! trANNsformation BaBy !

I’m tired.

It was interesting today with a realtor driving you around. I have to admit it was nice to have someone else driving around for a change She could have used the GPS though because it would have been a more efficient use of time but she seemed to know her areas pretty well. I liked her, Mother of two youngest being 12 and she had her when she was 38 years old. She’s been in the biz for a good 20 years and loves real estate.

We went to see 3 houses. The first one was the one I found on the web in Oakland - the neighborhood was gamey but the house was pretty cute. The second one she found and it was built in 1944 with only two owners - it reminded me of military housing. Very boxy, sterile, small - when I first walked in - I felt depressed. Then come to find out the backyard is adjacent to an industrial gases manufacturing company that has yellow signs posted everywhere about ‘birth defects’ - even though they’ve moved to another city. I took one look at that depressed ‘barracks’ and those signs - nope - not for me. It was rather humorous when she said, ‘Well you don’t want to dismiss that property so quickly until some research is done on that company.’ Later after we got back to her office, she mentioned something about having a ‘chemical plant’ in your backyard and how that house depressed her as well. Oh well, I guess one woman’s chemical plant is another woman’s opportunity to make a buck but it pays to have a small brain on top of these thick shoulders. A very tiny one, but one nevertheless.

I told her she can send me listings, I’ll send her listings and we’ll work that way. I let her know that I can go out alone and she let me know that she would be willing to take me to the ones she feels would be most suitable for my intentions. She did know some of the neighborhoods in the reasonable part of town so that was good.

Now the joint that her office is in is like the mansions of Berkeley - very very fancy neighborhoods in the hills. Driving through rich neighborhoods always makes me wonder why fate never allowed me to experience such a luxury that quickly morphs to ‘well - rich people are fucked up’. Before you’ve let that sink in - you quickly move to ‘WTF?! I’m fucked up - I have every right to be sitting on my white Malaga leather sofa on my espresso bamboo floors listening to jazz on my BOSE home speaker system while sipping Pineau des Charentes, freshly pressed grape juice from a crystal goblet that my assistant Laurent has brought me while impatiently awaiting my stretch limo to take me to yet ANOTHER dinner at French Laundry.

WTF?!!!! Yeah yeah, I’m a hater.

No shame in that game honestly - because I can whine with the best of ‘em.

Well we also saw really cool house in the middle of a drab neighborhood but the single older guy musician wanna be built a ginormous tool workshop in the garage and got rid of all of the grass - put concrete down otherwise it was a cute house. I don’t know who will buy that thing - probably another craftsman like himself. I liked the garden that he had built up around the concrete - it was really quite wonderful. But a big NO because of the lack of green space and I didn’t like that the tiny sliver of a closet was shared between both rooms so if you’re fucking in one room - you best believe your kids, brother, mother will be hearing your bullshit. And frankly - THAT is not gonna work. Eventually I intend to get laid again and paper thin sliding closet doors between rooms is not gonna work.

So after we went back to her office, I hit one more place and it was alright. I’m not much on corner houses. I think it’s a bit more traffic than I would like - the area was fine but the freeway was within hearing distance so that part wasn’t cool. I walked out to the backyard and you could hear the cars zooming along. Nope, there’s no amount of foliage that could mask that so oh well - back to the drawing board. It was funny when the agent saw me walk out to the back door within my first 3 minutes - she said, ‘Looks like you’re a gardner!’ I smiled as I thought to myself, ‘Hell no - I just wanna another space to make a mess.’

Just kidding, you know I’ll be fat ass deep in soil, shrubs and bulbs once I get back there because I know I want a tranquil setting in which to chill the fuck out.

One of the ones we saw today was bank owned but in really great shape. It was sad to traipse through this house that someone had lovingly painted so many crayola crayon colors that I felt queasy at one point. Obviously someone had loved that house enough to pick out a bright shade of lime jungle green for the living room and invest that brown wooden banana leaf ceiling fan. It even had a jacuzzi bathtub that dominated that puny tiny white toilet. My agent thought that they had refinanced so many times for upgrades etc that they ended up not being able to afford their home. She was also surprised at how well it was cared for considering it was a bank repo. I walked away from it thinking that it was sad and the neighborhood was a bit gamey for my tastes.

So this makes a total of 17 houses that I’ve seen in 3 weeks. Not to mention countless numbers on the internet. Tideous if you ask me. But I’m taking next weekend off for Labor Day and she says it’ll pick up in September and October - so that should be interesting.

Nothing is easy huh? You get a loan for an amount that you know is a bit more than you really feel comfortable with and you’re trying your best to come as low as you can without living in a bullet zone while still trying to have a quiet backyard and some room to grow because you anticipate your still unemployed brother as well as your complaining, demanding Mother would someday need to come stay. Shit. But honestly, you gotta do for you and your kids (well the ones you’re gonna get anyways) - if the relatives come along - they’d better come along with some cash to move the tribe into a bigger home.

Today that agent in the last house told me a lady had seen 400 houses before she decided on her dream home then went and took all of her flyers from all of her open houses and used it to create rows and rows of banners to decorate her new house for her housewarming party.

Can you imagine 400 homes? WTF?! I thought my ole boss was batty because she hit up 200. That same lady went on to be a real estate agent. WOW. That was interesting. Obviously she had a love for that shit. No, it’s alright to go to other people’s homes for something other than reports of child abuse/neglect - but I’ve had my fill of home visits to last me a lifetime. I hope this process will move quickly.

I have NO intention of peeping into 200 disasters (my price range) before I make a decent choice. But all of this browsing is beginning to form what I find appealing about a space. Very interesting indeed. Now if I could just find one - I saw some cuties but they would need to be transplanted in the other’s neighborhoods etc - that’s in a decent place, in decent shape with a decent back yard we’re good to go.

Somethings are easier said than done but persistence is the key. I’m in two bedroom bungalow hell for now but hell - there are worst places I could be like living in my 500 sq foot box for the rest of eternity alone. Now that’s a thought no?

Next week is sheer hell at work, I’m going to Denver (one day round trip!) on Wednesday, a messy court hearing on Tuesday, a 40 minute drive outta the city tomorrow morning and then it looks like my Thursday is completely clear. Maybe I’ll just work from home (get a work laptop with the network on it) on Thursday. It sounds miserable to me but at least I won’t have to drive anywhere. Then I could catch up all weekend with this miserable laptop. Hmmmm, that actually sounds pretty decent because it’s been a real pain knowing that I have a million notes to put in the computer.

Yawn.

It’s 5:29 on Sunday evening and I’m feeling rather wistful about the day.

It’s good however, to be on my couch in one piece reflecting on the upcoming challenges of life.

I really can’t complain.