My daughter and I live with four adults, in one house.
I usually don't try to explain this to people, for several reasons. Since our living situation is a little bit unusual, I just try to guard myself from people's reactions. I know this is right for us, and I know my reasons for being here, and honestly, I just don't think that I should have to explain that to someone. Often when we are explaining our reasons for doing something, I think we just end up trying to offer excuses to someone who doesn't understand or accept something we are doing. And this is not a situation for which I feel obligated to make excuses.
At the same time, I am being intrinsically drawn towards clarifying - perhaps only to myself - my reasons for being here. Some of them are reasons I had at the beginning, some of them are reasons I am developing along the journey. Here's my laundry list of reasons. Over the next several posts, I hope to explore them all in depth and figure some things out, see where I need to ask more questions, etc.
1. Community.
2. Safety.
3. Being in a house vs. an apartment.
4. Greenliness, i.e., being green, conserving, etc...
You would think that financial conservation would be on this list...but it is not. For me, this was a lateral move, and I wasn't necessarily doing this to save money. In fact, I was prepared to pay even more to live in the right house with this group of people than I would have paid for a place on my own.
Which brings me to my next topic: the right house. When my sister initially told me that she and her husband (Unky J) were thinking about moving into a house with KiKi and CanCan (our roomies), I thought - how fun. And then, over the next few days I started thinking, no really...how fun. So I told her I wanted in - possibly - and very tentatively. My focus was always on finding the right house. I had in my mind the picture of our ideal living space, and I told her that if we could not find a space like that, the babe and I would be just as happy to live in our own place, and the roomies could go on and, probably much easier, find a house that suited their needs.
My ideal space was a split floor plan, or a split parlor plan, that included a downstairs area with a separate living area, bedroom and bathroom, with access to a garage. This way, the babe and I could maintain an almost completely separate household, have plenty of privacy and quiet when we needed it, and feel as independent as possible. I was very specific in my description of this ideal space, so I'm sure everyone was like - yeah whatever. At the same time, they were all open-minded enough to try it.
So we started a dialogue on how to make this happen, what it would look like, and exactly when we could all jump into something like this. I have to admit, it really did not seem like it would work out. We were on three different schedules for move-in dates, with mine being the latest. I have pushed hard enough in the past to get what I wanted - and then had to deal with the fallout from making an impatient decision (see: the first move to Little Rock, January 2004) that I knew this one would have to be different. I prayed that God would work out whatever was supposed to happen - and that we would know His hand was in it by how smoothly it would go.
A few weeks into formulating our brilliant plan, Kiki found a posting on craigslist for a house that looked pretty interesting. We set up a date to see the house - and I was secretly very excited and, at the same time, scared to get my hopes up, lest it not be the perfect place it seemed to be. So we went and saw it. And would you know, it was perfect. The floor plan is exactly what we needed, and exactly what I had envisioned. Long story short, we signed a lease and now we all live here. We somehow made it work on three different move-in schedules, and now we are all snug and settled.
And that's where we are for now. Lately I've really been thinking about how we can be more, for lack of a better word, green. So expect me to be throwing a lot of thoughts out there on that subject.
My sis has a blogspot, too: www.living-in-community.blogspot.com. Feel free to check it out. We will both also be posting recipes, as we have quite the cooking house. Well, that's all for now. Peace and love.
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