Maybe it's the fireplace, or our new favorite thing, the "roman shade". Or maybe it's the delicious bottle of wine, whatever je ne sais quoi the living room holds, it's my favorite room. We wanted at least one room established so we had a place to rest, and the living room is it. I "finished" the rest of the rooms this morning, but they're no where near as interesting.
Yesterday, we got a clean bill of health from Uncle Gerry!! The importance of this commendation cannot be underappreciated. This man, this systems engineer for a major company here in ol' RVA volunteers his free time, taking new Habitat for Humanity homeowners on "tours" of their new houses, teaching them the basics of each system - the HVAC unit, the furnace, the washer and dryer, all the bathroom components, etc... and has a little pamphlet to leave them when the tour ends. He's great. Totally great. Plus, he's a marathon runner who's battled/ing cancer. Seriously. He's amazing. I can't adore him enough.
So for a housewarming present, he took us on our own little tour of our cute little home, and thoroughly blessed it. Even when yesterday morning, our dryer decided it didn't really want to dry the clothes, it just wanted to spin and get hot, but not do shit. I kept running the cycles, I guess partly from misplaced hope, and partly in disbelief. I don't know the first thing about fixing house stuff. Except maybe cleaning out a clogged sink drain. That's the extent. That's like, knowing how to boil pasta; it equals zilch. When Ben pulled the dryer out from the wall, he noticed the botched surgery job done to the dryer (after a little help from the world wide web, we discovered the problem could be a clogged vent hose, which Gerry later affirmed); the previous tenants? owners? had repurposed a PIROULINE can into a connector for the hose to the dryer and had an extra 6' of hose tangled up going into the wall!!!! It was ghetto NOT fab for about 4 hours yesterday.
Gerry swooped in and rescued our nervous emotions by exclaiming, No big deal! Go to Lowe's, get enough METAL hose to connect to the dryer and run it out the screen door. It's a working temporary solution, but I'll tell you, I'm tempted. I'm tempted to keep our makeshift dryer vent. It's kind of charming in a tenement building kind of way. Fits with the peel and stick laminate. YES!
Ben followed Gerry around for the rest of the tour and told me afterwards, He came alive! He was crawling into the attic, walking all around the basement and the half crawl space, checking everything out, and everytime he came to something new, he'd say, wow! this is great, look at this! At the end of the tour, right as he and Aunt Lynn were about to leave, he told us, You guys couldn't have done better for a first home. You could stay here forever if you wanted to. It's a great house. Lynn even told us on the way out, He keeps saying "It's a wonderful house!" I love it.
I love it because it's been an agony the past few months. Up and down with emotions, wondering if we'd find something, if we could afford it, if this really was a step forward or a misguided attempt at adulthood. We want to make it. We want it to be ours, to be a source of peace and calm, and I hope Gerry's affirmation is the beginning of something beautiful.
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