A flawed house

 

November 18, 1998

 

I keep wanting to despair because we own a flawed house, leaks in the walls and leavings in the gutters, and windows that let more air in when closed than when wide open.

Most people buy houses in ignorance, thinking they can move in and not take care of the investment, and thus find themselves with a house like the one which we now own, pieces of the building lying in tatters while the whole still maintains some sense of integrity. We will be playing for this for 30 years or more, and spending most of our weekends patching holes, caulking seams and doing all those sorts of things deemed necessary to maintain the qualify.

Of course, as with our move to Hoboken, we rushed into the affair, so bent on coming back, and setting down roots that we failed to realize just what that concept means,

We believe we got a good deal here, and perhaps we have, and perhaps it will show off its value when we have made erode  into the vast number of repairs necessary.

Sal Manete told me yesterday, when I met him in the supermarket parking lot, that it is an ongoing process, something that we will have to take on a little at a time, doing those things first that we think necessary to move in, such as the repair to the heat -- which we still do not know why it has failed to work, and the repair to the roof, which if needed, we will fix ourselves, rerouting some of the water out from the pipe into which it now goes. I am constantly amazed at the failings, and how frail a creature we humans really are when it comes to such things as this, our lives caught up in making sure we are warm in winter and fed all the seasons round.

The gutter men have already begun to exploit us, the way all contractors in this county seem to do, finding a few more things needed to fix for of course an additional amount of money, when the thing I most needed them to fix remains unresolved, and the reason I expected precious time from work to be here at the house, waiting them out, waiting for some answer to at lease one of the many problems.

By the time they leave, I will be $140 poorer and no closer, I think to a resolution.

I will have learned, however, to do for myself, to buy a ladder with which to climb to the roof myself, and clear out the gutters myself.

Doing for ourselves has become the key ingredient in this mix and something we had failed to understand when living in Hoboken. We, like the other children of the wealthy who bought there, thought we could move in and live as if we still rented. How unwise we were, and how wise we have become I think.

Meanwhile, I wonder how long it will be before the money runs out, and whether or not we have satisfied the demon which has ruled our lives to this point, the demon who makes us unhappy with each situation, thinking we might find a better situation somewhere else, and we never do.