I am tired of tripping over boxes.
I have a few free hours this morning, which I have decided to dedicate to writing (finally). While I was making my coffee, I found myself wondering where to even begin after a six-week hiatus. Do I open with hello, happy September? Maybe August kicked my butt, but I am checking in to let you all know that I am still alive? In the end, I decided I would just open with what I am thinking in this present moment, which is that I am really, really tired of tripping over boxes.
Now, for a brief August recap:
Husband and I both turned 26 last month, which would have been cause for plenty of introspection and journaling any other time. This August, however, we also closed on our first house, so any time I might have spent reflecting or quietly looking inward was instead dedicated to what will henceforth be called ~house tasks~.
Ian and I started looking at houses in April of this year. Technically, we were looking and sending each other periodic Zillow links for much longer, but April was when we finally got preapproved for a mortgage and found ourselves a realtor. We first met our realtor in person and started touring houses on May 2, a date that I remember because 1. I am very good at remembering dates, if nothing else, and 2. May 2 of last year is when I started working on my currently-unnamed manuscript.
It’s a sign! I thought to myself when we settled on that date with our realtor, Chris. May 2 is a great day for me!
(I am the kind of person who will interpret anything and everything as a sign–perhaps to a point where it is actually a facet of mental illness–but more on that later.)
That first evening, we toured four houses. I will point out here that a childhood filled with watching HGTV with my mom did not prepare me for interest rates of 2024 (hello, 6.5%, my “good deal”) or the reality of homes in our budget in Wheeling, West Virginia. Wheeling is an interesting place in that there are many inexpensive homes located in the flood plain adjacent to the Ohio River and many $1,000,000+ homes located in the Old Money neighborhoods (yes, Wheeling has those!) but comparatively little in the middle. The four houses that we toured on May 2 were not chosen because we absolutely loved them but because they were quite literally the only houses in our price range available at that time where we could reasonably envision ourselves living.
House 1, I will admit, I did love. It was a little brick house situated on three acres. Original woodwork inside, super well maintained. I think Alexa and Ian of two years ago would have bought that house in a heartbeat, no other home tours necessary. However, somewhere along the line, I came to enjoy what I call “silly little mental health walks” around our apartment complex, and it became important to both of us that we live somewhere with sidewalks. This house was out in the country–something that was once desirable to both of us but now, in my remote work era, something that would certainly leave me feeling very isolated. We were also outside of cell service, which would be a bit of an issue, given that a good deal of my job involves texting clients, and 25 minutes from Ian’s work, which is on the upper bound of how far he was willing to commute. It was fun to see inside a house we had viewed online multiple times, but given our new-ish perspectives on where we would like to live, we said goodbye to that house pretty much as soon as we said hello.
House 2 was smaller, with similar square footage to our two-bedroom apartment, and situated in our favorite neighborhood. It was the least expensive of all of the houses we toured, and we found ourselves wondering why it had been on the market for so long. The answer comes in the form of a giant crack in the foundation. Ian pointed out that we could probably knock the house down with one swift karate kick. Needless to say, house 2 was also a no-go.
House 3 was no doubt the nicest house that we toured that evening while still being within budget. It was nice enough that I imagine if anything broke or any work needed done it would completely break the bank. It was also the biggest house we looked at–honestly, probably comically large for two people. I loved the house in theory but also had a hard time imagining the eclectic/cozy decor we favor in a house that felt, for lack of a better term, too fancy for me. If anything, it looked like a house meant for my Deceased Bougie Grandma (about whom I have written many times), and I would like to entertain you all with a dream I had that night where the house did belong to my grandma, who then morphed into my therapist asking me, “Why do you think you are having this dream?” Very weird dream. Very meta dream. In any case, house 3 was not for us either.
House 4 was right smack in the middle of our budget and located in a nice neighborhood near where I used to work. There were elements of the house that I did not necessarily love–it was a split-level situated at the end of a cul-de-sac, which is not exactly my vibe, and it also had a very 70s interior complete with green countertops and wallpaper in every single room. If I had to pick a house from that initial batch, I would have settled for house 4, but in the same way that house 3 did not sit right with me, house 4 did not sit right with Ian. I think it was all of the wallpaper. I will include a picture below for your viewing pleasure.
