Our House
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -


I'll light the fire, while you place the flowers
In the vase that you bought today.
Staring at the fire for hours and hours,
While I listen to you play your love songs
All night long for me, only for me.

Our house, is a very, very, very fine house.
With two cats in the yard,
Life used to be so hard,
Now everything is easy 'cause of you.
Come to me now, and rest your head for just five minutes,
Everything is done.

Such a cozy room, the windows are illuminated
By the evening sunshine through them,
Fiery gems for you, only for you.
I'll light the fire, while you place the flowers
In the vase that you bought today.

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I think we are officially house hunting. I say think, because we go through this phase from time to time. The impetus for this current search is our taxes in town…astounding! We aren’t getting our money’s worth. Also recent additions of large big box stores not too far from where we live have made travel less friendly.

We’re just done with this place and although I do love our little home, it could be arranged better…we’re looking for an open floor plan, lower taxes, and a few upgrades that we either can’t put into this house or just can’t bear the thought of living through the renovation period to acquire.

House hunting is probably one of my all time favorite activities. I love to be let into a home of someone I don’t know and see how they live. The homes we viewed yesterday showed me that most people don’t own the amount of books we own. It is one of our concerns: where will the books go? The realtor was shocked we’d discuss this more than where friends and family would sleep or eat or watch TV.

One house was almost perfect, but the driveway was so steep we’d need to install a rope tow to walk up the driveway to get the mail. All I could think of was ice and snow and cars slipping down that driveway right into the dining room’s big windows. Or the opposite, trying to drive up that hill to go get milk – no way. So that house was xed off the list.

It did have one feature that I’d love in a future home. One of the extra rooms being used as a den of sorts, had a big, deep double closet with wooden shutter doors. Inside this closet sat a huge TV and the guts of the sound system. How nice not to have to look at the glaring face of a TV all the time, and be able to shut the doors and have a neat looking room. The alternative, as we have, is an armoire that just ends up looking like a huge box – with most of the back cut out to accommodate the rear area of the TV and stereo components.

I don’t like plasma TVs…at least not what I’ve seen of them. I would hate one mounted over the fireplace…I don’t watch enough TV to have one. I don’t watch enough TV to have that huge armoire either…loved that closet idea.

The house with the steep driveway had a baby grand in the living room. I saw husband’s eyes mist over as this is one of his dreams – to have a baby grand, even though I’m the piano player in the family. It must represent something to him…what? Elegance? Old-world civility? Or maybe it’s just the shape and presence of a baby grand piano.

This same house also had a secret garden I adored…old wood steps leading up to a terraced perennial garden reminiscent of a cultured English garden, only hidden by trees and shrubs – making it truly secret if you cared to keep it that way.

This house had a brook? Stream? Some form of water in the back of the property but down another steep slope. A waterview, as they called it, is stretching the truth, but I would have loved that element just because I would wonder what new birds I’d see at my feeder.

When we came home and pulled in our own driveway, my house looked mighty good to me. No waterviews and no open floor plan exactly. High taxes and all.

So the new house I’d buy will have to be better than the one I own now. Also, I will have to maintain my interest in moving or I’ll just look around and say: Our house is fixed up the way we like it. Decorated the way we like it. Wired for sound, AC’d and new furnaced up just recently. It has the brick sidewalk *I* laid…in 90 degree weather, brick by brick and it also has my local bird families that I can recognize and know from year to year.

Changing where you live is a big step, especially if it isn’t necessary but optional.

Looking for a new house does bring dreams with the search though. It will be interesting to see if we can find a house that will pry us out of the one we live in now, our house.