Since we've been here for almost 3 months now and the details of everything that's happened over the last 6 months will quickly begin to get smaller in the rear-view mirror, I think it might be now or never. So in the face of irrelevance, here is a chronicle of our very eventful summer into fall into winter that starts in Lakewood, Ohio and ends(only to begin anew) in Austin, Texas. It is very long. The longest post yet, so give yourself some time to enjoy or simply close this window.
Nothing is easy.
Though time gets you worrying
my friend, it's o.k.
Just take your life easy
and stop all that hurrying,
be happy my way.
-Jethro Tull
Buying a home is one of the biggest, most important financial decisions you will ever make in your life. You're basically putting all of your (future!) money on "red", rolling the dice and crossing your fingers. At best, you'll be happy in your new place and the neighborhood will appreciate so that when/if the time comes to move on, you'll have a pile of chips to lay down on the next number. At worst, you'll hate your house, the neighborhood will go to hell and you'll either get stuck there because you can't sell it or you'll either lose money, break even or make very little. Most people end up somewhere in between. Assuming a 30 year fixed mortgage, by the time the house is paid off you'll probably end up paying more than twice the buying price anyways, with all of the interest, mortgage insurance and other hideous fees and taxes. Unless of course you pay cash up front, which is a rare opportunity for most folks.
So you do it anyway, have buyer's remorse when you look at your first statement, get over it and start spending even more money (that you don't have) remodeling and decorating so that the place feels more like "home". This is an interesting generational quirk. Growing up I don't remember my parents being nearly as obsessed with home remodeling/decorating as people are today. The place was just our house. It was safe, reasonably clean, we had a yard in which to play, dinner together most evenings. We just lived there. It wasn't a museum or the set of "Make Your House Look Cooler and More Zen-Like Than Your Neighbor's, So That When You Entertain, They'll Be Jealous and Impressed, Show" (insert cool, hip beat with a slight world-culture theme-possibly Asian?). I say this because I'm kind of like that. I enjoy making my place look nice and inviting, but I probably spend too much time and money and I must have it now...
We went through this 8 years ago when we bought our duplex in Lakewood. We probably paid a wee-bit too much for the house and certainly spent a lot of money keeping the place up. Most of what we did was cosmetic to medium-type jobs, so we never sank a ton of money into the place, but because it was built in 1922, there was a constant stream of projects to occupy my time. This was sort of a labor of love, since there's tremendous gratification in doing something yourself. I certainly learned a lot. But it was a fairly large duplex building, and I felt sort of "over it" in terms of my time commitment. The next place we buy will be smaller to be sure, or maybe even some sort of condo or townhouse.
That brings us to the near recent: selling a house. This has the capacity to be a much more stressful transaction. Our situation in particular called for a fairly quick resolution, with job pending in the new city, starting on a certain date. Our choices were as follows:
1.) Try and sell the house before we move, but not too far ahead, since we didn't want to move into a "halfway house" and pay for storage.
2.) Move anyway and keep the house on the market while paying rent and a mortgage. Not an option for us.
3.) Rent both units out and manage the property from 1400 miles away and hope the place doesn't become a crack-house and/or brothel. Paying someone to manage it does not guarantee that any of those things won't happen as most property management companies are off-site and can't always be trusted. Everyone smiles in person.
Selling the house was clearly our best choice but in the market that Ohio's in right now, is by no means a foregone conclusion. Duplex sales have been especially stagnant in Lakewood with 80-90 units collecting dust. So we put the house on the market, priced it aggressively(in other words, lower than we wanted and less than the city's appraisal used to set our property tax), and moved ahead with our future plans. If the place didn't sell, plan B was to go the rental route and hope to find someone we trusted to manage it for us.
