You know you wanted it!

When we bought The Landfill, it was 1984 (not *that* 1984) and we paid $65,000 for a 1959 ticky-tacky house with three [small] bedrooms, one bathroom (the blue and only!), an AAAAAAA-dition (as the Grinchie called it), and a basement. No garage. For $65K on the Planet Ann Arbor in those days, you could get either a basement or a garage with your house. We chose basement. I *think* that was the right decision but sometimes when I am egregiously idling my vee-hickle to thaw zee ice on zee veeeendsheeeeld, I wonder. You don’t want to know what Zillow thinks this place is worth now. As much as I love the place, I disagree with Zillow.

We were fortunate to be able to put enough money down (1/3? something like that, I can’t exactly remember) that we were able to avoid having an escrow account. That was partly thanks to diligent savings habits for a couple years but also thanks to PARENT CONTRIBUTIONS! THANKS PARENTS! $65K was STILL a whole heckuva lotta money to us and I remember counting in thousands at that Batscope Hour many nights before we closed on the property. I will say that my recent kitchen renovation cost more than that down payment and I didn’t wake up at that Batscope Hour counting in thousands thinking about how to pay for it even once.

When closing day finally rolled around, we had to take thousands and thousands of dollars out of one bank in cash and carry that cash across town to another bank in one of our cute little Ford Fiestas. I saw that the GG was about to embark on this adventure wearing a sleazy looking Shakey Jake tank top. I told him NO NO NO NO! That will not do. He either changed his clothing or put a jacket on over the tank top, ah don’t recollect (as the southern boyz say when they wanna weasel out of answering a question). Yes, this was before the age of online banking, the industry that now employs yer fav-o-rite blahgger. Nowadays we have to worry about him wearing his bomb-head shirt. You do NOT want to know. Fortunately I inadvertently raised a couple of Amazon Women who help me police that shirt when they are around.

Why didn’t we ever upgrade our housing situation after all those years? Many friends who were maybe more financially challenged than we were did just that. Well, one reason is because we paid the place off in 13 years and it is sooooooo nice to not have a mortgage. Let me count the ways (some other day). But also, we like it here. At least I do. The beach urchins didn’t have to cross even one street to get to grade school. And nowadays my fave grocery store is a short walk away and the neighborhood pub/steakhouse is around the corner and I have a lovely Zen Commute to work [except in snow]. Oh, and woods? Yeah, right behind us. Location Location Location? We have it.

I got off on a huge tangent. I was going to talk about pavement [again]. The top photo is our loverly driveway a few weeks ago. Look at huge slanted piece of pavement. I was sick to death of that thing. Now that the GG is no longer employed, I end up parking my loverly little Ninja in such a way that when I go around to the passenger side to get my work laptop and all of my other crap out of the car, I have to deal with that crappy old slanted piece of pavement. It’s annoying during the warm months but it is horrible when it ices up. We tried to get a professional to come out and re-do our driveway this fall but no one would take our money. I dunno whether we’re too small a job or maybe they don’t want to deal with the tree. Whatever. We have given up on getting a new driveway put in until [hopefully!] spring but today the GG broke up some of that crappy old pavement and it is at least marginally better now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2017 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.