No Ghetto No More

Can I just say that I am a home-owner?

I figure if I write it here, that will help make it a little bit more of a reality. Right?

M and I like to play that game where you think back to when you met that person you married… and then you mentally trace all of the steps that you took to reach the place where you are now.

It never gets old, all of that retracing. I know you play the game too.

So we start back in Japan circa 2002 when we were both young and supple. All fresh-faced and wide-eyed at living abroad.

Flash-forward to 2005, M and I getting married in Florida lake-side (possible gator-sighting in back-drop).

Skip one more year (that year where we were apart as I couldn’t legally reside in the States as I didn’t have my citizenship sorted out) until we hit 2006.

Now that’s where things start to happen.

The first year I moved to Florida, we lived in a teeny one-bedroom apartment in MetroWest. At that time, it was still a nice neighbourhood. And just what out-of-staters think Florida should look like. Right on a golf course, palm trees everywhere, a pool. Ideal.

So small. Although, compared to what we had lived in in Japan, it was a palace. A PALACE. That same year we got Chewie, the needy, love-driven, attention seeking, ‘I hate everyone but you’, angry, super-licky, pain in the ass Chihuahua. That we love.

I still remember the first night we took him for a walk. He was extra little then. We walked him around the complex and just happened to walk near a storm grate.

M said to me, “Do you think he knows not to walk over that?? He won’t fall in, right?”

Me: “Of course he knows and he totally won’t”.

And then he totally fell through the grate. Those little chihuahua legs are not meant to be walking over things like that.

Suddenly that area of town became a hot-bed of crime. Drugs and prostitutes, man… and Jimmy Dime-Bags, our neighbour, smoking pot on the stairs every morning.

And I wanted a baby, an apartment with a hallway (or at least one other room) and somewhere that wasn’t full of prostitutes. And on we moved to Hunters Creek.

Such a good move. Much closer to the parents. And clearly my biological clock liked it too, as I instantly became pregnant the moment we moved in.

And we have been in this apartment for 2 years. And now have a one year old son plus our dog-child as well…

Now is the time for first time homeowners to make a move. And so we did. And are heading over to Lake Nona…

So as we drove to our new townhouse after closing this morning, these are things that ran through my head. We pulled up in front of our building, the birds of paradise were beautiful at our front steps and it was raining lightly.

M and I stepped out of his car, got out our new key on its orange puffer-fish key chain and opened that door. We stepped in to glorious uncirculated air and flesh coloured walls. A few carpet stains, a lack of blinds, some ceiling fans from 1987 and a few other little things to fix. It was gorgeous.

From a one-room Japanese flat, to ghetto prostitute-filled neighbourhood to country bliss in Lake Nona…

How amazing our travels through life have been.

Dusty and old

Wednesday is a fickle day…. sometimes I love it, and sometimes I hate it.

This week, I love it.

My father-in-law called me this afternoon and left me a message letting me know that a package had arrived for me. How exciting!!
I was pretty sure I knew what it was, as my mum was sending me a box of books. They are getting ready to sell the house, and are cleaning things out….. and I have way too many books

(while I am writing this, I am sucked into BattleStar Galactica….)

Anyways, sure enough those books arrived, and what a thrill it was to open the box!

My Granny’s books that she had passed on to me…

3 mini volumes of Shakespeare that I used to eye longingly when I visited her house. They were so little, just the size a young girl would find especially appealing (Remember when anything little was so desirable? Tiny writing, teeny My Little Ponys, Cabbage Patch Preemies, very small stickers….)
(Best episode of BSG ever… and now I have moved on to a dvr’d episode of Leverage)

When I was in Uni finishing up my English degree, my sweet Granny broke the news that our family had a famous relative that was a writer.
This was pretty much the most exciting news I had ever heard, and I immediately headed to my University’s extensive library to locate his books. And to my delight, there they were!!

His name is Charles Reade, and he was a contemporary of Dickens. I guess my Granny had a set of his books, family inherited, that she had thoughtfully ruined by storing them in my mum’s drafty, poorly insulated shed (a shed that my sister and I painfully remember painting many summers ago).

So those poor books, who lounged alone in a damp cardboard box for years, were freed when my interest in literature was revealed. I love my Granny and I know shes a little absentminded…. but those poor books.

Mum and I took them to an antique book dealer, who told us that there was no point in even attempting to have them restored…. they were just too far gone…. oh poor darling books…

They have joined us down in Florida, where they will have a better home than that damp shed.

Funnily enough, one of my sister’s old books joined the batch that was sent down. I only knew it was my sisters as it had the name of one of her high school boyfriends in it (who I will only refer to as Mr Camoflague). It was full of pressed flowers from her 18th birthday….

Now I only need a proper bookshelf to store them on. And they might lounge for a little in the box that they arrived in…

Regardless, they completely brightened up my Wednesday!