Friday, February 12, 2010

An Excitable Boy

So I am an excitable boy. Not in the Warren Zevon sense, but more in the very passionate, never-looks-before-he-leaps sense. I'm a spaz and proud of it. I have no desire to be moderately intrigued by events or people or places. I want to fall in love with them and run around in circles and walk home 4 miles instead of taking the train because I just like how good walking feels when there's a little pep in my step and the sun is shining. I want to have something to play my harmonica about. To obsessively think about. To daydream about.

I say all this to put it into perspective for you. So when I say "I am damn excited about this house", you know that I am DAMN EXCITED about THIS house. Yeah, I've already walked all over today. I've played my harmonica, I've daydreamed . . . sheee-it, I might just bust a little bass here in a minute. This house is awesome! Let me tell you why:

1) It's exactly the right size for us. We've looked at a lot of places that have been much bigger and we've fantasized about the clean, sparse, open feel that we would cultivate in such places. However, as much as we like a clean, sparse, and open aesthetic, that is fundamentally NOT who we are. We are burrowers. Creatures of cozy contentment who ultimately prefer the reassuring embrace of snugness to the graceful openness of sparse. We are also hoarders. I have fought it for years, I always wanted to be associated with a powerful, sleek, dangerous animal like a panther or a puma, but when you get down to it, I am a squirrel. It's true. I like to climb. I like to jump. I like to scamper. And I like to hoard. I also like nuts and acorns. This house allows to both burrow and hoard. I love it.

2) The yard is HUGE! Extra-long lot, my friends. Plenty of room for vegetables, trees, lilacs, and barbecues. Oh yes, and wiffle-ball.

3) It's on Shakespeare. I just like that. And I can walk to Rosa's, one of the finest blues bars in the city of Chicago and hence, the universe. I can walk to Jon and Kirsten's place. I can walk to the Brown Sack. I can walk to the YMCA. Oh yeah.

I will post more about my earlier housing heartbreaks and the rigors of the search. I might even weigh in with a more subdued and balanced look at this possible house. But for now, I am only interested in wiffle-ball-worthy backyards and a place to finally put all 12 volumes of the OED up on the shelf in the cozy room next to the upright bass. Oh yeah.

3 comments:

  1. I hear you on the "right size" issue. When we bought our house, it was smaller than any other we'd looked at, but we were about 10x more charmed by it than any other we'd looked at. It's cozy and perfect. No regrets!

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  2. Potential. Not perfect yet. About as big as our current kitchen, but not as much good counter space.

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