A dream house

There is a house for sale a few blocks from our own home, and it is listed online. Every once in a while I go online, stare at the pictures and try to imagine what it would  be like to live in there. In many ways it is exactly the kind of house that I want for our family, and also very much what we need right now. We really need a few extra rooms where the kids can stretch out, run around, play games, explore, be free.

Our house is modest, but it feels like home and we’re happy here. It was also one of a few homes in our area in our price range. Even now I grumble about our mortgage payment, so I don’t know what I’m thinking when I start going window shopping for houses that are more than twice as much as what ours cost.

I try and talk myself out of it in many ways. First, cleaning is still a painful issue in our house. We have yet to find a system for sweeping, mopping, scrubbing the bathrooms, dusting, doing the laundry, and so on. We also have good sized front and back yards, with roses along the driveway and wild bushes out back that require landscaping attention we simply don’t know how to give. So then I think: if we can barely manage our 1,300 square foot house, and 6,000 square foot lot, how are we ever going to keep up with a 3,000 square foot house on a 12,000 square foot lot?

And there’s also the matter that we can’t afford it, even if we wanted it, and the other burden of already owning a house.

I tried to think of my obsession with out-of-reach houses kind of like an adolescent crush on a movie star. Like, I could think I’m in love with Brad Pitt, or Johnny Depp, and that nothing would bring me greater happiness than having one of them fall in love with me. But seriously, what are the chances? And better yet, how likely is it that we’ll even be compatible?

Anyway, here is a picture:

I think I love this house.

I should really stop going to that web site. Isn’t $400,000 a steal in Los Angeles? Maybe soon it will be sold and I can just say, “Oh, well.” But isn’t it cute? And it doesn’t cost anything to dream, right?