That's me trying

Exhaustion seems to be the running theme nowadays. I feel like I should be doing fifty other things than bloghopping. There's laundry and recycling, for one. It's no joke to have a massive magazine obsession. I find myself at Hudson News realizing that I already have most of this month's/week's mags. (By the way, whatever happened to Radar? I can't seem to find it on the newsstands anymore.) Sometimes I have to stop myself from buying a magazine that I'm already subscribed to.

The other thing that I really want to do (besides go back to school) that I mentioned a few posts back is buy a house. My lease is ending soon and it just seems to be a huge waste of money to keep paying rent. The major obstacle (there are a lot, but this seems to be the defining one) is that I am poor. It's very difficult to buy a house if one is unendowed in the funds area.

Every Saturday for the last three months all I've done is travel to unfamiliar places to look for a cheap, decent house that's close to public transportation. I've seen really nice houses and utterly deplorable ones. In one of the worst ones, there was a guy living in the storage closet. One room smelled suspiciously sweet. This week-end, one of the houses we went to see was in a block that looked so unsafe I didn't even get out of the car. The broker said even he wouldn't buy the house. One broker looked like he was stoned. Last week-end we saw a house that had abandoned cars in the community driveway. One house had a basement that could be a set for a horror movie.

It hasn't all been bad experiences. We saw a house set on top of a hill, with a nice little backyard and shiny hardwood floors, and when we went in the owner's mom was baking apple pie. But it was all the way up north and inaccessible. One house had chessboard floors in the kitchen and matching white appliances. But it had too many offers.

I know we'll eventually find one. It'll be nice and simple. Maybe the bathroom will be too small, or there won't be enough storage space. But it'll be homey and safe. Maybe in the summer we'll have little barbeques in the backyard.