The first two months saw very little action. Once we got over the novelty of seeing a "For Sale" sign in the yard, we started to get anxious. Our timetable really suggested a late July, early August sale before we had to eject and go to plan B. At the same time, we needed to get an early start on finding a place in Austin before the mad rush of college students swarmed the affordable apartment market. So, in mid-July, we scheduled a trip to Austin to meet with an apartment locator to help us find a place for at least the first year. For us, staying in an apartment, scouting the city for a year to get a feel for the market made sense. Austin's real estate market is very robust so decisions need to be made quickly and assertively. I booked the appointment a month ahead, so when we got to the office, they already had a profile on us and a general idea of what we were looking to find. After a short, interview we headed out with the agent, and eventually settled on a place we felt was a good combination of location, price and amenities. By that I mean: something close to the city and to my wife's job, under $800 a month, and a place that would take our dog and cat, had a pool, outdoor space, a reasonably modern kitchen and some good storage. Since I'll be working primarily from home, this would also enable us to ditch our second car.
Since we found a place on day two of a seven-day trip, the rest of the week was spent exploring and hanging around my uncle-in-law's amazing house. On the fourth day however, our realtor called: we had a bite on the house.
I can't explain the excitement that phone call generated. Hoping against all hope, we tried to think positive and finish out the rest of the week knowing we couldn't really do anything but wait for a phone call. Ironically, the guy interested was from Texas and if his friend liked it, he was going to pay cash. My mind immediately started to worry about things I couldn't control, like picky inspectors, bugs/pest showing up at the worst time, hot water tanks/furnaces dying, roof leaking. Insanity really. Upon returning home, it took much effort on my wife's part to keep me from obsessing over details and phantom fix-it projects but after another detailed walk-through, a bid was made and we accepted.
Game on.
Now this where the fun really starts. Generally, there's an inherit tension between the buyer and seller of any goods. Due to the magnitude of such a transaction, this tension seems to be multiplied exponentially as the rounds of give-and-take commence. Nobody likes to lose. From the seller's viewpoint, there are psychological as well as financial thresholds and boundaries to work through. A seller often quantifies a home's value based on emotional connections that may or may not be out of step with a potential buyer's needs. Also, there is a tendency of sellers to expect a mutual return on the effort and capital applied to the house. In other words: I should be rewarded for my effort and time, right? Well, not really. The housing market is not based on sentimental, emotional or sweat equatorial relationships but by a simple supply and demand formula.
Reminds me of an 80s song by Megadeth: "Peace Sells, but Who's Buyin'?"
From a buyer's point of view, the seller is always hiding something. The price is always inflated for wiggle room or just in case some sucker doesn't know any better and just pays the asking price without negotiating. Anyway, the most important thing for us was to sell the house at a reasonable price, while not paying anything out of our pockets and maybe getting a little bit of gold to throw into our sack just for trying. If our realtor made more than us, so be it as long as our interests were met. That's the nature of trying to sell a house quickly in a bad market.
Everything was going along nicely until the inspection. Having been through this myself when we bought the place, I knew there would be a list of things found and that we would then negotiate what I would and would not fix. As long as it wasn't anything excessive, things would turn out alright. We would give a little - the buyer would give a little. Again, to recapitulate the main theme: Nothing Is Easy.
Of the list the inspector made, there were three items the buyer wanted me to fix before he was willing to sign:
1.) There was a tiny gas leak around an old pipe connection near one of the dryers.
2.) The inspector found unacceptable traces of CO around both furnaces(this house is a duplex)
3.) While the driveway as a whole will need to get replaced, 4 slabs around and including two slabs of the sidewalk were particularly egregious and would need to be fixed.
Well, at least it was nothing major!
At this point, the buyer was starting to back away, feeling anxious and second-guessing the transaction. This house that I had loved and improved, had bitten me in the backside leaving me feeling like a jilted lover, confused and betrayed. The romantic in me felt I had a relationship with this house. That it knew I wanted to pass it on to good, caring hands and that it would feel gratitude towards me.
"Snap out of it, you sentimental ass! It's a house, not a rescued cat"...jeez, how sobering. Time to get to business and close this deal. "Excuse me Mr. Diabolus, what do I need to do to get this thing wrapped up?"
