There's a scene in an episode of The Simpsons – the one where Homer takes a second job at the Kwik-E-Mart in order to pay for Lisa's horse – where Apu, upon seeing Homer quit and walk out the door, looks on wistfully and says, "He slept, he stole, he was rude to the customers... but still, there goes the best damned employee a convenience store ever had."
And as my moving day fast approaches – this coming weekend is my last one before the big day – I realize that I feel the same way about my townhouse.
Like Homer's employment term at the Kwik-E-Mart, the townhouse has its problems and its inconveniences – things I just don't like about it. For starters, it's always felt more like an apartment than a townhouse, owing to the fact that, as a carriage-style place, it's really only one floor. And having somebody live below me really makes it feel apartment-style, too. And I share my garage with four other people – one of whom is an old man whose giant truck blocks access from one side of the garage to the other, which has been extremely annoying for the last three years.
And my balcony is small and gets filled with bits of the roof – which needs to be replaced, and will be the subject of a special assessment later this spring – whenever the wind picks up.
And my neighbours below me fight often and loudly.
And I don't have a yard.
And with a one-in-front-of-the-other parking situation, Christene and I have spent approximately 25% of the last year jugging cars.
And my strata is run by monkeys.
Monkeys who charge me almost 100 dollars more than any other townhouse owner I know.
And my doorbell is shrill and loud and heart-attack inducing.
And I've run out storage space for a lot of my stuff.
These are all things that never used to bother me – either because four years ago when I moved in, these problems did not exist or because I just didn't care. I mean, I still don't really care that the doorbell shrieks, or that my neighbours fight. But things like the parking situation have come about because four years ago I lived by myself.
The roof was in better shape then, too. And I had less stuff.
But problems aside, it was my first place, and first places aren't supposed to come without some warts. If everybody had their dream house on their first go-around, nobody would ever move. That's just how it is.
But you learn to live with these things, and when it comes right down to it, I'm sort of sad to be leaving. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm extremely excited about our soon-to-be-built new house – it has a small yard, its own garage (single-car though, but whatever. There's still a dedicated outdoor spot), no strata, nearly 1,000 more square feet than the townhouse; a basement that will be turned into a man cave; and a big, open kitchen with a granite-countertop island.
But I'm still a little sad. I don't like change in the best of times, and I'm actually still shocked to realize that I've actually gone through with this whole move – it sort of seemed like the kind of thing I'd talk a lot about but never actually do. But it's done.
I'm moving.
And I'll miss my little 1,200 sq. ft. house a lot. When I moved back from Alberta six years ago, I made a promise to myself that I would buy a house by the time I was 25. So for more than a year, I saved and saved and saved, and I bought the townhouse two weeks before my 25th birthday (Even if I didn't move in until the summer).
It was, obviously, the biggest purchase of my life up until that point, and it was something I was pretty proud of, so there's some sentimental value there. I still remember the day I moved in, the first night I stayed there, or the Friday afternoons Bucholtz and I spent drinking while everyone else was still at work... which coincidentally led to one of my other favourite townhouse memories – Bucholtz rapping into my intercom, which was broadcast loudly into my townhouse courtyard, which upset my neighbour because it was "fucking loud."
And then there was the time, with a few hours to kill between Cannons' playoff games, Jeremy decided he needed to cook about seven boxes of Kraft Dinner (carbo-loading, I guess) and then proceeded to eat as much of it as he could, right out of the pot with a giant plastic spoon.
Or the time I woke up at 5:30 a.m. because a giant Canadian goose was thrashing about on my balcony.
Or the time I woke up, saw Christene's stuff all over the place, realized she lived here now, and said, 'Holy shit, how the hell did that happen?'
So yeah, some good times were had there.
I'll miss it.
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