Putting Myself On The Map

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I am a homeowner.

It feels good to say that. I bought my first house this past July and moved in at the end of August.

My house is off of one side of a cul-de-sac. It shares a narrow driveway leading with the house to the east. There's a little park just past that house, but you can't reach it from their property; besides their fence, the city doesn't mow a strip of the park, so it's wild and overgrown.

My friend Allison sometimes claims that my house is pink. In some lights, I think it's salmon-colored. It feels weird to care about the difference, but I do. It's a two-story house with a garage out front, the brick-red front door down a little strip of sidewalk, and a window by the door that looks in on a wall. If you stand to one side (and I have the blinds open, which I rarely do), you can look into my living room.

There are two windows on the front of the house. One is the master bedroom. Sometimes if I am working at a desk and have the blinds open just right, I think you can see me from the street. The other window is in the office. It has a better view of the park.

Open the front door and you'll see the small entryway. It has composite hardwood floors. There's a tan rug where you can wipe your feet. Immediately to your left, as you enter, is the downstairs bathroom. Right now it belongs to the cat. The door to the garage is on the right and the coat closet is opposite.

The wood floor ends with the living room. On the left side is a large picture window that looks out on my side lawn, such as it is, and the neighbor's house. Looking from the front of the room on that side toward the back, you'll see a tan recliner (it rocks and reclines but does not swivel), a halogen lamp, a couch, a coffee table with some books I intend to read someday), a recliner that matches the first, but not really the couch, and a blue bean-bag chair.

The other wall holds the entertainment center, holding the first TV I've ever owned, a VCR, a DVD player, and a stereo. Those were all gifts from a previous roommate who didn't have room for them and wanted to buy new toys anyway. There are also several video game consoles, two of which were also gifts.

The top of the cabinet holds miscellaneous knick-knacks, including a collection of camels (metal, leather, cloth) and a light green alien head (with suckers inside; candy, not tentacles).

Inside of the cabinet are three rows of entertainment products: games, DVDs, and CDs. You can tell I like decent science fiction with the row of Babylon 5 and Firefly boxed sets.

Just past the entertainment center is a bookcase. It's still mostly empty, mostly because my roommate still has boxes of books to unpack. I've claimed the top couple of shelves for books I want to show off downstairs. My nephew has a spot on a lower shelf reserved for books he can read (or convince someone to read to him) when he comes to visit.

The wall juts out into the room (to make room for the fridge) at that spot. There's a large beam in the ceiling across the room, presumably to divide the living room from a dining room visually. I painted the beam the same color as the walls, sort of a buttercreme tan. It looks very nice.

I don't use the dining room for a dining room. Instead, there's a small desk under the window holding plants and the cat's scratching post just to the right. The left corner of that room will eventually hold my arcade cabinet, when I put it together.

There's an opening into the kitchen just past the scratching post. Turn to the right to see the microwave and sink on the left and the fridge and stove on the right. There are several wooden cupboards and drawers lining the walls beside and below the sink and around the stove.

The kitchen has a laminated floor. It's non-descript.

The fridge is a huge white side-by-side hulk. It initially looks out of place because it almost doesn't fit, but you adapt to it after a while. On the front left side is an icemaker with a light and a water dispenser. You also have your choice of whole or crushed ice cubes.

There's a row of cookbooks I haven't used since I moved to the side of the microwave, almost to the sink. The sink and faucet are new; my father put them in shortly after I moved in. The sink itself is white and deep. I have clear little plastic guides to keep dishes from scratching it. The faucet is chrome, with a chrome nozzle on a hose and a chrome soap dispenser. The soap dispenser spits out twice as much soap at a time as I think it should.

There's a small kitchen window above the sink looking out into the back yard, over the deck. You can't quite see the creek from there, but it does give a good view of the potted tomatoes growing right now. Sometimes I wonder why the light above the sink is on the same switch as the main kitchen light.

There's a dishwasher below and to the right of the sink. That's a good place for it, as I can open the dishwasher and still walk around in the kitchen.

I keep a spice rack to the right of the stove along with a rack of knives and several cutting boards (two for vegetables, one for bread, and one for meat).

On the other side of the stove is the toaster and coffee machine. I usually use it for tea instead. The kitchen wall ends there, as the bonus room starts. I have a small wooden wheeled cabinet sitting at the end of the counter space, though, which holds miscellaneous plastic dishes. They're good for holding leftovers.

There's a rubber dish drainer to the right of the sink and a white phone hanging on the wall beyond that.

That takes you to the backdoor, a white door with a brassy knob and deadbolt that leads outside to the deck. There's also a screen door there, which is odd, because there's no screen door on the front of the house. Maybe someday.

The deck itself is ten-by-ten, about six feet off of the ground, with a handrail all of the way around about four feet tall. There are no stairs. It seems older than it is because the original builders didn't stain it very well and it seems wobblier than it should be because they used nails instead of screws to fasten the boards together. My father has some ideas on how to improve it.

On the wall just past the back door, there's a still life painting from my grandmother. I don't remember where she had it in her last house, but it came from the dining room in her house in Vale. There are four little saucer-sized paintings of various fruits hanging beneath it. It's probably irredeemably ugly, but it reminds me of my grandmother so I like it.

My dining room set (a table and six chairs) takes up the rest of the kitchen area. It's a little tight to sit at the far end, under one of the two windows on the west side of my house, but it's manageable. Six people can sit at the table. If it's not quite large enough, there's another leaf in the closet.

Turning to the right again leads you to the bonus room. There are more chairs in here. On the right side, you'll see a wall that hides the stairs. There's a small closet under the stairs, but I use that to store rarely used items and have a couch blocking it anyway. On the left side, under the other west window, there's an oversized blue chair and my old ugly secondhand chair from college. It rocks and swivels but doesn't recline and still smells faintly of cigarette smoke.

In the corner of the room is a gas fireplace. The mantle holds two bubbling fountains, one a black tri-level square fountain intended to hold polished rocks (I have no idea where they are now) and the other a round gargoyle sculpture with a glow-in-the-dark orb in the middle. There's also a blue lava lamp and a small TV/VCR combo in the middle.

When my maternal grandmother died, I asked for a fake-wood gothic clock she had hanging over her TV. It came with two matching candle holders and an oil lamp. I have the clock hanging on the wall to the left of the mantle and the candle holders to the right. The lamp is right next to the gargoyle fountain.

To the right of the fireplace is an again papa-san. If you've never sat in one before, it looks like it might be really comfortable. It's not. It's worse for sleeping. There's also a temporary particle-board bookshelf belonging to a previous roommate with a few books on it. That will go away when he reclaims it.

If you keep looking to the right, you'll see the stairs and then the living room again.