2002-06-15 - 9:45 a.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "The Wheels on the Bus"

A few updates:

My foot is much improved. It's that gross sickly yellow color, but I can wear almost any pair of shoes now.

There have been no further (knock wood) roach sightings. Hopefully it was just a freak thing, or maybe one of the neighbors called in the pest control. Poindexter said, "Maybe that was the mate for the one I squashed in the bathtub the week before. It was coming back, looking for its long lost love..."

My tooth has settled into a place that is not terribly annoying. I still need the wax, but it's quite tolerable now. I have the earliest possible appointment with an oral surgeon a few blocks away, which is Friday, June 28th. I got my panoramic x-rays from the oral surgeon in Virginia. I am all set. I'm scared.

So, the housing situation. Good grief. We've been all over the map with this. In fact, I hesitate to write this because I'm afraid we're going to do a 180 next week.

When we went to Florida, we were describing to his parents the issues we're facing and how we were trying to find a place in the suburbs near the train and shops, blah blah blah. And I mentioned how I would get excited about the suburbs, and then I'd go walking here in Center City and find one of those streets and start to want to live in the city again.

Poindexter got mildly exasperated, and said, "You always do this. You sound like you're all set for the suburbs, and then you get excited for like, a day about the city, and it's intense, but then the next day you're complaining about taxes and the like and you're back to the suburbs."

I agreed, and said, "Yeah, but that one day is awfully intense."

I started thinking about that, and it began to seem like maybe with my outrageous waffling, buying ANYTHING right now was a bad idea. So the next morning, I said to Poindexter, "Maybe we should just rent in the city until we figure this out."

And he thought it was a good idea. Especially because he's not completely sold on Pennsylvania yet. He noted that he hasn't been really enthusiastic about any of the inner suburbs he's seen. None of them are comparable to the closest-in suburbs of Virginia, really. And DeeCee is a much nicer city than Philadelphia. He's also really frustrated with bureaucratic problems we've been having with driving-related issues and insurance. Everything is an ordeal. I suppose that might be less of a problem once we're settled in Pennsylvania, but moving here has been incredibly annoying.

Once we decided to look into THIS avenue, I started to feel a lot better. I realized that I'd been trying desperately to convince myself that the suburbs were the right choice, when in fact, they weren't. I want to live in the city. Higher taxes, higher costs, crappy roads, corruption, those fucking commie UNIONS, whatever. I want to be in the city. Poindexter is more flexible, but apparently I'm just not.

Surprise, surprise. I should have known better.

Well, actually, it was a heart vs. mind kinda thing. My fiscally conservative mind still thinks the suburbs is a better deal. But I just like the city too much.

This kind of decision is a funny one to make. Some could argue that the rational decision would be to choose the suburbs. Choosing the city is more of an emotional decision. But if my objective is to be as happy as possible, then paying attention to what I get happy about -- which may have no rhyme or reason to it -- is the most rational thing for me to do. Hunh. I've noticed that some people (no one in particular springs to mind) will make decisions because they think they're "rational" decisions, while not paying attention to what their own emotions are telling them. Like a monogamous person agreeing to an open relationship, because they can see all the logical reasons why open relationships make sense (heck, you saw me drooling over the guys in New York), but then they end up being miserable because, fundamentally, they are a monogamist and that is how they are happiest.

So anyway, it's been a relief. There's still a tiny chance we'd buy in the 'burbs if the perfect house existed right next to the perfect little village right next to the train station, but it's not that likely.

So. I went and looked at a few places. Took digital pics. One of them was a loft building on the Avenue of the Arts. Oh.My.God. I can see why artists like lofts. The light, once you get up to the fifth floor or so, is just incredible.

That loft was too small, but once Poindexter heard how many loft conversions are happening in the city, he started to get excited about buying one. It would, most likely, allow us to design our own floor plan and choose our own amenities to an extent.

So we're looking into that, and we're looking into buying houses again, and we're also looking at rentals. I have no idea what's going to happen. I'll keep you posted.

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