Meme: Love that House!

Via 4boydad: "List 5 things you like most about your house."

1. The price. We purchased our house just as the real estate boom began. We didn't have much to spend on our first house, but three years of apartment living and prompting from my dad led us to explore our options. Our agent searched diligently for a home in the area that we wanted and in our price range. Sadly, the only homes in our price range were former crack houses (or worse). One day he drove us to a pre-foreclosure in "great for a fixer-upper" condition. So we bought it. Now we live in a former crack house. One day I will tell you the rest of the story; it takes me about twenty-five minutes to tell when I tell my classes (it is a perfect story for the half-day before Thanksgiving when a third of the students are gone and nothing is getting done anyway).

2. The downstairs living room. This large, L-shaped living area is where we spend most of our time indoors. It has plenty of room for the kids to play, a TV area, a computer area, a fireplace, and most of our books. Because it is below grade, it stays quite cool in the summer (though it is tough to heat in the winter).

3. The backyard. Our house sits on a large, trapezoidal lot (.79 acres). The house is sited at the narrow part of the trapezoid near the street leaving the bulk of the acreage behind the house in a spreading, west-facing lawn. When we moved in, the backyard was a bit of a jungle, but I have put in many hours making it quite a pleasant place. Much remains to be done (a large crabapple tree just split in half and awaits my chainsaw, but the westerly wind that almost always seems to be blowing will make the chore bearable). The backyard is continually surprising us with some unexpected wonder. Just this year we discovered that the unusual tree in the back corner of our lot is a pecan tree. In addition the mysterious disappearance of the neighborhood cats has led to the return of reptiles to our backyard (only a couple of months ago I saw the first lizard in our yard in eight years).

4. The Two Trees: It will be hard to move if we ever have to. Each of our children has a tree in the backyard that was planted in the year they were born. Our boy has a silver maple. Our girl has a redbud. The twins will, perhaps, have red maples.

5. Location: Just before we bought our house, I was having a discussion at my temp job with a
co-temp (temps generally only talk to other temps) about living in the suburbs versus "in-town" (not quite downtown but close enough to feel urban-chic). She was a recent social work grad and wanted to move in-town for the diversity; she wanted any kids that she might have to meet all kinds of people (in a reversal of white flight, a large number of young, white suburbans have begun moving back "in-town" over the past fifteen years in Atlanta). I thought she might have a point until we moved in to our own, very suburban home. Our Iranian neighbors live across the street from our Vietnamese neighbors who live down the road from our Indian neighbors who always walk their dogs past our African-American neighbors, our Mexican neighbors, and our white neighbors (both red-necked and white-collared). Walking down the street at dinner time, one can be met by a wondrous melange of international food scents. In addition, I am only fifteen to twenty minutes from work and within thirty minutes of most of our families. Plus, we are close to a good Mexican restaurant, a good barbecue restaurant, a good Italian restaurant, a good pizza joint, a excellent movie house, a national park, a major trout stream, a thrift store, and are only three miles from the interstate.


Peace