Shiksa buys a house

There's this great book called "Yiddish with Dick & Jane." It makes my heart glad on so many levels, especially in demonstrating the proper use of the word 'schlep.'

Jane works in real estate.
Today is Sunday.
Jane has an Open House.
She must schlep the Open House signs to the car.

See Jane schlep.
Schlep, Jane. Schlep.
Schlep, schlep, schlep.

Well Jane had nothing on us this last week. We began the house-hunting process exactly nine days ago when we went to see a private mortgage adviser. After three hours of all kinds of acronyms running through my head (PMI, DTI, ARM - don't all of these sound like sexually transmitted diseases?) and more numbers than ever crossed my path in my third semester of calculus, we began looking for a house.

The actual looking began a week ago, last Saturday, when we made the pilgrimage out to Dorchester. Now if you'll follow the link to that neighborhood, affectionately known as 'The Dot,' you'll probably find out that there are several beautiful parts of Dorchester filled with remodeled Victorians and Georgians and such. You'll also find out that it's more than a little scary to go there at any time of the day because of the incredible crime rate. Wonderful. I'd love to live here and go running and walk my dog in a neighborhood where you really shouldn't leave the block. Great. That was Saturday.

Sunday was church for both of us, and we decided to catch a few open houses before I had to go sing evensong. First house was beautiful, a newly converted classic 3-family near the Forest Hills T stop. This sounds like a good idea. The building is great, the structure is all revamped with new electrics and plumbing and such, off-street parking, bonus, no a/c. Hmm. Well, we live without a/c now, it couldn't be any worse, and there is central heat. Okay. House number two has now become known as the 'Fiesta House,' where every day is Cinco de Mayo. Oy. I would have needed a margarita every time I came home to deal with the terracotta colored walls. All of the walls, friends, all of them. Living room, dining room, kitchen, it was like there was a leftover paint sale for the Mexican restaurant scene. Remember the Crayola color 'thistle'? That was the color of the second bedroom. The bathroom? Aqua. NOT KIDDING. But it had central heat and a/c and yard space, etc. All good things. Big drawback - street parking. Hmm. Third house was a dive. It smelled funny and, despite the huge square footage, the bathroom was not only unusually small and had not been updated, but the single update in the bathroom was this weird vanity sink that looked like a mixing bowl with a spout hanging over it. Would it have killed them to redo the windows instead of putting in a chi-chi sink? Big fat NO on that one. That was Sunday.

On Monday our agent had some time and one of our appointments was canceled, so we took a leisurely drive through a few different neighborhoods. "You know those beautiful new condos you saw online? I'm going to show you why we're not going to look at them. Okay, see the building?" *nod* "Now look around the corner as we drive around. See that big brick complex that looks a little scary?" *nod nod* "That's the housing project that's being torn down in three years. That's why the condos are priced below their value. I just wanted you to know why we're not going to look at them." *nodnodnodnodnodnodnod* So we drove around for a while before our appointment at this house in Hyde Park.

Now let me preface this by saying that husband and I had several conversations about the house selection process. What's our first step - establish our price range. Second step - make a list of the 'must have' and the 'would like to have' aspects of the property, structure and neighborhood. Rank these in order of priority. Use this criteria and our agent's access to the MLS service in order to locate houses that are both affordable and desirable. Calculate commute time, research neighborhoods, rule out houses that don't take pets, rule out houses that don't have our top five, make appointments to see said houses. He asked me, "What about emotion?" My extremely naive response to this question was something like, "I don't really think emotion enters into this decision. We will only look at the houses that match our search criteria, so any of them should be in the running. It will just be a question of which one is the best deal for the best house."

I want to go on record for the benefit of my husband and anyone who came in contact with me over the last five days and say, "I WAS WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG." And I get that about myself. The wrongness.

So Monday, after our driving tour through Roslindale, Forest Hills and Hyde Park, we arrive at our appointment. I am immediately impressed by the off-street parking area that is not only paved but has lots of space, likely enough for six cars, but is only shared by the three units in the house. Perfect for turkey frying, note to self. I notice the three compressors outside as part of the a/c system. I notice that the yard is landscaped with terraced garden areas, one for each unit. We go in through the basement which is HUGE and has enclosed storage space for each unit, as well as the new hot water heaters and the incredible common storage space. Just right for refinishing a porch swing. Big enough for a worktable or three. Fine. We go up the stairs into the back hall and investigate the rest of the house. I'll spare you the details because it reads like a Harlequin romance novel with me falling in LOVE WITH THIS HOUSE. No bare-chested Fabio with his hair rippling in the wind, just me freezing my ass off on a cold day in my Red Sox hat, mouth agape in shock at the size of this place that's only supposed to be 910 square feet. But that's without the laundry room, the foyer, the enclosed and insulated sun porch. Did I mention the laundry room? Because that means we would never have to schlep our laundry to the basement again.

