as I write this, I'm still only about 90% sure that they're going to take it, despite the fact that they've signed all the paperwork. I'm a person who has almost no issue spending a lot of money in tiny chunks, but when it comes to losing a whole month's rent on an apartment that we don't need, it makes me irrationally angry. Once that was done, we needed to pack and move. And we wanted the house cleaned ahead of time, which went smoothly. And we wanted all our services initiated before moving in -- water, gas, electric, internet. The gas company informed us of an unsafe condition on our stove that was never mentioned, so we had someone come out and fix it. The internet is still not on, despite me calling every day this week and being told, "All you need to wait for is someone to come by your house and turn the switch on outside." Amazingly, that process can take up to 5 days. It's not as if I work from home and need internet to do my job or anything. Then we had some electricians come to the house to put in some lights and network some cables, which took the better part of 11 hours, when they estimated it'd take 6. Which meant Siobhan and I waited around the house, holding Alfie on a leash so he wouldn't bother them, sitting and hearing them gripe about how difficult the job had become. All the while, we were getting used to living in a new house in a different neighborhood -- one that is definitely in a transition and causes me to get out of bed and check the locks twice before I go to sleep.
I'm sure all of these things are standard parts of being a homeowner. Anyone who reads this probably has several horror stories that go way deeper and might have made me break down in tears. But that kind of goes back to my first point, that I'm really not used to things like this, and I'm amazed that so many people choose to take on this task. I know that it'll be well worth it, hopefully as soon as tomorrow, when we'll be able to sit back in our house with all the initial fixes done, and just enjoy the fact that we now own this tiny piece of Charlotte. For right now, I'm just looking forward to that time.
Now that I've taken some time to reflect on it, I'm able to put all of these things into perspective in a better way, but for the last three weeks, not so much. I had a difficult time not taking the blame for every hiccup along the way. It made me feel like I was not prepared in the right way, or I was expecting too much of other people. One of the things that locks up my gut is the idea that my choices might be ruining someone else's day, and even more so when that person is my wife. At some point, she sat me down to tell me that I had been ignoring all of her ideas about the house and focusing solely on my own. She was right. I batted away every suggestion she had as if it wasn't important. That's a crummy way to treat any person, and an awful way to treat the most important person in your life. I had given more compassion to the contractors who I was paying a handsome rate.
When we first got engaged, we spoke with a pre-marital counselor, who we had chosen to be our officiant. In those discussions, one of the continual thoughts my wife had was that we needed to constantly work to make our marriage better. At the time, it seemed silly. We were so excited just to be together, how could we ever not be on the same page? Well, here's the answer. I ended up on a different page from her not because I sat down and decided to, but because I was simply barreling down my own path, clearing everything else in my way. That's where constant work comes in -- how can I stop myself from doing this the next time?
In some ways, I'm grateful for this experience, and the challenges that have come with it. I've learned a lot, and hopefully I've developed a little bit better stress management, though that's something I would prefer not to test any time soon. Even after all of that, I'm again struck by how fortunate I've been. Every time something came up, there was always someone I could talk to to help resolve the situation. I'm never on my own, even when I feel like I'm on my own. So thank you, to everyone, for that. It's pretty cool to know so many good people.
Now if you'll excuse me, I probably have to call my internet provider again, I haven't yet today.
