Staying Put

Sorry for the lack of a blog about, as Charlie Stross called it, the "fertility ritual involving an amiable but allegedly none too bright helicopter pilot and a conventionally pretty party planner".

Mr. Stross can be forgiven his anti-monarchism, him being Scottish and all. I myself have much more positive attitudes towards William and Kate and indeed (most of) the royals in general; as such, I have been gravely remiss in not offering congratulations and best wishes. May the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge achieve lifelong happiness. I rather think they have a shot at it: for royals, both of them are about as close to 'just plain folks' as it is perhaps possible to be.

I did see most of the wedding ceremony. I was nowhere near as captivated by it as I recall being thirty years ago. But then again, thirty years ago, I was nine. My mom and stepdad had just married, nine days previous, in the tiny chapel at Storybook Gardens in London, Ontario...the total antithesis of Westminster Abbey in London, England. Also, there was something exotic and strange in the air, getting up at 4:30 a.m...in 2011, that's not far off normality.

Nor was this wedding, in all honesty. It sounds bizarre, considering there were 1900 people in attendance, glorious fanfares, ethereal choirs, live trees lining the indoor processional...but I got the distinct sense the pomp was merely protocol in this case, maybe even undesired protocol. As I said, if any royals merit the compliment of 'common', those two do.

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We're staying put.

For the past two years, if not longer, we've been toying with the idea of moving up the street or across the city. This house was bought at what we thought was the beginning of a timeline that would see us raise two children in it. Everything was planned with this in mind, from the location (across the street from a public school) to the choice of home inspector (the same one employed by Family and Children's Services).

Things did not work out as planned.

And so this house has never felt quite like home, despite our best efforts. Ghosts of children-that-never-were flit through its halls, provoking occasional wistfulness rather than fear. We've settled quite comfortably into a childless by choice lifestyle, and so this house sometimes feels just a little wrong, a little off-kilter, as if it has one tiny foot in another dimension.

I sometimes sift through the Homes section of the paper, scoping out local properties that seem in every way superior to what we own. "Look, love," I'll say, "this one is a bungalow with a garage on a large lot with a country kitchen. Price is--have we got three hundred grand floating around?"

Informed that we don't, I will silently curse the mudbath of a backyard, in which our money tree has stubbornly refused to take root, and wait another week or two before trying again.

It's the garage I want more than anything else. No, I don't drive. But I do scrape the windshield, a task that I find downright unpleasant some winter mornings.

But looking at it objectively, we're pretty happy here. The house has nearly doubled in value since we bought it, but more than that, we've made it home. The neighbourhood is reasonably quiet; we've had astounding good luck with regards to the tenants on t'other side of the wall, and...let's face it, moving is a colossal undertaking. You've gotta wanna. As of right now, we don't really wanna.

One last datum point in favour of staying right where we are: seven years ago, we made a choice to buy considerably less house than we could afford. I was a kid the last time interest rates went through the roof, and had less than a child's understanding of finance, but looking at those rates now I quite frankly wonder how my parents did it.

I have a doomer's mentality. I won't deny it. I may overstate the case for calamity, sometimes, but my caution has served us well in many respects. We have an eight year old car that sips gas, because I knew in my gut that we'd be paying $1.40 a litre by now. Likewise, I was more than okay with buying the cheapest house in the best neighbourhood we could find. If things do go to hell, we have roughly fourteen hundred square feet of wriggle room.

There remains much to do if we want to optimize the loving space. (No, that is not a typo). The kitchen needs a refresh, hopefully including a double sink. Various and sundry surfaces cry out for paint. The back yard needs solid wooden fencing, and oh, yeah, maybe some grass?

Of course, if the situation takes a turn for the worse, our basement is relatively easy to convert into an in-law suite or a rental unit. We're within walking distance of the most prestigious mid-sized university in the country--which, believe it or not, was also a selling point when we bought this place. I like to think long term. It sure beats the immediate if not sooner gratification-think that so typified my youth.

And that's the last reason to stay put. Whenever I look at other houses, I hear a little teenage voice saying you think your life is good now? Imagine how much better it would be... I've learned to distrust every syllable that voice says. Mostly because it never shut up over a period of years, and it led me to the brink of financial and emotional ruin. The fact is, we're happy here. Sure, we might be marginally happier somewhere else, but is marginally worth the effort and expense? We think not.

So: we're staying put, and glad we are.