Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig

1.6.07, 8pm, North Hollywood, CA

I called a real estate agent over the holidays who deals in new development, high-rise condos. A too-rich-for-my-blood 2-bedroom, but nevertheless, I called. What the hell.

In Williamsburg. Found it on Craigslist.org. I am how I Google. I shop for real estate on Craigslist.

Oof, is that’s depressing. Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…

Soo called me back with a warm and friendly voicemail confessing her plan to move to Billburg as well in the summer, and how simpatico. The condo is to be in a new development totally unlived in and ready for move-in in July. (Who knows who was priced out of their own home in order for this development to happen.) I’m shopping for brownstone apartments, too, 150 years of paint and shellac. However, the desire to own – finally – something that I can be the first in is pretty damn strong these days.

How freeking American… damn mutated genetics.

Anyhoo, the real estate agent Soo … is she driving up the market in Billlburg? Or will she become my newest best friend? Or will we shop at the same Crate & Barrel and only wave politely when we run into each other? Or is she destined to be the High Priestess of my Home Ownership Neuroses?

It’s been phone-tag and e-tag ever since.

However, I now have a floor plan from the website’s posting, I decorate it obsessively with my 1920s Italian-American Stink of Gaudy. I hang my dad’s mirror in the front room. I arrange my clothes and shoes in the closet. I exchange familiar jokes with the Imaginary Doorman in my mind.

And I believe that I can create my home there. All I’m doing is visualizing the Possible. Seems a little creepy and unhealthy, but I can’t stop.

650K for a 2 bedroom condo seems like a lot, though, for a starter home. Like A LOT a lot. For a toddler home? For a house with training wheels? For a home that stills has stuffed animals and a pacifier to keep from screaming bloody murder? And I get scared. I know I want to move to Brooklyn, but maybe I should find a smaller town, a lower rent. Save some more. It’s felt good, lately. The Saving. So far in my financial life, I’ve saved to skrijmp by. But for the last two years, I’ve saved towards Brooklyn, which means paying off some bills, starting an IRA and a 401K.

These are all new feelings – new, demonstrative actions proving to me that I no longer believe I’m gonna die in my 40s.

I mean, who doesn’t schedule their own death, really?

But the words in my head – ‘settling in Brooklyn’ – sound so glamorous. So end of the rainbow. So legendary. So right. It just sounds like glee. Sounds like the prom and I’m 16 and there’s a guy that’s been buying me cokes at lunch and the prom’s in a month and I might, I MIGHT JUST HAVE a chance to get dressed up and feel like a fucking girl for a change.

I gotta get that Soo on the phone.