I'm feeling a little crappy about my house today. Let me start by saying that, yes, I am grateful to have a house, to not be under a sub prime mortgage, to have bought my house when I did, to have the neighbors I have, to live so close to the school, blah blah etc. etc. but I don't come here to express my gratitude, I come here to bitch so that's what I'm going to do.
My house is small. Really small. 925 square feet with a ridiculous, kludged floorplan. You walk in the front door, you see the toilet. Welcome home! 95% of the time, I'm okay with the smallness. My electric bill is low, I save a lot of money not buying books and CDs and other stuff because I have no where to put them, and my family and I are always together, even when we don't want to be. I don't have to wonder what Leila is doing in her room across the house or upstairs because her room is smack in the middle of the house and she can't hide from me. If I have to, I can straighten up the whole house in half an hour. I only have one toilet to clean (okay, I have two, but I can't remember the last time I cleaned the other one, or used it.) The single biggest thing I do for the environment is live in a tiny house. At least that's what I tell myself when I'm feeling righteous. The environmental part is really just an unintended outcome of buying this house when we were young, and then no being able to afford to move.
Last night, Rob and I were sitting around chatting about all the stuff we have to do before Christmas, and he goes, "Where are we going to put the Christmas tree?" We have this new sectional sofa now, and I love it, but there is no longer a natural place for a Christmas tree. I know, those of you who are eco-hounds will tell me that I shouldn't get a Christmas tree anyway because they're evil and a waste and they melt the ice caps and whatever, but I am getting a tree and that's all there is to it. I put all those damn ornaments away every year with tissue and loving care, and I'm not just leaving them in the box. There are rituals to attend to, people! I have stockings! Snow globes!
The only place that it can go is where my office currently is. Calling it an office is really euphemistic. Its the smallest desk I could find, next to a small book shelf and its shoved into a corner of my living room. It works fine for me, its all I really need, but I'm going to have to dismantle the whole thing (desk, printer, files, do dads, post its, chair) and put it all in the garage for three or four weeks during Christmas. Jeez. There is literally no other place in my house that it can go for those weeks, that's how small this place is.
Also, I'm selling the side table and coffee table that were in here before the sofa, but we realized that we use the side table to put the Christmas tree on. We get a smaller tree and put it on a table with a tree skirt around it so we can save a little dough. I don't want to pay for an eight-foot tree. So now I may have to keep that stupid table under the house year 'round, just to be able to put the tree on it for three weeks out of the year. Honestly.
And another thing! We were never going to stay in this house, and our next house was going to have a dining room. I compromised on a dining room when we bought this place, and Rob compromised on a gas stove. Well, he's got is gas stove now, but where's my dining room? I'll tell you where: in my freakin' dreams!!! Of all the second generation grown kids that make up my family who could host Thanksgiving, I'm the only one who wants to, and I'm the only one who can't. These are not the kind of people who will eat off plates perched on their knees, and I can't fit all those people in here unless some of them eat in the bathroom, and the children stay in the yard.
I'm not asking for a lot. We have two ten year-old cars and I love at least one of them. I don't want to buy a new one until I absolutely have to. I only get a bikini wax twice a year (much to the chagrin of the few who are forced to see me without pants) vcb': (Perry the dog just walked across my laptop and typed "vcb':" I thought I'd leave it in. He says hi.) I get my hair cut by a friend, I do my own nails, I am not an extravagant person! Is a dining room too much to ask? Apparently it is, because the only way I'm going to get one is if I completely redo the back two thirds of my house, or move, neither of which I can afford unless I go get a full time job which would totally get in the way of all the on-my-ass sitting I have planned.
I bought another lottery ticket today, like a lemming, like a rube, and I'm not going to win, not now and not ever, and I will never have a dining room, and I will never be able to host Thanksgiving, or Christmas dinner, or any of the dinner parties in between. I should just get rid of all that china I got for my wedding. It just sits there, in the cabinet, taking up space, mocking me. Plus, my back deck is completely useless, and my bedroom is a shit hole. I'm going to be 40 next year. 40! And I still sleep in a room that belongs in, like, a dorm.
So click on those ads, people! I will either save up all my ad-clicking money for my remodel, or I will use it to drown my sorrows about living in the cutest little Kleenex box you ever did see.