The first two were relatively easy and cheap(great combo!) to fix. I called the furnace guy and he came out and took readings and it was agreed that because of the old furnace design, the initial CO readings disperse rather quickly and were not a threat physically or operationally. The gas leak was a two minute job: since the pipe was not being used, he just cut it and put a cap on it. The whole thing cost us $75.00.
Number three was a little harder. I could have just hired someone to do the job but it would have cost well over $1000 between materials, labor and removal. Since I didn't want to spend a grand-plus on a driveway I would use for only a month, we needed a plan and quick.
Enter our friend Amanda. With a construction background, connections to materials and honest generosity, she assured me that if I could break up the old concrete and find a "place" for it, that she could get the job done for the price of materials alone. Her friend Tom owed her a favor and she was willing to cash in that chip to help us sell our house. That kind gesture will never be forgotten by either my wife or myself. In a world of foolishness, that kind of generosity rekindles my faith in the upright animals we call people. So the only thing left to do, was grab a sledgehammer, put on my Alan Lomax collection of prison songs and get to breakin' rocks.
Here's a few images of the removal:
My wife's cousin Matt came over with his pickup and hauled three loads of busted up concrete to a dump he has access to which also saved us money. My dad came over with his truck and we took the last load of dirt, rocks and roots to the Lakewood public waste department. I never got charged the $20 for that so I suppose some more good karma had been approved to come my way at the last minute.
For some strange reason, I never took photos of the finished job. I suppose I was just glad to be done and just moved on to other tasks but suffice to say, it looked awesome, the buyer was satisfied, signed the necessary papers and the deal went through. All told, everything worked out: The realtor did a good job, the buyer got the house he wanted and just like that, our house was sold. We could now start packing and preparing for the 1,400 mile move staring us square in face.
Moving Out
Hitch Your Wagon to a Star
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
I never thought I would find myself living in Texas. To many, it has a pungent aroma that can be hard to take. A land full of colorful, outgoing, hard-working, enterprising, independent, and often brilliant people; not afraid to speak their mind, even when they might sound arrogant, boastful, backwards and stubborn. Like most stereotypes, the classic Texan can be an iconic figure that you either love or hate. I admit, my lower opinions of Texas and its people have been generally made up of an aggregate of hearsay, Hollywood caricature, political lampooning, and a perceived backwardness that is often portrayed in popular culture. Like most stereotypes: New Yorkers(smug and cynical), West-Coasters(flaky and happy), Midwesterners(normal and plain) and Southerners(poor but friendly), Texans' many qualities while sometimes accurate, are often erroneous as well. Texas sure has its share of gun-toting gorillas, an egregious over-abundance of giant trucks and SUVs barging their way across the state and a huge army of zealous, sometimes irrational fundamental religious bullies. It does have those things. It also has a ton of music and art, four fairly large cities, great regional food, prominent Hispanic culture, deserts, mountains, hills, swamps, plains, piney woods, lakes, rivers, and ocean coasts. There are big bugs, snakes, Republicans, armadillos, ringtails, javalinas, coyotes, Libertarians, cactus, agaves, yuccas, palms, oaks, Democrats...in other words: Texas is a big place with a lot of different things to offer. You can fit six Ohios inside of it.
These were the thoughts going through my head as we were packing up our stuff and preparing to move to the Lone Star State. Moments of excitement and adventure mingled with fear, panic and doubt were at times consuming for the both of us. Many people leave a place because they have negative feelings or memories with which they cannot reconcile. This was not the case for us. Our situation in Cleveland was great. We were surrounded by many friends and family, we had a house, a yard, a generally comfortable lifestyle. While often frustrated with the city's lack of gumption and foresight, it is our hometown none-the-less and if we don't love it, who will? But at some point it's necessary to change into another pair of pants, otherwise you'll simply wear them out. This is how we were beginning to feel about living in Cleveland: a comfy, ripped up pair of jeans. Why not mix things up a bit? And besides, if we don't like Austin, we can go somewhere else. Leaving Cleveland, the Mothership, was the hard part.
