Home a.k.a The House

About a year ago, I bought my first house, a very modest, very-very fixer upper. A man's home is his castle, as they say. Student loans being the Crime Unto Nature they are, I decided 15 years ago I would never be a home owner. Now I have surprised myself by achieving genteel urban poverty of the professor-ish sort, and I am making the transition from renter headspace to Owner headspace. Interestingly, I am transitioning to Owner in *both* the physical environment and relationship/kink life, at the same time. Apparently the Universe wants me to learn something about this.

Not quite sure what that might be, and watching the post for a Memorandum on the subject, but tellingly, when I renewed my vehicle registration recently, I noticed that for the first time ever, it seemed entirely logical and right to choose the two year registration option.  For years as a renter, I went to some lengths to avoid a one year lease, because I was so certain life was so un-certain that I couldn't possibly be sure of still being in the same place a year hence. Now, as an Owner of Real Property, suddenly the perspective is "Heck, yeah, saves me ten bucks and I'm obviously not going anywhere. Why didn't I do this before? Oh, right, cuz I'm *me*."  I lived in that apartment for over 15 years, so it has taken a while for my headspace to catch up with my geography.

Strangely, I feel so comfortable now having roots. I have a physical sensation of home ownership being a form of falling off a log. How ever did I manage to forestall it for so long? What now feels inevitable was all but unimaginable two years ago.

It's unlikely I would have gotten here without the most recent Big Relationship, which ended some time ago already.  In the early days of our cohabitation, TheNowX used to tease me that I was only with him for his porch.  Today, I have an urban brownfield for a backyard, need to do something about it and guess what? I'm thinking: porch! Notwithstanding any thing else that passed between us, TheNowX gave me the great gift of demonstrating the joys of having one's own home and hearth, in the form of a charcoal grill.

It's hardly surprising that when we lack something, we are prone to re-frame its absence as a virtue.  My father is some flavour of highly anxious sort, cannot sit still. He made several careers out of various forms of transportation. I moved around a lot in the first several decades of my life, didn't have roots, so I told myself I didn't want them, it was better to not be stuck in one place, keeping those options open!  I did get to see a lot of different places as a result. It was only because I lived in a nice little house with a nice little garden with TheNowX who is deeply attached to them, that I ultimately came to terms with wanting those things too.

I didn't really Get It, though, until we split and months later had reason to go back to the house, triggering a smashingly gutteral, growling, snarling sense of  MINE!!!!  (Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got / 'Til it's gone. Tra-la-tra-la-la-la.)   It was very much the moment in Room With A View, when at the end Lucy Honeychurch says to Mr. Emerson, "Well, of course! What did you all THINK?!"   Scales falling from eyes biblically, etc.  Maybe I really was only there for the porch?

Cause. Effect. Messy stuff.

Moons ago, when in a fit of career assessment I learned my Myers-Briggs type, I read that the opposite (we're talking Jungian Shadow, folks) of your two primary traits will eventually manifest, one about the age of 25, the other in the 40s.  In my case, that means the 40s bring a heretofor absent awareness of and appreciation for concrete sensory input, the physical environment.  Boom! Sure enough, I suddenly find myself with a garden, figuring out window treatments, paint, and appliances, and really enjoying it. Until even three years ago, I might have complained about glaring deficiencies in such things (witness the hole in my former apartment bathroom's exterior wall, through which I could see the parking lot), but fundamentally took no great notice or pleasure in such things when done right.  But now I have my own Xanadu, in which I literally experience a spasm of physical pleasure every time I open the not-rental-crap fridge, use the not-rental-crap stove, or... wait for it!... run a load of laundry At Home.

The poet David Whyte observes that just about the time we hang the last picture on the wall, put the final gilding touch on our home, the Universe will yank us from it and send us on our way again, toss us out onto the open road in the middle of the night with a storm bearing down.  The Universe is too compassionate to let us stay in the perfected house, where we would stagnate.  At the current pre-global-warming glacial rate of progress through my House To Do List, I figure I've got a good ten years of not-stagnating before the Universe feels compelled to take such compassionate initiative. Until then, Gentle Reader, I hope you will follow the adventures of The Stately Pleasure Domme.