At the end of that first evening with Chris, I thanked him and told him we would talk and let him know if we wanted to make an offer on anything, mostly because I did not know what else to say.
“Don’t rush into anything,” he advised us. “You mentioned that you have your current apartment lease through August. Take your time.”
I felt disheartened on that first evening, not necessarily dismayed–that part of the story comes later!--but just vaguely deflated and already tired by the whole ordeal. We drove through McDonald’s for ice cream on the way home and then sat on the couch discussing the homes we had toured and our needs vs. wants before I went to bed and had that weird dream about my grandma that I mentioned earlier.
Over the next few days, Ian and I fell into a routine where we would look at Zillow every night before bed and send each other any new options we found interesting (which were still far and few between). Later that week–or maybe it was the next week, I can’t remember–I found a listing I was so excited about that I actually ran into the bathroom to tell Ian about it while he was showering.
This house did not only have all of our needs; it had all of our wants as well. House 5 was mostly one story with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It had a basement that was partially finished and partially unfinished and a two-car garage. There was a nice back patio and beautiful touches of character throughout, including an octagonal window (I just love those). The house had a metal roof (Ian has long ranted about the superiority of metal roofing) and was also located in our favorite neighborhood, just up the street from the house with the terrible foundation.
“Text Chris right now,” Ian said, and so we found ourselves touring the house the following evening, less than 24 hours after the listing had been posted.
If we were starstruck by house 5, so was our realtor.
“I’ve shown 1.5 million dollar houses in Oglebay,” he told us, “and this is still one of the nicest houses I have ever been in.”
House 5 was the most expensive house we toured, $10,000 over the asking price of Bougie/Nightmare-Inducing house 3, but it was still technically within budget for us and under the amount for which we had been preapproved. That evening, Ian and I made our first offer with Chris’s assistance. We learned about the concept of an escalation clause and decided that we would offer up to $5,000 over asking price if the sellers received another offer that was higher than ours.
And then we waited.
I have since deleted all of my pictures from inside house 5–by now, you might be able to deduce why–but I still have this picture of the cat we met outside.
I love cats, to the point where Ian said, “Dear lord, Alexa, don’t let your decision be swayed by a cat you met outside.”
I don’t think my decision was swayed because we would have made an offer on that house anyway, but I cannot deny that my annoying, annoying brain thought, Oh yes, this is definitely a sign.
Early the next week, we got the following text from our realtor: “I received a response on (address here). The sellers received multiple offers and have decided to accept another offer. Don’t get discouraged. This is common.”
Don’t get discouraged. That’s easier said than done, Chris. Surprisingly, I took the news in stride, and it was Ian who was more disappointed. I think that my ability to tell myself it’s okay, there will be other houses came mostly from the fact that I had already started panicking about our budget. Going forward, I wanted to look at houses that were less expensive, metal roofs and octagonal windows aside.
It was almost exactly a full month after we first started looking at houses that we came across house 6. There were only 6 pictures in the listing (6 pictures for house 6, ha), and none of them were great quality. However, from the property description, we gathered that the house had three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a garage, and a patio. The vinyl siding was a nice pale yellow, and it was located in our favorite neighborhood once again. Moreover, the house was just the right cost for us to be able to put 20% down and still have money left over for an emergency fund.
We asked Chris to show us the house but entered with some apprehension. As I said before, there were very few pictures included in the listing and no pictures of either bathroom.
There have been times in the past when I have been in houses that looked far better in pictures than they did in person. This phenomenon has not been exclusive to house-hunting in my experience; it has happened with Airbnbs as well. I will never forget when Ian and I got an Airbnb in Pittsburgh for some of our college friends to get together and celebrate a few weeks after our wedding and we figured out that the pictures online had actually been edited to not include the window AC units or any of the cracks in the walls. The Airbnb was also located on a not-so-great street, and, strangest of all, none of the lamps inside had lightbulbs. It was fine for one night, though, and makes for a funny story after the fact.
