Estoy celoso

A good friend of mine from many years ago just bought a house. Considering I'm in my late 20s,this may not be surprising to all that many people reading this blog - particularly those gentle readers who happen to reside outside of California, New York, and major cities such as Boston. He is, after all, in State College, PA, pretty much close to nowhere in the western part of good old Pennsyl-Tucky. He and his lovely partner have to deal with things like: snow, mosquitos, humidity, and don't have the advantages that us Californians have such as: nice weather, beautiful scenery we can be in year-round, and (in Santa Cruz) sea otters.

But what he does have is a house. One that is over 2,000 ft sq, on a good chunk of land for less than many manufactured homes sell for here, and has a kick ass name.

Where it is hard for me to believe is that this is affordable for them as two grad students. You couldn't afford a house like that out here if you were two professionals raking in over 100K a year.

Per a conversation with kungfuramone, I remind myself that I choose to be here. We could have gone to Univ of AZ and probably purchased a home in what for me is a less than desirable area with a program that wasn't a good fit, didn't guarantee TAs, had no union and only one other history grad student. But we're here for a variety of reasons and I feel truly lucky that I have the opportunity to live in such a beautiful place. I'm never again going to be able to afford the view I have out of my kitchen, I love having redwood trails in my backyard, and I remind myself of what I love each day.

On the other hand, I'm jealous that they have the opportunity to live in a place they own. No landlord telling them they can't have a cat, no sharing a wall, no more saving quarters to do the laundry, and a place indoors they can put their cars at night where they don't have to worry about them getting broken into. (We've had break-ins at FSH, Luke's stereo was stole out of East Remote, not to mention our place in LA...).

Combined with that is a general "move-weariness" that is particularly strong in my generation and even more so amongst us crazy nutcakes going into academia. I have now lived in my place in FSH longer than any other home since I was 15 and my mom and I moved out (it'll be 2 years in Sept). Most of us have been moving around every year or so since we were 18 or so. I'm tired of moving. I'll probably be here another 2-3 years, making this the most stable home I will have had in years, but it's always with the look towards a future move date: to who knows where and who knows when.

I feel like a lot of things in my life (with the exception of my husband) are very semi-permanent: home, classes, work relationships, grad school friendships. I'm looking forward to a time when I can put down some roots, and not have them have to be in a pot that I can throw in the car and move somewhere else.





PS Finally, a few large things that are advantages when renting: it's always someone else's problem to take care of the stuff that breaks, no property taxes, no homeowners insurance, and if you hate your neighbors there's always the possibility that one of the two of you will leave.