house hunting

It is kind of hard to give up a dream.

I know it is God's will that life should go in the direction He ordains.  My husband has a job (for now... we will see what happens regarding sequestration).

We had that land, that beautiful, glorious land.  Ten acres of arable land that sloped gently back from the road to ten more acres of protected, wooded wetlands.  It was the perfect setting to build a beautiful walkout that faced west toward the sunset over the woods.  Autumn was a particularly wondrous time to drive out and look at this land, this land of ours, and dream about the house we would build on it.  We had actually bought both the lot and the view.  How many times in life do you get to do that?

I drew up floorplans full of my dreams, a vaulted ranch full of hardwoods and windows.  It had a lovely walk-out basement full of west-facing windows and plenty of room to keep our parents, should they ever need a place to stay, or our children, should they come to visit with their families.  And closets: pantries, coat closets, broom closets, and closets to store the dog-food and the rain boots.

The houses nowadays do not have closets.  It makes me want to cry.

In the midwestern city we are moving to, a smallish, college-townish sort of place, there are not many houses that float my boat.  Possibly not any.  I just looked at a plan of a house, new construction, that costs 64% more than what we probably will be able to get for our house here.  And it had no closets.  Well, there were bedroom closets, of course.  But there was no front closet, no back closet, and only one tiny linen closet upstairs, no linen closet to serve the master bathroom at all.

Seriously?  Seriously?  I've spent the past 24 years stressing about where to store my vacuum, but apparently in my next house, there might not even be anywhere to hang my coat.

At the same time, these stupid houses (yes, I am temperamental, and I will say stupid) all have frou-frou whirlpool garden tubs and separate showers with glass doors.  This frustrates me no end.  I do not like whirlpool tubs.  They always make me nauseated whenever I use them.  I suppose I run the water too hot and stay in too long, but really, isn't that the idea?   Anyway, I don't want one.

Also, I despise glass shower doors.  They are a bear to keep clean.  I've said it before and I'll say it again:  if your shower curtain liner gets nasty, you throw it out and buy a new one.  Five bucks.  Everything's cool.  If your glass shower doors get nasty (and they will, especially in that little metal track that the doors slide along), there is no such simple and cheap solution.  The angles you need to contort your body into to clean a glass shower door are too much for me at my age and with my back.  And the replacement cost is, well, not five bucks.

I was fussing about these ridiculous bathrooms, and I said, "If given the choice, I would so take a linen closet over a whirlpool tub.  Where are you supposed to keep your towels?"

"Why, people store their towels in their garden tubs, of course," David told me without missing a beat, "Since garden tubs make you nauseated if you use them."

We brainstormed a bunch of potential fixes.  "How about," David suggested, "You get one of those round curtain bars that hang from the ceiling and hang a shower curtain from that over your garden tub, converting it into a shower/bath?  Then you don't have to clean the glass shower doors.  And you could install shelves in the shower and store your towels in there."

All I'm going to say is this:  If I start looking at pictures of a house online, and the first picture they show me is the frou-frou garden tub, and that is the major selling point for the house, then I might as well x it off my list then and there.