I am happy to say that we had the opposite experience with house 6. The pictures did not do it justice. House 6 was built in 1940 and maintained a lot of its original charm, including wood floors, a fireplace, a little window seat in the bedroom, and a built-in china hutch in the corner of the dining room. Certain parts of the house had also been updated recently–the kitchen cabinets and quartz countertops were clearly relatively new, and the upstairs bathroom was decidedly modern. House 6 had room for improvement–some of the floors were scuffed up pretty badly, and there was also carpet upstairs we wanted to rip out–but I could absolutely see us living there, especially because the seller was an eccentric philosophy professor with an attic filled with books. Once again, Ian and I made an offer, this time offering a very straightforward asking price and hoping that the poor pictures in the listing dissuaded any other potential buyers. Then, we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Remember when I called the seller an “eccentric philosophy professor”? One of the wonderful facets of his eccentricity is that he seemed to get cold feet after listing his house and took well over a month to make a decision about an offer for asking price given the day after he listed his house.
We were not bound to that offer for that time, Chris informed us, so we continued touring other houses as they entered the market. Houses 7-9 do not warrant full descriptions in my opinion because I was always comparing them to that pale yellow house in Woodsdale in the back of my mind. We did not make any offers on houses 7-9. We continued to look, and we continued to wait.
This is the point in time at which I grew dismayed. Dismayed and jealous. I kept reminding myself that everyone’s experiences are different (this is something that I must constantly remind myself in all areas of my life, unfortunately), but my jealousy did bubble over a bit the evening after we toured houses 7 and 8.
I was having a terrible day–there is no other way to put it–when we decided to get drinks with two couples we have befriended at a local bar/restaurant/sort-of-concert-venue. All of these friends have purchased houses within the past four years, and we ended up comparing experiences.
One couple purchased the first house they toured–but, they qualified, it was in 2020 when interest rates were very low and people were buying houses as quickly as they could. I’d only been in their house once at this point in time, but once is enough to say that it is lovely.
The other couple bought the second house they toured in fall of last year. I believe they had a few hiccups in their house-buying process, but still. The second house. Also lovely, I should add. Walk-in shower. Jacuzzi tub. Newly updated kitchen and wood floors that probably did not warrant crawling around with a bucket of vinegar to attempt to get sticky spots off.
“That has . . . not been our experience,” I offered while drinking my second $12 cocktail and choosing to forgo dinner.
After all, if I am going to wallow in self-pity, I’m going to do it right.
I have mentioned before that I am extremely mentally ill, right? I have four mental health diagnoses in my medical charts that I know of, and I can think of at least four other diagnoses that providers have considered for me. I know from years as a patient and one year as a mental health therapist that there are often enough overlapping symptoms that it can be hard to nail down a correct diagnosis for someone who presents as many maladaptive symptoms as I do (imagine me flipping my hair as I write this because that’s exactly the tone that I am going for). The DSM is also not infallible–we are constantly reevaluating diagnoses, diagnostic criteria, and best practices for treatment–so, regardless of whatever mental illnesses I do or do not have, just know that I have a lot of very harmful thought patterns that have required years of restructuring via Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, nine different psychotropic meds, and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.
Looking for signs around me can be a benign habit, but sometimes I also fall into a very negative pattern of thinking where I believe that if I get too comfortable with things going well, something bad will happen, or if something bad has happened, it is karmic punishment for something bad I have done. I distinctly remember when I took Ian to the emergency room once for a heart issue thinking, This is it. This is my punishment. The best thing I have is getting taken away because I’ve become complacent.
“That’s not how this works, Alexa,” he pointed out, even while he had nodes strapped to his chest.
He is right, but that does not mean I can always see it.
I have spent years talking myself and others out of catastrophizing, out of focusing on the bad and wallowing in the idea that everything is just horrible and it’s because I am a bad person and don’t deserve good things and if things are going well it’s only a matter of time before they get bad again, etc., etc., etc. That being said, during the house-hunting and house-buying process, I frequently asked myself what I was doing wrong. Even Ian asked the same question, although his questioning came from a more logical, is-there-something-wrong-with-our-offer place.
