Getting My Houses in Order

Boy, what a bumpy five, six months it’s been, what with Egmont and now this looming move.  I’m kind of frazzled, and this entry reflects that because it’s in two parts.  I started it days ago at a Starbucks in a Huntsville Kroger’s and am only now getting around to finishing up.  I’m back home, in my kitchen, looking out at the backyard and wondering if and when it will get warm enough here in Wisconsin so I can finally plant the potatoes I’ve been nursing along for the last few weeks.  That is, when I’m not fretting over where the hell I’ll be living next and what’s going to happen once I get there.

Think of this as a before and after.  When I wrote the Huntsville part, I was tired and anxious about whether I’d find anything to like about Huntsville, if we’d find a house, etc.  As for the “after” . . . well, I’m not any less tired.  For the past few months, I’ve been surviving on about four hours of sleep before I pop awake at 3 or 4 and fret. I wonder if I’ll ever sleep through the night again.

Anyway, let’s dive into the before part, and then I’ll talk about where things stand now.

* * *

BEFORE: (Saturday morning at the Kroger’s) 

No Sunday’s cakes, no Friday’s cocktails (though I talked about a few of them on Facebook) . . . my only defense is that I haven’t been around [was on the road last week (an event at the Anderson Public Library, which was very fun) and will be on the road this weekend and next] and–frankly–I’ve been kind of preoccupied getting the house ready to list.  That finally happened this past week, and we’ve already had one showing with an open house scheduled for tomorrow.

The cats are frazzled.  Winnie’s been following me around, mewing and dragging his blanket.  Timmy’s whinier than usual.  Me, too.

Needless to say, I haven’t written a lick either.  Not a lick in weeks.  WEEKS.  MONTHS.

That’s driving me crazy, especially when I had a head of steam going for a novel I thought  I wanted to write.  But I just can’t find the place inside to get my head into the game.  Painters and plumbers and construction guys and all those folks traipsing through the house on a regular and daily basis probably has something to do with it.  I remember the last time I did sit down to write and almost immediately a painter asked if he could ask me a couple questions and then borrow my muscles to help move furniture.

I’ve kind of lost interest in that book, too.  It doesn’t feel oh-so-yesterday, but it almost feels as if the book belongs to another part of my life that I’m not in right now.

So, instead, I’m trying to cope.  I like information.  So I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Huntsville and Birmingham and Alabama. In the process–and it’s been interesting because there’s a whole bunch of history I just didn’t know–another idea’s come to me: a novel that I want to set in Alabama roundabout World War II.  The idea’s really taking on shape in my head, and I’m thinking . . . yeah, go for it, follow that feeling.  Stop looking over your shoulder and face forward.

Like I said, I think that marshalling my natural curiosity is my way of coping.  I like learning new things; it’s one of the best aspects of my job, to be honest.  Right now, the people taking shape in my head feel much more immediate and real than the folks I was writing about–and that should surprise no one, least of all me.

I only need to find that space to write again.  Now that the house is on the market, I’m thinking that things will settle down.  Well . . . once I stop traveling.  And find a house.  And move in.

But, maybe, if I start outlining this new book next week and just plug away at it, do my best, I can get back into the groove.

Who knows?  I might even make a midweek cake, just because I can 🙂

* * *

AFTER: (Wednesday morning, my kitchen)

Well, you know what they say about good intentions.

For starters, I don’t think I’ll be making a midweek cake.  I’m flat-out exhausted and still not sleeping.  Plus, the husband’s actually not going into the lab again after today.  We leave on Friday yet again for the weekend, only this time for a wedding (in Toronto!  I’ve got to wear something FORMAL!  Which means I’ll freeze…). So there’d be little point in a cake because there’d be no one to feed it to.

At any rate, here’s where things stand.

I survived Huntsville (or maybe it survived me).  It’s not a bad place, but it’s a city with surburban sprawl and neighborhoods; there are tons of people and lots of cars and ribbons of highway; and there’s no getting around that.

On the other hand, there is a lot of green space, especially east and northweast of the city where the sprawl isn’t so terrible, and a really lovely mountain park, Monte Sano, with cabins, a place where they hold summer concerts, and scads of hiking trails (nothing really long or arduous but still nice).  We even saw some brave souls biking the narrow winding road leading up to and down from the park.  Some of those sections were pretty steep, too.  At the very top of the mountain, there used to an old resort hotel that numbered Helen Keller amongst its frequent visits. The views of the Tennessee Valley are to die for.

There’s an old historic district with tall trees and beatiful mansions.  We found the oldest Reform synagogue in Alabama down there, and it’s apparently still going strong.  It’s a really cool-looking building, too.  There’s also a lovely park in the middle of town.

There are botannical gardens and nature trails, and about forty minutes outside town, I hear there’s another lake park where people like to hang.

Food seems to be big here.  The places where we had dinner were wonderful: good food, nice people.  They need to work on their cocktails a touch, but that’s no big deal.  There are farmer’s markets, and that’s good, too.

