Casual
MATUS, VICTORINO
Casual MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE As a recent college graduate, I had the typical young-male fantasy of what my first adult residence should be like. But even I knew that living upstairs from a bar could...
...But even they would grant that there are merits to owning a home—such as not worrying about disturbing the neighbors downstairs or getting hassled by a cranky tenant leading a petition demanding a game room...
...Luckily, I found an apartment one block from several watering holes...
...If so, wonderful...
...A young coworker laments my move and what it will do to our annual bar crawl—for which my old neighborhood was perfect...
...Your life has gotten incredibly boring," said one of my colleagues, age 24...
...About a week," is how long a friend tells me the excitement of housework and lawn-mowing lasts...
...But it feels right for where I am now...
...Indeed, I enjoy doing chores around the house and staying home on weekends...
...We settled on the Virginia suburb of Arlington, but this time my concerns were different...
...I couldn't imagine bearing the burden of a house back then (or the experience of a near-meltdown, the night before closing, concerning various accounting and legal questions still as mystifying to me as the horticulture in my yard...
...But, as I've tried to explain, suburbia is not where I wanted to live ten years ago either...
...But even I knew that living upstairs from a bar could have lethal consequences...
...Of course the crawl would be a short one, from one end of the strip mall to the other...
...Someone even asked if I'd noticed lilies of the valley growing in my yard...
...Okay, so maybe my friends don't share my sentiments exactly...
...Being near a grocery store and a Metro station were important, too, but, as I recall, the bar was the important part...
...Meanwhile, the upstairs toilet makes a hissing sound, leading me to think there's a leak...
...Laundry can be done at any hour, and no one will remove your clothes from the drier before you return...
...So I decided my first apartment should merely be located near a good bar, within walking (or crawling) distance...
...I was soon imbibing with friends at one Irish pub often enough to become a regular...
...What were the public schools like...
...That was my father's job (I can hear him laughing in New Jersey...
...The chimney flue and the gutters need cleaning, plus I have to buy a ladder and a carbon monoxide detector...
...Best of all, the pub served food during happy hour on Mondays, which meant one free dinner a week...
...Beginning last fall, my wife and I started house-hunting...
...There were other botanical questions like "Do you have begonias, azaleas, or boxwoods...
...And why would I have...
...I wondered how safe the area was, especially at night...
...Once we moved into our new home, fellow homeowners started bombarding me with other questions, like "What kind of mower do you use...
...For starters, there are crickets in my basement...
...And if I had owned this house when I was in my early 20s, I certainly wouldn't have kept the yellow-flowered valances above the windows...
...Our 23-year-old assistant editor finds my tales of home-ownership "terrifying...
...and "Do you plan on growing tomatoes...
...Not one or two, but about two dozen...
...I have no idea what any of these people are talking about...
...And my contemporaries tend to feel the same way...
...It supposedly blooms in the summer...
...If so, I'll need to be careful about not using too much nitrogen, which results in a tall plant bearing little fruit...
...I've been told to change the air filter regularly (it was hard enough remembering to change my Brita water filter...
...He added, "If this is adulthood, I want no part of it...
...asks a former college housemate, now with a wife and two kids, who often speaks of leading a life of quiet desperation...
...VICTORINO MATUS...
...My father recommends painting the basement walls with a sealant coat (a project already underway) and using a caulk gun to fill the holes...
...But, at the moment, there are more pressing matters that need tending...
...We'd hit maybe three bars...
...In fact, the only thing I tell them is what my wife tells me—that there is something called a crape myrtle behind the house...
...That was ten years ago...
...How many trips to Home Depot and Lowe's have you made...
...I reassured him that if he's willing to come out to my new neighborhood, we can continue this venerable tradition...
...Or even known what a valance was...
...The good news is that I could stop in at the hardware store and pick up more caulk for my caulk gun...
...The neighbor kid calls them spyhoppers and I've placed sticky traps to catch a few...
...And, in the next few years, we may have to replace either the hot-water heater or the furnace or both—issues I never once thought about while living in my parents' house...
...Still another summed things up by saying, "Welcome to middle age...
Vol. 11 • May 2006 • No. 35
