So we looked at the house.

It's gorgeous, actually. But too small; the kitchen is cramped and would be hard to expand, and the upstairs bedrooms are all tiny and put together in such a way that it would be difficult to make any of them bigger. But that's okay. We're still kind of toying with this whole property-buying idea, anyway.

And then today we went to an open house at a good-sized place quite close to campus. The pictures online suggested that it was not exactly decorated in our style, but you know, we like the idea of painting and whatnot...so we swung by.

And GOOD LORD. This house is officially The Ugliest House in the World. Each room worse than the last! Heavy, awful curtains over every window; thick pink carpeting and pink walls; drop ceilings in places where they have no reason existing; shiny white linoleum; heavy awful curtains AROUND THE BATHTUBS; wall-length slat-doored closets; insane "Western"-themed fake-stenciled wallpaper bordering the kitchen ceiling; shiny silvery patterned wall covers (what is that stuff?); CARPETED WALLS in the stairwell--I could go on. The mind boggled. And it wasn't just the ugliness; additions had been tacked on willy-nilly so that, for example, the master bedroom was only accessible through the kitchen and the dining room was nowhere near the kitchen. To make it worse, the realtor was a relative of the owner's, so we had to hold in all of our incredulity until we were back in the car.

Oddly enough, it turned out that the owner also recently married the (elderly) father of a co-worker and friend with whom we were getting together immediately after our viewing. She confirmed the unbelievable ugliness.

So we're still thinking about what exactly we're doing here, and until we figure it out, we have a nice place with a month-to-month lease.

Fretting, Uselessly

(Is there any other way to fret?)

There's a house for sale. A nice-looking house, right next to campus (which would be great--not a problem at all; it's not too close to the dorms, but it is across the street from our office and close to the gym!). Three bedrooms, two baths, new roof kitchen heating AC etc. It costs...$129,000.

We haven't looked at it yet. I picked up the flier with the specs this afternoon. Seems good, in general. The rooms are quite small (I'm guessing that's why the price is so low?), and it has one weirdly enormous bathroom (twice the size of the bedrooms!!), but it has a big enclosed front porch, a screened-in back porch, and a patio. The porches would be perfect for prepping seedlings, and the yard is the right size for a garden, reasonable lawn, and minimal mowing.

The bedrooms are really small, though--8.5 x 11 (plus walk-in closets). The dining room and kitchen seem smallish, too.

OK, but here's the source of the fret (because, again, we have not looked at this house, and whatever, there will be other houses). At what point should one buy a house? I don't mean in terms of affording it (because at that price, I expect we could easily be paying less in a mortgage than our current rent, if we wanted to, and I have some savings that could make a small down payment), but rather in terms of life-planning. Especially in academia, because, let's face it, if we (both) got some kind of nice deal elsewhere, we'd take it. (The "both" makes that more difficult, of course.) But I don't want to keep wafting around noncommittally because I might one day get a job somewhere else. On the other hand, what's with this sudden urgency? We've been talking about looking for a house next spring, but neither one of us wants to move RIGHT NOW. And obviously we shouldn't just look at one house; so, if we look at this house (which we've agreed we ought to do, if only for kicks), shouldn't we look at others, too? And what if it's too small? In principle I'm okay with small rooms, but I don't want to buy a place that we'll "outgrow" in a few years (although I guess that's not the end of the world.... I just like the idea of stepping outside of the whole buy-buy-buy thing that seems to be our national home-owning culture). So, ugh, maybe I just need talking-down?

I'm sure that this enthusiasm, or whatever it is, will blow over in a day or two. In the meantime, I need to go measure my bed.

Little and Much

Not very much has been going on over here, in the grand scheme of things. I'm busy, naturlich, but not with anything worth noting--going to the gym, eating, sleeping, reading, writing this or that little thing that (I hope) will one day join up with other little things and produce something bigger. On the other hand, there is The Garden.

