I joined a church recently. Nothing fancy but I didn't know which one to choose. Like any good millennial I Googled "Lutheran churches near me" and went the following Sunday to the closest one. It worked out well. I happened to sit by the pastor's wife and she went to Luther. One of her best friends in college was my high school calculus teacher. The world already felt small. A quick glance around the church I realized I recognized another Luther grad that I had met at a random bar in Des Moines almost a month ago. Saw another Luther family in the church parking lot who's daughter ran track with me in college. Of all the churches, Lutheran or otherwise, I had managed to pick one where I had small string of connections. It was cute. It was fun. I liked finding Luther people outside the Twin Cities, since it seemed like most of them went there after graduation.
Like any good Lutheran in a small church, a woman came up to me at the end of the service last week and said, "You must be new here because I've never seen you before." A part of me giggled because the moment was "so Lutheran" but I continued on because everyone I had met at the church was nice so far. I explained that I was relatively new to Des Moines and had been looking around for a church when I came across this one. I had been meaning to start coming to church for awhile but a series of plumbing issues on Sundays that lasted a month and half had prevented me up to that point. She asked if I was from the neighborhood because she lived nearby years ago. I said I did live quite close. She told me when she lived nearby she had had plumbing trouble as well. She proceeded to tell me the street name. I said I lived on that same street. She asked me the number so I told her. March 19, 2017, will go down as the strangest day in the history
of my life because at church I met one of the previous owners of my
house. She had lived in that very house in the late 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. I threw out an invitation to have her over and see the place now. She was delighted. The conversation came naturally and neither one of
knew when it started that we would have so much in common.
What are the odds a woman approaches me and asked where I live? And then proceeds to tell me she used to live there? I can't even fathom how that is possible. The Des Moines metro population is 622,899. It does not seem possible for our paths to cross let alone discover we share an address in history.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Homeownership Owns Us Pt. 1
Back in December Cole (and me kinda, but not in the legal or financial sense) bought a house. We had some done some math and figured out a price point where our house payment each month would be about the same cost as rent; we would actually be able to build something with our lives instead of throwing money aimlessly at rent each month. It only made sense.
Our house hunting adventure began in October. We saw some great houses in bad neighborhoods and horrific houses in great neighborhoods. We finally found the house we bought: it was a decent house that needed some manageable TLC in a nice neighborhood. We jumped at it. Fast forward through packing up an apartment with a puppy reopening every box we packed, and moving across town in a sleet/snow/ice storm: we made it. We had a new house; we had new furniture; we had a backyard for our dog. We thought we were on the fast track to living the dream.
During our clean up and small fixer upper projects my dad repeatedly mentioned that, "You don't own the house; the house owns you." Two weeks after we moved in we did laundry for the first time (because we didn't have a working dryer up until that point) and the carpet was wet in our basement. We had never done laundry and showered and run our dishwasher all in a short window of time. We figured that was probably it and a relatively simple fix: only do one of those at a time. Well it kept happening even if we only did laundry. Or took a long shower. We called a plumber and he replaced part of a pipe he thought might be leaking. Thought the problem was solved and we could go back to our lives. Well it kept happening. Our carpet was wet for unexplained reasons.
We had a sewer guy come over and he ran a snake down the sewer line. He couldn't find any trouble and thought he might have broken up a clot or wiped away some build up. Little did we know he would show up 6 more times in our lives. Every Sunday or Monday we were calling him to snake our sewer line so that we could function. This went on for several weeks. Between Cole and I we missed a fair amount of work, sitting at home waiting for plumbers to show up. We met some very nice plumbers along the way who offered us way more discounts on their services than were necessary but were greatly appreciated.
One night our pipe got so full of water from our sump pump emptying into it, we had to bale water out of the basement from noon to 5AM the next day. It was horrible. The sump pump was going off every 15 minutes. So every 15 minutes we rushed into our laundry room and filled a few buckets with water. We walked them up and out of the basement into the backyard. Cole and I took shifts so that we each got some sleep out of the deal. The phrase "sump pump" still gives me a bit of anxiety now. For the days following the sump pump incident I would panic at work at the sound of a toilet flushing. It will go down as one of the weirdest nights of my life.