Huntsville has a literary scene; they’ve got a great library system; there’s a symphony and chorus (so maybe I’ll still be able to sing).  Talk to the locals, and the University of Alabama at Huntsville has the best gym that’s also open to the public.  As for football, Tuscaloosa isn’t so far away that I couldn’t catch some games.  Roll Tide (unless they’re playing the Badgers and then I’ll just have to be careful).  Of course, there’s no pro team, but you can’t have everything.

So that’s all good.

We’ve also narrowed down possible houses to two (and maybe three).  One’s in move-in shape; all it needs is a coat of paint and we’re done.  But there’s a downside in that there’s no room in the house where I could see myself writing. Other than the master bedroom and kitchen, no other room looks out on anything remotely scenic (in this case, the back yard).  There are plenty of windows at the front of the house, though, and the street is quiet, so working in one of those rooms for right now wouldn’t be too terrible.  After all, I did it in Wisconsin for years before we added the sunroom where I work now.  Eventually, we’d build out the rest of the basement (a lot of space down there, and potential) and probably add an office off a screened porch.  But we’re thinking that you move in, you live in the place for a while, and then you start making changes.  The important thing is that the house works and it’s enough house for the two of us without being so palatial that I’d have to wear a radio collar for the husband to even find me.  (Some of the houses we saw were MASSIVE.  Massively expensive, too.)

The other house needs more work–new carpet, new paint, new hardwood–but it’s much more interesting because it perches on a bluff off Monte Sano.  All the houses up there, at least the ones in this particular area, are reminiscent of houses in LA: you know, the ones propped up by stilts in the hills.  These are similar, which means that you don’t get much of a yard in the back, but the tradeoff is a fantastic view of the valley and surrounding foothills.  Essentially, you’re living up in the trees, and all the houses have decks and windows facing the valley.

So you’d think that the house we’re looking at would be a piece of cake, but it’s not that easy.  All the houses in this particular section are older, but they’re certainly not cookie-cutter and they have a lot of character.  Yet  things are dated.   Still,  those are all cosmetic issues you can correct.  If I wanted an office, though, I’d have to knock out another window in a bedroom on the second story, or even a pair of French doors that would then communicate with an upper deck (there are two on this house).

But the house might not be able to tolerate that, given that one of the supports shows some damage and cutting through brick walls isn’t trivial.  Still, if it’s only a support structural issue, that’s something you can fix.

What we may not be able to correct for, though, is the possibiility that there’s been water damage to the foundation.  There’s a very funky, very ugly smell in that basement.  Now, the entire HVAC has been off for months.  That means the whole space hasn’t been ventilated in forever, so it might just be that.  But you read all the time about those weird molds that creep into the drywall and stuff.  Here, the smell’s contained to the basement, so it might not be horrible and could be an easy fix: seal the concrete and ventilate the thing.

Or it might not.  It might be something terrible.

In which case, then we go back to the other house.

Unless we decide against that, too, and keep looking for a place where we don’t have to futz or build anything.  Since nothing is certain, I’ve kept looking online and spotted a possibility just this morning. That would mean another trip to Huntsville.  Actually, we’ll be going back again, regardless, if we decide on the house with the funky smell because we need to lay eyes on the thing, take measurements, talk to contractors, and all that.  But if the house can be fixed, then we could take possession and get started on this now, so the house is ready for us to move into.

Why am I so focused on this?  Well, I like knowing where I’m going, and moving is a big deal in all sorts of ways.  Personally, I just need to know I’ll have a place to work and be comfortable; a kitchen I like and that works for me.  I feel like I need to get there already.

And that’s interesting because of something Freud once wrote: that a house represents the dreamer.

Now, that’s spot on, at least when it comes to me.  When a book’s not going well, I always have dreams where a house is broken, needs fixing, is filled with people I don’t know.  The first dream I talked about in my own analysis was one where I was walking to the analyst’s house; the windows were yellowish and ugly; the trees were all dying; the place looked haunted.  I remember that, as I faced this awful house, I noticed this sore on my right arm.  When I touched it, this putrid yellow pus dribbled out–and then I woke up.

Well, that dream was about me: my fears of what I might find out about myself; my concern that all this ugly stuff lived inside and now here this analyst was going to bring it all out into the open.

In the past few months, ever since this Huntsville thing became a reality, all I’ve had when I do sleep are house dreams: people breaking in, people telling me I have one ugly house, things falling apart or getting violent and black.

None of that is surprising, really.  After all, what have I been doing for months but getting our house ready to sell while obsessively looking through listings to find a house we might make into a home?

What this all tells me, though, is I need to settle this.  I desperately need a house of my own.  That means I need a new novel I really want to write.  I need to re-enter my life and its routines.  Once I do that and get that house in order–once I’m writing–things will probably get better.

I might even sleep, and not dream of bad houses and disaster–and what a nice change that would be.

I got to find a house.  I got to find a book.