The Garden is truly three gardens (East, South, and West), and it is truly the province of The Minister, though I contribute here and there. (I made a triple batch of pesto today, for example. We now have more than 50 tablespoons of pesto in the freezer.) It is a lovely and densely packed garden, or gardens, chiefly because of some vines (melons and a mystery squash) that have filled in every empty inch and would willingly tear down the other vegetables if allowed. Tonight, inspired by the beauty of our lettuce going to seed, I took some pictures. For your pleasure:

First, the lettuce. It's almost in flower! We're hoping it'll reseed the patch.


Our chard is frankly out of control. This is one of like five rows (albeit the healthiest one). Chard, chard, chard. It'll produce until November, too.


Plenty o' poblanos.



You get two pictures of the eggplants viewed through the jalapeno leaves, because I think they're pretty.



And now for the jalapenos.


The ever-bearing strawberries are trucking along; we've got about three gallon-bags worth in our freezer already, and they'll keep rolling in into the fall.


Raspberries! The bushes are still pretty tiny, though.


A single blackberry flower.


The mystery squash! It grew out of our compost. It's huge. It wants to conquer the world.


Oh--and of course, there will be tomatoes.


I love summer.

On Domesticity

Fig. 1: Laundry Day, February Edition

I've been thinking about domesticity lately, especially as this spring break--for the first time since I moved to Field State in 2007--I am not traveling overseas but am instead spending most of the time, together with my honey, working and puttering around the house. (We leave tomorrow for two nights in Possibly Exciting Northern City.)

I love travel: or rather, I identify myself as someone who loves travel, and I do believe that mostly this is accurate. I've traveled rather a lot (not as much as some people I know, but more than average, for sure). And I used to be haunted by the feeling that I hadn't done as much, or seen as much, as I could/should have done--especially when I was with someone who had lived a particularly nomadic life. The Ex-Boyfriend is one of those: He's been more or less everywhere by now, I think, and even though he's employed in the Legal Profession, he's managed to work things out so that he's spent the last two years on two different coasts.

But with age--and I have reached the Age of Perfection, after all, even though its remaining months are numbered--I've come to see that what I like, most of all, is coming home.

Fig. 2: Laundry Day, Moody Edition

Case in point: Last summer's month in France. Fabulous! Of course! But from almost the beginning I was looking forward to the pleasure of returning to our newly-moved-into little rented house, our garden, our cats, our...everything. Laundry, even. For truly, I do love doing the laundry, especially if I can hang it up (and we have a wonderful clothesline in the backyard).

When I think of such things, I'm reminded of that poet who is quoted with such irritating frequency and sanctimoniousness of spirit, but whom I do actually like--Rumi. Thus:

Either this deep desire of mine
will be found on this journey,
or when I get back home!

It may be that the satisfaction I need
depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone
and come back, I’ll find it at home.

-"In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo: In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad"

But most importantly, in The Minister I've found a partner who shares a commitment to the pleasures and comforts of home. Our time together is spent in domesticity: We cook (though he does most of it); we make things from scratch (me: yogurt, granola, pizza, pesto; he: creme fraiche, creme brulee, buttermilk, butter--basically anything to use up the remaining cream from our weekly milk jars--and most of our fancy breads, though I make a tasty one with onions and walnuts); things are put away; we spend our evenings reading and working and occasionally watching a show through Netflix. We go to bed early. We garden and eat what we grow. We have a candle on our table at dinner every night and we almost always have a glass of wine--it's comforting, it's civil, it's civilized. There is great reassurance in all of these things.

Is it a sign of psychological fragility that having a stable and well-ordered environment is so important to me? I don't actually think so--although it does make it particularly difficult for me to spend long periods of time (like, days) at other people's messy houses. But if it does, so be it; I'm pretty happy like this.

What I'm really driving at here is how nice it is to have married a person with whom I can live, in the day-to-day sense, in such a perfectly comfortable way.

Oh, and the cats like it, too. Here's visual evidence of how utterly they are spoiled:

Fig. 3: Pertelote on the Pillow Pile

I do believe she'd know it if there were a pea under there.