Smokey the Magnificent

Not tooooo bad yesterday. I got inspired by the thought of our imminent chucking-out and cleaned under the bed. Many were the dead hankies that I unearthed, and their countenances grimy. I also took the snortlepig on a long and rambling walk around our area in the hopes of finding “For Rent” signs, but nothing appealed.

And Helpdesk Man isn’t dead keen on 10 Fzzzfphht St (or more accurately, what of 10 Fzzzfphht St he could see through its windows). We’re being shown around again on Friday, but Helpdesk Man thinks we could do better - and knowing that I tend to panic and settle and leap at the first place I see, I feel I should heed his warning. It would be a slight downgrade in niceness for more money, and that’s always depressing.

So having thunk it over for a bit, here are our options, bearing in mind we want to start saving for a house as renting is a Piffle and a Scam:

1. Downgrade in size. The snortlepig doesn’t need her own bedroom just yet, as we’re still cosleeping; so Helpdesk Man could use the other bedroom or the living space, if it was decent-sized, for his study. Thus, we could (hopefully) get a house all to ourselves and still maintain the Style of Living to Which we are Accustomed.

2. Downgrade in quality, ie. rent a smeggy three-bedroom home on the cheap, infested with roaches and with the corpses of rodents decomposing in the hot water cupboard. Then save like mad to scrape together a down payment, spurred on by the fungus on the fridge. Not a v. appealing option, as the quality in homes tends to decline first and most dramatically in the kitchen.

3. Upgrade in quality, renting a nice attractive place, and take on a homestay student to pay the extra rent. This may be the way to go. Neither of us is uber-keen on the idea of sharing a house with a stranger, but it would probably be good for our characters. And the extra income would be more than the difference in rent (assuming we didn’t go for an incredibly fancy place), so we could put it towards Teh Deposit and thus get out from under the thumb of Teh Man sooner. Or something. Plus, the pig likes having people round. And it would force me to become a more organised housewife, which as this blog so amply demonstrates would be no bad thing.

The only trouble with that is if we moved within the next few months, I’m not sure it’s a good season for homestayers. They probably migrate North for the summer once Uni finishes, and I doubt we could afford to pay fancy-house rent for months while waiting for them to return. Although I suppose there’s summer school. But still.

4. Upgrade in quality but find some other way of making extra money to pay for it. Which doesn’t really appeal. Any not-at-home job I could get would be hugely disruptive to the family, and I don’t really fancy in-home childcare. Or drug trafficking. Besides, if we did have extra money I’d want to put it towards the down payment, not the rent.

Any other options I’m missing?

Yesterday was a bit of a dead loss. When I heard about the house I sallied forth online and found several thousand overpriced and increasingly degenerate houses, which depressed me so much I broke my no-frivolous-internet rule and mooped around on Mental Floss for the rest of the evening. For which I was duly punished: it was shortly before midnight that I learned of the quaint Victorian custom of propping up their newly-deceased relatives and taking family photos, a thought that made my slumber uneasy.

Today the houses are, if anything, more decrepit. I like looking at houses in theory: I just prefer it if they don’t have mustard-coloured paisley carpet and a kitchen the size of my own spleen. Did entire generations of New Zealanders live on Bovril? Or were women back then just more serene, and this better able to cope with whipping up a three-course dinner for eight on a strip of bench that was 90% sink? (By “back then”, I mean “during the era when sea-foam green was the colour of choice for kitchen cabinets”. Naturally.)

So anyway… *deep sigh* we’re going to have a look at a place in an hour with no fence, no garage and a fireplace only marginally less repulsive than our current one. Then tomorrow we’re viewing a place whose listing had only one photo, and whose agents asked if we were students and sounded so fierce I didn’t even dare ask about the kitchen, any mention of which had been tactfully omitted online. Such fun.

On the bright side, an agent for the house a few doors down from us is going to ring me back. If the house is semi-decent it would be a Good Thing: v. easy for moving, anyway.

Update: Email from Mother to myself:

Dear Smokey the Magnificent

Sorry about the bombardment of houses - Ruth sent you some and I may have
doubled up!

Mother.

Email from myself to Mother:

Heh. Yus, it is very kind but I think I have seen them all already. We went to have a look at one on Cook St but Bnonny* did not like it, and I committed a faux pas by asking if they wouldn’t mind if we painted, and it turned out they just had. But, someone’s gonna show me round 10 Fzzzfphht St** in an hour, and I peeked in the windows (it’s empty) and it looked not too bad! Wouldn’t that be handy? We wouldn’t even need a moving van, the pig could just help me carry things. But we will see… I couldn’t see the kitchen from outside. Might be infested. Or plague-ridden. Speaking of which, the pig had her first cigarette today.

Smokey the Magnificent.

*Helpdesk Man.

**Names have been changed to prevent crazed fans outbidding us and burning love-hearts into the lawn. We live at 3 Fzzzfphht St, so you see how close the new house is?

Soooo, apparently we’ve been given 90 days’ notice. Our landlords, bless their entrepreneurial little hearts, want to sell the house. Right out from under the snortlepig, who with typical fortitude is coping with the situation by having the milks.

To the landlords I say: Is it. To the snortlepig I say: Stop thrusting your fingers up my nose while you drink, it isn’t Nice.

Then, being of a calm and sunny nature, I turn tranquilly to TradeMe and start browsing through the houses. Whether I am calm because I’ve never been a fan of this house in the first place, or because the snortlepig thrust too far and lobotomised me, I cannot say. But hoo boy, there are some ugly houses out there.