The one part of moving I like, is going through your possessions and reconsidering the importance of certain things. This can be heart-wrenching but also very therapeutic and cleansing. My wife and I often disagree on these decisions as I can be a bit of a purger and she a pack rat. Because we were moving to a much smaller space, I felt it was absolutely crucial to make severe cuts, as the idea of lugging things 1400 miles away only to discover we can't use them seemed foolish. However, I have been known to sometimes make hasty decisions only to regret them later so in the end, we both got our way without too much bloodshed.
No matter how organized you think you are, there's always some sloppy moments during a move. Things you put off until the last minute, hastily throwing stuff into bags and boxes, or just tossing things into the garbage. Overall, we were packed and ready but there were some really heavy pieces that we just couldn't carry ourselves. What we needed were bodies. I hate asking people to help me move. It's fun the first time, but after that, it's sort of like asking someone if you can borrow money. Just tacky and maybe even a bit shady. But we really had no choice and since we were doing this thing ourselves, we just couldn't afford to hire movers. My wife's company gave us a good amount towards expenses but all of that money would go towards the truck rental. So I leaked out an implicit plea for help and we got a generous crew that came and went as was convenient for them and over the course of the day, got about 90% of the 26' truck loaded up. Laura and I finished up the next morning(with a little help from my wife's friend and her daughter). I simply can't thank all of those people enough. It made me realize how fortunate the two of us really are to have so many good people in our lives.
My "plan" was to finish packing the truck in one day, relax and grab some local food, get a good nights rest and get on the road early the next day. I would be driving the truck - a longtime truck-driver fantasy finally fulfilled - my wife would drive the car with the dog, cat and many of our houseplants(yes I know, ridiculous but we like our plants and new ones are expensive). Instead of a miserable two-day powerdrive, we would take 4 days, visit some friends in Nashville along the way and try to enjoy the adventure. But alas, we didn't get the truck fully loaded so we didn't really get to relax, or enjoy a leisurely meal and some beers. And since our fruitbat cat yowled endlessly all night long in our now empty, echo-chamber of a house, we didn't get any decent sleep either. So the next day we finished packing, took care of some last minute details and prepared to leave. It's strange but walking through the house one last time wasn't as emotional as I might have expected. Sure, my memory was flooded with past moments and I made little mental observations about various details, but I didn't feel sad. Without our personal possessions, the house just felt like an empty space, made up of wood, plaster and glass. It wasn't our home anymore. Like a body that dies, it no longer held the actual spirit and meaning that we loved and admire. Those things only continue in our own minds and memories.
It was 3:30 pm. So much for an early start. We had a hotel(motel, really...)reserved that night in Louisville, Ky so we had about a 6 hr drive ahead of us. Both of our next-door neighbors came out to wish us well. They were both very sweet and it was sort of awkward and wistful to say goodbye. I remember saying farewell to "Bear", the dog next door who was always buddies with our dog Abby. Just before we left, our neighbor took a picture of us. At this point we were literally locked out of the house we owned and lived in for eight years. The doors I stripped, sanded and refinished were now closed to me. We didn't live there anymore.
Pulling away was weird. Not as emotional as I expected, but sort of peculiar and queer.
Me: "That's the last time as a resident of this town that I'll drive by that tree, turn left at that stop sign, get on this freeway. You can never go back. I'm driving away from my house, with all of my possessions in a Penske diesel truck, my wife and critters following behind me...what the hell am I doing?"
Another voice: "Moving to Texas you over-analytical mama's boy. Now quit with the neurosis and start driving. They'll be time for whimsy later..."
