If you’ve been following along, where we live is a big part of my crisis. Here’s a brief refresher course on what our options were when I started this blog.
Last week, while on the way to pick up Nora from daycare, we passed by a house with a for rent sign in the window. It’s literally two blocks from Nora’s daycare and just one block from the first place we lived in Berkeley when we moved here in 2006.
Though we haven’t even been in the place we’re living now a year, it was intriguing enough to call and see what the story was on it, and what we found out (3 bedrooms, sort-of within price range) was enough to make an appointment to see it.
When appointment time came on Saturday, we almost canceled because even though it was sort-of within price range, it was, in fact, more expensive than our current place, and the odds of us getting the energy up for moving again so soon seemed slim-to-none. But we figured it couldn’t hurt and besides, it would be a way to entertain Nora for an hour.
The house was, well, just fine. He’s in the middle of doing some upgrades, so it looks kind of funky and because it’s a rental, I don’t have high hopes that the upgrades will be very inspiring. But it’s certainly big enough, and it’s a whole house with a nice back yard and a big deck. But it’s not special.
Those who know me say that I’ve got amazing house/apartment karma. It’s not so much karma as it is that I become obsessed when I start looking and I don’t stop being obsessed until I find the perfect place. But we weren’t really looking this time; this place just appeared. So I guess it makes sense it’s not the “perfect place.”
But it’s in our near-optimal neighborhood in Berkeley (that is, one that we like and we can afford). We could walk Nora to daycare. We could walk to BART. We could walk to Berkeley Bowl. We could have an awesome garden in the back. We could stay there a long time if we want to. We can basically afford it. All good things.
Bad things outside of it not being “special”: It’s three doors down from a bar. It’s three doors down from a busy cross street. There’s a marijuana club two blocks away. Our bedroom would be on the front of the house. It’s a few hundred dollars a month more than we pay now (and we moved to our current place to save money). I actually love our current house (and see below), even though I don’t like the neighborhood we live in and how much we have to drive. We’d have to move. Again.
Scary things: It would mean we’re committing to Berkeley. The stake I put in the ground when we moved last time was that I wasn’t moving again unless we found a place to buy or we moved to a rental where we wanted to stay for a long, long time.
Also, moving there would put an end to the fantasy of moving somewhere smaller, slower, more affordable—or just smaller and slower: Marin/Sonoma.
And finally, moving there would mean my husband would not be pursuing a career in entertainment. Not that I wanted to move to LA or New York, and I certainly didn’t want him to sell little pieces of his soul to work in TV, but the idea of more potential (and potentially steadier) income that would come with that was vaguely appealing.
What makes all of this so confusing is that I actually love Berkeley. I love the Bay Area. I love my friends here. I love the weather. I don’t know why I have such a problem with committing to living here; I guess it’s just the broader problem of committing to anywhere tangled up with the issue of committing to a place where you feel stretched financially and sometimes psychically because of the pressure of living in “The Bay Area.”
We do have to decide soon, so at least this angst-y limbo won’t last forever. And in the meantime, we get to live in this lovely place:
And I do realize that we are lucky to have such problems. Even if I can’t help from complaining about them here.
Stay tuned.
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