During the full month where we waited to hear back from our dear professor Robert, Ian and I thought of a variety of things we might do to convince him to sell us his house. One idea was to write a letter filled with philosophy puns. Some of our puns included we Kant live without your house and we’ve found our Nietzsche in your neighborhood. Another idea was to email him via his school email address, which I found online, with pictures I had taken inside of his house as an intimidation tactic (this idea was quickly discarded).
Finally, at the end of June, Chris texted us to say that our offer had been accepted. That afternoon, Ian and I actually held hands and jumped around our apartment kitchen like we were my two- and four-year-old nieces playing Ring Around the Rosie. We knew it was going to be a long process yet with getting actually approved for a mortgage, getting home insurance, getting an appraisal and home inspection, getting utilities in our names, and actually moving, but the excitement was still palpable.
We were getting a house, we were getting a house, we were getting a house.
I would like to say that it was all smooth sailing from there, but you should know by now that it wasn’t.
The process of getting approved for a mortgage, getting a home inspection, and getting home insurance was not bad. During the home inspection, we did figure out that we had a high level of radon in the basement, but we were able to get a $1,500 concession from the seller to put in a radon mitigation system.
No, the next hiccup happened exactly one day before we were supposed to close, when good old Chase Bank decided to review the inspection reports we had sent them weeks before and determined that the radon mitigation system would need to be installed before we could close.
Chris was righteously ticked off on our account when I called him to provide an update and even the radon mitigation specialist I called on his recommendation said, I believe, “Well, dang, that’s some shit.” The soonest that the company would theoretically be able to come set up the ventilation system was three weeks out, but they were kind enough to squeeze us in early on a Saturday morning. Ian brought them donuts in thanks.
Even after the radon people were able to expedite our service, we still had to wait four days to do another reading and then two days to get the reading sent off to a lab for analysis. We were originally supposed to have one month between when we closed on the house and when our lease at the apartment ended. This quickly turned into two weeks.
Even closing did not go smoothly, although Ian and I tried to have all of our affairs in order well in advance. Since we met at the attorney’s office at 5:00 one evening, our wire transfer from Discover Bank was not able to be completed until the following morning. The title attorney was little help.
“This is one of the strangest closings I have ever had,” he told us cheerfully, and I will point out here that the man was really, really old.
I can’t say that the statement inspired confidence.
I actually thought Ian might die from anxiety that evening, so rare is it that I see him so nervous, but everything ended up going through with the transfer the following morning, and we were officially in the clear. The morning that all of our paperwork and wire transfer went through, when all of our t’s were crossed and i’s were dotted, was actually the morning of my 26th birthday.
. . . a sign, perhaps?
I am kidding. Well, sort of. The weekend after our birthdays, when we spent the day at the house cleaning and ripping up carpet, it was both rainy and sunny, and Ian and I saw a small rainbow in the backyard. Literally, the full arch was contained within our small yard, plain as day.
Even he said, “I don’t really believe in signs, but if I did . . .”
I would like to be able to tell you that everything went smoothly after we saw that small rainbow, but our inconveniences were not over quite yet. First off, we had to do a good bit of cleaning. Robert was, simply put, quite inconsiderate in the things he left behind. The garage was filled with stuff, including a trash can filled with maggots, and he even left his trash in the bathrooms in the house. He left an odd assortment of goods in the kitchen, including one can of tomato soup, one can of red chilis, a few individually-packaged tubs of guacamole, and two yuenglings. Thank you, Robert! Perhaps worst of all, one of the drawers in the bathroom was full of hair. I told Ian that I am going to find him on RateMyProfessor if he is still teaching and review-bomb him in retaliation for that hair.
The week after we closed on the house, Ian and I spent every evening after work either cleaning at the new house or packing at the old apartment. It was mentally and physically exhausting, and I also made the big mistake of letting my prescriptions lapse between when I was kicked off my parents’ insurance on my 26th birthday and when I switched my medicines to Ian’s insurance (my job, you should not be surprised to learn, does not offer health insurance). As a result, I was unmedicated, exhausted, and PMSing for a handful of unholy days.