We got to Louisville by about 10pm. Not too late. The hotel was dump, but the sheets were clean and we got free wifi so all was good. At this point, we were pretty hungry, so I went down to the lobby and asked the manager if there was any food close by. He informed me that there was a McDonalds, Taco bell and the Gas Station next door. Since I was tired, hungry and in no mood for foolishness, I figured I'd just go to the "Gas Station" and see what they had. Well, not so good. The typical snacks, sodas, beef jerkey, candy bars, cheap cigars and the "real-food" selections of taquitos, hotdogs and sausages rotating endlessly on a greasy conveyor belt-like affair, microwavable hamburgers, burritos, ham and cheese...basically garbage disguised as food.
Taco bell it was...at least it tastes good, even if all of the flavors are made in labs.
The next day we had a short 4-hour drive to Nashville, where we would be staying with my buddy Dave and his wife Kathy. Beat from the previous two days, we slept in a bit and hit the road around noon. They had just moved down there in June, so we were excited to see their new place, hang out and get a small taste of Nashville. On the way, we stopped at a gas station/Subway(the new evil duo), but instead of sitting in the restaurant, we just ordered to go, laid a big blanket out on the big patch of grass that was planted there for no reason what-so-ever and had a picnic. The animals were glad to get out of the car and it seemed that people thought we were sort of amusing. When we were done, my wife took this photo of me in all my faux trucker-fantasy glory:
We had a great time in Nashville, although it was a bummer saying goodbye to our friends again. After seeing them off a few months earlier, then saying farewell to everyone else before we moved, there was a slight feeling of loneliness hanging around me for the first few hours after we left. But the drive through Tennessee was really beautiful and the weather was decent, so before long my mood had made a nice rebound. Also, listening to an audio book of the last Harry Potter book helped to keep my mind in a suspended state of fantasy!
Before we left Cleveland, there was significant discussion pertaining to the coordination of driving separate for such a long distance. It was necessary for us to do this because of expense and logistics. So while our first choice would have been to get a POD and just drive together with the animals, it simply was not an option. So, caravan it was to be.
Now, too many things can turn sideways during a caravan, contributing to confusion, disagreement and safety issues. What happens if someone lags behind and takes the wrong exit? Needs to make a pit stop? Has a car problem? Also, when driving a large truck, an extra pair of eyes is always welcome, especially when changing or merging lanes. Here's where I must give credit where it's due. My father, always being the clever, sensible, responsible foreman, insisted that we had a quality pair of two-way radios(i.e. walkie-talkies). I responded "oh, that sounds like fun!", to which he responded "they're not for fun but for practical purposes". Well I must say, they were both fun and useful and I simply cannot imagine doing that trip without them. They constantly proved their worth to us for both practical, conversational and entertainment purposes. How else would I have heard my cat's distressful meows if my wife hadn't placed the mic in front of her panicked maw?
The drive from Nashville to Texarkana, TX was probably the dreariest of the whole trip. Not for lack of scenery. Quite the contrary as Tennessee and Arkansas are both interesting. Tennessee is hilly and rugged while Southern Arkansas flattens out but crosses the Mississippi River. This Delta region is very beautiful and serene. Being from Ohio, I'm certainly not a flatland hater as there is beauty in every kind of landscape. The problem with this leg of the drive was the condition of the road. Absolutely hideous. Arkansas is a fairly poor state and so I suppose it should come as no surprise that it's road conditions are in disrepair. It was bad enough for my wife, driving in a small wagon but for me, it was downright rugged. I was literally bouncing in my seat at times, maps, drinks, snacks, ipod all flying around the front seat. This of course, contributed to an ill state of affairs in terms of mood, quelling my sense of adventure(then again, not all adventure is fun...) and wreaking havoc on my lower back. Maybe being a trucker isn't that cool after all?
By the end of the day, we were both tired, cranky, hungry and in full "staring at the yellow lines" mode. We had a hotel reservation in Texarkana, TX, on the state line(home of Scott Joplin!) and once we found the place in the maze of hotels, fast food and various interstate detritus, settled down for a well needed overnight rest.
