Homeward Bound

Get outta my house!

Have you ever sold your house? Then you know what I mean when I say it’s one very distinct ring of hell. First of all, during the process, you have to keep your house very clean. You think you live in a clean house? Oh no you don’t. That teetering pile of magazines you keep planning to leaf through? Clutter. The little piece of wood that you intend to glue back to the window frame but keep forgetting since it’s not such a big deal? Eyesore. The framed kindergarten art that demonstrates your devotion as a parent? Distracting, plus what a tacky frame!

This is my house, ready for a showing

When I lived in Oregon, I held garage sales now and then, spreading my junk on the front lawn and expecting suckers to pay a few cents for things I was too lazy to throw away. I was the worst garage sale host. I took each customer’s behavior personally and with a ton of boiling resentment. If someone picked up an item, gave it a raking glance, and then put it back down, I was outraged: If it was good enough for me, why wasn’t it good enough for them? How dare they reject my slightly discolored plastic mixing bowl! It was all I could do not to confront my customers and demand apologies.

Selling a house is that emotion times a million, since your feelings about your house are so much deeper and wider than your feelings about your plastic mixing bowl. This is why brokers shoo you out of the house before showings: No one wants to sit there and watch strangers hiss and boo at their very own house, or even just poke at the walls and flip the light switches or talk about whether it’s worth x dollars or y dollars. I love my house and I know it’s very beautiful, so this isn’t a raging inferiority complex masquerading as aggression. It’s just uncomfortable! It’s like loaning someone your underwear. Too much? Well, it’s almost that intimate. No one wants to even think about someone living in their very own house. That’s why brokers make you remove all personal photos when you’re showing your house; it gives buyers the creeps when they’re trying to picture themselves in a new place.

In California (and maybe elsewhere, though I’m not sure) you have to disclose if anyone died in the house. I find this so interesting. The law must exist because people believe in ghosts, or at least they feel entitled to know if something sad or bad happened in the place, as if the past lingers into the present. Our house in Santa Barbara had a rental unit, and one of the former tenants was a felon; we get letters from his parole officer on occasion. That’s a little icky. (We’re hoping if he was a bank robber, he buried money on the property and someday we’ll find it.) On the other hand, the people who owned our house in Los Angeles before us were artistic and musical and lovely, and that feels like a good connection, as if we’re taking care of it for them.

SHOW NOTES

—We just started watching a Netflix show called “Intimacy” that seems very promising: Spanish politician on the rise and a sex tape. I’ll keep you posted.

—Also on the television front, we just finished “Shining Girls”. It’s… hard to decide if it’s good or not. The cast is amazing (Elisabeth Moss, Wagner Moura, Jamie Bell) and it’s incredibly well-made. But it drifts into time-travel/supernatural stuff that is just not my style. Still, I enjoyed watching it enough to recommend it.

—I just got a pair of great shorts, which means not too long and not too short, not too baggy and not tight. And not stupidly overpriced! Levi’s Baggy Dad Jorts! They’re perfect. They seem to run a little big, so maybe size down one size.

—Lately I’ve become obsessed with belts. They are weirdly very, very expensive—good ones, that is—and unfortunately, good ones are genuinely nicer than cheap ones. The argument in favor: You wear belts forever, so investing in good ones is likely to be amortized over many years. They do not go in and out of style, so you don’t have to worry about that. Also, they really make a difference. I began thinking about them as jewelry, and when you compare them to jewelry they’re pretty reasonable. My favorites right now are made by Dehanché (I just bought the Revenge Belt, and it scratches a punk itch that I’ve got). Also got one by a brand called HTC, which makes a lot of things I absolutely do not like, but the 5000 studs belt is kind of great. (I got it in light green.) TheRealReal has a lot of nice belts, too.

—I’ll say it again: I loved “The Odyssey” and I wish Emily Wilson weren’t being so snippy about it. I defend her right to say whatever she wants (of course, duh) but it feels a little peevish to gripe when it’s such a miracle to see people engaging with a 3000 year old poem and ideas that are serious and important like human kindness and war and guilt and trauma. Whatever. It doesn’t seem to be denting the box office for “The Odyssey” so maybe it’s just a big nothing. By the way, I saw the movie twice, in part because I really wanted to see it in IMAX, and it was really, really worth it. I also think seeing it a second time was great—it’s a dense movie and it really rewards a second viewing.

Thanks for reading!! xSusan