There was one night in particular when I grew especially disheartened. I loved our apartment, I realized very suddenly. Why did I want to leave? Home ownership was already proving to be immensely stressful, and we had not even officially moved in yet.
I am not really an astrology person, but it may amuse my astrology-loving friends to know that when I got up from ranting to Ian on our couch at the apartment, I turned to look out the window, and the moon was red.
“Of course,” I said. I think I snorted.
Tiny rainbows when I was happy. Giant red moons when I was stressed. Honestly, how can I not buy into signs from the universe?
The second weekend that we had access to our new house, we rented a U-Haul and had some friends and family help us move. We left a few boxes, food, plants, and toiletries back at the apartment but, with the assistance of the others (for which I am very grateful! Thanks, guys!), we got all of our furniture into the house that day. The plan was to start staying at the house that night and move the last of our things over while returning to the apartment to clean the following week, but that did not go exactly as planned either.
We did not have any issues getting electricity, water, sewage, trash, and internet set up at the new house. The issue occurred when a technician came to turn the gas back on and found that a pipe needed grounded to the breaker box before they could legally turn the gas back on. When the technician–who was a very nice man who said hello and goodbye to my cats, by the way–came up from my basement saying “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” I genuinely wanted to bash my head against the table in front of me.
Our mishap with the gas happened on a Monday, we got a plumber in to fix it on Wednesday, and finally last Friday—the day before our lease at the apartment ended–someone came in and was able to legally turn the gas on. For all of last week, we did not have hot water to shower or gas for the stove to cook, so we either went out to eat or ate something that needed only to be microwaved and we went back to the apartment every night to shower. As a result of having to go back to the apartment every day and not yet having all of our possessions at the new house, it felt like we were living in two places at once. It was stressful and exhausting for us–and perhaps doubly stressful and exhausting for the cats, who we brought over the day that we moved all of our furniture.
I am thankful to report that the cats are happy and thriving at the new house now–and thank God for that because I do not know what I would do if I had to add traumatized cats to my list of stressors–but the first day was . . . not their favorite. Asher is typically our brave boy, but he was unhappy to be put in the carrier and transported in the car. Nemo is always a bundle of anxiety, no matter what, and spent the first several hours at the new house hyperventilating with his mouth open like a dog.
When both cats had calmed down by the second day and actually seemed to be enjoying themselves, I went up to the attic and left the door open for them to follow if they desired. Asher immediately decided that he liked it up there; when I cannot find him, that is where he is often lounging. Nemo, on the other hand, began to hyperventilate again when he discovered a new room in the house.
Oh buddy, I thought sympathetically. Me too.
Even in the best of times–which these past several weeks/months certainly were not–I do not do well with change. I felt less affectionate toward our apartment this past Saturday, when Ian and I did our final sweep and spent entirely too long cleaning the cats’ boogers off the wall with a magic eraser, but on the whole I loved living there.
The apartment, our dearest Unit 11, was the first home that Ian and I really shared. I lived in an apartment with him for a few months in the summer of 2022 and goodness knows I spent countless nights at his apartment when we were in college, but the last apartment was the first place where both of our names were on the lease, where we bought decorations together and listened to records together and drank tea on the deck together.
I think I will miss that deck more than anything. It is funny how I always tend to romanticize some of the worst times in the past. The nights when my anxiety kept me up all night, for example, were objectively horrible, but I could always count on a pretty sunrise on the deck with the cats after a night without sleep.
(Sunrise after one of the previously mentioned sleepless nights)
Now that all of our stuff is finally at the new house and now that we can use the shower–horray!--I am finally beginning to recognize that this place is ours. Our house. We live here. We bought this place.
Since I turned 26 last month, I have found myself thinking a lot about being 16 ten years ago. Ten years ago! Specifically, I have been thinking about getting my driver’s license a month or two after my sixteenth birthday. I can remember exactly what I was listening to the first time I drove myself to school, and I remember saying out loud as I drove out of my parents’ neighborhood, “Wow, I’m actually doing it.”
To be honest, that is how I have felt a lot about buying a house: Wow, I’m actually doing it.
I’m actually doing it.
Now I need to go unpack some boxes.