The last day from Texarkana to Austin was pretty uneventful, in a good way. We drove through Dallas for the first time and were surprised to find how interesting it looked. A modern, sleek, shining, collection of phallic monoliths rising out of the flat prairie. I have many pre-conceived notions about Dallas, but at some point I will try to set them aside and give it an honest look.
We got into Austin about 4:30pm, which was really cutting it close, since the office closed at 5pm and we needed to sign one more form and pick up our keys. But we made it, and the apartment seemed pretty close to what we expected: a 1980s sort of generic place with carpet(blah!), but with a huge walk-in closet, a nice layout and a great outdoor space. I might add that this was the first time that we actually saw our apartment in person. When we looked at the complex in July, all they could show us was a floor plan and something similar, so we were really hoping that our measurements were accurate and that we didn't haul a bunch of crap 1400 miles for nothing. So, after looking the place over, getting something to eat, letting the animals sniff about, we moved on to the next phase...
Moving In
Nowhere to go but up.
When we picked out this apartment, we knew that the move-in would be brutal. We would be on our own, it would be hot and we would have to carry everything up 39 steps to our 3rd-floor apartment. Since we arrived late on a Saturday, our plan was to peck away at the huge task ourselves, at our own pace and then hire two local movers to help with the large, heavy furniture on Monday morning. This worked pretty well, since we packed all of the really heavy stuff first and in the front of the truck, allowing us access to at least two-thirds of the contents. By the time the movers got there on Monday, we had a little over half of the truck unloaded and carried up to our place. Two fairly bulky dudes showed up and got right to business. I helped as well, carrying everything that I could take by myself. The weather was pretty darn hot(94degrees), so it was important to drink lots of fluids. The guys had a couple of gatorades each and we gave them water as well.
Everything was going as well as expected until the guys got to my beloved mid-century oak credenza.
I got this piece of furniture from my grandmother via my mother. She was the live-in housekeeper of some very wealthy folks back in Altoona, P.A. for twenty-some years, and when she retired, they gave her a bunch of great, old furniture. I have always admired this piece and when I was a kid, loved playing with the old keys and opening and closing the very well-crafted doors. When I bought a house, my mother asked me if I wanted it and I of course accepted! It was custom made for this rich guy's fine shirts and so has very shallow drawers. It's a great man's dresser.
Before we left Ohio, I made certain that I stored the keys in a "safe place" so as not to lose them. I also put the drawers back in for easier transport, as well as fifteen small oak shelves from my CD cabinet. Why not use the space? Of course, when the movers were ready to haul this sucker up three floors...I couldn't remember which box(safe place) I put the keys. So while the piece was heavy to begin with, it now had about 75lbs of unnecessary items inside of it, which made it a real man-killer. I felt really bad, and warned them to be careful. The guy in charge, confident with hubris said "well, let's just get after it..."
Famous last words.
They got about two-thirds of the way up when this guy came running up to the apartment and asked politely(but under great duress) if he could "use" our bathroom. Well, we all knew what was happening in there as the sounds of retching and coughing, slid under the door. "Better him than me", I thought. After a bit he came out, mortified, apologetic and a little pale and resumed the quest. They finally got the thing into the apartment and while it had a few scuffs, I didn't have the heart to bitch.
Epilogue
Well, we got everything in and spent the next month digging out, setting up and re-organizing. After several trips to the local IKEA for shelving and storage, we finally got everything in place. Coming from a house to an apartment is quite challenging as everything needs to fit or you feel like you're living in a Goodwill showroom. We no longer have the luxury(curse) of chucking things into the abyss that was our attic, basement or garage. I have to say, the smaller profile is very appealing at the moment. We know what and where everything we own is placed. We've even thinned out more since moving and have our apartment organized according to all the important Feng Shui principles and requirements, which is of course crucial.
So I guess we're back to the beginning. We are where we were. Our black-belt has turned white again. Lots to learn.