Suffice it to say that I dragged husband back that night to see the house. After a few more visits on Tuesday and Wednesday, we put in an offer on Thursday afternoon. I went to church for evensong and choir practice, phone charged and on silent in my hand the entire evening. We went out with our friends to the bar and talked about the house and our plans and how this was all happening waaaaaaaaay fast for us. Friday was the counteroffer/counteroffer/counteroffer process, and finally our offer was accepted Friday afternoon around 4:30pm.

So if everything goes as planned, on June 30, 2008, we will be homeowners.











Welcome to our home.

Back by popular demand.....

My darling friend Nicole intimated that it's been a while since my last post and, in keeping with her track record, she is not wrong. I've been quite busy in the last few weeks, coming back to Boston, back to back concerts, and getting ready for the great house hunt that began on Saturday and is continuing even as I type. Cross your fingers that we don't end up in the ghetto.

Something that's been on my mind a lot lately - respect. How do we define the respect that we give others, our spouses, friends, family, colleagues, etc. Returning home to Boston, a lot of my conservatory friends asked me how the program in Seattle was. Anyone who has read my blog has a pretty fair idea of how I feel about my experience in Seattle, but a few weeks' distance affords me a little more perspective. What did I go there to accomplish? Husband and I said that the purpose of going to this program was to 1. get management 2. get work and 3. better my craft. Done, done and done. I know that I did a lot of bitching and whining and crying over how I didn't make the friends I wanted to or how I didn't get included in the cool kids' table, but safe in the warmth of my office with my dog asleep on the rug, I can say that it all comes down to respect. You either respect yourself or you don't. You either respect your art or you don't. And you either respect the work or you don't.

My mom is a superwoman. She went back to school when I was a senior in college to start her bachelor's degree and pushed, full steam ahead, through her undergrad and masters with a 4.0 at the end of everything and then went straight into her first accounting job, and started studying for the CPA exam. And even though Miss Jean gets on my nerves, as I know I get on hers, I have a tremendous amount of respect for my mom.

My piano teacher is also a superwoman. She suffered a huge blow about eight years ago with a nerve disorder that left two fingers on her right hand unusable as a pianist. Many people would have closed up shop and taken up scrapbooking. What did she do? After many rounds of physical and drug therapy, she re-learned how to play the piano with eight fingers and came back to play my masters' recital. And with eight fingers she wipes the floor with many pianists who still have all ten. The Divine Dr. L is an ass-kicker of phenomenal proportions.

My husband is also an ass-kicker of phenomenal proportions. He has supported this insane opera career of mine for the last four years, packing lunches and suitcases and driving me to and from the airport and coming to concerts and helping me not lose my mind when I want to kill the people I work with. And he's put together a career of working for non-profit music schools (is there such a thing as a for-profit music school?) who desperately need the kind of energetic organization and innovation that he provides, expanding and revamping the music program at his church (even if by force, says I), and organizing and rehearsing concerts of his own music in his 'spare' time. Show me a musician who has spare time and I'll give you a shiny new nickel.

*Shameless plug - go to his website and listen to the sound files from last week's concert. Go now. I will wait here for you.*

Back now? Good.

What do these people have in common, other than that they're on speed dial in my telephone? I have tremendous respect for these people and many others that I've talked about in the last few years on this blog. And it's not just that they respect themselves and their art (my mother will tell you accounting is an art and, since I don't have the experience in that field, I defer to her). Most of all, they respect the work. And because they respect the work, they are in turn respected by their colleagues. This is what I want from my career. I want to respect the art and the work enough to continue to fuel the drive that makes me practice and research and read and explore. I want my kids to tell their friends that their parents are ass-kickers and takers of names. I want to come home from work exhausted from working well and working hard. And I want to still love it as much as I do now.

Things work out, you know. The truth is always the easiest path. It's less complicated to be yourself. All those cliche nuggets of wisdom that your parents told you, they're true. And I know that I'll get upset again when I have to work with someone who doesn't respect the work. I just have to remind myself that I get to come home to the husband and the house and the dog. And so long as I'm faithful to the work, the work will be faithful to me. The rest is, in the words of Alex Ross, "just noise."