House-hunting. And here, it is really like hunting: Here, you are required to have visited the property before even applying for it, so it creates open house situations where crowds of people are setting their sights on a house, especially if it is a good deal. All the prospective renters are smiling at one another with eyes of steel--eyes behind a gun, with a parlor-mouth. Weird.
We started looking in the 400s per week (why do they do that? No one thinks of their home from week to week), but saw enough frights to bump us into the next bracket...21a Cecil Ave looked great online but the back yard ended three feet--one meter, I mean--from the back door. Why have a sliding glass door there? For what? Hopeful that an impossibly thin person might actually enjoy the impossibly thin strip?
The agent asked, as we left, if we liked it. By that time, we just stared at her. Now I know how the Ugly American labels get started. A bunch of jet-lagged Americans trying to understand what she is saying, number one; why she is saying it, number two; and how on earth anyone would like paying a small fortune for a hut, three, dammit. We are very practical, I suppose, and especially when jet-lagged.
We want to live close to the college so that we can be something a part of the student life there--the president here does "Pasta with the President" evenings from time to time. We thought at first "Drugs with the Dean" might be funny as a counterpoint to pasta. Baxter might say at this moment, "Thaddeus is at Campion." But that was actually my idea. The secret is that I am the crazy one in this family. Don't think we'll do that, just like we didn't buy the pink Yaris. We'll just have people over informally, I hope...but anyway, I like Old Toongabbie, where the college is located: it is middle-class, lower-middle, with more of a melting pot than further out and northwest of the city...you get out into Kellyville and the hill-areas and it reminds me so much of those suburbs in LA or Denver...the ones that are these huge, new houses with ostentatious pillars and picture windows, small mansions on small plots in a maze of phony parks where no one sits or walks because they have i-phones and huge screens to go virtual walking, places where you'd feel like an interloper sitting on a bench in this kind of rich and clean desert of smooth driveways and green lawns.
After yesterday, though, those LA cookies looked pretty good. Later, I found one house that has the delightful Australian style--these are bungalow-cottage types that have pointed roofs decorated with wood-pillar accents; perky little things, and really charming. I can't remember if it was on Domain or the other one, and where on earth it is; it is like trying to keep your eyes on a sparkle on the ocean. That's a poetic way of saying I'm not great at organizing a search--just fob it off on some poetic insight, and you're golden still to yourself. Oh well. My hope is in Gandalf's idea: "I have never met such a thing as 'luck' in this life...you were meant to have the ring..." I think this must work with so many little things, like house-hunting, because really, where you live can have tremendous meaning, a small change like all changes, that changes everything.
I don't have any idea, really, of our budget...so much has to be understood just by living it, day-to-day. This is probably one of the hard things; how to make a decision like this without all the info? A home, I know, is such an important part of life, and as many parents do, I feel again that responsibility for providing something safe and with a potential for happiness for these vulnerable souls in my charge. Usually that thought line reveals to me quite forcefully that Thaddeus and I cannot do it alone; we need, ultimately, God's guidance and help and provision. I told Him, as I did in Lander, that contrary to my emotions about it all (finding a home is very emo), that I wanted to see what He puts in front of us.
Usually He answers with the Toothpaste Tube Response (TTR): I start looking at limitations as His hand squeezing me in the right direction. Sometimes I wish He'd just say, "Hey, toothpaste--look over here. Here it is."
Okay, it's early for Tami--7 am Sydney time. The jet lag excuse is wearing thin, now, too. But maybe I can milk it for a few more days.
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