step one

Three years ago in a whole different lifetime Dave and I lived a pretty damned ideal yuppie life smack in the downtown of Philadelphia. We had a one bedroom with lots of windows on the second floor in the rear of an apartment building on 17th and Spruce.

There was a washer and dryer in the basement, right next to our storage closet where our camping and Christmas stuff was crammed. Our neighbors were lawyers and doctors and Indian chiefs (dots, not feathers. It's Philadelphia.).

We had lots of friends and good jobs three blocks away from home and a couple of really expensive pieces of paper on the wall and ate good food that we didn't cook and drank great beers in better places with our best friends. I sat on the Board of a do-good agency and we were helping a friend set up his own non-profit. We went on nice vacations and our credit cards were paid off and we didn't have a car or a need for one. Dave didn't even have a license to drive. Who needs that when you have SEPTA and taxis and bikes and your own two feet and friends with cars? Not us. We were the awesomest. Our life was the awesomest. We didn't really want it to change, but we felt like if we just kept living like that we might find ourselves in a rut and we would surely turn into 40 year olds living like 25 year olds and then 50 year olds living like 25 year olds and then it would get progressively worse and that is just annoying. So we decided to look into buying a house.

I found us the world's most perfect inner-city rowhouse/farmhouse in Manayunk. It had a big grassy backyard, and a picket fence, beautiful pine floors and solid oak doors with glass handles, a huge country kitchen with a lot of cabinets and a sink you could wash your mother in, a dining room with built in shelves and buffets, a small first-floor bathroom that looked like it came right out of a storybook if storybooks had bathrooms, a sunny living room, stairs between the living and dining rooms that led to the second floor where there was a huge office with a glass wall and a sliding door that lead out to a deck overlooking Center City and a giant bathroom with a claw-footed tub (I just typo-ed "club-footed lion". My brain is screwy sometimes) and original tile and a walk-in closet and more stairs that led from the office to a three bedroom loft on the third floor. It was everything that I ever wanted in a house. Except for a garage. And a basement that had more than old bricks and tree roots for a floor and packed soil for walls. But this is Philadelphia, where a finished basement means that someone laid some planks down so you don't have to walk through mud to get to your laundry when it rains and that same guy was nice enough to string up some chicken wire across your muddy walls so the beasts don't tunnel in. You say "basement", we say "one step above a root cellar", especially up in that part of the city. The house was going for the low, low price of $179,000 so we bid $185K immediately. Dave never even saw the house. It was that fantastic.

No one got back to us for a few days about the bid, and no one seemed to be able to find the family. Mom and Dad didn't go to work, and the kids hadn't been seen in camp. More people bid, and the price got higher. We stopped at $197K ten days after our original bid. I guessed that the family was dead and the closing process would be grueling and I didn't want to be house poor so I gave up. And cried. A lot. In public.

The house ended up going for $265,000 two days after we lost the bidding. The family was on vacation because they didn't think their house would sell so quickly and they needed some together time before the madness began. Whatever. I hope that the family that bought the house is healthy and happy.

And having a lot of plumbing problems. Or maybe some faulty wiring. Or at least a bad neighbor. Barking dog? A runny nose?

Anything. I hate them.