The only reason we waited so long to fix the sewer line was because we were advised to purchase insurance that would pay for the cost of replacing the sewer line. Well, we got the wrong insurance (thought we had the right one) and just had to go for it. Come February 13th our entire yard was dug up only to determine that 5 feet of pipe in the boulevard had collapsed and needed to be replaced. We now have a very large mound of dirt in our front yard that is ever so slowly going down. But we have working sewer line and that's all that matters.
So right now, the house owns us. A lot. Eventually we will own enough of it to outweigh the early struggles. It is still really fun. We can put a hole in the wall to hang a picture if we want and we won't get fined. A couple weeks ago we decided spur of the moment to paint a navy blue room light green–simply because we could and no one said we couldn't. It's great. We have a dog, a house, a bunch of freedom...And it's pretty cool.
Our house hunting adventure began in October. We saw some great houses in bad neighborhoods and horrific houses in great neighborhoods. We finally found the house we bought: it was a decent house that needed some manageable TLC in a nice neighborhood. We jumped at it. Fast forward through packing up an apartment with a puppy reopening every box we packed, and moving across town in a sleet/snow/ice storm: we made it. We had a new house; we had new furniture; we had a backyard for our dog. We thought we were on the fast track to living the dream.
During our clean up and small fixer upper projects my dad repeatedly mentioned that, "You don't own the house; the house owns you." Two weeks after we moved in we did laundry for the first time (because we didn't have a working dryer up until that point) and the carpet was wet in our basement. We had never done laundry and showered and run our dishwasher all in a short window of time. We figured that was probably it and a relatively simple fix: only do one of those at a time. Well it kept happening even if we only did laundry. Or took a long shower. We called a plumber and he replaced part of a pipe he thought might be leaking. Thought the problem was solved and we could go back to our lives. Well it kept happening. Our carpet was wet for unexplained reasons.
We had a sewer guy come over and he ran a snake down the sewer line. He couldn't find any trouble and thought he might have broken up a clot or wiped away some build up. Little did we know he would show up 6 more times in our lives. Every Sunday or Monday we were calling him to snake our sewer line so that we could function. This went on for several weeks. Between Cole and I we missed a fair amount of work, sitting at home waiting for plumbers to show up. We met some very nice plumbers along the way who offered us way more discounts on their services than were necessary but were greatly appreciated.
One night our pipe got so full of water from our sump pump emptying into it, we had to bale water out of the basement from noon to 5AM the next day. It was horrible. The sump pump was going off every 15 minutes. So every 15 minutes we rushed into our laundry room and filled a few buckets with water. We walked them up and out of the basement into the backyard. Cole and I took shifts so that we each got some sleep out of the deal. The phrase "sump pump" still gives me a bit of anxiety now. For the days following the sump pump incident I would panic at work at the sound of a toilet flushing. It will go down as one of the weirdest nights of my life.
The only reason we waited so long to fix the sewer line was because we were advised to purchase insurance that would pay for the cost of replacing the sewer line. Well, we got the wrong insurance (thought we had the right one) and just had to go for it. Come February 13th our entire yard was dug up only to determine that 5 feet of pipe in the boulevard had collapsed and needed to be replaced. We now have a very large mound of dirt in our front yard that is ever so slowly going down. But we have working sewer line and that's all that matters.
So right now, the house owns us. A lot. Eventually we will own enough of it to outweigh the early struggles. It is still really fun. We can put a hole in the wall to hang a picture if we want and we won't get fined. A couple weeks ago we decided spur of the moment to paint a navy blue room light green–simply because we could and no one said we couldn't. It's great. We have a dog, a house, a bunch of freedom...And it's pretty cool.
2-13-2017
3-19-2017
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