Yesterday’s House

We weren’t planning on looking at houses yesterday, but this one seemed so amazing, we felt like we had to rush out to see it, in case it was the one.

And I have come to believe that houses have their own personalities, that some are like grandma’s, quoting bible verses at you on the bedroom door, and some are like bachelors, whose girlfriends made it smell pretty, but everything else was just an excuse to sleep and eat between fishing and hunting trips.

Yesterday’s house was like a friend’s charming, asshole grandpa.

And was it charming! Big old trees in the yard, a grape arbor and a peach tree in the back, a tiny pet grave, still tended, and a porch swing.  Inside, it had a beautiful front room with a fireplace and so much light, and did I mention the huge deck and the pool?

Oh, America, even though it was out in Old Hickory and there’s no easy way to get from Old HIckory to any place, I was ready to move in.

Even after I saw that both “full” bathrooms were so narrow you had to turn sideways to get into them.  After all, like men of a certain era–okay, this era–when they’re so charming, you are kind of like “Well, I could lose some weight.”  And then, when you see that the stairs to the basement, where there’s another fire place and a couple of bedroom and the laundry room, is so narrow your whole foot won’t even fit on a tread, you start telling yourself, well, I could just wear very high heels and then my foot would fit here.

It was really only after I saw Kathy T. trying to get in the second bathroom that I was all like “Oh my god.  What if something happens and I get stuck between the bathtub and the closet trying to get to the toilet and I have to call the paramedics to save me and they all fall down the stairs and then I have to call in more paramedics to save them until there’s a giant pile of paramedics moaning in pain in my basement and I’m stuck in the bathroom?” that I was like who makes bathrooms like this in the first place?

The main floor one I could almost understand, because the house was old.  But the basement one was clearly a part of a modernization of the basement and half of the basement was devoted to a laundry room.  There was plenty of room to expand the bathroom and why they chose not to?

I have no idea.

My dad’s all like “Well, maybe a carpenter could figure out how to fix the stairs” and I was all like “Yeah, and he could work at the house until he had to go to the bathroom and then he’d have to just resign himself to living on our toilet.  That’d be great.”